Chapter 9 Rhea
RHEA
The borrowed skimmer hums beneath me like a wounded bird as we coast into neutral space—customs- and war-free zone for the moment, at least. I sit with the data crystal pressed to my chest, sweat cooling quickly in the recycled air, a hush settling over me that’s heavy and brittle.
Around us, small freighters drift like lazy fish in a glass tank, cargo lights blinking, docking arms slack.
I expect silence. I expect relief. Instead, my comm-pad chirps. Sharp. Insistent.
I lift it with one gloved hand, the crystal’s faint vibration against my ribs reminding me this is far from over. The screen shows URGENT: TOP PRIORITY in crimson text that feels too loud in the quiet.
My breath stops. My hand catches on the edge of the pad. The world tilts. I taste metal in my mouth.
“Quinn’s dead,” I whisper, more to the starlight outside than to him.
Valtron’s next to me, massive frame hunched over controls, golden eyes flashing in the dim light. He hears it. I can see the flicker.
“Explain,” he says quietly but I feel the growl.
I swallow. “Quinn Reyes. The anchor who replaced me at Sunrise Sector Live. He—he was found dead near the holodocks this afternoon. Authorities say mugging. But I… but he was working our story. My story. Before I left. He activated my archived feed. He tried to broadcast the corruption packet.”
Valtron’s hand tightens on the throttle. The hum of the skimmer grows louder.
“He died because of this?” he asks.
“Because of us,” I say. “Because of the file. Because, probably, the Combine found a breadcrumb and followed it back.”
He doesn’t answer. His jaw sets. The hum dips into an ominous note.
“Rhea,” he begins, low and slow—his voice is always too controlled when he’s angry. “If you back down now—if you stop—Quinn dies for nothing.”
I stare at the crystal against my chest. The memory of Quinn’s grin when we’d interviewed him about low-level contract fraud, the idealist-fire in his eyes—not cowered. The footage of him signing off after he accessed the system. He’d said: “For the truth, Rhea.”
I breathe in. The recycled air tastes stale, like yesterday’s coffee and fear. “I want to stop,” I say. “I want to run away. I want to grieve. I want… normal.”
Valtron turns to me fully. His shoulder slab of scale presses against me.
I feel the shift, his heat, calm but heavy.
“Normal’s dead,” he says. “It died when the first body dropped. Quinn’s blood is on this.
This file—your anchor-life—on this. You walk away now, and you’re leaving him and every other unknown casualty behind. ”
I look at him. The brilliant gold of his eyes is lost in shadow—dangerous and tired. I feel something in my chest crack. The weight of this mission, the truth of what we uncovered, and the cost.
“Do you ever worry?” I ask. “Not about us. About you. About me. About what happens when this ends?”
Valtron’s lips twitch. “Yeah. All the time.”
I blink. The admission is velvet-soft, so unexpected I stumble.
He continues: “I worry I’ll lose you. Or I’ll lose me. Or we’ll win and there’ll be nothing left worth keeping.”
I exhale, a sad, slow sigh. The skimmer tilts slightly on a star-swept drift. Lights outside flicker. I rest my hand on the crystal. Warm. Quiet. Precise. Still ticking.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says. “Be scared.”
I meet his gaze, full and raw. “Because if I weren’t, this wouldn’t be real.”
He nods once. Then leans in. His voice comes close. “Stay sharp.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Stay human.”
He smiles, a ghost of something broken but alive.
“You teach me to.”
Later, I lie awake in the skimmer’s resting compartment. The cot is narrow. The lights are low. Outside the viewport, worlds drift—cold, silent, infinite. Valtron’s out of sight for now. I hear his boots on the walkway, the swish of his jacket, the slow breathing of the pilot station.
I wrap the blanket tighter, feeling the difference between his blanket and mine—the scale of his armor, the residual heat from his body, the scent of metal and sweat and something dark I don’t fully understand.
My fingers find the scar beneath my collarbone.
I trace it like a story I’m not ready to read.
I close my eyes.
I think of Quinn. Of the idealist who believed broadcast and truth could change the galaxy. I think of the young anchor I was behind the bright lights, the carefully edited segments—how soft I was. Too soft for what’s coming.
