"Sully, how's the stealth on this bucket?" Kane asked, his hand resting on the vibrating console of the stolen Stellar-Vulture. The ship smelled like ozone and the metallic tang of the three-eyed scavenger's blood.
"Non-existent, Sarge," Sully grunted, her fingers blurred into motion across the holographic displays. "But I've re-routed the transponder. To the Relay Station's scanners, we look like a piece of space-junk. Just... high-velocity space-junk."
"Vance, get the 'Welcoming Committee' ready," Kane said, looking out the viewport.
The Relay Station loomed ahead, a massive ring of spinning data-spires. It was protected by a shimmering Aegis Field—a Tier-8 defensive barrier that would vaporize a Rank 6 soul in seconds.
"I'm ready," Vance rumbled. He was standing in the airlock, his Asteroid Juggernaut armor glowing a dull, angry red. "Just tell me when to hit the brakes."
"Now!" Kane roared.
The Stellar-Vulture didn't slow down. It slammed into the Aegis Field at full burn.
[WARNING: AEGIS-DECONSTRUCTION INITIATED]
[VITALITY: 72%... 65%...]
Kane didn't use a shield. He used his own body as a conductor. He reached out, his Tech-Vore veins glowing neon-blue as he "bit" into the Station's defensive barrier. He wasn't breaking the field; he was drinking it.
"Gah!" Kane's back arched as thousands of volts of pure "Heavenly Logic" surged through his nervous system. "Vance! Go!"
Vance launched out of the airlock like a golden meteor. He hit the Station's outer hull with enough force to buckle the Tier-8 plating. CRACK. A hole the size of a house opened in the side of the data-hub.
The Great Data-Heist
The interior of the Station was a nightmare of white light and floating crystalline servers. There were no guards—just Logic-Sentinels, spindly machines made of hard-light and laser-precision.
"Doc! Keep the droids off Sully!" Kane commanded, his boots clattering on the glass floor as he coughed up a cloud of blue sparks.
Doc raised her hands. Her Life-Eater Spores didn't just rot flesh anymore; they were evolving into Nanite-Blight. The green mist swarmed the hard-light sentinels, eating through their logic-cores until they began to fire wildly at the ceiling.
Sully dove into the central data-pillar. She didn't use a keyboard; she jammed her neural-link directly into the crystalline core.
"I'm in!" she screamed, her eyes rolling back as the sheer volume of a million worlds poured into her brain. "Map of the Galaxy-Ocean... Trade Routes... The 'God-King' Directories... Oh, stars, it's so much..."
[DATA INTEGRATION: 45%... 60%...]
"Keep it coming!" Kane roared. He was standing at the entrance, his Twin Fangs merged into a single, massive Void-Cleaver.
Suddenly, the air in the room grew heavy. A hologram flickered to life—a towering figure in robes of woven starlight. It was a Consortium Overseer, a Rank 8 entity projecting its consciousness from across the sector.
"You are the glitch from Earth," the Overseer spoke, its voice sounding like grinding diamonds. "You think stealing a map will save you? We have existed since the first sun cooled. You are a footnote in our ledger."
"I'm not a footnote," Kane hissed, his silver eyes burning with a vacuum that made the Overseer's hologram flicker. "I'm the guy who's going to audit your soul."
Kane didn't strike the hologram. He slammed his axe into the Main Power Conduit beneath his feet.
[TECH-VORE OVERLOAD: 150%]
[SQUAD ABILITY UNLOCKED: THE GALAXY-FEEDER LINK]
The energy didn't just flow into Kane; it flowed through him and into the squad. For a split second, Alpha-6 wasn't just four humans—they were a single, hungry entity.
"I got it!" Sully yelled, her nose bleeding as she pulled the neural-link. "I have the location of the Consortium Home-World! And something else... a blueprint for a Stellar-Gate!"
"Move! Now!" Kane grabbed Sully and Doc, while Vance smashed a path through the far wall.
As they leaped back into the Stellar-Vulture, the Relay Station behind them began to implode. Kane hadn't just stolen the map; he'd left a "Void-Virus" in their servers that was currently eating every bit of data in the sector.