Page 78 of Red Scale Daddy
“And you do not get to call standing still a strategy because moving scares you.”
“I am not scared of moving.”
“No,” Dux says, stepping closer, his voice dropping. “You are scared of moving without knowing exactly where your foot lands.”
The cold wind presses between us, snapping a loose strand of hair against my cheek inside the helmet seal. His eyes are too direct. Too warm for a place this cold. Too perceptive for a man who claims so much of himself is reckless appetite and bad manners.
“I know where my foot lands,” I say.
“Not here.”
I hate that he is right.
I hate more that being right does not grant him authority.
“My command remains in effect,” I say. “We repair. You will secure the perimeter within visual range while I begin shield restoration.”
Dux’s nostrils flare faintly as he draws in the thin air through his filter. “Visual range is not enough.”
“It is what you are getting.”
“I could be more useful on that ridge.”
“You could also be dead on that ridge, taking our only combat specialist with you.”
He pauses, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Our only combat specialist?”
“Do not make me regret word choice.”
“You called me ours.”
“I referred to crew allocation.”
“Still warm.”
“It was administrative.”
His smile lingers only a moment before his attention snaps past me.
Not toward the ridge.
Toward the ship’s crash gouge.
I turn instantly, scanner raised though it is not a weapon. At first I see only dust drifting through the long scar in the stone, the pale glow of mineral veins, the broken fragments of rock thrown up by our landing. Then a darker shape shifts behind a stone spire.
Low.
Fast.
Too deliberate for debris.
“Dux,” I say.
“I see it.”
The shape vanishes.
The scanner flickers, catches movement, loses it, catches three more points behind it. Small by mass readings, but the interference is bad. No, not small. Compressed signatures. Dense bodies. Multiple limbs distorting the return.
