"Launching!" Zero yelled.

  The cargo bay doors blasted open, and the Titan shot out into the void, its **thrusters flaring silently**. Zero synced instantly, the white noise of the connection flooding his mind.

  *// ORION READY. //*

  "Let's clear a path," Zero said.

  The interceptors swarmed like angry hornets. Zero didn't try to outmaneuver them; he went through them. He pushed the Titan's thrusters to 150%, the g-force threatening to crush him against the pilot's couch.

  He ignited the fusion blade. In the vacuum of space, the plasma edge was a silent, blinding line of actinic destruction—no hum, no crackle, just pure thermal death waiting for contact. He swung the massive sword, cleaving an interceptor in two as he roared past. The explosion was a brief, expanding sphere of gas that vanished as quickly as it appeared, choked by the void.

  "Concentrate fire on the prototype!" Silas's voice cut through the open **Link-Frequency**.

  The lead cruiser fired its **Particle Beams**. Beams of coherent light slashed through the dark.

  "I can't shake them!" Val yelled over the **Link**. "Ablative plating is at 30%!"

  "I need a hole!" Zero gritted out, deflecting a beam with the Titan's **Magnetic Deflector**.

  "I can't make one!"

  "Then I will."

  Zero cut the thrusters and flipped the Titan 180 degrees. He locked onto the command cruiser—Silas's ship.

  "Hades... I mean, Orion. Divert all power to the jump-jets."

  *// WARNING. SAFETY LIMITS EXCEEDED. //*

  "Do it!"

  Zero engaged the jets. The Titan became a meteor, streaking toward the cruiser. Point-defense cannons filled the space around him with flak, but he weaved through the fire, the Scrapper's Flow guiding his hands.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Instead of firing, he landed on the ship.

  The Titan's magnetic clamps locked onto the cruiser's bridge viewports with a bone-jarring thud. Zero looked through the reinforced glass. He saw Silas, standing on the bridge. The corporate mask had slipped. He didn't look like a manager anymore; he looked like a man realizing his assets had just become a lethal liability.

  Zero raised the fusion blade. He channeled the reactor's output into the edge, turning the tungsten white-hot.

  "Transaction denied," Zero whispered.

  He drove the blade down. It didn't pierce the hull—it overloaded the shield generator directly beneath the bridge. A massive feedback loop surged through the cruiser's systems. Lights blew out. **Reactors scrammed**. The ship drifted, **dead in the void**.

  "NOW!" Zero screamed.

  The *Rusty Nail* shot past the disabled cruiser, its engines flaring blue as Val punched the fusion torch.

  Zero disengaged the mag-clamps and pushed off the hull, firing his maneuvering thrusters to match the ship's vector.

  "Gotcha!" Jax yelled. The cargo bay's tractor beam locked onto the Titan, reeling it in like a massive fish.

  "Jump!" Val commanded.

  She slammed the throttle forward. The crash couch groaned under the strain, and the G-compensators whined, overwhelmed by the sudden violence of the burn. For a second, Zero felt his vision tunnel, the blood rushing to the back of his skull. The universe outside the viewport didn't just blur; it *screamed*. The stars elongated into infinite, needle-thin streaks of white light as the fusion torch dumped its entire reserve into a frantic, relativistic sprint.

  The blockade vanished, left behind in a wake of cooling plasma. They were gone.