And for the first time in forever, the horizon doesn’t look like a battlefield.
It looks like a home.
A new chapter begins.
Not of war.
But of peace we earned.
CHAPTER 26
RHEA
The quiet is loud out here.
I mean it—space hums, sure, and theBlue Embercreaks like the old bones she is, but out in the border sectors, the kind that barely qualify for a grid designation, there's a stillness so wide it feels like I’m holding my breath for whole star cycles.
And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, that stillness isn’t terrifying. It’s... room. Space to stretch. Space to feel.
We drift between moons now. Take odd courier jobs. Supply runs. Small stuff—packages that don’t ask questions, routes that don’t require names. It’s not glamorous, but it’s ours.
Valtron calls theEmbera “mismatched freighter with personality issues.” I call her home.
Ripley, meanwhile, calls her entire room “the ship.” As in, “The ship wants another poster on the wall,” or “The ship says my stuffed animal goes on the shelf.”
We’re still figuring it all out.
“Alright, storm,”I say, sweeping a stack of hastily printed astrocharts onto the makeshift kitchen table. “Today’s lesson: trajectory math.”
Ripley’s legs swing under the bench, her elbows propped up like a pint-sized philosopher. “Can I do it with stars instead of numbers?”
I blink. “You mean, use actual constellations to map vectors?”
She nods with a little smile that’s half mischief, half magic. “They’re prettier.”
Valtron grunts from the stovetop. “Stars don’t help you calculate burn velocity.”
“They sparkle better than your cooking,” Ripley tosses back without missing a beat.
Valtron turns, spatula in hand, mock-offended. “That’s it. I revoke breakfast.”
“Good,” she chirps. “Your last eggs smelled like rocket fuel.”
I smother a laugh. “Language, please.”
Valtron turns back to the pan. “You try cooking on a ninety-year-old stove with a grudge.”
He flips something—probably eggs, possibly an alien lifeform. A heartbeat later, the fire suppression system chirps. I lunge for the override switch before the foam deploys.
Ripley collapses in giggles.
Valtron groans. “Betrayed by my own tech.”
We eat in the cockpit that morning. Half-burnt food, over-salted tea, and three generations of messy, imperfect love.
Later, Valtron watches the stars drift past our viewport. He’s got that faraway look again. The one that says his body’s here, but his soul is walking battlefields we can’t see.
I slip in beside him, tucking my knees to my chest. The hum of theEmber’sengines is a lullaby now, soft and rhythmic. Thekind of comfort you don’t know you’ve been missing until it wraps itself around you.
