3. Garokk
GAROKK
I wake to the sound of intruders.
Again.
The warning groan of breached pressure seals hums through the bones of the Hulk like a ghost dragging chains through steel. It vibrates in the ducts. It echoes in my ribs. I hear it before the monitors pick it up—low, subsonic, ancient tech whining awake like a beast poked too many times.
The ship groans with me. Not in pain. In hunger.
I stalk the dark like I always do, barefoot and silent.
My claws click soft against the grating.
It’s cold in here—always cold. The sort of chill that lives under your scales no matter how hard you breathe or how fast your blood runs.
Fifty years of this tomb have taught me every tone it sings.
Every whisper of metal on metal. Every sigh of systems long past their prime.
But this ?
This is new.
I swing into my surveillance bay with a grunt. It’s not much—a nest of repurposed wiring, scavenged consoles, and cracked black-glass monitors patched together with sheer will and tenacity. Most don’t work. Some flicker when they feel like it. But a few—the best few—still give me eyes.
And today, they show me them .
Three humanoids at first.
One is massive. Horned. Arrogant. Carries his weapon like it’s an extension of his cock.
One’s smaller. Jumpy. Covered in fur. A Frayvoyan, if I’m any judge.
Another is lithe and silent, masked by something more than armor. A shadow with legs.
Then more.
A human man in a suit steps down into my Hulk like he owns it. Already barking orders. He scans the walls, the bulkheads, the seals—always looking for value. Not enemies. Not danger.
Treasure.
I snarl low. They always come for that. Gold. Weapons. Secrets. They never understand the Hulk is the treasure. And the curse. And the grave.
They walk deeper.
My fingers twitch. The talons haven’t dulled over the years. I keep them sharp. Not for food. There’s barely enough of that. Not for writing. I’ve got nothing to say to the void. No.
They’re for this .
For them.
I lean closer to the screen. My eyes adjust automatically, pupils narrowing into reptilian slits.
And that’s when I see her .
At first, it’s the colors that get me—vibrant, stupid colors. Hair like dusk with violet slashes. A bodysuit half ripped from turbulence, half style. Glitter smudged on cheeks that should not be here. She walks like the ground owes her stability.
But her eyes?
No.
Her eyes are alive .
She’s talking to a little hover-drone, muttering something that’s half complaint, half showmanship. There’s a microphone built into her collar. She knows she’s being watched. She wants to be watched. She thrives on it.
And yet... beneath the bluster... I see it. Just a flicker. A flash of something that doesn’t belong in the eyes of a holonet star.
Fear.
Real.
I inhale slow through my nose. She smells wrong for this place. Bright. Fruity. Artificial. Synthetic perfumes trying to bury the scent of nerves. She stinks of rich comforts and false courage.
But the courage part?
That might not be fake.
“Idiot girl,” I murmur. My voice scrapes the walls.
I flick to another monitor. The one that follows the Frayvoyan.
He’s already tampering with a power junction he has no business touching.
The cyborg has wandered off-course, staring blankly at a blinking wall of pressure valves.
The horned one is sniffing around bulkhead doors like he wants to mark territory.
Amateurs.
I shift. Something cracks in my spine. I’ve grown too tall for these halls. Or they’ve grown too small for me.
Then the human in the suit—Meyer, the screen pings—says something I don’t hear, but I see the shape of it in his mouth.
“We’re not leaving.”
His eyes settle on the girl.
And I feel my claws curl into the armrest.
So that’s how it is.
They’re not tourists. Not scientists. Not warriors.
Raiders.
They want to take from my ship. My home . They want to steal, ransack, dig up old gods and wear their bones like trinkets.
But him? He wants more than gold.
He wants her .
No. That’s not quite right. He wants to use her. Leverage. Fame. Access. A hostage with high market value. He doesn’t see her as fire. He sees her as a key.
I lean back.
Let the monitors blink. Let the heatless light of ancient displays cast flickers over the deep red of my scales.
I’ve been here fifty-three years, six months, twenty-two days.
I’ve eaten ratpacks from ten extinct factions.
I’ve drunk recycled coolant and filtered fungus from dripstone caverns.
I’ve fought off scavengers, parasites, crazed drones, rogue defense grids.
I’ve killed with blades. With teeth. With my bare hands.
I am Garokk.
Vakutan warrior. Survivor of the Centuries War. Last son of Rysh Tal.
And this ship is mine.
But now...
I look again at the screen.
Her image lingers.
