18. Garokk
GAROKK
I hover above the comm-panel in the command pit of the?Hulk, the big hull limp and ghostly in the Badlands’ edge, and still the static rings louder than the stars.
My gloves are scorched. My chest is still痛he same—burned, patched, alive.
The console hums under my fingers; the warnings and metrics flicker red and yellow like warning lights in a skull.
“Reflector,” I breathe. My voice is dry—dust in the throat of a ship that’s seen too many explosions.
“Yes?” His tone crackles through the speaker chain. He’s integrated now, a part of the system—his voice runs along every data bus. I feel him in the walls and wires as much as I sense the hurt in myself.
“Scan for inbound broadcast,” I say. “Any open channels from Novaria-linked nets. I want all of them.”
He whirs. “Affirmative. Filtering—multiple streams. One anomaly—Combine comm traffic. Designator: commemorative event, Orbimall One. Broadcast begins in T-00:03:12.”
My heart picks up its pace. A commemorative event. A station orbiting Novaria?Prime. My blood drums. I press in. Fingers dance across the panel. My claw-tips leave tiny grooves in the metal sheath.
“I want the feed,” I say. “Record and enhance. EVERY frame.”
“Recording,” Reflector says. “Streaming … got it. Initial view: wide-angle. I am enhancing.”
The screen flares. Images flicker. I grip the rail so hard my back catches a jagged scar. The feed sharpens. I hold my breath.
In the crowd—black hair. Shoulder-length, luminous under station lights. A child beside her—soft, small. A purple streak in the hair, glowing faint. The child’s eyes flash gold. I freeze.
“Pause,” I say.
The image stalls.
“Zoom on her face,” my voice taut.
Reflector obeys. The woman's face becomes linen clarity. Her skin lit pale. Her eyes searching the camera. Then the child, stepped closer, glances upward. His hair ruffled. Scaled cheek faint. Golden eyes.
I want to laugh. I want to scream. I want to hurt .
“Enhance frame,” I say, voice low.
The frame stabilises. I rewind it. Forward. Backwards. The crowd blurs around them; everything else melts away. In that frozen moment, her eyes lock with the camera. That shock of recognition, the crooked half-smile, the strength in her stance.
And then?—
“She’s wearing the Verrix crest,” Reflector says softly. “Or a stylised version thereof.”
My breath stops. I taste the vacuum of space in my lungs. The air inside the command pit feels thicker now, electric.
“Isolde,” I whisper. The name is a blade. I feel it cut into me.
The screen blurs. The feed glitches and jumps back to wide-angle, the moment gone.
I lean back. My brain catches up slower than my lungs. My chest is hollow, yet roaring with things I cannot name.
Reflector’s voice reverberates. “Captain?—”
I don’t want to hear the “Captain” tag. Not now.
Instead, I say, “Keep recording. Archive all frames from this broadcast. Lock it. Do not leak. Understood?”
“Understood,” he says.
I turn from the console and into the hull’s pale light. My claws flex. I feel the metallic scent of the ship, the tang of burnt plating in the vent above. The Badlands around us rumble faintly—gravity waves, distant detonations.
I walk the corridor to the observation deck, boots heavy. The deck is empty. The hull hums around me. I stand before the viewport and stare into the black with the gold stars mocking.
Her face in the feed haunts me. Her child. My son?
My son.
The truth lands like an asteroid: she’s alive. He’s fathered. They exist in that orbit.
And I… I am here.
Breathing. Broken. Still fighting. Chasing shadows.
Fists unclench. I lift them to the glass, feel the cold press through. I press my forehead against it.
“Isolde…”
Suddenly, I can see again. Really see. And really Grok in fullness what’s become of my life. The crew reeks of anticipation.
Not the giddy kind. Not excitement. This is the thick, cloying scent of bloodlust. Greed.
Desperation tangled with something older, meaner.
A predator’s hum in the chest. Even before I open my mouth, I feel their eyes crawling over the viewport, watching the station grow bigger in our trajectory like it’s already cracked open and spilling guts.
They think this is a raid.
And why shouldn’t they? I’ve taken them into worse for less. Looted mining colonies, corporate convoys, even gutted a Black Sun courier shuttle and came out with three crates of bonded credits and a barrel of oxygenated rum. But those were survival. Necessity. Vengeance, sometimes.
This isn’t that.
This is her.
I don’t say her name. Not in front of them.
She’s mine. And I’ll be damned if I let them twist that name into something raw and profane with their beast mouths.
