Chapter 7 Valtron
VALTRON
The ice moon is a bastard. There’s no sugarcoating it.
Even through insulated armor, the cold gnaws at my bones like a starving animal.
The wind doesn’t whistle here—it howls, rips, tears.
Every gust feels like it’s trying to peel the skin off your soul.
My visor fogs with each breath, the edge of the display frosting at the corners no matter how many system diagnostics I run.
And still, I push forward, eyes locked on the half-submerged comms tower blinking weakly through the snow squall.
Rhea is behind me, wrapped in thermal cloth and stubbornness.
I glance back more than I need to, watching the way her steps lag, the way her jaw clenches with each gust. She’s freezing, but she won’t say a word.
She won’t give this place the satisfaction.
She doesn’t complain. That’s one of the things I’ve always respected about her.
Even when she’s pissed, scared, or exhausted, she faces it with fire in her veins.
When we reach the hatch, I punch in the override code I memorized six years ago.
The door groans open like it resents being disturbed.
Inside, warmth hits us in a slow crawl—barely above freezing, but better than the arctic hell outside.
Rhea exhales a sharp breath, her face pink with cold and frustration.
Vice Admiral Leena Dray stands waiting. Half her face is flesh, the other half a lattice of cybernetic plate and sensory mesh that hums faintly in the still air. She’s older than the last time I saw her—greyer around the temples, but no less dangerous.
“You brought the package?” she asks.
I nod, tapping the pouch on my side. “Data crystal’s intact.”
She narrows her eyes at Rhea. “Who’s she?”
“The reason you’re about to blow the lid off this conspiracy,” I say.
Leena snorts. “Charming. Let’s get to it.”
She leads us down a narrow corridor into a low-lit control chamber, its walls pulsing with blue light from ancient data conduits. It smells like cold metal and dust. Leena plugs the crystal into an encrypted port and initiates the download.
Data floods the screen.
Schematics. Command logs. Genetic models. Video footage.
Some of it I’ve seen. Most of it I wish I hadn’t.
Leena’s jaw tightens. “Genome manipulation… obedience implants… neural dampeners… this isn’t just experimentation. This is weaponized control.”
“They’re splicing recruits,” I say, voice low. “Installing compliance protocols on a molecular level. Some are flagged as having ‘dissension risk factors’—and those are the ones who keep dying in training mishaps.”
Leena taps through more logs. “High-ranking clearance codes… Admiral Belos. General Tarren. Sector marshals. This goes high. Real high.”
“And Dowron?” I ask.
She hesitates. “Still alive. But politically neutered. He’s been reassigned to a fringe zone with zero intel traffic. They’ve boxed him out.”
“Which means he’s not compromised,” I say. “He’s the only one we can trust.”
“Assuming we can reach him,” Leena mutters. “All live comms are monitored. You send even a ping in his direction, and it’s gonna set off alarms across five sectors.”
“We need a ghost relay,” I say.
Leena tilts her head. “There’s one. Out beyond the Jandari Veil. A busted relay outpost still running off legacy protocols. You hardwire a transmission into its emergency beacon loop, it’ll ride the old network straight to Dowron’s signal cluster. Quiet. Clean. Dangerous as hell.”
“How dangerous?”
She lifts one brow. “Blockade. No shields. Pirates. Half a dozen mines left from the last border scuffle.”
Rhea mutters, “So basically the fun kind of suicide.”
I glance at her. “We’ll make it.”
Her eyes flash. “You keep saying that.”
Later, we’re tucked into a temporary staging room—a reinforced box the size of a janitor’s closet. There’s one cot. Rhea’s on it, sitting cross-legged, tapping on her compad. Her lips are tight. Her shoulders tense.
I sit across from her on the floor, feeling the heat of her frustration like a solar flare.
“Say it,” I tell her.
She looks up. “Say what?”
“Whatever’s boiling in that head of yours. Get it out.”
She slams the compad onto the cot. “You act like this is just another mission. Like you’re fine with throwing your life into a meat grinder because that’s what you’re built for. But I’m not. I’m not fine. I’m terrified, Valtron. Not just of dying. Of this being meaningless.”
“It’s not meaningless.”
“If we screw this up,” she whispers, “no one ever knows. The Combine buries it. The truth dies with us. All the people who’ve already died… they stay erased.”
I cross the room slowly. Sit beside her. “Then we don’t screw it up.”
She turns her head away. “You always say that. And you never explain how.”
I reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t squeeze back either.
“I don’t have a guarantee,” I admit. “I’m not pretending I do. But I’ll get you through this, Rhea. Even if I don’t come out the other side.”
“That’s not comforting,” she says, voice thick.
“I’m not trying to be comforting. I’m trying to be honest.”
She exhales, a sharp shudder of breath.
“We leave in six hours,” she says finally.
“Six hours,” I repeat.
And I sit there in silence beside her, memorizing the shape of her fingers in mine, the scent of her skin, the heat of her doubt. Because if this is the last night I get to be close to her… I want to burn it into memory.
The second night on this frozen moon is colder, somehow.
Not temperature-wise—no, the heaters wheeze and hiss just as pathetically as the night before.
But the silence between us thickens. Not angry.
Not hostile. Just… full. Packed with everything we’re not saying.
I can feel it pressing against my ribs like a loaded pulse rifle.
Rhea’s asleep now, her body curled beneath layers of synth-fiber blankets, one arm tucked under her cheek like a child. The line of her spine is outlined by the curve of the cot’s edge, and her breath fogs in tiny wisps. It’s the only thing soft in this entire rust-box relay station.