She’s speaking to the camera. Smiling again. But it’s different now. Smaller. Brittle. A smile like a wall with cracks showing. Her voice trembles beneath the cheer. Her hands twitch at her sides when she thinks the camera isn’t looking.
It’s a strange, stupid sensation.
Because I remember that look.
I’ve had that look.
It’s the face of someone trying to be brave. Not for others. Not for audience or honor or pride.
For themselves .
And somewhere deep beneath the muscle, under the armor and scales and memory of war, something inside me twinges. Not pain. Not yet.
Recognition.
It’s been decades since I saw anyone worth saving.
It’s been longer since I wanted to.
I watch her longer than I mean to.
Even as the others move. Even as Meyer’s crew fans out and begins probing the Hulk like ants on a corpse. Even as One Horn starts looking for corners, for shadows, for opportunity.
My talons drum the console.
I could wait. Let them come deeper. Let the Hulk finish them the way it’s finished the others. Let the gravity wells bend their bones, let the misfired AI scramble their nervous systems.
I could wait.
But that girl?—
Isolde, her name tag reads. Isolde Verrix.
She’ll die here.
Unless I don’t let her.
The ship is awake now.
I can feel it in the walls, in the grind of old machinery remembering how to breathe.
The Hulk stirs under the weight of intruders like an animal twitching in its sleep, not quite conscious, not quite blind.
Power trickles down sealed conduits that haven’t thrummed in years.
Floor panels groan where no footfall has touched them in decades. The old systems... they're listening.
And I listen with them.
My talons rest against the edge of a half-dead monitor as I crouch in the shadows of a forgotten command alcove, tucked between two cracked coolant arrays. The screens flicker with broken feeds—images fractured by static and time. I make do. I always make do.
They’re sloppy, these newcomers. Loud. Greedy.
I don’t know their names, but I know their hearts.
Mercenaries. Raiders. Treasure-hounds with no patience and less reverence.
One of them tries to slice into a sealed data conduit using an old drill, and the ship retaliates—flooding the hall with static and resetting every environmental control in the sector.
He stumbles back, cursing. The Hulk is watching them as much as I am.
I can use that.
If I route power to junction six, I could force open the sluice grates. Corridor Delta-3 is still sealed by residual atmospheric pressure—I could pop the locks and vent that whole stretch into the vacuum. Not fatal, not quite. But enough to send a message.
Let the ship do the bleeding.
I mutter the thought aloud, a low growl of consideration. “Scare ‘em. Shake ‘em. Keep my knife clean.”
But then she appears on the screen again.
The woman.
She’s small, soft-skinned, a splash of purple against the Hulk’s ash-pallor. Her eyes flick everywhere—too bright, too alert. She’s not like the others. She doesn’t walk like someone looking for profit. She walks like she’s trying to be brave, and barely holding the mask in place.
She shouldn’t be here.
Her voice cuts through the monitor’s feedback, sharp and clear. She’s performing, I can tell—talking to a droid that floats just behind her shoulder like a twitchy little shadow. But the fear’s in her tone now. Real. I taste it in the static.
And that... other one. The tall one with the crooked horn and the smile that isn’t a smile. He watches her too closely.
I know that look.
Predators know their own.
One Horn—yes, that’s what the others call him—starts lingering near her more often. He leans too close when she speaks. Takes too long to move when she shifts away. There’s hunger in the way he watches, and it’s not the kind that gets satisfied with gold or old tech.
I don’t need sound to know what he’s thinking.
My fingers curl around the hilt of my blade.
It’s not much. A scrap-metal edge honed to a whisper of usefulness, hidden away in my bunker for years, like the last vestige of who I was. It’s the kind of weapon you keep for the moment you finally give up on peace.
I told myself I wouldn’t get involved.
Not again.
Not for outsiders. Not for thieves and posers and holonet darlings with no business waking the ghosts that sleep here.
But when One Horn touches her arm—pretending it’s by accident, drawing her away from the others, down a corridor too quiet, too forgotten?—
My instincts scream.
She resists. I see the flick of her elbow, her retreat, the unease on her face when no one else seems to notice. She says something, and he answers with a laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. Bokis glances their way, uncertain, but does nothing.
They disappear from view.
The screen blinks out.
I rise.
The Hulk’s systems still hum beneath my claws. I could still do it. Trip the corridor seals. Shut them off. Herd them like cattle through the ship’s arteries. Let it swallow them one by one.
But this isn’t about tactics anymore.
This is instinct.
This is blood memory rising to the surface, raw and undeniable.
I sheath the blade. I tell myself: Stay hidden. Let the ship decide.
But when the screaming starts?—
I don’t hesitate.