Page 44 of Red Scale Daddy
“I was comparing him to fungus.”
“That is worse.”
“More accurate.”
The Lamplight slides into the launch corridor, and the station falls behind us by degrees. Panels curve away outside the viewport. Guiding lights flash in ordered sequence. Past them, space waits vast and black, pricked with distant suns that look peaceful because distance makes liars of beautiful things.
Roma’s hands remain steady on the controls.
I keep mine visible, for now.
Boundaries matter.
Mostly because the important ones tell you exactly where the fight will be.
CHAPTER 7
ROMA
The Lamplight leaves Docking Bay Twelve with less drama than Dux entering my cockpit, which is both mathematically unsurprising and personally aggravating.
The station drops behind us in measured increments, a vast wheel of plated metal, cold lights, service spines, docking arms, and habitation rings turning against the starfield like something too old to care who comes and goes. Its departure lanes glitter with disciplined traffic: cargo haulers crawling under heavy mass, private couriers darting along narrow vectors, maintenance skiffs blinking amber beneath the authority of bored traffic controllers. Beyond them waits the civilized dark, wide and hungry, its silence pressing against the canopy with a grandeur that would be poetic if poetry had any measurable impact on navigation.
Inside the cockpit, the air is filtered, cool, and faintly sweet with new polymer warmed by active circuitry. The engines deepen beneath the floor, not loud, but present in my bones, a restrained vibration that climbs through the soles of my boots and settles behind my ribs. My hands rest on the primary controls. My displays layer the world into useful obedience: velocity, drift, traffic hazard, shield harmonics, drivecoil temperature, ballast micro-adjustment, Dux’s unauthorized heart rate spike when Loklo accessed our private comms.
I did not ask the system to track Dux’s heart rate.
I also do not disable it.
“Stop touching the atmospheric balance,” I say.
Dux, who has been seated for less than seven minutes and has already tested three locked panels, two camera selectors, and one emergency foam diagnostic, pauses with his finger hovering above the secondary environmental screen.
“I’m not touching,” he says.
“You are preparing to touch.”
“That is a different crime.”
“On my ship, conspiracy is actionable.”
He leans back in the undersized secondary chair, which complains softly beneath him despite being rated for his mass. “You know, for a woman who claims to value precision, you use a broad definition of misconduct.”
“For a man who claims usefulness, you generate an extravagant amount of supervision.”
He smiles, teeth showing just enough to remind the room that amusement and threat are cousins in Vakutan anatomy. “I like to know where the walls are.”
“The walls are where I put them.”
“Yes,” Dux says, glancing toward the panels, “and I like to know which ones move.”
I bring us through the outer traffic band and accept the station controller’s final vector correction. “Lamplight clearing local authority. Transitioning to independent navigation.”
Dock control answers with professional relief. “Confirmed, Lamplight. You are clear beyond marker seven. Safe?—”
“Choose your next word carefully,” I say.
The controller pauses long enough for static to fill the line. “Confirmed, Lamplight. Departing traffic corridor.”