I think of Valtron. His warrior vows. His oath to Dowron. His shame for following orders he couldn’t believe in. His eyes when he told me about the training pits. The way he flinched when he admitted regret.
I think of the file. The implants, the covert operations, the genocide disguised as “friendly fire,” the civilians used as data sets. The Combine’s plan: privatized enforcement of the Alliance by contract soldiers. The officers complicit. The hierarchy rotten at the core.
And I think of me.
Standing at a crossroads.
And I realize: this isn’t just about telling a story anymore.
It’s about surviving it.
It’s about making sure Quinn’s death means something.
It’s about sometimes losing so much you gain the only thing that matters.
Because waking up, I know one thing for certain:
When this ends—if we end it—I don’t want to be the anchor that goes home.
I want to be the woman who walked through hell, held the truth, and came out on the other side holding someone she didn’t expect to love.
And if the cost is giving everything?
I’m ready to give it.
Because I’ve already lost someone I thought I could afford to keep.
And I’m not doing that again.
The hum of the relay’s generator washes through the air like a slow tide, its low vibration under the floor panels syncing with my pulse—tight, nervous, alive.
The walls of Vice Admiral Leena Dray’s command suite are cold metal and old war-paint flecks, smell of coolant leaks and recycled air thick with cables overhead.
I sit opposite Valtron, his red-scaled form hunched over the holo-console, the glow from the projection making his gold eyes glint like molten ore.
“I’ve found a lead,” I say. My voice sounds sharper than I feel. Maybe because I’m scared, maybe because I’m furious. Or both.
He pauses, doesn’t look up. “Tell me.”
I lean forward, fingertips tapping at the projected data stream.
The crystalline shards of the file we decrypted flicker across the screen—names, dates, worn-out audio logs, schematics disguised as innocuous supply manifests.
“Contractor codename ‘Bishop.’ He had the override chip. Prototype. Fled the Helios Combine after the test on Trenar-4. We traced his last jump to the planet Glimner—crime-infested, entertainment-drunk, law-light. Exactly the kind of place where someone disappears.”
Valtron stares at the data, jaw clenched. “Glimner?” He doesn’t like it. I can see that. The color drains from his posture. “You know what happens on Glimner.”
“I know what’s at stake,” I say. “If we don’t go after him, the trail dies. The file turns into a memory. I’m not willing.”
He meets my gaze then, and for a second I see his fear. Not the mask. The actual fear. “You’ll be walking into a fire-pit. Bishop won’t just hand over the chip.”
I lean back. “I might burn. But if I don’t step inside … what kind of journalist am I? What kind of woman?”
He exhales and stands. The holo-screen dims behind him. “Alright. We go.”
The word crackles like a gun-click. I swallow.
Leena leans forward. The cybernetic plates on her face catch the light and she looks older, sharper than when we arrived. “If you do this, you’re committing. I’ll provide coordinates, safe-house, extraction line. But Glimner is no fortress. It’s a jungle of vice and kills for sport.”
I nod. My fingers hover above the console. The ambient lights flicker. I can taste the tension—metal tang on my tongue, the sulphur-afterburn of the cruiser’s thrusters just outside.
Valtron comes to stand beside me, his height casting a shadow over half the console. My hand hits his arm. He glances down. I grip his forearm. The scales are cool beneath my glove. “Before we go,” I whisper. “After this mission—what happens to us?”
He doesn’t reply immediately. I watch his face. The room’s lights glow orange before the backup kicks in. The hum crescendos. The moment stretches.
Then Valtron reaches forward. His fingers brush my hair back—gentle, carry-over touches of battlefields and unspoken vows.
His thumb grazes my cheek. The rough pad of his claw presses softly.
“We see,” he says, voice low and real. “We see if the universe is big enough for a war-dog and a woman who tells the truth.”
I feel it all in one breath: promise, fear, possibility.
I nod. “We do.”
Packing for Glimner is less glamorous than I expected.
The borrowed cruiser’s cargo deck has become our staging area.
I zip my jacket, check the case with the data crystal twice.
Valtron loads tactical gear—armor panels, stun grenades, the kind of equipment that smells like regret and adrenaline and old steel.
I breathe in the scent of it and taste the same. My stomach flips.
