Chapter Four: Juno's Silence
The jump to Dorian Edge takes eight hours in blackout mode. I sit in the dark, the Solace coasting through the void like a whisper. No signals. No lights. Just the hum of life support and the soft crackle of recycled air.
I don't sleep.
I replay her message in my head. Not the actual words—there were barely any. Just the way her voice cracked at the end, like static trying to hold itself together.
I don't know what I'll say when I see her. If I see her.
The Juno Wastes stretch like the scar of a forgotten war. Fractured moons, debris fields, hollow asteroids. I pass through clouds of broken metal and shattered hulls from battles no one remembers. The stars here are faint. Even the light seems afraid to touch this place.
I find the coordinates. A derelict comms outpost floats at the edge of a collapsed ring system. Mira always did love her ruins.
I dock with minimal power, the Solace locking onto the drifting station with a metallic sigh. The airlock creaks open with reluctance, and the stale smell of rust and vacuum-baked wiring greets me like an old enemy.
No welcome party. Just dust, flickering lights, and the whisper of things that used to be alive.
"Mira," I say into the comm. "I'm here."
No response.
I draw my pistol. Not out of fear—out of memory. The kind that reminds you that trust gets people killed.
Footsteps echo in the corridor ahead.
One set. Light. Measured.
She appears like a ghost from the flickering shadows. Hood up, eyes sharp, hair shorter than I remember. But it's her. Mira.
And for a second, everything freezes. My heart, my thoughts. The war. The regrets.
"I didn't think you'd come," she says.
"You knew I would," I answer.
We stand there, years hanging in the space between us.
"I don't have long," she says. "They're watching the channels. Even this place isn't safe."
"Then why call me here?"
"Because they're rebuilding it, Kael. Requiem. Bigger. Faster. They've moved beyond deterrence—this time it's about erasure."
The word sits heavy in my gut. Erasure.
"Why you?" I ask.
"Because I know where they're building it. And I have something they need."
She reaches into her jacket and pulls out a data crystal—ancient tech, impossible to trace. Only one person I ever knew could decode something like that.
"Do you still know where Adler is?" she asks.
Adler. Dominion scientist turned traitor. A genius with a conscience too slow to save anyone.
I nod.
"Good," she says. "Then we've got one shot."
A distant clang reverberates through the station. Not natural.
She looks at me, her voice dropping. "They found us."
I raise my pistol.
She smirks. "Still quiet. Still dangerous."
I smirk back. "You always liked that."
And then we run.