Chapter 10 Valtron
VALTRON
Glimner grabs you by the throat and doesn't bother to be subtle about it.
The air outside the docking spindle is thick and hot, like walking into a sauna someone forgot to turn off.
Light splashes everywhere—neon sliced by holo-ads, laser ribbons advertising pleasures guaranteed to rot the soul, and the kind of private signage that winks in languages only the rich or desperate understand.
The smell is a sick, intoxicating mix: fried algae, singed synthmeat, perfume that smells like money, and the undercurrent of ozone from too many power converters. It makes my scales itch.
Rhea walks beside me and, for once, she’s the one wearing armor.
Silk and cut that would embarrass a senator.
She moves like a woman who knows three things: how to be seen, how to fade, and how to make men forget to breathe while they try.
Her gown hugs the right lines, the holo-lace throws patterns across her clavicle, and the jewel at her throat catches purple light and throws it onto her skin like lipstick.
People glance. Eyes linger. I feel the attention the way a dog feels the wind before a storm.
“Valtron,” she murmurs, just loud enough for me. “Act bored.”
I look down at her and snort. “I was not programmed for boredom.”
“You might practice,” she says, and there’s a smile in her voice that bites me sweet.
She slides her hand into the crook of my arm.
It’s an absurd gesture—me with my armor, my height, my teeth.
But it works. The attendants at the club tilt their heads like we belong.
We pass through an arch of living crystal that coughs out perfume smoke and a chorus of laughter that sounds edible.
The place is a fever dream. Every surface throws a reflection, every reflection throwing another lie about what’s real.
Holo-dancers spin on platforms like planets, their costumes rippling into fractal illusions that taste like vertigo.
A trio in silk are arguing over the ethics of blood-bot racing two tables down; a child—too small for this place—sells counterfeit prayers to a patron who keeps his hand in a velvet glove.
“How do you see this and not flinch?” Rhea asks, her voice a low cut of curiosity.
I tighten up. I don’t answer right away.
There's predator scent in the air—actual predators, not metaphorical ones. People here walk like they’re hunting.
Maybe they are. Maybe Glimner trains you to take what you can without asking for forgiveness.
“You learn to listen,” I say finally. “And to trust your fists more than your faith.”
She laughs, and the sound is a bright knife in a dark room. “Charming.”
We weave deeper into the belly of the pleasure district, away from the open stages and into darker corridors where the lamps pulse slower and the clientele narrows.
The gambling den we’re hunting is something of a local legend: half-club, half-auction, all-vice.
They call it the Serpent’s Ledger. The sign above the door is an old-fashioned neon coiling into a stylized S that looks like it could bite.
We step through and the air changes. It’s cooler.
Cleaner. That’s the Glimner trick—masks and zones.
The ledger smells of spilled spirits and old money.
Holo-odds flicker in the air. Cards slap.
Dice tumble with soft, hungry clicks. Men and women with too-perfect faces lean in to the games like the outcomes might save them.
“Stay close,” I tell Rhea. She gives me a sideways look and slides in front of me as we approach a velvet booth whose occupant is the last person I expected to see sitting calm in a place like this.
Bishop is small enough to disappear into the shadows if he wanted to.
He’s wrapped in a holo-disguise that comforts him with pixelated age and innocence—wrinkled skin dancer-makeup, a soft linen shirt that suggests poverty more than it reveals.
He trembles with the kind of fear that polishes itself into habit.
He’s exactly the kind of thing who would hide under a godless glamour and hope no one recognizes the person underneath.
Rhea’s fingers tighten on the crystal-case at her side. She’s pale but steady. If anyone can get the right answer from a man like Bishop, it’s her.
I don’t do subtle. I plant myself at the edge of his booth like an immovable shadow. Men who come near our table slide away when they feel the weight of me, which entertains me more than it should.
“Bishop,” I say.
He jerks, eyes darting under his disguise. His voice is not a man’s voice but a whimper rendered human. “Please—I don’t want any trouble.”
“No trouble,” I say. “Just questions. You worked for Helios.”
He starts to babble the kind of denials the guilty love—too detailed, too small, a weave of truth and lie. I watch him like a hunter studies the twitch of prey’s ear. When Bishop starts to drop the names—contracts, drops, test sites—he tries to make them sound like numbers to be forgotten.
