The pirates surrendered. The convoy passed unharmed. And Kael, the miner who was nothing, sat in the heart of the most powerful ship in the galaxy.
Two more shots. The dreadnought's engines turned to brittle, orange-brown dust. The ship drifted, helpless.
A pirate armada—the Crimson Fang, fifty ships strong, led by the legendary dreadnought Maw of Vengeance —blockaded the jump gate to the rich inner systems. They were after a Company convoy. Hundreds of civilian lives were in the balance. darkorbit uber protegit
The Maw tried to flee. Kael smiled. He pointed his bow at its engine nacelles and whispered, "Rust."
The screens flickered, zooming out from the sector, then the cluster, then the entire galactic arm. A single red dot was pulsing at the edge of the known universe. The pirates surrendered
the voice replied, "you learn why you were chosen. There are older things than pirates, Kael-3. And they are waking up."
Kael’s hands, once calloused from hauling ore, now danced over a phantom interface only he could see. He engaged the Void Shift and the black ship turned to smoke. He flew through the first wave of interceptors. Their missiles passed through him, exploding harmlessly against each other. Two more shots
A vessel so sleek, so impossibly black, it seemed to drink the starlight. It descended without a sound, its hull shimmering with a liquid-metal iridescence that hurt to look at. A single, pale beam lanced out, enveloping Kael’s ship. He didn’t feel fear. He felt… chosen .
The training was brutal. The Uber Protegit didn't have weapons—it was a weapon. Its primary cannon, the Chronos Lance , didn't just destroy shields; it aged them, turning nano-alloys into rust in a single shot. Its secondary system, Void Shift , allowed Kael to phase his ship partially out of reality, letting enemy fire pass through him like a ghost.
"Your old life was a single pixel," the voice said. "We will teach you to paint with galaxies."