Chapter 17
NAULL
The first thing I hear is a symphony made of metal and bone. Not human. Not exactly Vakutan. A low drone that stacks on itself until the world shifts under me. I taste burning fire in each limb. Sweat and ozone and something that feels like promise and regret mixed together.
When I try to speak… nothing. My throat locks. My jaw won’t move. My limbs feel hollow, as if I’ve been drained of strength and left to float.
My eyes open. Too bright. Whiplash-white lights buzz overhead. The scent of antiseptic hits me like shards of glass. There’s static in my ears. The world spins slow and sharp.
I’m back on Rhavadaz.
Familiar and horrible in equal measure.
I’m strapped into a med-vault—tubes in my arms, wires crawling across my chest, monitors beeping low. The walls are too grey. The air too cold. I feel the hum of systems and the drip of some leak into a tray beneath my bed.
“Vital signs stable,” a voice says. Soft. Male. Scientific.
The words bounce inside me.
Another voice mutters: “Still no pilot match the Meld readings. He’s… floating between sync states.”
Floating. Hell.
I don’t understand how long it’s been. Minutes? Hours? Days? These things blur here.
I sit up—or I try. My muscles protest. Every joint fires. The bed shifts like it’s wound on springs.
I see myself in the reflection of a screen. My body is bruised. Bandages where joints should bend. My chest is scarred—not the fresh wound, but healing. I remember the scar: Me. Aria. The contract we made.
She said: "You weren’t supposed to survive me."
I remember her voice like a pulse.
Then the visions. Flickering. Stars rearranging. A mask of light. Spectra standing in the heart of a titan’s core, laughing.
Prophecy. I never believed in it. Didn’t have the time. But something in me now knows.
“Lieutenant Naull Vakuta,” the doctor says, voice clipped. “You’re awake—barely. The Meld core is offline. We’re rerouting synaptic nodes. You’ll need days—weeks to recover.”
I shut my eyes. The hum closes in. I taste iron in my mouth.
“Where’s Sanchez?” I croak.
Silence.
Then the doctor: “Investigation ongoing. Pilot Sanchez eject confirmed—uninjured though burn trauma observed. Base wants you both grounded until debrief.”
I try to absorb it. Sanchez. Uninjured. I want relief. Fear. Guilt. I don’t know what I feel.
“I… saw her.” I say, though I’m not sure if the voice is mine.
The doctor shifts. “There are reconstruction logs. She was ejected successfully. Evac pod activated.”
That’s not what I mean.
“What did she see?” I say. “What happened… to us?”
He doesn’t meet my gaze. “We’re collecting data. You’ll be briefed.”
I close my eyes again. I remember the megafauna. The Titan. Whiplash crumpling. My own scream slashing through the cockpit. And in that rupture, I felt something move inside me—her. The Meld latch.
And then… darkness.
Hours later—or perhaps days—I’m moved to a recovery suite.
The room smells like lavender sachets, antiseptic, recycled air.
I shift on the bed. The isolation is heavier than any battlefield.
The beep-lights flicker. I feel the OSS-type monitors clamp to my fingers.
A nurse wheels in medicines I don’t see, but taste the bitterness of them like the residue of dreams.
My head swims with static. I imagine I hear her voice. Aria. Her hair pushed out of her face by sweat. Her eyes glowing in that moment when I held her in the workshop. When we said things we had no room for. There was no promise then. Just… need. Just truth.
And I think: Did I die? Did we both die in that explosion? But it’s a miracle I’m breathing. So how?
My bed shifts. The door opens. A guard stands. Uniform prim but too tired. An officer I recognize—Commander Cowley.
“Vakuta,” he says. “Glad you’re awake. I’d shake your hand if my morale allowed it.”
I manage a chuckle, weak. “Morale or sarcasm?”
He smiles. “Little of both.”
He steps inside. I sit up, and it’s like I’m waking from a long nightmare—limbs stiff, body unfamiliar.
“How’s Sanchez?” I ask.
Cowley’s face hardens. “She’s in London now. Leave of absence. Saw her yesterday. She… wants you grounded.”
“I’ll comply,” I say. “But why London?”
“It’s complicated. Burn trauma. Beside that—you know she’s not the type to stay put.”
He leans. “Vakuta, listen. The logs show the Titan we encountered wasn’t catalogued. The Meld surge during the crash—traces indicate an intelligence. Not just beast.”
My gut tightens.
“Are you saying… Spectra?”
Cowley nods. “We’re investigating. But in the meantime—you two are out until we make sense of it.”
Betrayal and relief circle me. I want to curse. I want to blame. But mostly I want to be with her.
“I want to go to London,” I say.
Cowley sighs. “Not yet. Base orders.”
I nod. “Then I’ll recover.”
He looks at me. “You and Sanchez—whatever happened in that cockpit—it changed you both.”
I don’t respond.
After he leaves, I lie back. The hum softens. I dredge memories.
I taste dust. I feel molten metal spray. I smell methane and ozone. I see her face—her fear and her fierceness—moments before the blast.
I want to lighten the tension. I whisper: “Aria… if you’re hearing me—know this: I’m not done.”
And that’s the truth.
Because I survived.
Because the Meld didn’t die.
