Page 5 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
Tavi’s voice breaks in again. “Don’t be dramatic, Monroe. You know Logistics doesn’t have the budget for functioning AI.”
“Great,” I deadpan. “So we’re running interstellar cargo flow with glorified Speak & Spells. Awesome.”
My fingers fly over the controls, rerouting freight from Dock 3 through North access instead of South. South’s overloaded again. Surprise.
The drone crane overhead lets out a mechanical moan and slouches right, swinging a crate of hydration filters in a perfect arc… straight into the side of a recycling compactor.
The resulting crash sounds like a droid dying dramatically in a soap opera.
“Beautiful,” I murmur. “A masterpiece in three acts.”
Tavi pops up behind me in person this time, eyes smeared with last night’s mascara and a cup of stimbrew big enough to drown a toddler.
“You see that security audit memo?” she asks, sipping without breaking eye contact.
“The one with the six typos and no signatures? Very official. I framed it.”
She snorts. “There’s a Grolgath patrol on base today. Guess who gets to baby-sit the north corridor.”
“Oof. Want me to write your eulogy?”
Ando looks up from his console. “Don’t bother. I already called dibs on her boots.”
Tavi flips him off with her stimbrew still in hand. “I’m immortal. I drink the blood of interns.”
“Explains your coffee breath,” I mutter, but it’s with affection. Mostly.
We banter because it’s easier than screaming. We laugh because if we stop, we’ll start to remember we’re one small screw-up away from disappearing into a League prison transport labeledmisplaced cargo.
Mid-shift, I crack open the maintenance panel under my terminal like I’m popping the lid on a secret treasure chest. Which, okay, technically it is.
Nestled in the dust and wire guts is a stubby gray data wedge. I slide it into the port under the table and feed it the smallest of crumbs.
Power usage logs. Crate ID overlaps. Just enough noise to be worth something, not enough to point back to me.
Gifts to the ghosts.
In return, I don’t get shaken down by security squads who like to “confiscate” property for “investigation.” Translation: they break your ribs and steal your ration credits.
This deal? It keeps the peace. Mostly.
“Hey, Monroe,” Ando calls without looking up. “That manifest on Crate 7-G—why is it marked for triple scan?”
“Because the League thinks redundant data is holy and wants us to tithe properly,” I reply. “Also, someone mislabeled it ‘biologicals’ and the system thinks it’s a biohazard now.”
He groans. “You think it’s gonna blow up if I look at it wrong?”
“I think if itdoesn’tblow up, that’s a good day.”
And then I feel it.
A vibration in the floor. Too deep for machinery. Too clean.
Boots.
Not the lazy clomp of warehouse workers or the shuffle of overworked drones. These are heavy. Precise. Synchronized.
Grolgaths.
