First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 470: Nomad Zone

The next two days passed without incident, which didn’t mean they were easy.

The ship followed its route with mechanical patience, stopping only to take on passengers and supplies, never long enough for anyone to get curious. Reva rotated watch with Viola while Requiem tried to rest in short bursts that never added up to real sleep.

Lyra woke often, disoriented, drifting between exhaustion and anxiety, while Iria stayed close, grounding her with a quiet presence more than words ever could.

When the ship finally docked, it wasn’t at a city that made the news or a port that bothered with welcome banners. The terminal sat low and wide, concrete layered over older steel, surrounded by service roads that led nowhere important. Cargo moved through faster than people, and nobody cared enough to remember faces once they passed the gate.

They left with the crowd.

No luggage worth tagging. No conversations worth overhearing. They moved with the flow until the port disappeared behind stacked structures and half-lit walkways, then peeled off gradually, one turn at a time, letting the noise swallow them.

Requiem led them underground.

Not through hidden tunnels or dramatic entrances, but through maintenance accessways and repurposed transit corridors that had turned into living space over time. The deeper they went, the more the architecture gave up pretending it belonged to a government. Pipes ran exposed. Power lines were patched by hand. Signs were painted over older signs until language stopped mattering.

The nomad zone sat beneath it all.

Temporary housing stitched together from modular frames and reinforced fabric, tents that weren’t meant to last forever but always did anyway. People lived close, traded quietly, and minded their own business because survival depended on it. Credits changed hands without records. Names were optional.

They rented a space big enough to fit all of them, the structure bowed slightly inward like it was listening. Inside, it was warm, dim, and insulated against sound in a way that felt intentional.

Requiem dropped his pack and stretched his shoulders. "I’ll see what I can find about a vehicle," he said. "Ground transport, maybe air if we’re lucky. Nothing registered."

Viola straightened immediately. "I’ll come with you."

He shook his head before she could take a step. "You haven’t slept properly in over a day. This is the one place we can afford to stop. You rest now."

Viola opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. The fatigue finally caught up to her expression.

Reva stepped in before the silence got uncomfortable. "I’ll go with him," she said. "I need supplies anyway."

Requiem glanced at her. "Supplies?"

Reva nodded. "Parts. Or old hardwares. If I find the right device, the right mods, maybe I can build something that talks without being heard. Something that lets me reach Angel or Xavier without lighting us up."

She glanced toward Lyra, who sat on the edge of the sleeping mat, shoulders slumped, eyes unfocused. "And we need food. Proper food. She’s not doing great."

Lyra didn’t protest. She didn’t look like she had the energy to.

Requiem accepted it with a short nod. "Stay visible. Don’t rush."

Reva grabbed her jacket and a small pouch of physical credits, then looked back once to make sure Viola was already sitting down, eyes half-closed, finally giving in to rest.

Then Requiem and Reva stepped back out into the layered noise of the underground market, disappearing into the flow of bodies and dim light, each of them carrying a different part of the same problem and hoping the city beneath the city would sell them a way forward.

Reva and Requiem moved into it the way you moved into a crowd that had already decided you didn’t matter. Stalls were stitched together from scrap panels and polymer sheets, lights hanging low and uneven, cables draped like afterthoughts. Voices overlapped without rising, bargaining kept tight and fast, hands exchanging items that never touched any scanner long enough to be remembered.

Nothing here stayed still long enough to become traceable.

Reva walked slowly, eyes active, not fixed on any one stall for too long. She wasn’t looking for finished products. She ignored polished devices and sealed units, passing over anything that looked complete or proud of itself. Her attention stayed on the broken tables, the bins under counters, the places where merchants dumped things that only people with patience bothered checking.

She crouched near a spread of half-dead tech laid out on fabric that had once been white. Power cores with cracked housings. Signal repeaters missing shielding. Old comm frames stripped of identifiers so aggressively they barely resembled what they used to be. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

She picked one up, turned it in her hands, thumb pressing against a loose panel.

