Chapter 10
ARIA
The wind howls like a dying god, all fury and teeth.
I taste iron in the air as Whiplash crouches low, its servos whining against the pressure.
Dust grinds against the hull like it wants in, and the world outside has gone all colors of panic—orange lightning, purple haze, the sky bleeding neon as the storm creeps closer.
I’m half-blind from static. Every sensor’s half a second slow, and every breath feels like it’s borrowed.
“Left quadrant, back under the wreckage,” Naull says, voice steady even as the comms crackle. “Bio-signature’s holding, but weak.”
“Trapped?” I ask.
“Looks like it.”
No time to doubt. No time to weigh options.
I’ve got seconds, maybe less, to make a call.
Because the thing circling us—that monster—is still out there, pacing like it’s waiting for us to slip up.
One wrong move, and it’ll tear through the dropship, the survivor, and us like we’re tissue paper in a hurricane.
“Can’t take it head-on,” I mutter. “Too fast. Too armored.”
Naull doesn’t argue.
Doesn’t question me. Doesn’t push.
He just nods, like he already knows I’ve got this.
That trust? It’s the realest thing I’ve ever felt.
“Rerouting power from the forward ballast,” I say, hands flying across the controls. “Channeling it through the cable arms.”
“Going for a trap?”
“Damn right.”
I guide Whiplash in a wide arc, dragging the high-voltage cables through the sand.
Each line pulses faintly, the energy current building under the surface like a snake coiling for a strike.
I cross the terrain twice, loop them into a choke point near the wreckage’s exposed wing.
The wind makes visibility garbage, but I trust the readings—and my gut.
This thing’s heavy. Fast, yeah, but it’s a goddamn mountain with legs.
It’ll charge.
It has to.
Naull keeps the mech steady while I patch in a feedback circuit and flip the last breaker.
The trap hums. The air sizzles.
And the beast roars.
It moves like a nightmare, all blur and jagged light, slamming across the sand toward us. My heart slams with it. For a second, it feels like we’ve misjudged, like we’re too slow, like the damn thing’s gonna bowl us over before—
CLANG—KRAKOWWWWWWW—
The cables light up like lightning rods, the current slamming through the creature’s body. It convulses, limbs jerking, mandibles shrieking against the night. For a split second, the entire world holds its breath.
Then the beast drops.
Hard.
It’s still twitching, still making that unholy guttural sound, but it’s down.
Naull whoops. Just once. A short, low punch of relief. I can hear it over the Meld, through the comms, in my bones.
“Move!” I bark. “We’ve got maybe four minutes before another wave rolls in.”
We don’t argue. We don’t hesitate.
We just move.
Whiplash shifts into surgical mode, locking its feet and deploying the emergency stabilizers. Naull runs point, scanning the wreckage and triangulating the signature’s location. I route power to the precision cutters and start carving through what’s left of the hull.
Inside, it’s a furnace. Heat rolls out in waves. Smells like burnt plastic and blood. The survivor’s wedged between two buckled walls, half-buried in what used to be a medcrate.
“Female,” Naull calls. “O2’s low. She’s unconscious.”
“Vitals?”
“Holding. Barely.”
I don’t waste words. Just reach in with the support clamp, grip the edge of the debris, and lift.
It groans, resists, then gives with a sickening crack.
Naull grabs the body with practiced gentleness, pulling her free like she’s glass.
He cradles her against his chest, his expression gone dark and focused.
“Pod’s prepped,” I say, slapping the controls on the emergency evac chamber.
Whiplash’s dorsal hatch opens. The small escape unit hisses out, its interior sterile and blinking with ready lights. We slide the woman inside, activate the vitals lock, and send the pod screaming back toward the base on a pre-set trajectory.
She’s safe.
For now.
Which leaves just us.
Whiplash retracts its arms, systems winding down into idle. The quiet is deafening.
I turn. And there he is.
Naull. Standing across the cockpit, one hand braced on the wall, the other still smeared with blood that’s not his. His eyes meet mine—and for a second, I forget to breathe.
The Meld’s still active. Dim, but open.
His exhaustion bleeds into me. So does the adrenaline. The grief. The hope. The relief.
We’re both shaking.
We just don’t show it the same way.
“You okay?” I ask, softer than before.
He nods. “You?”
I nod back.
And then we just stand there.
Not touching.
Not saying anything.
But the space between us crackles louder than the storm outside.
I didn’t realize how close we were until now. His hand brushes mine as we both reach to reroute power at the same time, and the contact sends a jolt through my spine.
Our eyes lock.
We don’t move.
Not for a long second.
Then the cockpit lights dim, switching to standby red. The storm rages outside, muffled but insistent.
We’re alone.
Just like always.
And everything in me wants to close the gap between us.
But I don’t.
Not yet.
Instead, I whisper, “Thanks for trusting me.”
He looks at me like I just rewired his heart.
“Always.”
Back at base, the hangar roared.
It wasn’t just noise—it was relief. It was pent-up adrenaline erupting in applause and slapped backs, in grins too wide to be real and laughter pitched too high to sound sane.
Victory on Rhavadaz isn’t common. Survivors even less so.
The med teams rushed the evac pod like it was carrying starlight. The woman inside—tech officer, maybe security, I didn’t ask—was alive. Burned. Broken. But breathing.
For now, that was enough.
