Page 6 of Red Scale Daddy
“Shut up,” I mutter.
Varkun bares his teeth. “You’ve got a mouth on you.”
“Yes,” she says. “And unlike yours, it appears connected to a brain.”
The room tightens around that. Bodies shift. Drinks lower. Bets begin without words. I have owned this miserable place long enough to recognize the flavor of anticipation when it rolls across a crowd. It tastes like salt, old sweat, and the copper ghost of blood not yet spilled.
Varkun pushes away from the bar and squares up. “You some kind of engineer?”
“Yes.”
“That ship real?”
“Yes.”
“You really think it’ll survive the core?”
“Yes.”
He bends until his face is near hers. “Then you’re crazier than a Reaper choir in a maternity ward.”
Her eyes flick to his throat, his right knee, his left hand, and back to his face. I see it because I am looking for it. Most people will think she is frozen. She is not frozen. She is calculating angles.
“That joke requires knowledge of Reaper reproductive acoustics,” she says. “I’m surprised you have such a delicate academic range.”
Loklo whispers, “I am in love.”
“You fall in love with anyone who insults customers.”
“Only when they do it with footnotes.”
Varkun does not understand the half of what she said, but he understands insult. That is enough for him. His hand shoots out toward her hood, probably to yank it back, maybe to drag her offthe stool, maybe just to prove he can touch what has refused to bend.
She moves before he reaches her.
Not far. Not dramatic. She slips half a step inside the arc of his arm and drives the heel of her gloved hand into the inside of his wrist. It is not strong enough to injure him badly, but it changes the line of his grab. His fingers close on air and the edge of her hood instead of her throat. Fabric tears. Her head jerks, and a coil of red hair flashes out from beneath the disguise like fire catching in a vent draft.
For the first time since she walked in, her composure cracks. Not fear. Fury.
Varkun laughs. “Well, now. Look at that.”
I am already moving.
He catches a fistful of the torn hood and hauls. She twists with it, trying to keep her feet under her, but he has too much mass and she has too little room. Her shoulder clips the bar. The compad projection wavers, the ghost-ship shuddering in the air as if the core has already found it.
I come over the bar because going around would take too long.
Wood and metal complain under my boots. Bottles rattle behind me. Somebody curses and scrambles back as I land on the customer side, close enough that Varkun finally remembers where he is and whose floor he is bleeding on if this keeps up.
“Let go,” I say.
He turns his head toward me, still gripping the torn cloth. “Dux, this ain’t your?—”
I hit him once.
Not hard by my standards. Hard enough by his. My fist drives into the hinge of his jaw with a crack I feel up my arm. His good eye loses its focus. His knees fold, but I catch him by the front of his shirt before he drops and slam him face-first onto thebar. The impact knocks over the human’s drink and sends amber liquor spreading under the hovering schematic.
Varkun groans.