"This one," she said, more to herself than the vendor. "The lattice is fried, but the internal clock still runs."

The vendor watched her carefully. "That piece is scrap."

"That piece is parts," Reva replied. "And it’s overpriced."

The vendor smiled without warmth. "Everything here is overpriced."

Reva set it down and reached for another device, this one heavier, older, edges worn smooth by years of being handled by people who didn’t care how it looked. She tapped the casing, listening, then shook her head slightly.

"You replaced the buffer with a cheaper clone," she said. "It’ll desync under load."

The vendor’s smile tightened. "Are you buying or diagnosing?"

Reva looked up at him. "Depends how honest you want this to be."

A few credits changed hands.

She added two more items from the pile, pieces that didn’t look like they belonged together, but would once they were broken down. As she stood, she tucked them into her bag without ceremony, already planning how she would gut them later and reassemble what mattered into something quieter, something that could ride signals without leaving fingerprints behind.

Across the market, Requiem worked a different angle.

He didn’t stop long anywhere. He walked, listened, asked questions that sounded casual and answers that didn’t sound like answers at all. He spoke to dock runners, to people leaning against crates with nothing better to do, to vendors who sold fuel cells and pretended not to know what they were used for.

"Looking for transport," he said more than once.

Some shook their heads immediately. Some laughed. A few pointed vaguely and said nothing else.

Eventually, someone did.

A man with grease-stained hands and eyes that kept moving leaned closer than necessary and lowered his voice. "Ground ride, maybe. Old crawler. Slow but forgettable. Air is harder."

Requiem nodded. "Hard isn’t impossible."

The man shrugged. "Depends who’s asking."

Requiem met his gaze without pushing. "People who don’t want trouble."

The man snorted. "Then you’re asking the wrong guy."

They moved on.

Reva paused at another stall, this one cluttered with sensor mods and passive receivers, most of them too loud to be useful. She picked through them anyway, selecting one that looked harmless enough to fool anyone who didn’t know better.

"This," she said, holding it up. "You’ll knock ten percent off."

The vendor frowned. "Why?"

"Because the shielding’s warped," Reva replied. "And because I’m not asking."

The vendor hesitated, then nodded. The deal closed immediately.

Requiem circled back to her a few minutes later. "I might have a line on a crawler. No registry. Runs on mixed fuel. The owner doesn’t care who drives it as long as it comes back in one piece."

Reva adjusted the strap of her bag. "That’s a start."

"It won’t be fast," Requiem added.

Reva glanced toward the direction they’d come from, toward the tent and the people waiting there. "Fast isn’t quiet. Quiet is what we need right now."

They merged back into the flow of the market, purchases secured, questions half-answered.

"Did you ask about the food and supplies? Reva asked as she leaned closer to the side to glance at a stall.

"I did. But the food here is too expensive."

"I don’t care about my portion, but we have to feed Lyra something good and nutritious. Remember, we are doing all of this for her. If something happens to her, then everything we have suffered so far will be meaningless."

They continued walking, Requiem’s gaze fixed on the path ahead.

"What is she to you?" he suddenly asked.

"Huh?" she raised a brow. "Well... I don’t know... maybe a friend?"

"If you are so uncertain, then why care so much about her?"

Reva shot a glance at him and remarked, "I could ask you the same thing."

"Xavier has done me a lot of favors. I can’t repay it no matter what I do. Which is why I accepted his offer when he invited me on his space odyssey. Although... I didn’t think it would turn out this way. Regardless, I wouldn’t abandon him or his people. Especially his lover, Lyra."

Reva frowned her face hearing that. "Excuse me, but I am his lover."

"Oh!" He gave her a side-eye. "I had no idea. He was always with Lyra and talked about her whenever we met."

Reva walked faster. "Don’t forget what you just said when we meet Xavier."

"Uh oh."