I stood in the middle of it all, covered in dust and static burns, still hearing the megafauna’s final shriek ringing in my teeth. My arms ached from holding the console steady, my fingers still tingled from feedback surge.
But I didn’t feel any of it.
Because all I could think about was him.
The slope.
The way Naull reached for me without hesitation, his hand gripping my harness—not rough, not commanding, but careful. Like I was glass. Like I mattered more than the wreckage, more than the storm, more than whatever pain was chewing him up inside.
The way he said my name.
Not like a name.
Like a prayer.
“Aria.”
Soft.
Low.
Sacred.
I can’t get it out of my head. It echoes louder than the cheers, louder than the machines powering down, louder than the scrape of Whiplash’s hull cooling in the bay behind us.
Somehow, he says it like he means every syllable.
And gods, I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could chalk it up to exhaustion or battle hormones or the psychological fallout of deep neural tethering.
But I can’t.
Because I felt it. In the Meld. In the grip of his fingers. In the look he gave me when the evac pod took off and left just the two of us standing there, the world burning quietly in the background.
He looked at me like I wasn’t part of the wreckage.
Like I was what made it all worth it.
I should’ve gone to my bunk. Slept. Decompressed.
That’s what I told myself as I stripped the Meld suit, scrubbed sand from my scalp, powered down my console.
But my feet didn’t listen.
Instead, they led me down the back corridors, past flickering diagnostics panels and coolant hisses and the faint hum of generator cores.
Toward the mech bay.
Toward him.
I don’t know what I expected to find—maybe him gone, asleep, somewhere far from me and everything I can’t say. Maybe the bay dark. Empty. A place I could pretend I wandered into by accident.
But it’s lit.
Not bright—just the kind of golden-dim that makes shadows stretch and metal gleam.
And he’s there.
Naull stands beside Whiplash’s extended arm, a rag in one hand, smoothing grime from the plating like it’s sacred relic instead of battle-scarred alloy. His shirt’s gone. Just the undersuit tank now, clinging to every line of his back, every curve of muscle that moves with slow precision.
He hums while he works.
Not loud. Not tuneful, really. But... soft. Foreign. The cadence of the song isn’t Terran. The intervals slide, hover. Vakutan, maybe. Something old.
Something important.
I stay in the shadows, my back to the wall, just out of range of the glow panels. I don’t even try to step closer.
I should.
I want to.
But I just stand there and watch.
The way he moves is different now. Not tense like before battle. Not shattered like after. There’s peace in the way he handles the mech. Not just mechanics. Not just duty. Reverence.
It hits me harder than I expect.
Because for all the strength, all the bravado and brawling and bravado, Naull treats Whiplash the way he touched my harness.
Like it matters.
Like it’s something he protects.
A part of me aches.
He doesn’t see me.
And I don’t know if I want him to.
Because if he does, this little space—this stolen, secret moment—ends. It becomes something. It becomes real. It demands words. Decisions.
Things I’m not ready to give.
Things I don’t know how to give.
So I stay.
Just a breath longer.
Long enough to memorize the way he tucks the cloth into his waistband. The way he runs a hand over the power joint, checking connections by feel. The way his brow furrows, not in anger, but concentration.
There’s poetry in him. Not flowery. Not scripted.
But honest.
Worn down and sharp-edged, forged in grief and duty and relentless, infuriating loyalty.
I’m halfway to turning away when he stops humming.
His hand pauses on the mech’s arm.
Then, quiet—barely louder than the fan hum—he says, “You coming in, or just planning to haunt the shadows like a spy?”
My heart stutters.
He knew.
Of course he did.
I step into the light slowly, arms crossed over my chest like they might hold me together.
“I wasn’t spying,” I say.
His mouth twitches. “Sure.”
I glance at Whiplash’s arm. “You clean that thing more than you shower.”
“Mech hygiene’s a pillar of Vakutan culture,” he deadpans.
I raise an eyebrow. “Is it?”
“No. But you believed me for a second.”
I almost smile. Almost.
“Didn’t think you’d still be up,” I say.
“I don’t sleep much after a fight,” he replies, tone quieter now. “Everything buzzes too loud. Doesn’t shut off.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Same.”
Silence settles again. But this one’s gentler. We’re not dodging landmines or dancing around unspoken things. We’re just... here.
Present.
I step up beside him. Close, but not touching.
He hands me the rag without a word.
Now, I’m cleaning Whiplash’s plating next to him, both of us moving in sync like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
After a few minutes, he speaks again. Low. Careful.
“You ever think about staying here?”
I blink. “On Rhavadaz?”
He shrugs. “Some of the engineers—Tos and Maklin—they talk about setting up a permanent post. Long-term base expansion. Outpost Epsilon. Something ridiculous. Dig in instead of evac when the tour’s over.”
I glance at him, searching.
“Would you?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “Maybe. Not for the planet. For the work. For the team.”
“For Whiplash,” I offer.
He pauses.
Then, softer than anything I’ve ever heard from him—
“For you.”
The words drop like gravity.
I look at him, fully now. And he meets my gaze like he’s been waiting to.
My pulse roars. I don’t breathe. I don’t move.
Because this? This is the moment we don’t come back from.
Whatever happens next, we can’t pretend anymore.
He steps closer.
I don’t stop him.
And for once, the storm outside isn’t the loudest thing in the world.