“Want some coffee?” I ask, trying lightness. The cruiser’s galley is a tiny cube with two chairs and a coffee-brew spout that never works right.
Valtron leans against the wall, arms crossed. “No thanks.”
He’s tense. I see it in the way his fingers drum the deck. The way his mask sits loose on his belt, the gold of his eyes exposed.
“So,” I say. “What’s your plan with Bishop once we find him?”
Valtron shrugs. “Get the chip. Extract him. Question him. Then you publish.”
“Then you disappear?” I whisper.
“Then we see.”
I press my lips together. “Don’t leave me behind.”
He looks at me. That look that still makes my knees weak. “I don’t plan to.”
But I hear the rain-drum of his doubts.
The trip to Glimner passes in motion blur.
The cold moonscape in the rear-view is replaced by neon-ringed ports.
The airlock opens into the scent of fermented liquor and burnt algae grills and cheap snapholos.
The station side-port deck hums with music and clamor and broken people buying indulgence.
Everything smells sideways. I breathe deep.
If I were filming, I’d rate it a 9.3 on the exotic danger scale.
Valtron leads with a discreet hand at my back as we move through the crowd. I clench the case with the crystal. I feel the weight of it. The weight of everything.
We reach a back hallway—dim, less traffic. I glance at him. “We’re not safe yet.”
He nods. The gold in his eyes glows bright. “You focus on the crystal. I’ll handle what follows.”
The case feels warm in my hand. I almost smile. Warm has been a long time coming.
We reach the safe-house, battered metal door, padlock scratched like a confession. I knock the code. It opens. Inside: one room, one bed, one holo-screen. The scent is stale upholstery, old coffee, and invisible dust. I set the crystal on the table.
Valtron enters last. I notice the scar across his cheek—new. The cut fresh. My stomach lurches.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
But I see the fatigue. The strain in his stance. The way his armor belt dips a little lower.
I pull a stool. I touch the crystal. “Let’s dig in.”
He sits opposite me. The holo-screen glows. I load the fragment we traced from Bishop’s last jump. Audio, video, footage of covert drops, civilian files flagged “TERMINATED.” I watch the flicker in Valtron’s jaw as each line appears.
“This,” I say, voice steady but trembling, “is more than we thought. Bishop had orders to activate citizen-subject programming. Not just soldiers. Civilians. Refugees. The Combine used humanitarian nets to seed the chip prototypes.”
A clang from the door jolts us. Valtron reaches to his weapon. My heart hits the floorboards.
“One moment,” he whispers. He steps outside. I hear the door close. My pulse thumps in my ears. Progress flickers on the holo-screen. I breathe. I keep watching.
Inside again, he returns. “Looks clear.” He sits. “What else?”
I swallow. “The contract list is signed by one name—Admiral Belos. Under him: divisions labeled ‘Civil Compliance.’”
He blinks. I know he glimpsed the same thing I did. The names that should never have been. The rationale that should never have existed.
“For Bishop,” he mutters, “this is high-treason.”
“For us,” I say, “this is we either expose it or we vanish.”
Silence.
Then I stand. I look at Valtron. His armor catches the light. His face half-shadowed. “After this,” I say. “After we finish—what happens to us?”
He stands. Moves toward me. He doesn’t speak. He just brushes my hair back again, thumb grazing my cheek. “You’re lightning,” he says. “And maybe I’m just thunder. But if the universe is big enough…” He pauses. “If it’s big enough, we’ll find our place.”
I lean into his touch. The warmth cracks through the cold. “Okay,” I whisper. “Then don’t let me down.”
He smiles—quiet, fierce. “Never again.”
We sleep briefly. Not much. The safe-house doesn’t feel safe.
The walls sigh, the lights flicker. I hear the distant howl of traffic outside.
I lie on the cot, listening to Valtron’s breathing.
Steady. Weighted. Familiar. I keep the crystal under my pillow.
It hums faintly. I rub the scar beneath my collarbone while I wait.
In the darkness, I dream of Quinn. His grin, hopeful eyes. I wake with a gasp. Valtron is there. He pulls me close. I don’t fight it. I close my eyes.
Tomorrow: Glimner’s underbelly. Bishop. The chip. The truth.
I’m ready.