Rhea’s there like a blade. Smooth but aiming for bone. “You fled with a prototype chip,” she says. “You planted it in civilians. You tried to sell it. Why?”
He goes still. His hands gather in his lap like a child’s. The holo-lace of Rhea’s gown shimmers as she leans closer. Her perfume—sugarfruit, a smell that’s become his and my anchor—hits me and something in my chest perks dangerously.
“I ran,” Bishop says. “I ran when they started talking about scale. I didn’t want to be a goddamn executioner in lab coat. I couldn’t—” He chokes on the words. “I thought if I had the chip, I could—trade it. Get off-world. Make a life.”
“Who hired you?” Rhea asks. Her voice is soft. It’s the wrongness of softness that cuts deepest.
He looks at me. Fear trembles across his face like a fever.
“They said Dowron wanted it. But not Dowron. Belos. Belos wanted a tested army—private units—paid by Combine contractors so they’d answer only to those who could pay.
They called it privatized enforcement. They’ll take back the war in contracts and call it peace. ”
A clink of glass echoes, then another. Someone two tables over laughs too loud and turns, their expression blank. Sensing the mood tightening.
“Who is ‘they’?” I ask. My voice is low, flat as a blade. “Names.”
He swallows. “Admiral Belos is the signature. There’s a director—Malik—and a procurement head, Voss.
They worked with Helios. They call the program Project Arbitrage.
It’s not just soldiers. They were embedding compliance into crowd-control drones—into aid relays—into officers’ neural arrays.
They tested on Trenar-4. It failed in clinical terms but succeeded statistically. They got the datas that mattered.”
Rhea’s fingers drum on the case. She tastes the words before she says them. “Project Arbitrage? That’s the name in the file. We have coordinates. We have logs. We can expose them.”
Bishop’s gaze flickers between us, animal and pleading.
“Expose them and you die,” he whispers. “They will hunt anyone who sees, who knows. They have assets—people who sleep in your headquarters and smile in your camera’s face.
They have fleets. They have money. They’ll make sure there’s no one left to tell the story. They’ll erase you like a bad feed.”
“They’re building a fleet,” Rhea says, and the words are an arrow. “A mind-control fleet?”
Bishop nods, a rapid, terrified rat-bob.
“Prototype brigs. Armed barges fitted with high-frequency emitters—the sort that rewrite response curves in the field. They’ll market it to alliances as a way to reduce casualties.
The contractors get to sign off on ‘policy enforcement.’ Contract soldiers will be compliant, and the Combine will own the market. It’s terrifying.”
I feel a cold truth settle in my gut that’s worse than the ice on the relay. We knew corruption. We knew graft. But a market for obedience? The idea tastes like copper and rust.
“Where is Bishop’s contact?” I ask. “Where do they test?”
He says three locations in a staccato, and I memorize them with a soldier’s speed: an orbital yard outside Naras Gate; a decommissioned tutorial float in the Jarek Belt; a private contractor outpost tucked behind a smugglers’ ring at the Helios Combine’s liaison node.
Each site is a pin in a map of a system about to be bent to their will.
“How do we get to it?” Rhea asks.
“We don’t,” I say. I should have known better than to step into a plan built on hope.
But she doesn’t look away. She looks like a woman who will walk through fire to set a story alight.
“We hit one. We hit it fast. We leak early, hit press windows, hit allies who won’t want to be on the wrong side of history.
Create noise. Force the Alliance to respond publicly. ”
Bishop laughs—a broken sound. “You’ll die trying.”
Rhea leans in, her face inches from his, and I see the steel in her set jaw. “Then Quinn did not die for nothing,” she says. “We live enough to make a dent. Isn’t that why you ran?”
He stares at her, eyes glittering wet. For the first time, he looks like a man, not a code. “I ran because I didn’t want to build their cage.”
“Then help us break it,” I say. I put my hand flat on the table. The gesture is gentle, not the kind I use with weapons. “Give us what you have. Access codes. Shipping manifests. Names and times. And whatever blood-money trail you can show.”
The siren starts like a whisper at first—just a soft chime in the floor beneath my boots—but it blossoms into a roar that rattles the walls of the Serpent’s Ledger and shreds whatever fragile anchor of calm we had.
