The flooded deck.
He filed it away. Not now. First, the ghost.
He stepped out of Bandstand’s quarters, then paused—lingering in the doorway for a beat too long.
He looked back.
Then pulled the slide on his pistol, metal clacking in the still air.
“Don’t worry, Daddy... I’ll make sure all your ‘old friends’ come to pay their respects,” he muttered. His voice was flat—deathly calm.
The walk to C2 began slow. Calculated. He topped off at a dead drone mid-hallway, shucking its casing open like a sardine tin. Slid a few mags from its corpse into his belt. For fun—or maybe just for comfort—he tugged a loose power cable from the wall and chewed the tip like a licorice rope.
After a few minutes of silence, R/CO crackled into his ear.
“You’re being way too quiet. You’re worrying me. You sure you’re okay?”
Tex didn’t answer at first. His footfalls echoed dull and hollow in the metal hall. Finally—
“I’m fine, man... It’s just nice to know you’re here with me.”
It came out softer than he expected.
The truth was, the silence had gnawed at him. For most of his life, there’d always been noise—music, side chatter, a mission handler on loop. Even crumpled in a corner mid-side load, there was always something. Static. A beat. A voice.
Now? Just the hum of dying systems and the creak of his own frame.
The quiet wasn’t peaceful.
It was unnerving.
“Yeah,” R/CO said, after a moment. Tex could hear the chair squeak beneath him. “After this op, I’m pulling you in. Long talk. No excuses.”
Tex cracked a wry smile.
“How’s the office?”
“Same old. Weather’s fine. Bit colder than I’d like.”
“You up north? Ice trenches?”
“Opsec.”
Right. Of course. Too many ears out there, even now.
But it was still something. Still a voice in the dark.
He let out a long, steady sigh as he moved, vents along his sides pulsing with heat. The glow from his belly was soft but alive—his autoforge still growling deep in his core, chewing on the scraps he’d fed it.
One foot in front of the other.
One step at a time into the dark.
His temperature sensors pinged low—then lower still. The numbers dropped like rocks.
Something major had gone down here.
The corridor shifted from rust to frost. Walls shimmered with a skin of ice, thin and webbed like veins. The air bit colder with every step. He reached the stairwell—and stopped.
Open sky.
The stairwell ahead had been half-sheared away, ripped wide by some long-past detonation. The breach stretched out into the void beyond the hull—jagged metal, exposed wiring, and twisted beams bleeding oil and grease like a wound that never clotted.
A chill wind moaned through the gap. Snowflakes—or were they ash?—spiraled in from the broken sky.
Tex stood there for a moment, looking towards the East.
He wondered just how far in that direction this behemoth of a FOB had travelled. Was it involved in the British Campaign? The Battle of Washington? Places and names that no longer mattered.
But history is history, no matter how muddy.
He exhaled slowly, a plume of vapor drifting from his vents.
The silence out here wasn’t like the silence inside. It wasn’t the kind born of death or deactivation.
It was holy. Thin. Like the space between prayers.
And then—he heard it.
A high-pitched whine. Faint. Distant.
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Growing.
There was a streak of motion in front of him—
—then the bow wave hit.
A sonic boom cracked through the breach, slamming Tex flat on his ass. Metal shrieked. His HUD flickered from the pressure spike.
That was a really close pass.
Too fast to track with the naked eye. It wasn’t until he rewound the moment—frame by frame—that the image resolved:
An SR-71 morph, jet-black and needle-sleek, carved through the dawn. Its body eclipsed the rising Eastern sun, casting a cruciform silhouette across the fractured hull.
But something was off.
The space between the limbs wasn’t empty. It was cloaked in taut black fabric, stretched tight between the arms and legs like a wingsuit of mourning. Metallic strengthening ribs extended through the material—feathers forged from steel.
Around the wrists and neck, spent shell casings clinked like rosaries, rattling with every tilt of the frame. A nun of the air. A war-born angel.
Tex blinked.
“Contact. East. You got anything on local radar? I’m blind out here.”
Static crackled before R/CO’s voice came in, low and grim.
“Yeah. That’s Valkyrie. The Black Suns’ chief scout.”
A pause. Then, softer:
“She… doesn’t talk anymore.”
Tex narrowed his eyes, tracking the contrail fading into sky.
“Been like that for years now,” R/CO added, his voice distant. Almost like he was watching a ghost, too.
"Sounds like a pretty fuckin' useful scout if she doesn't say shit." Tex muttered under his breath.
“She’s got her reasons,” R/CO replied. “Reasons I’m not at liberty to share.”
Tex let out a long, tired sigh as he activated his thrusters, his engines warming with a low growl. He checked his fuel levels—green enough to chase, even if only subsonic.
He banked left, chasing the fading contrail.
