Chapter 410: Meanwhile

The ship drifted on a steady course, engines humming in a way that never fully faded into the background. Power ran clean through the conduits, shield layers cycled on schedule, and the navigation locked in and recalculating every few seconds as Jupiter’s gravity well tugged at their trajectory. Nothing was wrong with the ship, and that somehow made everything feel worse.

Requiem stayed in the pilot’s seat even though the autopilot had control. His hands rested on the console, not gripping it, not relaxed either. He stared straight ahead at the forward display like looking away might make something slip through unnoticed.

Viola stood at the sensor station, posture straight, shoulders tight. She ran another sweep, waited for the cooldown, and ran it again even though she already knew what the result would be.

“No new signals,” she said. “No traffic. No delayed pings. Nothing hiding in the noise. We requested permission to land, now awaiting a response.”

“Run it again after the cycle. It will take us an hour to reach Jupiter’s orbit.” Requiem replied without turning.

Lyra worked through diagnostics at the rear console, scrolling through readouts she already knew by memory. Hull integrity, weapon charge, internal pressure, all within normal parameters. She paused for a second, tapped the panel harder than needed, then forced herself to slow down and continue properly.

Requiem’s daughter sat at the auxiliary station, quiet, her legs pulled in close to the chair. She was eighteen, almost nineteen, old enough to understand exactly what silence meant and smart enough not to keep asking questions that had no answers. Her eyes moved across the screens without really following the data, attention drifting every few seconds toward the forward viewport.

Reva stood near the center of the bridge.

She was still wearing the engagement ceremonial dress from Blackwood Tower. The fabric was formal and heavy, marked with old vampire sigils meant to represent bond and future. It looked out of place on a ship like this, but nobody commented on it. Everyone knew why she hadn’t changed.

She stared out at the stars, hands clenched at her sides. Xavier was supposed to be with them. He was supposed to leave Earth alongside them. Instead, the last thing they had seen was Blackwood Tower collapsing into itself, fire tearing through it as the structure folded inward.

They had no body, no signal, and no confirmation of anything.

Viola broke the silence when protocol required it. “All systems remain stable.”

“Copy,” Requiem replied.

The response landed and went nowhere.

None of them knew that Xavier hadn’t died in the collapse. None of them knew he had found the teleportation gate buried deep inside the tower and used it in the middle of the chaos. None of them knew it had thrown him all the way to Jupiter, or that he had been arrested the moment he arrived.

The ship kept moving through open space, quiet and efficient, carrying people who were doing exactly what they had been trained to do because it was the only thing left they could control.

The ship received clearance after a delay that felt longer than it actually was. Traffic control fed them a narrow descent corridor, layered with automated checkpoints that locked onto the hull the moment they crossed into Jupiter’s controlled space. External scanners swept the ship in overlapping passes, mapping mass, energy output, weapon signatures, and life signs with quiet efficiency. The scans weren’t aggressive, but they weren’t casual either. Jupiter didn’t trust anything by default.

Requiem kept his hands steady as the ship passed through the final toll gate. A credit deduction flashed briefly on the navigation display, then disappeared just as fast. Entry fees, transit levies, environmental compliance charges. Jupiter made sure visitors paid before they ever touched ground.

The atmosphere thickened gradually as they descended. Not blue like Earth.. The sky outside the viewport carried muted tones, layered clouds stretching endlessly, broken only by artificial structures anchored into stabilized zones. Massive platforms hovered at fixed altitudes, supported by systems powerful enough to fight the planet’s pull without apology.

They set down at a controlled port built into one of those platforms. The landing pad locked the ship in place immediately, clamps engaging with a heavy thud that traveled up through the deck. Environmental seals formed around the hull, and pressure equalized before anyone was allowed to move.

Inside the terminal, the air felt heavier than it should have. Filtered, regulated, but still dense enough to remind them they weren’t on Earth. Security moved them through in stages. Identity verification. Cargo declarations. Biological scans tuned for mixed species. Nothing personal, nothing hostile, just thorough.

No one spoke while it happened.

When they finally cleared the last checkpoint and stepped out into the open transit concourse, the silence broke in an awkward way. The space around them was busy, full of movement and sound, but none of it had anything to do with them. People passed by with purpose. Systems announced arrivals and departures in multiple languages. Jupiter went on as if their world hadn’t just stopped.

They stood there for a moment, unsure where to point themselves next.

Reva was the first to speak. “We’re here,” she said, her voice tight. “So where is he?”

No one answered immediately.

Viola broke the pause. “Xavier said to trust him,” she said. “He always tells us to trust him, even when nothing makes sense.”

Lyra didn’t say anything. She stood slightly apart, arms folded, eyes fixed on the crowd moving past them. She had been the loudest one on the Earth, the most restless, the first to complain about hunger or boredom. Now she looked drained, like she’d used all that energy just holding it together.

Requiem took a breath and looked around, forcing himself to focus on something practical. “We will get a room first,” he said. “We clean up. We rest. Then we figure out our next move.”

Reva looked like she wanted to argue, then stopped herself, and nodded once.

Requiem pulled up a local transport interface and requested a hover taxi. The vehicle arrived quickly, a low-slung craft designed to handle Jupiter’s gravity without jolting its passengers. They climbed in without ceremony, the doors sealing behind them as the cityscape slid into view outside.

The taxi lifted smoothly and merged into traffic lanes that curved around massive support towers and anchored habitats. Jupiter wasn’t built outward like Earth cities. It stacked itself vertically, layers of infrastructure balanced against a planet that never stopped trying to pull everything down.

No one spoke during the ride.

When the hotel finally came into view, tall and reinforced like everything else here, Requiem felt the exhaustion settle properly for the first time since they left Earth. Whatever waited for them on Jupiter, it wasn’t going to reveal itself tonight.

For now, they just needed somewhere to stand still.

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