Page 98 of Red Scale Daddy
“Maybe not, but you are running hot and pretending the gauges are decorative.”
She turns back to the console. “I have work.”
“Of course you do. Work is safe. Work does not ask what happens when your father looks at you and realizes you buried yourself to dig him out.”
Her hand stops above the controls.
Good.
No, not good.
Effective.
There is a difference, and I am beginning to dislike how easily I reach for the sharpest thing.
Roma lowers her hand slowly, then faces me again. “Do not bring him into this as leverage.”
“He is already in this. He is the whole damn engine.”
“My father is not a rhetorical device.”
“No,” I say, voice roughening despite my attempt to keep it light. “He is a man you love so much you have turned yourself into a rescue mechanism.”
Her eyes flare. “Better that than turning myself into a bar fight with a pulse.”
There she is.
The words hit, and I grin because pain is familiar ground. “Careful, Commander. That sounded personal.”
“It was meant to.”
“Good. I was worried you had replaced all emotional function with navigation software.”
She steps closer. “You do not want emotional function from me. You want a reaction. You want proof that I can still be provoked because then you can congratulate yourself for finding the woman under the mission.”
I move closer too, because I am exactly the kind of fool who advances toward artillery. “And there she is again, pretending being seen is an attack.”
“It often is.”
That stops me more than I expect.
Roma seems to hear what she has admitted a second after saying it. Her mouth closes, and her eyes cut briefly toward the signal display as if it might offer an emergency exit from her own honesty.
The ship creaks under another impact. Somewhere aft, a drone shrieks as shield charge repels it from the hull. The sound travels through metal, thin and furious. Neither of us moves.
I keep my voice lower. “Who taught you that?”
“No one taught me anything.”
“Liar.”
Her gaze snaps back. “Do not call me that.”
“You lie beautifully when the truth is about yourself. Less well when it is about engines.”
“I am going to ignore you now.”
“Try harder. You’re bad at it.”
