Page 50 of Red Scale Daddy
My father used to say machines were honest if you listened before forcing them to answer.
The Lamplight answers me now with stable harmonics, clean heat exchange, and a minor vibration in the starboard ballast pump I will recalibrate before first rest cycle. She is ready. I am ready. Dux is a statistical insult with a harness.
A soft ping announces the outer gate accepting our flight plan.
Dux speaks before I can transmit final confirmation. “That gate queue is ugly.”
I scan it. “Define ugly.”
“Too many ships clustered near buoy three.”
“Freight delays are common.”
“Not like that. The back two haulers are holding position instead of adjusting for queue drift.”
I zoom the external feed. Two blocky cargo haulers sit near buoy three, drives warm but not advancing, transponders blandly identifying them as mineral carriers. Their hulls are dirty, patched, and unremarkable. Too unremarkable, perhaps. One vessel’s running lights blink out of sequence.
My stomach cools.
“They are not in our route,” I say.
“Not yet.”
“We are not carrying listed cargo.”
“You are Roma Larson, flying an expensive custom ship after a public bar fight with creditor muscle.”
I adjust our vector manually, increasing distance from buoy three. “That information should not have propagated this quickly.”
“You were famous before tonight.”
“In engineering circles.”
“And now in creditor circles, bar circles, and whatever circles Pell screams in when frightened.”
I initiate a passive scan. One hauler’s heat signature spikes beneath its declared output. A concealed system is warming.
Dux says nothing.
For once.
That silence is worse than a joke.
“Unidentified energy buildup on mineral carrier two,” I say.
“Recommend lateral drop.”
“I am aware.”
“Recommend now.”
“I said I am aware.”
The concealed system flares.
I drop the Lamplight hard beneath the traffic plane. The inertial dampers catch most of it, but not all. Weight presses my body into the harness. The starfield tilts. A burst of accelerated particles tears through the space we occupied and splashes harmlessly against a distant cargo shield. The hauler immediately goes dark.
Dux’s hand grips the armrest, but he does not shout, does not grab controls, does not interfere.