I sit on the floor again. Just like last night. Back to the wall, knees up, rifle laid across my thighs. Eyes on the ceiling. Listening. Breathing.
The terminal beside me blinks.
Blue.
Blue.
Red.
A pulse of black.
My eyes narrow.
That color sequence doesn’t belong on this system. Doesn’t belong anywhere but one place.
Black-code.
It’s like a punch to the gut and a whisper in my ear all at once. I reach for the panel with the slow, deliberate stillness of a predator waiting to pounce. My heart doesn’t beat faster—but it does beat louder.
The message is simple.
Agent Valtron, confirm receipt. Immediate recall to grid vector 88x-Eps. Objective: intercept rogue war-mind. Expected loss probability: 93%. Acknowledge or deny.
No name. No signature. No encryption padlock. Just my callsign embedded in the transmission’s bones. This came from high up. So high I know who it’s from without them needing to say.
It’s not a request. It never is.
I stare at the screen for a long time. Not reading. Just feeling. The memory of adrenaline. The cold certainty of a no-return mission. The rush that used to make me feel alive.
But I’m not who I was when I started this damn job.
I glance to the cot.
Rhea shifts in her sleep, muttering something unintelligible. Her hair fans across the blanket in a golden spill that glows faintly under the pale emergency lighting. Her nose scrunches, lips parting in a dream. I wonder if it’s a good one. I hope it is.
I lower the volume on the terminal. I don’t delete the message. I don’t respond either.
Not yet.
Instead, I close the screen and slide back down into the shadows, cradling the silence like a wounded thing.
Two hours later, I still haven’t moved.
I watch her sleep. Creepy? Maybe. But she’s the only calm thing in my universe right now.
The only tether. Everything else is heat signatures and gunmetal and classified betrayal.
But her? She smells like warm skin and soap.
Her heartbeat—slow, steady—echoes in my memory from the way her chest pressed to mine the night before.
“Val…” she murmurs, half-dreaming. “Don’t go.”
My breath hitches. Just a fraction.
She turns toward me, one hand flopping onto the cot’s edge like she’s reaching for something. Someone. Maybe me. Maybe not.
I slide forward on instinct. Not touching her. Just closer. Close enough to hear the fluttery shift of her pulse against her neck. Close enough to see the tiny scar by her collarbone, a white crescent I never noticed before. My fingers twitch. I want to trace it.
Instead, I whisper her name. Not loud. Just enough to make it real in my mouth.
“Rhea.”
She doesn’t stir.
And I don’t deserve her.
I shouldn’t still be here. I should’ve replied to that transmission, packed my gear, ghosted out without a word. It’s what I was trained to do. What I’ve done a dozen times before.
But this time…
This time, I hear another name on my tongue.
One I haven’t said aloud yet. One that curls in my gut like a living thing.
Ripley.
Three syllables. Light. Simple. Dangerous as hell.
I don’t know if it’s true. Don’t know if she’s mine. But my gut—my soul—says yes. Says she smells like sugarfruit and looks like a sunrise. Says her laugh probably sounds like a song I forgot I loved.
I press the heel of my hand to my chest, like I can stop the ache there. Like I can make the choice disappear.
But it doesn’t.
And that’s when I realize the truth.
I was never supposed to love Rhea Hart.
She was supposed to be a firework—brilliant, fleeting, untouchable. A wild night before a darker morning. But she wasn’t. She isn’t.
She’s gravity.
She’s consequence.
And now I’m circling her like a fool, pretending the heat I feel isn’t a death sentence.
The bunk groans as she shifts again. This time, she wakes. I know the exact moment her breathing changes.
Her voice is quiet. Scratchy from sleep.
“You still up?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t elaborate.
She blinks at me. The light from the terminal makes her eyes look too big, too blue. “Something happen?”
“No.”
Lie.
She sits up, rubbing her face. Her hair’s a mess. I like it like that.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she mutters.
“And you’re terrible at pretending you don’t know when I’m hiding something.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
Then she says, “If you’re about to go off and do something stupid and suicidal, at least tell me. Don’t just vanish.”
I look away.
Which is how she knows I’m thinking about it.
“Valtron,” she says, voice sharper now. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Then, softly, “I got a ghost ping. High priority. Black-code.”
Her face doesn’t change much, but her hands clench in her lap.
“What kind of mission?”
I don’t answer.
“Val.”
“Not one I’d come back from.”
She closes her eyes. Her shoulders slump.
“Of course they’d send it now,” she says. “Right when we’re hanging by a thread, they’d reel you back in.”
I lean forward, forearms on my knees.
“I haven’t accepted. Haven’t responded.”
“Yet,” she adds.
I nod.
A beat of silence.
“Would you go?”
It’s not a trick question. Not a test. It’s worse. It’s genuine.
I exhale hard. “I don’t know.”
Another silence.
Then she moves—slides off the cot, crosses the space between us, and lowers herself into my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the galaxy. I freeze. She’s warm. Small. Soft in all the places I feel sharp. Her arms wrap around my neck, and her forehead presses to mine.
“If you leave,” she whispers, “do it knowing I won’t wait.”
That cuts.
Deeper than a blade. More final than any bullet.
I wrap my arms around her without thinking, bury my face in the curve of her neck. I breathe her in. Sandalwood. Sweat. Static from the bunker’s shitty air vents.
And I don’t say a damn thing.
Because I can’t promise her anything I don’t know how to give.
But gods help me—I want to try.