Page 82 of Red Scale Daddy
A fresh shriek rises from beyond the ridge, deeper than the drones’ calls, resonant enough to vibrate through the stone against my spine.
The scanner fills with motion, first in scattered points, then in a spreading wave that crawls across the display faster than my mind wants to accept. There are far more than eight drones beyond the ridge, far more than twelve, and the returns keep multiplying until the screen becomes a living map of coordinated hunger.
I look toward the Lamplight, wounded and waiting beneath the thin, hostile sky.
The mission is still intact.
It is simply no longer civilized enough to pretend it cares what I planned.
CHAPTER 12
DUX
The asteroid comes alive around us in claws, shrieks, and the cold scrape of too many limbs crossing stone.
The sound is wrong for open ground. It belongs in tunnels, under floors, inside walls where a man has nowhere to swing and every echo might be teeth. Here, beneath the thin metallic sky, it spreads across the ridge and down into the crash gouge until the whole place seems to be clicking, chittering, and breathing through armor plates. Dust drifts in the low gravity, shining faintly where the blue mineral veins glow beneath black rock. Roma stands behind me under the overhang, scanner in one hand, tool launcher in the other, her face pale inside the helmet seal and her eyes furious with calculation.
Good.
Fury keeps the blood moving.
The scanner display throws green light across her cheek, catching the bruise there and making it look like a storm under glass. She has stopped pretending the plan is intact. I can see that much. She hates it, but she has stopped. The difference matters.
“Count?” I ask.
Roma’s fingers move across the scanner. “Unreliable. The mineral interference is splitting returns, but there are too many for direct engagement in the open.”
“That was the long version of ‘bad.’”
“It was the accurate version of bad.”
A drone climbs over the ridge ahead of us, six arms digging into stone, plated body low and fast. Another follows to the left, then a third skitters along the crash scar below, angling for the Lamplight’s ramp. The ship sits wounded in the dust, tilted on her collapsed strut, hull scored and still faintly smoking from the landing. Roma sees the same thing I do: they are not only coming for us.
They are learning the ship matters.
“Ramp,” I say.
“I know.”
“Damaged port plating too.”
“I know.”
“Say the plan.”
She glances at me, irritated even now. “You require reassurance?”
“I require knowing whether I am about to be brave or stupid.”
“Those are often the same in your case.”
“Fair.”
Roma shoves the scanner against my chest. “We push down the ridge, cross the charged sealant field at the narrow point, reach the port-side actuator assembly, and I replace the damaged control link. That gives me partial vane response. Then we retreat through the ramp before they adapt around the traps.”
I look at the drones spreading below. “And the part where they try to turn us into lunch?”
“You handle that.”
