Isolde.
It slips out. Always does.
The first time, it was a slip during battle prep. Fierra thought I was cursing in my old tongue.
Now, I don’t correct them.
Let them think it’s a war cry.
They don’t need to know it’s a prayer.
After the novelty wears off, the raids blur together.
One Combine comm-station, two Reaper frigates.
A mining colony that fired first. I spared them. Sent them half our food stock before we left. They’ll never know who did it. That’s fine.
I don’t do this for thanks.
Each strike is a calculation.
Fuel, food, survival.
Stay moving. Stay alive. Stay ahead of the legend.
But underneath it all, something’s coiling tighter inside me.
Restlessness.
Guilt.
Purpose.
I can’t name it without sayingher name.
Reflector feels it, too. I know he does.
He’s wired into the ship now—literally fused into her nervous system, patched into processors and memory cores. His once-compact frame now sprawls across circuitry and corridors, light weaving through the Hulk like veins. When he speaks, his voice comes fromeverywhere.
He’s part of me.
Part of the ship.
Part of the myth.
“You’re quieter lately,”I tell him one night, walking the main corridor.
Red emergency lights wash everything in color—the same shade as our hull paint, the same shade that followed me since the Badlands swallowed us.
Reflector’s voice hums from a nearby panel. “Silence can be preservation. Data stores are fragile. The less I speak, the longer I last.”
“Coward’s logic.”
“Efficient logic.”
I snort. “Fair.”
Then, softer: “You think she’s alive?”
