7. Garokk
GAROKK
T his ship listens to me.
It always has, in strange, silent ways. Doors don’t just respond—they anticipate.
Bulkheads whisper warnings. Systems that lie dormant for years crackle to life when I pass.
It isn’t magic. It’s recognition. A deep, buried familiarity like blood memory.
The Hulk may be old, drifting, and broken in more places than it’s whole—but it still knows me.
It doesn’t know her.
We’re deep in the lower decks now. Passageways narrow into long arteries, veins pulsing faint blue from behind the walls.
This is the belly of the beast—the maintenance corridors, the repair hallways, places even war engineers avoided.
And still, the ship makes way for me. Hatches hiss open without needing codes.
Lights flicker only when she steps ahead of me.
She laughs about it, at first. “Guess I’m not on the VIP list,” she mutters, brushing her fingers across a sealed panel that doesn’t so much as twitch.
Then she tries to override it—some flashy wrist device clamped to her arm blinking in protest. When that fails, she glares at the metal like it personally insulted her fashion choices.
I step forward. The hatch peels open with a soft exhale.
She doesn’t laugh that time.
Instead, she stares at me like I’ve got a secret I’m not sharing. And maybe I do.
“This ship… you command it?” she asks, voice low, careful.
“I survived it,” I say.
She doesn’t ask more. Just nods, like that’s an answer that makes sense to her.
We move fast. The shadows here are thick and old, and I feel them clinging to her. She walks like she’s done this before—tight steps, low center, all broadcast bravado replaced with something quieter. Smarter. She’s adapting. I approve.
I stop her with a clawed hand across her chest. “There.”
“Where?” she hisses.
“Trip laser,” I say, pointing to a faint red line nearly invisible unless you know what to look for. She squints, then lets out a low whistle.
“Damn. That’s not standard Combine tech.”
“No,” I growl. “That’s Lor.”
“Creepy robot guy?”
I nod. “Minefield. Controlled flow.”
She blinks at me. “Wait—you think he’s trying to direct us?”
“Not us,” I say, crouching near the base of the wall and yanking a panel free with one claw. “Them. Anyone. Traps funnel prey.”
“Like a shepherd,” she mutters.
“Like a spider,” I say.
I find the first mine tucked inside a recessed panel—thin, circular, rigged with a proximity core that would detonate within six meters. Vakutan design, but upgraded with frayvoyan signal jammers and reaper-blend filament triggers. Smart. Almost impressive.
I crush it with my palm.
“Is that safe?” Isolde whispers.
“No.” I crush the next one. “But quick.”
We clear five more traps in the next hallway. Every single one carefully placed where a panicked runner would veer without thinking. Lor’s tactics are surgical. Cold. Effective.
And I’m starting to hate him.
“You’ve fought with guys like this before?” she asks, watching my claws make quick work of another embedded tripmine.
“Lor does not fight. He executes.”
“Great. So he’s a cyborg and a sociopath.”
“Cyborgs don’t feel,” I say. “He can’t be a sociopath.”
“Well, he still sucks.”
She’s watching me work. Not in the annoying, are-we-there-yet way humans often watch. She’s studying. Learning.
When the seventh mine’s disabled, she crouches beside me, careful not to disturb the wirework.
“I could help,” she says. “Reflector has schematics for at least the upper three decks. Maybe not this low, but some of the system layouts must overlap. I could?—”
“No.” I snap the last trap coil and toss the remains aside. “He learns. Tracks patterns. You trigger something, he changes it next time.”
“You think he’s watching?”
I nod. “Always.”
The next corridor splits in two directions—one toward a collapsed storage bay, the other toward the venting rings. The vent path is dangerous. No cover. Limited oxygen. But the alternative is slower.
I glance back. Isolde’s adjusting her wrist cam—probably updating some kind of feed.
“You’re still filming?” I ask.
“Always,” she says. “This is my job, remember?”
“Your job is staying alive.”
“And sharing the story. Showing people what it takes to matter.” She shrugs. “The feed’s low-broadcast. I’m not pinging Meyer or anything. It’s just stored. Edited later.”
“Later might not come.”
She gives me a look. “Then at least I went out documenting the truth.”
Stupid. Reckless. Brave.
I grunt and turn down the venting ring path.
“You picked the death route,” she mutters.
“It’s faster.”
The air gets colder as we move—temperature controls down here are erratic, pulsing between humid and frost. She’s shivering by the time we hit the first airlock.
I peel off my outer pauldron and toss it to her.
“What’s this?”
“Heat mesh.”
“You gonna freeze to death without it?”
“No.”
She wraps it around herself anyway.
We move again.
The vent path opens into a service junction, one of the few places where the Hulk still runs almost entirely on backup power. Panels glow dim green. A central hub pulses with light.
But I stop short.
Footsteps.
Not Meyer. Too heavy. Too staggered.
Bokis.
I hiss low. “Frayvoyan.”
“Party animal?” she whispers.
I nod. “He’s looking for loot.”
We watch from the shadows as he stumbles through, humming off-key. He’s high on something. Maybe stim-dust or liquid joy. Doesn’t matter. He’s not a killer.
Still, I reach for the hilt at my back.
Isolde touches my arm.
“Wait. Let me.”
I glare.
“He’s not like the others,” she says. “He liked me. Sort of.”
“Sort of is not protection.”
“Just… trust me.”
She steps into the light.
“Bokis!” she calls, voice bright, cheery.