I freeze mid-step, seeing the chandelier of holo-cards above us flicker and then shatter like brittle promises.
The glass rains down; the smell of supercharged ozone bursts in the air, mingling with the stench of spilled synth-wine and fear.
“Rhea!” I shout. My voice cracks through the chaos, and she flinches, silk sliding across the debris-strewn floor. I pivot and catch the first one—blade up, photon pistol hot. His muzzle flare lights his visor orange, then his eyes go dead as I shove him aside.
Lights strobe. Music warps into distortion. Someone screams. I feel the vibration under my soles like a drumroll for something monstrous.
I catch Rhea’s shoulder with a rough grip. “Move!” I growl.
She nods, lips tight. She stands, but the world shifts. A blast hits the wall near us; panels crumble. Glass shards splash over her hair. I smell burning ozone and taste adrenaline—cold and sharp.
As we sprint through the crowd, I feel my arm catch fire—impact, armor flare, a deep stab of heat. Doesn’t matter. I drag her toward the service ramp. People scatter like frightened fish, but she doesn’t slow. Her shoulder catches another graze—thin trickle of red. Her gown is torn.
“Valtron—” she gasps.
“No time,” I reply, voice clipped. “Get the crystal safe.”
The case thumps against my rib as I lift her.
I carry her across a floor slick with broken glass and spilled drinks.
My claws in combat mode—nothing soft tonight.
The attackers are closing; their visors red-hot.
I punch, I slash, I shield. One comes too close—this time I don’t hesitate.
I disarm him with a snap of wrist and his wrist weapon tumbles.
The ramp door hisses open. Steam and blast-smoke pour in. I step onto the edge, lift Rhea, arms like girders. The cold air outside is sharp, clean, contrasts the hell inside. I taste it.
“Now!” I yell. Someone behind me fires. Bolt past, scorching panel of ramp. Rhea’s weight shifts. I catch the glint of panic in her eyes. I don’t let it grow.
We drop into the cargo skimmer. The hatch clangs shut. The engine rumbles like a beast awakened. I strap her in before I turn. I see the Ledger behind us erupt—the hull buckles, glass panels blur, an aftershock like a dying star’s sigh.
Rhea groans. I run a hand over her shoulder, pulling off the torn silk to expose the graze fully. Blood beads. She clenches her jaw.
“You’re lucky I’m too stubborn to die,” she says, voice faint. My chest tightens.
“Don’t joke like that. Not to me,” I growl softly. My hand falls to hers, fingers brushing blood and silk and promise. She stares at me—fear, anger, gratitude, desire all tangled. I don’t speak.
We take off, leaving the ruin behind. The skimmer’s hum fills the cabin. The lights flicker. Rhea leans against me. I rest my head on hers, the scar on her shoulder pressed into my armor. Her breath hitches, once, twice.
In the small med-bay later, the patch burns the wound. She hisses, splinters of pain. I hold her arm. She meets my eyes.
“You saved me,” she whispers.
“You didn’t fall,” I say.
“She says barely,” I add. She laughs, weak but real. I don’t try to lighten it. I let it sit.
That night, we lie back-to-back at first, the cot too small.
I feel the metal frame press into my ribs.
I sense the closure of the world beyond the walls.
I close my eyes and listen to her breathing—soft, uneven, human.
My mind flickers to the mission, the recall order I haven’t answered, the data still corrupted, the price still unpaid.
Her hand slides along my chest—barely there, a whisper of faith. “What if…” she says, voice just above a breath.
I turn. Face to face now, jungle of scale and vulnerability. “What if we live?” I ask.
She meets me. “Then we try. For real.”
I lean in close, our foreheads touching. Her scent—sugarfruit and iron and fear—fills me. I whisper, “Then don’t let me screw it up.”
Her eyes flicker. “I won’t.”
In the darkness, I hold her close. I know what I signed up for. I know the ghost signal still waits, the recall mission still looms. But right now, I choose this moment. The heat of her body, the promise of survival, the fragile line between duty and something more.
And as the ship hums around us, I admit to myself something I’ve never said: I’d choose her. Not the mission. Not the war. Her.
Because right now, she’s not just the woman who tells the truth. She’s the one I’m trying to keep alive.