Chapter 29 Rhea
RHEA
The ping finds me when I least expect it—just as I’m helping Ripley hang her wet swim clothes on the railing.
She’s humming something off-key, one of those songs Valtron whistles while building things, all rhythm and no melody.
The sky is this unreal green, clouds soft like smoke trails curling against it.
I press a kiss to the top of her head and turn when I hear the soft chirp from my pad.
Encrypted. High priority. Alliance protocol.
I haven’t seen that clearance tag since—well. Since before. Since I still had credentials that mattered.
Valtron’s up the ridge, hammering something into the frame of a half-built greenhouse he’s obsessed with. Ripley’s helping him in her own way—mostly by handing him the wrong tools and narrating every bug she sees like it’s a nature docu-cast.
I sit on the porch, pad trembling a little in my lap. The message is from Leena Dray.
No preamble. Just:
Request for contribution to Alliance War Memorial Broadcast.
Topic: Truth. Survival. Freedom.
Voice-only. Secure link.
Optional anonymity.
Deadline: 48 hours.
My heart stutters.
I scroll through it again, like maybe the words will change. They don’t.
I close the pad and lean back against the wooden post, staring at nothing.
“You okay?” Valtron asks, later. He’s got dirt on his forearm and a smear of purple pollen across his neck. Ripley’s asleep inside, curled around one of her weird bug toys.
I nod, slow. Then shake my head.
He waits.
“I got a message,” I say finally. “From Leena.”
His brow furrows. “What kind of message?”
I hand him the pad.
He reads it in silence. His jaw flexes, just once.
“You gonna do it?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m not afraid of telling the truth. I’ve lived it. Bled it. Buried parts of myself with it.
But speaking into that void again, even for something as solemn as a war memorial… It feels like inviting ghosts to dinner.
Valtron leans on the railing beside me. The boards creak beneath his weight, but it’s a comforting sound now. Familiar.
“You were never just a voice,” he says quietly. “You were the signal.”
I look at him, startled.
He shrugs. “When everything else was falling apart… you were the thing people tuned into. Even me.”
I blink fast. “Damn it.”
He grins. “Didn’t mean to get you all sentimental.”
I shake my head, but something in my chest settles.
I record the message that night.
Valtron sets up a sound shield around the bench with old plasma shell casings and a length of curtain wire. Ripley sleeps under a bug net, snoring softly, her hair a tangle of curls and dreams.
The pad sits on my lap, blinking red. Waiting.
I close my eyes, breathe deep. The scent of the lake clings to everything—salty, strange, like a memory I haven’t earned yet.
Then I press record.
“My name doesn’t matter. My face doesn’t matter. Only the truth does.
“And here it is.
“I was a voice once. Not a soldier. Not a hero. Just a woman with a camera, asking questions the galaxy didn’t want answered.
“Then the war came. And suddenly, questions weren’t enough. Silence became dangerous. Secrets became fatal.
“I became something else. A fugitive. A fighter. A mother.
“I have lived in the dark. Hidden behind walls and false names. I’ve held my daughter while the ceiling shook from orbital fire. I’ve kissed the man I love while knowing we might not wake up.
“I have survived.
“But survival isn’t the same as living.
“I was asked to speak about truth, survival, and freedom. So here’s mine:
“Truth is fire. It’s dangerous. It burns. But it also lights the way.
“Survival is breathing through the pain. It's holding on when you’re too tired to stand.
“And freedom… freedom is messy. It’s not medals or broadcasts or parades. It’s your child laughing in sunlight. It’s choosing peace when your blood still remembers war.
“Sometimes the galaxy forgets we’re people.
“Sometimes we forget too.
“But truth always finds oxygen.
“And love… love is gravity. It holds us down when the stars try to pull us apart.”
I sit there after the pad goes dark. Just breathing. Just listening to the quiet.
Valtron doesn’t ask what I said.
But when I crawl into bed beside him, he wraps an arm around my waist and presses his lips to the nape of my neck.
“I felt it,” he whispers. “Whatever it was you gave them. I felt it.”
The stars don’t blink out. They blaze louder.
I wake to a chirping overload alert. Not from our system—but the public comms net.
I roll over, hair a frizzy halo, eyes still gummy from sleep.
Valtron’s already propped up beside me, frowning at his wristpad.
The glow from the screen paints his face with cold light.
He doesn’t say a word, just turns the pad toward me.
My voice is trending.
Not my name—thank the gods—but a clipped section of the message I sent. “Truth is a fire…” played on loop. Mixed with synth beats. Echoed over footage of protest marches and frontier border vigils. Hashtags multiplying like spores: #GhostReporter #GravityOfLove #SignalFlare
I sit up, heart clanging like a dropped wrench. “That was supposed to be encrypted.”
“It was,” Valtron says. “Leena must’ve leaked it.”
I can’t even be mad.
I pull on a robe and shuffle barefoot to the porch. Morning fog’s still hanging low, clinging to the edges of the lake like it’s afraid to leave. The sky’s a sickly pastel green this time of day, just before the two suns rise over the ridge.
I sip from a chipped mug—citrus root tea, sharp and grounding. My nerves still hum like overclocked wiring.
“People think it’s you?” Valtron asks from behind me.
“Some. Not many.”
“Do you care?”
I glance at him, eyes still gritty. “No. I said what needed saying.”
He joins me, sliding his arm around my waist. We stand there in silence while the lake hiccups mist into the air and birds that don’t exist anywhere else trill like cracked violins.
“She’s going to change the stars someday,” he says quietly.
I snort into my tea. “She already did.”
He chuckles. “Fair.”
By midday, Ripley’s bolted together a pair of wing braces from drone parts Valtron stashed in the supply closet. She straps them to her arms with uneven straps and takes off across the yard, yelling, “I’m gonna catch a moonbeam!”
The braces flutter, not quite lifting her, but she believes they will. That’s enough.
Valtron chuckles from his perch on the swing he built last week. I sit beside him and lace my fingers through his.
“You ever think about what it would’ve been like?” I ask.
He raises an eyebrow.
“If we’d never been torn apart.”
His gaze stays on Ripley. “I think we wouldn’t have survived it.”
I tilt my head. “That’s dark.”
“It’s true.” He turns to me. “We were a spark back then. Hot. Dangerous. Unstable. We had to burn out before we could burn steady.”
I look down at our hands. “Now we’re steady?”
He smiles, slow. “We’re stars.”
The feed buzzes again at dusk. The local system news is parroting the message now, trying to guess who “The Ghost Reporter” is. Some think it’s a planted AI. Some think it’s old archive footage from before the Fall. A few whispers suggest it might be me.
None of them are certain.
That suits me fine.
I don’t need credit. I don’t need spotlight. Not anymore.
Truth doesn’t need a name attached. It just needs to be heard.
We eat dinner on the porch—bitterroot stew and flatcakes Valtron half-burns but pretends are “rustic.” Ripley smears juice across her cheek and pretends to be a war hero. Valtron goes along with it, letting her “heal” him with a snapped twig and an acorn.
When the sun finally dies behind the hills, Ripley runs after fireflies again. Her wings catch the wind just enough to flutter. She shrieks with joy.
Valtron wraps a blanket around my shoulders.
“You warm enough?”
I nod, eyes fixed on the girl who shouldn’t have existed—but does.
“Thank you,” I say, unprompted.
He leans his head against mine. “For what?”
“For this. All of it. The quiet. The crazy. Her.”
We don’t say anything more. We just watch her. Fireflies swirling like stars fallen to earth.
No more war. No more lies.
Just light.