Because somewhere—under the ash and the scorched metal—I found something deeper. And I won’t let it go.
I tear the restraints off before the med-techs know I’m conscious.
The tubes rip from my arms with a wet snap. Blood beads and trails, but I don’t care. The hiss of the pressure-seal ruptures. I lurch off the table, bare feet slapping the cold tile, breath ragged like a saw.
The pain’s back, sure—but pain’s old news. It’s not pain that fuels me now.
It’s her.
It’s Aria.
The room tilts, but I force my legs steady. Every step feels like dragging a dead man behind me—maybe because I’ve been one. I don’t know how long I was gone. Minutes. Weeks. Long enough to forget the shape of my own shadow.
The door swishes open and Cowley enters mid-bark. “Stand down, Vakuta—!”
He stops short.
I’m already pacing. Muscles twitching under gauze. Chest heaving. No armor. No mech. Just me—and whatever this new current is burning through my veins like liquid fire.
Cowley’s voice drops. “You shouldn’t even be standing.”
“Where is she?”
His lips purse. He folds his hands behind his back. “Aria’s been reassigned.”
“Where.”
“Earth.”
That word slams into me. Cold. Distant.
I blink. Just once.
“She doesn’t know you’re alive,” Cowley adds.
I nod.
“She will.”
He frowns, probably thinking I’m about to collapse. But I’m already halfway across the room, dragging the remains of my med gown behind me, grabbing the nearest base gear I can reach. It’s too tight across the chest, but it'll do.
“Sit down, Vakuta. You’re still flagged for neurological instability,” Cowley says.
I stop only to meet his eyes.
“Don’t care.”
He sighs and shifts tactics. “We’re offering you a new mech. Cleaner. Faster. Meld optimized. Codename: ‘Rook.’”
I laugh.
“You think this is about specs?”
“We’re trying to keep you grounded,” he says.
“I’m already grounded,” I snap. “You grounded me when you let her leave without telling her I was breathing.”
“She requested reassignment. There wasn’t a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Cowley sighs. “She was... fragile, Naull. After Rhavadaz. We thought she needed distance.”
I grip the edge of the console until my knuckles crack. “She doesn’t need distance. She needs the truth.”
“She needs stability.”
I shake my head. “She needs me.”
The first time they try the Meld with another pilot, it’s a disaster.
A woman named Lira. Talented. Sharp. The kind of soldier they build in training sims and propaganda videos.
She barely straps in before the neural backlash knocks her unconscious.
Her vitals spike. The med-techs rush in.
The second pilot, Kaen, gets farther. Five seconds of connection. Then screams. Blood from his nose. Nerve shock.
He doesn’t speak for two days.
They try five more. All experienced. All cleared by psych.
Same result.
They burn through candidates like matches. Until even the room starts to smell like failure.
Until even the technicians won’t meet my eyes.
Eventually, they stop trying.
They stop calling me a pilot.
Now I’m just a liability with lungs.
They try to reassign me. I say no.
They try to ground me. I go feral.
They try to sedate me. I break the IV stand in half and throw it across the room.
They stop trying.
I spend most nights in the bay, staring up at Whiplash’s frame, stripped and inert.
What’s left of it, anyway.
The core is fused. The arm blown clean off. The hull carbon-scored with a scar that mirrors my own down the center of my chest.
And yet… when I lay my palm on the cockpit shell, I swear it breathes.
Not just metal. Not just tech.
Us.
I whisper into the hatch like a prayer. “You hear me in there? We’re not done.”
I start repairing it myself.
Not because they ask.
Because I have to.
I steal parts from unused shells. I cannibalize old boosters. I reroute circuits with trembling hands. The techs don’t stop me. They probably think I’ll burn myself out.
Good.
Let them think that.
Let them believe I’m broken and stuck.
Because one day—I will bring Whiplash back online.
But not without her.
Cowley shows up again. This time he brings intel.
“She’s at Oxford. Engineering division.”
I raise a brow. “What, you think I forgot how to use a satellite?”
“She has a child,” he adds, voice lower.
I freeze.
“What?”
“A baby. Male. Born two months after you were declared—”
“Dead.”
He nods once.
My knees buckle, but I don’t fall.
I grip the edge of the diagnostics table like it’s the only thing keeping me from shattering.
“Garma,” Cowley says softly.
I look up sharply.
“How do you know his name?”
He shrugs. “She filled out the birth record at New Bastion. Listed no father. No contact.”
I swallow. “You think it’s mine?”
“I don’t think, Naull. I know.”
It doesn’t feel real. Not yet. Not completely.
A son. Our son.
Built from the only moment in my life where I let myself be.
Cowley shifts, then says quietly, “She thinks you’re gone.”
I clench my jaw.
“Well, then. We should fix that.”
That night, I pull Whiplash’s neural coil out of cryo and wire it into the base’s holotable.
No tech support. No oversight.
I initiate a blank Meld tether.
It fails.
Twice.
On the third attempt, I reach—through circuits and flame scars and buried voltage.
And I feel her.
Not words. Not images.
Just warmth.
Just… her.
I don’t cry. I don’t speak.
I just hold on.
Because that’s what I do.
Because I have only one mission now.
Bring her home.