But I see her face. Clear as a war flare in my mind.
That defiant little chin. Those stubborn brown eyes.
The fire she holds in her voice even when she’s scared outta her glitter-painted skin.
“Target acquired,” growls Thresk, my new comms deck officer, a Reaper defector with a back like a stone wall and eyes like a ruined church. “Station reads eighty-five percent civilian occupancy. The rest? Alliance security. Mall-grade. Soft.”
A murmur spreads. Hungry. Eager.
“You see that promenade?” sneers Crik from engineering, his lipless mouth split into something that might be a grin if you’ve never seen joy before. “Five luxury jewellers in the span of one docking bay. I can smell the platinum already.”
“Shut it,” I snap.
The bridge stills.
I don’t yell. I don’t need to. My voice has weight. Same as my fists. The silence that follows isn’t respect—it’s survival.
Crik raises both hands like he’s innocent. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Cap. Just... seems a waste, y’know? Floating banquet like that, and we’re flying past on an empty gut.”
“I said shut it.”
I stand. My joints protest. Old pain. Old scars. My frame ain’t what it was during the war, but I move like it is. That’s all that matters. Illusions go further than armor.
“Listen close,” I rumble, pacing toward the central console.
“This crew’s made up of every damned thing the galaxy didn’t want.
Killers. Exiles. Freaks. You followed me through hell.
Through the Badlands. Through Reaper storms and Alliance blacksites.
I didn’t carry you all this way to get sloppy at a food court. ”
A few chuckles rise—nervous, sharp-edged. Good. Let ‘em think I’m half joking.
“But we are going in,” I say.
Crik licks his teeth. “To hit the vault?”
“No.”
My voice lands like a dropped anvil. He flinches.
I stalk back to the viewport. The station’s clearer now. Sleek. Garish. The kind of structure built to impress tourists and bankrupt dreamers. Neon flare and gold trim. Banners flicker along the hull: Grand Opening – Ribbon Cutting Live Now!
Of course it is.
She always did have a flair for timing.
I exhale slow. My breath mists against the glass.
“This is personal,” I say, low. “And it’s not a bounty. Not a raid. Not some glory-drenched massacre you can sing about later. We dock clean. We walk soft. No weapons drawn unless I say so.”
There’s a shift behind me. Like a pack of predators forced to wear collars.
“You goin’ after someone, boss?” murmurs Jil, my navigation tech. Her voice is soft, curious. Smart enough to be scared. “That VIP they mentioned in the comm burst?”
My eyes narrow.
On the screen, the broadcast flickers. A podium. Security drones. And there she is—center stage. Dress too fancy for this side of the stars. Smile too brittle to be real. But gods, she glows. Even angry.
Isolde.
I clench the railing. My claws dig grooves in the alloy.
“Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “She’s the reason.”
Another silence.
Then a low, cautious buzz as Reflector floats into view.
“I advise strongly against this,” the little droid says, lens trembling like a leaf in a fusion storm. “Probability matrix indicates multiple hostile outcomes. You are compromising your command authority.”
I don’t look away from the screen.
“Let ‘em come.”
“Captain,” Reflector says again, more insistent. “She’s moved on. She has a child. She has a life. You storming this station like it’s the damn Hulk again—this could destroy everything.”
I finally turn.
I walk slow. Deliberate. I stand toe to optic with that twitchy little bot, and I lean in close enough to see my own rage reflected in his lenses.
“Then let it burn.”
The crew exhales like a held breath released all at once.
They know that tone.
They’ve heard it before. Back when we took the Garrex freight hauler and I lost two men for nothing. When I burned an Odex camp to the ground because they touched something that didn’t belong to them. When I gutted a Combine enforcer with my bare hands in front of his squad.
It’s not a threat.
It’s a promise.
“I’m going down alone,” I say. “One shuttle. You don’t move unless I signal. And if anything happens to her—anything?—”
They nod. Even Crik.
Jil leans in, voice small. “What are you gonna say to her?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t know.”
Because how do you explain surviving a star’s fire? How do you look at the one person you died for and admit that you didn’t stay dead? How do you tell her you clawed your way back through void and violence and rage—not for revenge, not for loot, not even for survival?—
But for her .
I don’t have the words.
But maybe that’s okay.
I never needed words before.
Just action.
“Prep the shuttle,” I bark. “Five minutes.”
Reflector trails behind as I stride off the bridge.
“Sir,” he whines, “please reconsider?—”
“I’ve reconsidered for two years.”
And now?
Now it’s time to finish what the void started.