Red Scale Daddy

1. Roma

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 compad hidden 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 from interesting to we 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.”

“I’m not here to make friends,” I say.

A laugh barks out from two stools down. The human in the harness leans back and raises his voice.

“You hear that? Hooded little grease-rat’s not here to make friends.”

The table behind him joins in. Someone claps once, slow and mocking.

The bartender studies me for one long moment, golden eyes narrowed slightly, and then he props one forearm on the bar.

“You have exactly one minute before I decide whether you’re entertaining enough to keep,” he says. “After that, you either buy something, leave, or learn what the floor tastes like.”

Fair. By criminal den standards, that is practically generous.

I tap two fingers against the bar for projection, not nerves, and raise my voice without shouting.

“I’m hiring.”

A hush does not fall. I am not that lucky. But the nearest conversations snag and kink around the word.

“I require a pilot or combat-capable escort with experience in unstable space conditions, salvage environments, or long-range survival operations,” I continue. “Pay is substantial. Hazard is extreme. Departure is immediate upon successful vetting.”

A Kiphian from the card table calls, “That all? Thought for sure you were selling religion.”

“Only to people with money,” I say.

A few people laugh at that, but it is the laugh reserved for a street performer who has not yet started bleeding. Not admiration. Anticipation.

The human beside me swivels his stool fully toward me. “What kind of hazard?”

“The kind that kills people who ask that question first.”

“That sounds expensive,” he says.

“It is.”

The bartender folds the rag and sets it aside. His face gives me nothing. The younger man with him is openly watching now, eyes bright.

The human says, “And where exactly is this mystery job going?”

I let the silence stretch just long enough to sharpen it.

“The galactic core.”

The room breaks like a wave against stone.

Laughter slams into me from three directions.

Not nervous laughter. Not disbelieving laughter.

Cruel laughter. The kind that strips flesh from dignity and hangs it up for decoration.

Someone nearly chokes on a drink. One of the Pi’Rell lowers his cards and actually smiles, which I suspect is the immortal equivalent of rolling on the floor.

“Oh, sweetheart,” a woman near the back says. “That is adorable.”

“Core?” somebody else bellows. “Why not ask for volunteers to fist a supernova while you’re at it?”

A gravelly voice from the corner adds, “Depends on the rate.”

Even I almost smile at that one.

I plant both hands on the bar and wait for the noise to spend itself. Mockery usually burns hot and fast. It is insecurity in carnival paint.

When they settle enough to hear again, I say, “The vessel is purpose-built. I designed it myself. Its shielding geometry compensates for lensing stress and particulate shear, and its drive housing has been modified for repeated gravitational deviation without catastrophic coil degradation.”

That buys me exactly half a second of attention before the human beside me laughs again.

“She’s drunker than I am,” he says.

“I’m not drunk,” I answer. “You just have the educational disadvantages of a man who probably loses arguments to vending machines.”

That lands better than it should. Even the Alzhon beside me lowers his drink to hide a smile.

The human’s face darkens. “Careful.”

“Why?” I ask. “Will you challenge me to a duel with monosyllables?”

The half-Vakutan behind the bar bends forward, bracing his elbows on the counter. “Please keep talking. I have not enjoyed myself this much all week.”

The bartender cuts him a look without taking his eyes off me.

Interesting. He lets the other man play. He enforces only when necessary. That makes him more dangerous, not less.

I slide the compad from inside my jacket and set it flat on the bar. Several heads turn immediately. Money talks. Tech screams.

“Since some of you appear trapped in the tragic condition of needing evidence,” I say, “I brought some.”

I key the projection low and tight so only the nearest radius can see the first image bloom into the air: a rotating schematic of my ship, blue-white lines suspended over the bar in a ghostly lattice of structure and intent.

Hull cross-sections flicker into place. Drive rings.

Shielding nodes. Heat sinks. External maneuver arrays.

I do not show the full design. I am not suicidal. But I show enough.

The laughter changes.

Not gone. Just altered. Pulled thinner. More focused.

The Alzhon beside me straightens slightly. The woman with the neck scars leaves her stool and comes closer. Even the card players are watching now.

“That’s not dockyard trash,” the scarred woman says.

“No,” I reply.

The human in the harness squints at the projection. “That engine housing is insane.”

“It is mathematically ambitious,” I correct.

“It’s insane,” he repeats.

The scarred woman points at the shield geometry. “That pattern’s wrong.”

“It looks wrong because you’re assuming standard wave deflection,” I say. “It isn’t standard.”

She folds her arms. “What is it, then?”

“A modified convergence array.”

“That would tear itself apart under stress.”

“It would if I were incompetent.”

The half-Vakutan makes a choking sound that might be another laugh. The bartender is no longer polishing imaginary glasses. He is watching the schematic like a man who knows more about ships than a bartender strictly needs to.

That is useful. Potentially.

Also dangerous.

The scarred woman leans closer to the projection, eyes narrowed. “You built this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

There it is. The real question. Not can it work. Why would anyone try.

I knew this part would come. I also know truth is only useful when portioned properly.

“I’m retrieving someone,” I say.

“From the core?” the human says, incredulous. “Nobody’s in the core.”

“Someone is.”

A murmur moves through the nearest crowd. Skepticism, interest, opportunism. I can hear the categories splitting apart.

The bartender finally speaks.

“And you expect to hire muscle for a rescue run into the deadliest stretch of known space,” he says, voice level, “by walking into my bar dressed like a smuggler’s laundry pile and insulting my customers.”

I meet his gaze. Up close, his eyes are a hard, predatory gold, and there is intelligence there that makes me wary. Not the loud, sloppy kind. The patient kind.

“Yes,” I say.

The half-Vakutan lets out a delighted huff. “Gods, I like her.”

“I did not ask,” the bartender says.

“You never do.”

“Because your answers lower the tone of the room.”

“That ship sailed years ago.”

The exchange happens with such practiced ease that for a moment I forget to breathe properly.

It tells me more than words should. Familiarity.

Hierarchy. Irritation with no actual threat behind it.

The smaller man is not the bartender’s equal in force, but he is secure enough to needle him in public.

That means the giant either values him or hasn’t found a way to kill him legally.

Useful again.

Dangerous again.

A chair scrapes somewhere behind me.

The sound is slow. Deliberate. Heavy enough that my body registers mass before thought assigns it shape.

Several nearby faces angle past me toward the source.

Expressions shift. Some brighten with ugly expectation.

Others flatten with the detached interest of people who know a scene when they smell one.

I do not turn immediately. I let the sound come closer and use the mirror behind the bar instead.

Vakutan. Male. Massive even for the species, with yellow scales and a chest like a bulkhead.

One eye filmed over white from an old injury.

His shirt is unlaced halfway down, exposing scar tissue and the dark wet stain of a recent spill.

His gait has the rolling instability of a man who has been drinking for hours and intends to make it everybody else’s problem.

Wonderful.