Lightspeed Blocker [exclusive] -

“That’s suicide. The Kuiper Belt is eight hours away at max burn. The countdown says three.”

Kael had expected this. He pulled a black cylinder from his belt—a lattice destabilizer, jury-rigged from a mining laser and a warp core fragment. “Then I’ll make a new authorization.” lightspeed blocker

He didn’t.

Kaelen Dray worked the night shift at the Lunar Fringe Array, a graveyard of decommissioned relay stations orbiting Jupiter’s toxic blue shadow. His job: monitor “spacetime lattice stability”—bureaucrat-speak for making sure no one accidentally tore a hole in reality while testing experimental drives. Most shifts, he drank cold coffee and watched error logs scroll by. “That’s suicide