Page 177 of Red Scale Daddy
Then, for less than half a second, another pattern appears.
Crude. Improvised. Familiar in its irritation.
Larson-pattern recursion.
My breath stops in my throat.
Pally.
My father is close enough to receive.
Or someone has his equipment.
Or Dux?—
I clamp down on the thought before it becomes visible on my face.
The Reaper engineer leans closer. “Your pulse increased.”
“Your proximity is unpleasant.”
“You are agitated.”
“You are observant in the least useful way possible.”
“Explain the new data packet.”
“It is a triangulation artifact produced by damaged adaptive mapping routines.”
“You will isolate it.”
“I am already isolating it.”
I bury the incoming pattern beneath a false cascade of corrupted route fragments, then feed the engineer a cleaned version of the map that points toward a region near the Thorn Shelf. It is not my father’s exact position. It is not safe. It is not random. It is a carefully chosen intersection between three dangerous things: Pally’s likely salvage corridor, Throgg’s pursuit route, and a Zenos movement band I identified from the predator maps in his engineering archive.
A three-body problem with teeth.
I send the map to Throgg’s command channel before the engineer can object.
He makes a sharp sound. “You transmitted without authorization.”
“I transmitted actionable intelligence.”
“You are not permitted to determine?—”
Throgg’s voice enters through the cockpit comm, calm enough to slice skin. “Bring her to command.”
The engineer goes very still.
I close the panel and rise. “See? He enjoyed it.”
The walk back through the docking spine feels longer than before, though the route has not changed. Reaper guards bracket me with disciplined silence, their armor whispering softly witheach step. Beneath the floor, the massive vessel vibrates with redirected power, a low predatory thrum that tells me engines are warming above maintenance levels. Throgg is already moving resources in response to the bait.
Good.
Not enough.
But good.
