The Wrecking Ball's dive wasn't a tactical maneuver; it was a controlled fall into hell. The massive ship, built from the parts of a hundred different battles, groaned and shrieked as Jett threw it through the Crossroads' debris field. On the bridge's main viewscreen, the image of the Reality Devourers descending behind them was an apocalyptic sight.
"Shields at 70%!" shouted one of Jett's crew, a cyborg with an optical eye that buzzed with stress. "Reality distortion increasing! Navigation is becoming... suggestive!"
"Suggestive is my middle name!" Jett yelled back, his manic grin back in full force, fueled by pure adrenaline. "Keep diverting power to the engines! If I can't outrun them, I'll at least make our explosion pretty!"
Leo held onto a console, his stomach churning. The Pathfinder in his hand was flickering erratically, the line of light fragmenting into dozens of broken paths. The device couldn't find a safe path because there wasn't one.
Kael stood beside him, his face a mask of cold concentration. He wasn't looking outside. He was analyzing the sensor data, watching the Devourers' movement patterns.
"They're not attacking," Kael said, his voice low and tense, cutting through the chaos on the bridge. "They're herding us."
"What does it matter? Dead is dead!" Jett yelled, narrowly swerving around a building-sized piece of a broken space station.
"It matters because it's not random," Kael insisted. "Look." He pointed to the tactical map. The red dots of the Devourers weren't moving directly for them. They moved in wide arcs, closing off their escape routes, pushing them deeper and deeper into the debris field. "This isn't a hunt. It's shepherding. The Hunter didn't just unleash them; it's guiding them."
At that moment, as if to prove his point, one of the smaller salvage skiffs that had fallen behind was caught by the edge of a Devourer's distortion aura. There was no explosion. The skiff and its two-man crew simply... dissolved. For a second, their form became translucent, then broke apart into a cloud of light particles that was absorbed by the Devourer. Their screams on the comms were cut off mid-word, turning into pure static.
An icy silence fell over the bridge. The reality of their situation crashed down on everyone. They couldn't fight. They couldn't get hit. The only option was to run.
"It's pushing us into a kill zone," Kael murmured. "An area with no debris to hide in, where we'll be an easy target."
Yuki's advice made something click in Leo's mind. He wasn't looking for an escape route; he was looking for a weapon. Chaos. He closed his eyes, ignoring the shaking ship and the crew's shouts. He focused on the device, not on what it showed, but on what he felt. He searched for the feeling of "thinness," of instability.
And he found it.
He opened his eyes and pointed, not at an empty space, but at a swirling nebula of cosmic dust and crackling energy ahead of them. It was a miniature reality storm, a place where the laws of physics went to take a vacation.
"There!" Leo shouted. "The path is that way! Through that thing!"
Jett's navigator looked at him like he was insane. "Through the K-7 Temporal Anomaly? Are you kidding? The chronal tide readings in there would rip the hull apart like paper!"
"The chaos kid says the path is that way, so the path is that way!" Jett yelled, his face a grimace of suicidal joy. He wrenched the Wrecking Ball's helm, the ship groaning in protest, and aimed it directly for the heart of the storm.
"Kael!" Leo shouted. "I need a shield! Something to protect us from the storm!"
Kael was already working, his tactical mind grasping the madness of the plan. "I can't create a shield against time. But I can create a bubble. I'll reroute our own jump-drive's energy to the forward shields. It will create a 'bow wave' of stable reality. It might give us a second. Or it might disintegrate us. 50/50."
"I'll take those odds!" Jett roared.
The Wrecking Ball plunged into the nebula. The world outside the viewscreen dissolved into a torrent of light and color. Time inside the ship became elastic. Leo saw the crew moving in slow motion, their mouths open in silent screams. Then, everything sped up, and he saw glimpses of possible futures: the ship exploding, the ship making it through, himself aging to dust in the blink of an eye.
"Now!" Kael yelled.
Jett slammed a large red button, and the ship jolted forward. Kael's reality bubble formed around them, and they shot through the heart of the anomaly.
For one glorious second, it looked like it was going to work. They were breaking through to the other side.
But as they exited the storm, something was waiting for them.
It wasn't a Devourer. It was a single, small ship, black as the void, hovering silently in their path. It was shaped like a dagger, and it had no windows, no lights, no visible engines.
Kael's scanner beeped once, displaying an ID that made everyone's blood run cold.
'SILENT'-CLASS HUNTER VESSEL
The Hunter hadn't just cornered them. It had predicted their impossible escape move and had positioned itself to deliver the checkmate.
From the tip of the dagger-shaped ship, a weapon emerged, glowing with a dark energy that seemed to absorb the very light. It was aimed directly at the bridge of the Wrecking Ball.
They had survived the banquet. Now, they were face to face with the chef.