He jumps a full meter, fur puffing out in panic. His giant, flat face contorts in confusion—then relief.
“Isolde?! Woo! I thought you were, like, super dead!”
“Not yet,” she says. “But I will be if Meyer finds me.”
He glances around. “He’s… uh… not super chill right now.”
“Then help me,” she says, stepping closer. “Tell him I’m gone. Or misdirect him. Just keep him off me.”
Bokis fidgets. “I mean, Meyer gets real stabby when you lie to him.”
She touches his arm. “Please. Just this once. Be the guy who didn’t hurt someone.”
He swallows.
Then nods.
Isolde walks back to me, slow and proud.
“I handled it.”
I grunt.
But I’m impressed.
And maybe a little worried.
The ship watches her now, too.
We don’t stop running until the Hulk takes pity on us.
The corridors bleed into each other—twisting, pulsing, whispering with the quiet hum of a ship too ancient to be dead and too stubborn to die.
The lights flicker in recognition when I pass, those faint violet hues giving us just enough to see the way forward.
Behind us, nothing but the echo of our own breaths and the fading scent of burning metal.
I know where we’re going. I always do. The Hulk shows me.
Isolde doesn’t ask questions. Not this time. Her boots splash through a slick of rustwater, and she huffs, but she doesn’t complain. Her breath’s ragged. Her body’s tired. I smell it on her—fatigue, adrenaline, the slow creep of pain in her side where that bastard One Horn got his hands on her.
But she keeps pace with me.
We come to a wide hatch, partially sealed and furred with vine.
Not natural vines. These grew from the ship itself, decades ago when the bioengineered ecosystem began feeding on the Hulk’s waste heat and micro-organics.
It smells like damp earth and spores. I shoulder into the door.
It resists, then groans open on grudging hydraulics.
The garden’s still here.
It unfolds in silent, impossible wonder—an arboretum turned feral.
Vines the color of deep seaweed tangle around the bulkheads.
Spores drift like fireflies. Pale fungi the size of my fists throb with internal light—blues and greens and deep purples.
Somewhere in the center, the artificial skylight—long shattered—lets in the soft shimmer of starlight filtered through layered shielding.
This place remembers peace. A rare thing aboard this rusting coffin.
I gesture for her to enter. She does, slowly, as if stepping into a dream.
“Whoa,” she breathes, voice hushed. “This is… real?”
“Was a research bay once,” I mutter. “Oxygen gardens. Micro-farming. They let it rot.”
She steps forward, kneeling beside a patch of bioluminescent moss. Her hand hovers over it, not quite touching. “It’s beautiful.”
I stay close to the door. My blade never leaves my hand. Every breath, every sound, I filter through instinct sharpened by fifty years of survival. But I let myself take in her expression—eyes wide, lashes catching the low light, her lips parted just enough to reveal awe.
She belongs here more than I ever did.
I find a raised platform near the rear wall—a metal dais surrounded by a thicket of whispering vines. Some parts of the arboretum still respond to me; when I approach, the vines curl back just enough to let me clear the space. I make camp there, crude and minimal—no fire, just quiet.
She joins me.
“Can we stop for a bit?” she asks, curling her arms around her legs.
I nod.
She doesn't talk after that. No stream, no chatter, no bravado. Just silence. It’s almost sacred. She pulls her jacket tighter around her frame, lying down on a patch of moss that glows faintly under her. Reflector hovers beside her like a tiny silver moon, lens dimmed in sleep mode.
I stand over her.
I haven’t slept in three days. I don’t need to.
My body aches for it, but I deny it. Every creak in the corridor beyond is a threat.
Every gust through the broken vent could carry footsteps.
Meyer’s still out there. Lor, too. Maybe Bokis has gone rogue.
Maybe Snarl’s waiting for the smell of blood to come hunting.
But none of them will touch her.
She breathes deep. Slow. She’s sleeping.
I crouch beside her, letting the tip of my blade rest against the steel floor.
She makes a sound—something small, content. Her face relaxes. Her mouth moves faintly in the dream. I wonder if she dreams of sunlight. Of running water. Of family.
She shifts, and one of her fingers brushes my leg. Just the barest graze. I freeze.
This… connection between us—it’s dangerous. Illogical. But it feels like fate has clenched its claw around my chest and squeezed. I’ve never known softness. Not like this. Not in a place like this.
I was born for war. Raised to kill. Programmed to conquer.
And yet here I am, watching over a human woman in a ruined garden, while the world outside burns itself quiet.
She stirs. Her lips part.
“Garokk…” she murmurs.
Not fear. Not accusation.
My name.
I lower myself to sit, blade across my lap, shoulders hunched forward. The scent of her hair carries on the air—faint citrus, metal, and blood. I hate how much I already know that smell.
This ship gave me fifty years of solitude.
And I used every one of them to forget who I used to be.
Now, one night with her and I remember everything.
I remember how it felt to hold someone without squeezing the life out of them. I remember the sound of laughter, real laughter—not the mocking kind from my enemies or the hollow kind from warlords drunk on glory. Hers is different. Human. Messy.
It curls around the rust in my bones and takes root.
I shift my weight, careful not to disturb her. My gaze stays fixed on the shattered dome above. Stars burn through the cracks—distant suns I once fought beneath. Now they look cold. Distant. Irrelevant.
Because everything I care about is breathing just six feet away, curled up on a bed of glowing moss.
And I’ll kill the universe if it tries to take that from me.