Page 12 of Red Scale Daddy
ROMA
The room is no longer laughing at me.
That should feel like a victory, but victory implies advantage, and I am standing in the middle of a bar full of armed strangers with my hood torn, my name exposed, and Dux watching me like I am either a puzzle, a warning label, or an especially pretty explosive. The stale heat of the room presses against my skin. Liquor fumes sit thick in my throat. My torn hood scratches the side of my neck where the seam has split, and the spilled drink on the bar reflects the overhead lights in a wavering amber smear that makes my collapsed schematic look, for one foolish second, like a drowned star.
I do not have the luxury of embarrassment.
I have data.
I set one gloved hand flat against the bar and let the other rest near my compad, not quite touching it. Around me, the patrons wait with that predatory patience people develop in dangerous places. No one is mocking outright now. Good. Mockery is easy to manage. Interest is more volatile.
“You have heard the cost,” I say, letting my voice carry through the room. “You have heard the destination. Now youshould hear the terms before anyone mistakes this for an invitation to grandstand.”
The human in the mining harness lifts his half-empty glass. “Lady, I think grandstanding is the only thing keeping half this bar upright.”
“You may continue doing it from a distance,” I say. “I need skill, not volume.”
A few snickers move through the crowd, less cruel than before. The scarred woman near the bar studies me with narrowed eyes, arms folded over her chest. Dux remains where he is, too large and too still, his red-scaled body a wall of heat and consequence just outside my preferred operating radius. Loklo has drifted closer again, his expression bright with shameless enjoyment.
“You keep saying skill,” the scarred woman says. “Skill at what, exactly?”
“Navigation under gravitational instability. Combat in confined environments. EVA survival. Emergency repair. Salvage identification. Triage decision-making. If your main qualification is that you once frightened a customs officer, please save us both time.”
The human in the harness grimaces. “That feels personal.”
“It became personal when you tried to read my schematic upside down.”
Loklo makes a soft noise of appreciation. “She’s mean in complete sentences. That’s rare.”
Dux glances at him. “You are very committed to not helping.”
“I help morale.”
“You are morale damage.”
Their exchange draws another ripple of amusement, but I do not let the room drift with it. Humor is useful only if I own the pivot. I tap my compad again, and the projection reappears, smaller this time, above the bar. The ship forms in sectionsrather than all at once: spine, hull, rings, shielding nodes, maneuvering clusters. I omit anything that could be reverse-engineered with moderate patience and a criminal disposition, which means I omit most of what matters.
“I am not hiring a crew,” I continue. “I am hiring one person. Possibly two if the second person demonstrates exceptional value and does not annoy me into an early grave during the interview process.”
Loklo raises a hand.
“No,” I say without looking at him.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I made a probability tree.”
“Was I impressive in any branch?”
“Briefly, in one. Then you spoke.”
The scarred woman laughs under her breath. The sound is low and unwilling, which makes it more valuable. The room’s attention is no longer a loose animal; it is becoming a line I can pull.
Dux’s gaze sharpens. He sees it. Of course he does.
That is irritating.
I shift the projection to a partial simulation of the outer core boundary, a region of distorted light and layered gravitational vectors. The display turns the air above the bar into a transparent map of lethal mathematics. Most of the patrons will not understand the details. That is fine. They do not need to understand the equations to recognize confidence.