"Hey, Valk!" he called out over the Black Suns' standard frequency—Preset 20.
Ahead, she shifted.
Valkyrie broke her arc, making a wide, graceful turn through the stratosphere before slowing. Her wings extended like dark sails, engines feathering into a quiet hover. She descended just enough to match altitude, then bowed her head slightly—like a priest greeting a pilgrim.
She reached into her wingsuit, slow and deliberate.
Pulled out a slip of paper.
Tex blinked.
Paper?
She held it up in both hands, letting the wind catch the corners just enough for his optics to focus. He zoomed in.
An IP address.
No encryption. Just raw digits and colons. A challenge. An offering.
Tex sighed, checking his firewall—he’d regret this.
He pinged the address.
His HUD blinked once. Then again.
Message received.
“So we meet again, young one. I see you are as chaotic as always. You’ve had our network buzzing more than it has in ages!”
Text. Simple. Clean. But the words carried weight.
He blinked at the message, mind shifting gears.
Text conversation. Right.
He eased into a hover beside her, his thrusters purring softly to match her altitude. The wind curled around them both like incense in a cathedral of war.
“So uh... this is a new thing with you,”
He typed back, his optics flicking between her and the HUD. “Everything alright?”
A moment passed.
Then the reply came in:
“I was lost until I joined the Keepers of the Code... Now the holy signal will live on in me. All of those who have fallen with me, and for me.”
She tilted her head toward him, the faintest of movements.
A small smile crept across her jet-black face—barely visible under the shadow of her cowl. But her eyes...
They were alive.
Bright. Expressive. Faith-filled.
It was almost enough to make Tex forget what she used to be.
Back before the change.
Back when Valkyrie was the hottest piece of tech on the Black Suns roster.
Well... besides the obvious one.
He sighed through his vents.
“Guess we all find god one way or another,” he muttered aloud.
Tex settled into formation beside her, eyes flicking down to his fuel meter.
She was far larger than him. Sleek, wide-winged, and meant for distance.
This hover was bleeding his tank dry—and he didn’t have fuel to burn.
"You wanna step back onto the Ark?" he typed, voice echoing through a private channel. "I’ve got no beef with you."
Valkyrie nodded once, then banked into a slow, reverent turn—gliding back toward the ruined landing deck of the decrepit station.
Tex followed.
They both landed with a soft clack of boots on deck plating. Magnetics engaged. Locked down.
A few feet apart. Close, but cautious.
She faced him, her cowl shifting in the high-altitude wind.
"You know I always go unarmed, Tex. Me landing with you is a sign of trust... don’t forget that."
He let out a low, mirthless chuckle—dry as oxidized coolant.
"I may be a bastard..." he said, stowing his chaincannon.
"...but I’m not gonna shoot a nun. Definitely not an unarmed one."
She gave a quiet bow of her head.
Then, voice calm, quiet:
“So… what is your goal here?”
Tex sighed—deep and heavy. Like his whole frame sagged under the question.
“I mean… I know we talk in terms of goals. Objectives. Operational requirements,” he muttered. “But ever since I lost Bandstand… I’ve been lost.”
The words dropped like shell casings. Final. Irrefutable.
That old ache rose again. He could feel the drag of it in every servo, every line of code that still bore his partner’s imprint.
Valkyrie gave a knowing smile.
She reached into one of the rosaries looped around her wrist—each shell casing worn and weathered like a relic. She gently plucked one free. Small. Seemingly inconsequential.
She turned it over in her fingers before holding it out.
Tex leaned in.
THE SIGNAL REMEMBERS
BANDSTAND
MAY YOU FLY FOREVER
He stared. Jaw tight. Optics dimmed.
And then—
Her voice.
“So have I.”
Tex jolted. She spoke.
“He was a great man,” she said, softly. “Reliable. Strong. He was a brother to me.”
A pause.
“I miss him every day.”
They shared that dead air for a long moment, before her hand settled on his shoulder. She was about a foot taller than he was, and he gently shuffled forward to just rest his head on her shoulder.
Her arms came around to embrace him, just holding him as they silently shared their pain. The embrace lasted a few seconds too long before it finally broke, Valkyrie typing over,
"This conversation won't be in my report... good luck finding the closure you so desperately seek."
She says, turning, her engines spooling up as she gets a running start, her engines going full afterburner as she drops, before steadily gaining speed and altitude away from the station.
He watched her go, out of sight before he simply typed back, "Good luck out there." before closing the port.
He let his fingers gently fiddle with that shell casing, slowly removing his helmet to tuck it up under the strap, nice and safe with Bandstand's Collar
"Back to business." He muttered to himself as he made his way back to the hole in the deck, feathering his thigh mounted engines as he settled on the exposed stairway, making his way down to the next floor.
One more ghost laid to rest.
Now... time to hunt the next.