Page 150 of Red Scale Daddy
The engineer obeys.
Good.
I move to the panel with deliberate calm, though every nerve in my body strains toward action. The interface is Reaper military architecture, built around layered authorizations, pressure-based inputs, and command hierarchies embedded directly into the operating logic. Crude in philosophy. Effective in execution. It does not ask the user what they want to accomplish; it asks what rank permits them to attempt.
I hate it immediately.
I also understand enough to begin.
The symbols are unfamiliar, but the system behavior is not. Power always has grammar. Pressure always has syntax. A ship always tells the truth somewhere, even when its builders lie.
My fingers move across the panel, slower than I would like, fast enough to imply competence. I pull only shallow data at first: heat distribution, stabilization lag, pulse timing, field variance. I avoid anything that would reveal how quickly I am mapping their architecture beneath the surface.
“Your response chain is over-centralized,” I say.
“My engineers disagree,” Throgg replies.
“They are welcome to continue being wrong.”
The Reaper engineer behind me stiffens.
Throgg’s voice turns almost pleasant. “You enjoy provoking them.”
“I enjoy accuracy.”
“You enjoy both.”
I do not answer because he is correct and because acknowledging that gives him a shape of me I would prefer he not hold.
The diagnostic readout resolves, and I see the opening immediately.
A bypass channel exists between the secondary distributor and the emergency coolant routing. It is narrow, locked under command authorization, and almost certainly used to preserve power during combat maneuvers. If modified, it could also overload a localized section of the drive response system. Not enough to destroy the ship. Enough to interrupt pursuit. Enough to open a door.
I file it away.
Later.
Everything is later now.
Later I will grieve.
Later I will scream.
Later I will think about Dux’s hand against the glass and the impossible cold outside the airlock and the way his mouth shaped words meant to comfort me while he was being thrown into death.
For now, I breathe.
For now, I work.
For now, I refuse the conclusion they expect from me.
Dux is not dead.
The thought is irrational by any humane standard and statistically indefensible by most biological ones. Vakutan physiology offers survival advantages under vacuum exposure, but the core is full of radiation, debris, gravitational shear,and hostile distance. He had no suit. He had injuries. He had minutes at most.
I know all of that.
I decline it.
