Page 83 of Red Scale Daddy
I grin. “See? You do understand my skill set.”
“Do not enjoy this.”
“Too late.”
The first drone springs.
I step forward and meet it before it reaches her.
Low gravity makes strength strange. Every movement wants to carry too far, every strike wants to overcommit, but I have fought on ships with failing dampers, in breached corridors, on moons where a man can jump himself into orbit if he panics. I let the drone come high, catch its upper limb, and turn with its momentum. Its claws screech across my forearm guard. My boots skid against loose stone. I drive my shoulder into its armored chest and fire twice into the joint under its head.
It drops hard enough to bounce.
Roma is already moving past me.
Not fleeing. Working.
She slides down the slope in controlled steps, using her scanner to pick a path through the mineral veins and loose rock. A drone darts in from her left. Before I can shout, she fires the tool launcher at a glowing vein beside its feet. The microflare bursts against the mineral line, throwing a white flash and a spray of charged dust into its face. It reels, claws scrabbling, and Roma changes direction without wasting half a breath.
That is what I saw in the bar.
Forced out of the plan, she does not freeze long. She hates the shove, but once the universe kicks her, she moves.
I like that more than is wise.
“Right side!” I call.
“I see it,” Roma snaps.
She does see it. A drone skitters over a stone shelf and launches toward her shoulders. Roma drops low instead of back, letting the creature sail over her in the low gravity. She plants one boot against a rock spur, twists, and fires a sealant burst intoits underside as it passes. The foam expands across two of its limbs, hardening fast and throwing off glittering sparks where it touches mineral dust. The drone lands badly, tangled in itself.
I shoot it before it gets clever.
Roma looks over her shoulder. “I had that.”
“I know.”
“Then why shoot?”
“Because dead is a more reliable status than temporarily inconvenienced.”
She opens her mouth, probably to argue, then shuts it and keeps moving.
Progress again.
We reach the bottom of the slope, and the asteroid floor levels into a field of shattered stone. The Lamplight is thirty meters away. Thirty meters of open ground, crawling shadows, dust, and drones that now understand the shining patches on the rock hurt them. They split around the charged sealant and begin climbing the stone spires instead.
“High,” I warn.
Roma kneels by the port actuator housing without looking up. “Then keep them high.”
“I love a simple order.”
“It suits you.”
I plant myself between her and the nearest spire cluster. “That almost sounded like praise.”
“It was task assignment.”
