Page 66 of Red Scale Daddy
He gives a short laugh, but his hand has gone white-knuckled around the armrest. “I enjoy your optimism.”
The ship slides along the anomaly’s edge. Shields flare. The display becomes a storm of warnings, each one demanding priority, each one convinced it is the most important problem in existence. I ignore all but four. Vane angle. Ballast lag. Ventral shield decay. Drive alignment.
The Lamplight is no longer singing.
She is grinding her teeth.
“Port vane stress is climbing,” Dux says.
“I see it.”
“At current rate, it goes red in twelve seconds.”
“I see it.”
“Roma.”
“I need nine.”
He shuts up.
That, more than anything, tells me he understands.
I count without speaking. The anomaly’s rotation pulls us sideways. I let it, then feed a corrective burst through the port micro-thrusters at the exact moment its force changes direction. The ship whips around the edge of the gravitational knot, not free yet, but pointed toward a narrow spill corridor opening beyond the distortion.
The corridor did not exist in my model.
It exists now.
I take it.
Full thrust would break us. Half thrust would strand us. I choose seventy-three percent and accept the risk.
The Lamplight surges.
Every warning on the board becomes red for one terrible second.
Then the force releases.
The cockpit snaps back into relative stability. My harness bites again, then loosens as dampers catch up. The alarms continue, but they are status alarms now, not immediate death. Shield harmonics damaged but recovering. Port vane overheated. Starboard ballast lagging. Drive alignment strained but intact.
We are through.
I realize I am breathing too fast and correct it.
Dux does not speak immediately. He looks at the displays, then at the canopy, then at me. His face is stripped of its usual careless humor, and in its place is something more dangerous than mockery.
Respect.
I do not know what to do with it.
So I work.
“Running diagnostics,” I say.
My voice is steady enough.
Mostly.
