Chapter 26 Rhea
RHEA
The quiet is loud out here.
I mean it—space hums, sure, and the Blue Ember creaks like the old bones she is, but out in the border sectors, the kind that barely qualify for a grid designation, there's a stillness so wide it feels like I’m holding my breath for whole star cycles.
And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, that stillness isn’t terrifying. It’s... room. Space to stretch. Space to feel.
We drift between moons now. Take odd courier jobs. Supply runs. Small stuff—packages that don’t ask questions, routes that don’t require names. It’s not glamorous, but it’s ours.
Valtron calls the Ember a “mismatched freighter with personality issues.” I call her home.
Ripley, meanwhile, calls her entire room “the ship.” As in, “The ship wants another poster on the wall,” or “The ship says my stuffed animal goes on the shelf.”
We’re still figuring it all out.
“Alright, storm,” I say, sweeping a stack of hastily printed astrocharts onto the makeshift kitchen table. “Today’s lesson: trajectory math.”
Ripley’s legs swing under the bench, her elbows propped up like a pint-sized philosopher. “Can I do it with stars instead of numbers?”
I blink. “You mean, use actual constellations to map vectors?”
She nods with a little smile that’s half mischief, half magic. “They’re prettier.”
Valtron grunts from the stovetop. “Stars don’t help you calculate burn velocity.”
“They sparkle better than your cooking,” Ripley tosses back without missing a beat.
Valtron turns, spatula in hand, mock-offended. “That’s it. I revoke breakfast.”
“Good,” she chirps. “Your last eggs smelled like rocket fuel.”
I smother a laugh. “Language, please.”
Valtron turns back to the pan. “You try cooking on a ninety-year-old stove with a grudge.”
He flips something—probably eggs, possibly an alien lifeform. A heartbeat later, the fire suppression system chirps. I lunge for the override switch before the foam deploys.
Ripley collapses in giggles.
Valtron groans. “Betrayed by my own tech.”
We eat in the cockpit that morning. Half-burnt food, over-salted tea, and three generations of messy, imperfect love.
Later, Valtron watches the stars drift past our viewport. He’s got that faraway look again. The one that says his body’s here, but his soul is walking battlefields we can’t see.
I slip in beside him, tucking my knees to my chest. The hum of the Ember’s engines is a lullaby now, soft and rhythmic. The kind of comfort you don’t know you’ve been missing until it wraps itself around you.
“You okay?” I ask, brushing his knuckles with mine.
He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t know who I am without a mission.”
The honesty guts me.
I don’t answer right away. Just reach out and take his hand, lacing our fingers. His grip is calloused and warm and just slightly too tight.
“You’re a father,” I say softly. “That’s mission enough.”
He swallows. Looks down. Nods once.
But I can see it in the way his jaw ticks. The way his shoulders never quite relax.
The war’s over.
But the fight inside him?
That lingers.
That night, Ripley climbs into our bed, limbs sprawled like a tiny octopus. She has a nightmare—murmurs about masks and stun batons.
Valtron doesn’t speak. He just holds her tighter.
And I see it again, even in the dark. The question in his eyes.
Is peace really ours?
Or is it just a pause?
Some nights, I think about broadcasting again.
About telling the truth, unfiltered. No producers. No agenda.
But then I look around at this ship—our cluttered, creaky, wonderful little home—and I remember what truth really is.
It’s not a headline.
It’s a family. There’s something about the way Valtron stares at stars like they owe him something.
Not in a bitter way. Not anymore. But in that slow, haunted fashion of someone who’s memorized all their old ghosts and is still trying to forgive them.
Most nights, he walks the observation deck alone.
So I watch him.
Not out of suspicion or worry, but because even after all this time, I still find him beautiful. Still trying to figure out how someone so quiet, so broken, can make me feel like I’m the whole galaxy when he looks at me.
Lately, I’ve started recording him. Quiet little clips on my pad. Just for me. I angle the lens low, catch the way the starlight rims his silhouette. The twitch of his jaw. The way his shoulders set like he’s preparing for something that might never come.
Not to broadcast.
Just to remember.
I want proof, someday, that he made it out of the war and into something like peace.
He catches me one night.
I’m leaning against the far wall, pad up, half-lost in the frame. He turns. Sees the red light blinking.
“You always were a journalist first,” he says.
I should be embarrassed.
Instead, I lower the pad. Step into the starlight with him. “Now I’m yours first.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just reaches for my hand and pulls me close.
And in that moment, I know.
It’s not about recording him. Not really.
It’s about bearing witness.
Because men like him… the world forgets them. Turns them into myths or monsters. I want the truth.
We talk more now.
Not the shallow updates about ship routes or fuel cells or whether Ripley snuck cookies again.
But real stuff.
The kind that strips you bare.
He tells me about the blackout zone. About the heat. The screams. The way the ground felt like it was swallowing everything whole.
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” he murmurs. “Didn’t even want to, at one point.”
My chest aches. I thread my fingers through his hair, tugging gently. “But you did.”
“I kept thinking about you. And… something else. I didn’t know what then. But I do now.”
“What?”
“Ripley’s laugh. I hadn’t even heard it yet. But it was in my bones somehow.”
I tell him about the labor.
How I screamed for him and cursed him in the same breath. How the medbot malfunctioned halfway through. How I passed out and woke up to Ripley nestled on my chest, squalling like she had a message for the stars.
“She had your eyes,” I say, blinking fast. “Still does.”
Valtron’s thumb brushes the corner of my eye.
“I should’ve been there,” he says.
“No,” I reply. “You should’ve lived. And you did. That’s what matters.”
We don’t try to fix each other.
We just see each other.
Later, in our bunk, the silence stretches warm instead of cold.
No armor. No secrets.
He lays beside me, back bare, riddled with scars. I trace each one with my fingertips like reading Braille.
He doesn’t flinch.
Instead, he turns to face me, and for the first time, I see it.
Not the warrior.
Not the killer.
Just the man.
And he looks at me like I’m not broken, either.
Like maybe, just maybe, this is the start of something real.
Something worth remembering.