Chapter 27 Valtron
VALTRON
The second I see that battered freighter docked three berths over, I know who it is.
Nobody else in the quadrant’s dumb enough—or stubborn enough—to keep flying a cargo hauler that looks like it lost a bet with an asteroid belt. The hull’s more patch than metal, the port engine wheezes like it’s got asthma, and someone welded a decal of a naked Jarnathi dancer across the nosecone.
Only one bastard could pull off that aesthetic and call it functional: Tev Drax.
Sure enough, the airlock hisses, and there he is. Eyepatch still crooked. Grin like a knife. Smelling of engine grease, cheap spice rum, and bad decisions.
“Well, well, if it ain’t the ghost of war crimes past,” Tev drawls, striding into the station lounge like he owns it.
I don’t stand. Don’t need to.
“Didn’t think they let your kind in respectable establishments.”
He snorts. “They don’t. Lucky for me, this ain’t one.”
We clasp wrists like old soldiers, quick and tight. The kind of grip you only give a man who’s pulled your broken body out of a burning drop ship once.
“Tev,” I say. “What the hell brings you here?”
His grin fades. “Trouble.”
We sit in the dim booth of a rundown diner, booths sticky with spilled synthbrew and time.
Tev drops a datachip onto the table between us. I don’t touch it yet. I already know it’s going to suck.
“Alliance tag,” he says. “Still active.”
“Old ID?” I ask.
“Yeah. Yours. Codename designation—‘Steelwake.’ Sound familiar?”
My jaw clenches.
They only used that name when they needed something dead and didn’t want to admit who sent it.
“It’s marked ‘AWOL War Asset,’” Tev continues, voice low. “Live bounty. Mid-tier, quiet payout. Been active for three years.”
I blink. “They never cleared me?”
“Someone didn’t get the memo. Or didn’t care. Could be a deepfile agent. Could be political leverage. Point is—they’re still looking.”
My blood goes cold.
“Ship names. Power signatures. EM wakes. They’re tracking.”
My thoughts snap to Rhea. To Ripley.
To the quiet we bled for.
“Does Rhea know?” I ask.
Tev gives me a look. “She’s not stupid. But I figured you’d want to tell her.”
“She’s what?” Rhea’s voice cracks sharp, louder than she means to in the Ember’s tiny galley.
“A bounty,” I say. “Still active. Tev confirmed it.”
Rhea’s pacing now, arms folded, fury vibrating off her in waves. “We earned our peace.”
“Galaxy doesn’t care,” Tev mutters from the corner, sipping some foul-smelling brew. “It just keeps spinning.”
“I swear to Nova—” Rhea rounds on him, eyes blazing. “You show up on our doorstep, drop a grenade, and you’ve got the gall to sound philosophical?”
Tev holds up his hands. “Just the messenger.”
I step between them before Rhea starts throwing things.
“I want to fight,” I say. “Hell, I want to burn the network that greenlit this tag down to atoms.”
Rhea stops pacing. Faces me.
“But Ripley—” I add. “She’s not ready for this life.”
“No,” Rhea agrees. “And she won’t be. Not if we keep running. She’ll learn fear. But if we fight every shadow? She learns rage.”
Her voice softens.
“We need to teach her balance, Valtron. Teach her what peace really is.”
I nod.
Not because I’m calm.
But because I trust her to hold the line when I can’t.
That night, I can’t sleep.
I sit in the cockpit, lights low, watching stars drift like old memories. My knuckles itch. My blood hums like it’s still at war.
But I hear footsteps. Soft. Familiar.
Rhea slips into the seat beside me.
We sit in silence.
Then she says, “We’re not that couple who fights the whole galaxy anymore.”
I smile, wry. “We’re just a couple who might have to fight it one more time.”
She leans her head on my shoulder.
“If it comes to that,” she says, “we’ll do it together. But until then…”
She turns my chin. Kisses me. Slow. Deep. Grounding.
“…we teach her how to live.”
The registry panel hisses sparks under my glove, a stinging flash that bites my knuckles as I torque the last node into the hull’s cavity.
Ozone stings my nose, sharp and acrid. A thread of smoke curls into the stale, recycled air like it’s whispering secrets I’d rather not hear.
But the panel’s green now. Power rerouted.
Beacon scrambled. Our ship—the one that’s carried our scars and second chances—is someone else’s on paper.
I sit back on my haunches, wiping grime across my sleeve. The sweat sticking to the back of my neck is cold now. I’ve been under this floorplate too long.
Above me, Ripley’s face appears upside down in the hatch opening, smudged with carbon and shining with pride.
“Did we do it?” Her eyes glitter.
I reach up, tapping a finger against her nose. “We did. She's ready for her name.”
She clambers down the ladder like a baby spider monkey, barefoot and beaming, and scampers over to the terminal. Rhea’s already leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed, smirking softly as she watches her daughter command the moment.
“All right, Commander Rip,” I say. “Final task. Name our girl.”
Ripley plants her feet wide, fists on her hips, serious as a tribunal judge. “I name her... The Red Star.”
Rhea blinks. “That’s beautiful, honey. Why that name?”
Ripley grins like she’s just figured out the secret to faster-than-light travel. “Because it’s strong,” Ripley says with no hesitation, her voice firm. “And pretty like Mom. And flies fast like me!”
We both laugh. It’s not polite chuckling—it’s full-bellied, eye-watering laughter that shakes the ribs. The kind we didn’t know we could still have.
Rhea reaches up, brushes at her cheek. Her smile wavers, lips pressing together. I see the shine in her eyes even through the dim lights of the bay.
“She’s the best of us,” Rhea whispers.
And just like that, I can’t breathe for a second.
That night, we lie in the cargo bay, the one place on the Red Star where gravity’s half-decent and the stars stretch in a long uninterrupted view across the ceiling panel.
We strung up the hammock ourselves—Ripley picked the colors, a clash of neon-pink plasteel and navy-blue sailcloth stitched together like a patchwork dream.
She’s asleep in it now, curled into a half-ball, her thumb tucked near her cheek, blanket knotted around one ankle. She mumbles once—something about “rocket socks”—and then settles again.
The lights are low. Just the dull amber of engine standby glowing like the heartbeat of a sleeping beast beneath us.
Rhea shifts beside me on the blanket, our shoulders touching, the heat of her skin seeping into mine.
Her voice barely brushes the air. “Do you think we’ll ever stop looking over our shoulders?”
The question hangs, fragile and sharp.
I swallow against the knot in my throat. My eyes track the scuffed piping overhead, the memory of blood and fire and alarms still echoing in the bones of this old ship.
“No,” I say, after a breath too long. My voice is rougher than I want it to be. “I don’t think we ever will.”
Rhea exhales, soft and trembling.
“But,” I add, pulling her closer until her back settles against my chest, her spine fitting to me like she was always meant to be there, “I think we’ve stopped running from what matters.”
She’s silent for a long beat. Then she nestles deeper into the crook of my arm, her fingers brushing over mine. “We should let her be a kid.”
“We are,” I murmur, pressing my lips to the crown of her head.
“I mean really,” she says. “Let her plant something and forget to water it. Let her build a fort and cry when it collapses. School. Friends. Ground beneath her feet.”
I nod, though she can’t see it.
“One day,” I promise.
“Soon,” she whispers.
The ship groans, ancient metal singing a lullaby in its own dialect. Ripley shifts again above us, snoring softly now. Some quiet corner of the galaxy hums outside, unaware of the war we’ve fled or the future we’re fumbling toward.
And for the first time in my life, I let myself believe we might just make it.