Page 73 of Red Scale Daddy
“Because I kept her in one piece.”
“Yes.”
The word is simple, and it stops her more effectively than argument would have.
I unclip the harness and wince as my ribs object. “You did.”
Roma looks back at her displays, face shuttering hard. Damage reports cascade across the main screen: port vane offline, starboard ballast overheated, ventral shields drained, landing strut failure, aft routing damage, microfractures in external plating, atmospheric seal intact. She reads every line too fast, absorbing injury like insult.
Her hands move to restart diagnostics.
They tremble once.
Then stop.
She thinks I do not see.
I see.
“You all right?” I ask.
“I am functional.”
“That answer is getting old.”
“It remains accurate.”
Smoke drifts between us, carrying the chemical tang of burned insulation. The emergency lights paint her face in alternating blue and red. For the first time since I met her, the ship around her does not look like an extension of perfect will. It looks wounded, and so does she.
I keep my voice easier than my thoughts. “You got us down.”
“I should not have needed to.”
“There it is.”
She glares at me. “What?”
“The part where survival disappoints you because it was not tidy.”
“That anomaly should not have been there.”
“No argument.”
“It did not match mapped conditions.”
“Obviously.”
“My model accounted for gravitational variance.”
“Not that one.”
Her lips press into a thin, furious line. She looks away before I can read too much, but not quickly enough. I catch the flash of something under the anger: shock, maybe, or the first hairline fracture in the belief that enough preparation can make fear unnecessary.
I do not mock it.
I am an ass, not a monster.
Instead, I look through the canopy.
