Page 1 of Red Scale Daddy
CHAPTER 1
ROMA
The first thing that hits me when the outer door irises open is the smell.
Not one smell. A layered assault of them. Burnt sugar from cheap liquor with a caramelized finish. Fry grease old enough to have a legal identity. Ozone from overworked holotables. Wet scales. Hot metal. Some floral perfume trying bravely and failing spectacularly to survive in the middle of all that masculine ruin. The air is warm enough to cling to my skin under my disguise, and loud enough that for half a second the room feels less like a bar and more like the inside of a machine with too many moving parts.
Good. Noise gives cover. Noise gives me time.
I step inside with my shoulders slightly rounded and my chin tipped down, letting the hood shadow the upper half of my face. The jacket I chose is ugly on purpose, bulky through the middle and shapeless from throat to knee, the sort of practical outerwear people stop looking at as soon as they clock it. My braid is tucked up beneath the collar. My gloves are stained with harmless conductive grease I rubbed into the seams to make myself look like a dock mechanic too tired to care. The compadhidden against my ribs feels warm through two layers of fabric. So does the flat data wafer in my sleeve.
I stop just past the threshold long enough to look like I’m getting my bearings and use that pause for what it is: reconnaissance.
Front entrance behind me. Emergency side exit to the left, half-blocked by a cracked neon sign advertising fermented starfruit. Service door in the back near the kitchen, swinging open every forty seconds or so in rhythm with a sweating human carrying trays. Two windows, both too narrow to climb through without breaking something important. Twenty-three visible patrons. Twenty-four, if the broad-shouldered Vakutan in the far corner is asleep and not dead. Three probable mercenaries by bearing alone. One woman at the bar with scar tissue climbing her neck in a pattern that says ex-military or very committed hobbyist. Two Pi’Rell playing cards with the detached serenity of immortals who have seen civilizations rise, fall, and still found time to cheat at games.
Potential hires: maybe four.
Potential threats: most of the room.
I start toward the bar.
Conversations do not stop so much as deform around me. Voices lower. Glances slide over and away and back again. Suspicion is a living thing in places like this. It has teeth, and it likes newcomers best.
The floor sticks under my boots. Music mutters from recessed speakers overhead, all bass and brass and someone growling about blood debts in three languages. A burst of laughter snaps from a table on my right, sharp as broken glass. Somewhere behind me, the door seals shut with a hiss that sounds uncomfortably final.
The bartender is impossible to miss.
Vakutan. Male. Seven feet or near enough that the difference is academic. Red scales darkened almost to burgundy beneath the low amber lights. He stands behind the bar polishing a glass that has no hope of ever being clean, and the act has the faintly theatrical quality of a man announcing that he notices everything while pretending not to. He is not handsome in any soft or civilized sense of the word. He is too large, too scarred, too visibly made for force. But he has presence in the way collapsing stars probably have presence. The room bends around it.
A lean half-Vakutan, half-human man is stacking bottles two stations down, moving with the casual speed of somebody used to dodging flying furniture. Expressive face, clever eyes, mouth built for sarcasm. The bartender says something low to him. The younger man glances at me, glances back, and lifts one shoulder in a way that could mean anything frominterestingtowe are about to have a problem.
I catalog them both and keep going.
If this goes badly—and the odds favor that outcome—I will have to decide very quickly whether the bartender is the sort who values order over ego. Men that size often mistake the two for each other.
I reach the bar and claim an empty stretch of scarred metal between a silent Alzhon with silver hair and a human wearing mining harness webbing over a mesh shirt. The human looks me over like he’s pricing stolen components. I ignore him.
The bartender approaches, drying his hands on a rag that has surrendered all pretense of cleanliness.
“What’ll it be?” he asks.
His voice is deep enough to vibrate through the bar top. No overt hostility yet. No welcome either.
“I need five minutes of everyone’s attention,” I say.
The rag stills in his hand. Around me, the nearby talk thins just enough for the shape of my words to carry.
“That so?” he says.
“That so,” I reply.
The half-Vakutan snorts into the bottle he’s setting down. “Well, hell. Usually people buy a drink before they try and seize the floor.”
I turn my head and give him a measured look. “If I wanted advice on etiquette, I’d go somewhere that washes its glasses.”
He grins so fast I nearly miss it. The bartender does not.
“That was rude,” the half-Vakutan says, sounding delighted. “Accurate, but rude.”
