"General, there's movement from the Kree fleet!" Just as the Ranger Fleet was fighting the Ravagers, the observer on the flagship suddenly reported to Vereesa at the command seat.

"Oh? What are they trying to do?" Vereesa gave a cold smile when she heard that.

Even though the Kree fleet had already surrendered before the fight began, Vereesa didn't lower her guard.

As the top fleet commander in the Ouroboros organization, Vereesa wasn't stupid.

Fake surrenders were common in military history, so she had made the necessary preparations.

"They're slowly moving toward the jump point. Looks like they want to run!" The Kree commander was clever. He didn't order full speed right away, because that would clearly tell the Rangers, "Come catch me!"

Instead, he slowly drifted away from the battle area as if he were avoiding crossfire between the two sides.

Unfortunately for him, the Ranger fleet never stopped watching them. Even their slightest movements were quickly seen as signs of escape.

"Send eight warships to cut them off… take them out!" Vereesa didn't hesitate and gave the order to kill.

She didn't care that their leader, Josh, was friends with Mar-Vell, one of the Kree elite warriors.

In fact, this was also what Josh wanted.

It wasn't just for secrecy—it was also to weaken any potential enemy forces.

The truth was that Earth was located right inside the Kree Empire's territory. It was ignored because it was small, far away, and lacked resources.

Plus, Earth had some protection—at least in name—from Asgard, a special force in the universe.

That's why Earth had mostly been left alone.

However, if Earth wanted to grow and expand, the Kree Empire would be its first and biggest obstacle.

And that kind of problem wasn't something a small "friendship" between Josh and Mar-Vell could fix.

So for Earth, a weak Kree was a good Kree.

Josh wouldn't pass up any opportunity to weaken the Kree, even if it was just a small supply fleet.

"Send two more ships to take over those two cargo ships, and tell the landing team to be extra careful. Don't let the Kree trigger any self-destruct systems!" Vereesa ordered.

Following her command, ten ships left the fleet. Eight of them circled around the Kree fleet, pretending to be there to accept their surrender.

The other two flew toward the two "forgotten" cargo ships.

"Damn it! Full power to the engines! Retreat now!" Seeing the Rangers' moves and messages, the Kree commander knew they couldn't sneak away during the chaos anymore. He made a desperate move.

Now, he could only hope that the Rangers had truly accepted their surrender and wouldn't be too alert about their escape.

Sadly, he was wrong.

Before the engines of a few escort ships could fully start, the eight "surrender-receiving" ships opened fire first.

In just one round of concentrated fire, the last four escort ships of the Kree fleet were destroyed in a flash of light and turned into space debris.

But that wasn't the end. After destroying the Kree ships, the eight Ranger warships began sweeping the area, not letting a single escape pod escape.

"Boss, what should we do?" A Ravager who had just boarded one of the Kree cargo ships asked in shock. He had seen their Kree allies crushed instantly and witnessed the brutal massacre by the Ranger Fleet.

Lyan Ogord's face had turned completely dark—he hadn't expected this unknown fleet to be so strong and ruthless, leaving no one alive. (TL/N: Odge changed to Ogord as we got more context)

They were now stuck with no way forward or back.

Fight back?

They couldn't win. Just look outside—their fellow Ravagers were being hunted down by starfighters like dogs.

Run?

Two warships were already closing in on the cargo ships. Even if they ran now, it was too late.

Surrender?

Would they end up like the Kree, killed to the last man?

There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

But Lyan Ogord wasn't just anyone—he was the Ravagers' leader for a reason. He quickly came up with a plan.

"Have everyone change clothes and blend in with the slaves in the holding cells." That fleet showed up at a strange time. I think they might be after these slaves. If we mix in, maybe we'll have a chance to survive… and don't forget to find Stakar," Lyan ordered calmly.

"Boss, you're a genius!" His men's eyes lit up right away.

The slaves on the two cargo ships came from all over the universe. Aside from half of them being Centaurians, the rest were a mix of different races, just like the Ravagers.

Because most of the slaves had just been captured, their identities hadn't been recorded yet.

Normally, the Kree military would create official identity records for each one once they reached Planet Targ.

So if the Ravagers put on prison clothes and blended in, it would be hard to tell them apart. They had someone they could rely on—Stakar, the person Lyan had mentioned.

Stakar Ogord was the reason the Ravagers had risked so much to intercept the Kree fleet.

Just by the name, it was clear—he was related to Lyan Ogord.

In fact, Stakar was Lyan's adopted son.

To be exact, Lyan had found him as a baby in a junkyard on Planet Arcturus 17 years ago—not a joke, that's where he really found him.

Even though Stakar wasn't his biological son, Lyan treated him like his own, even after Stakar slept with his daughter.

In return, Stakar saw Lyan as a role model and dreamed of becoming the greatest Ravager.

However, Lyan didn't want him to follow in his footsteps. Being a Ravager wasn't a proper job.

He just wanted Stakar to live a peaceful life with his daughter.

However, like all troublemaking kids, Stakar went against him. Six months ago, Stakar stole a spaceship and ran off, yelling that he was going to be a Ravager.

After running off, however, the kid completely disappeared.

It took Lyan six months of searching before he finally received word from one of his Ravager friends. It turned out that during a failed robbery attempt, the boy had been caught by a Kree patrol fleet and thrown into a war slave camp.

He was soon scheduled to be sent to the front lines between the Kree and the Nova Empire as part of a group of war slaves being transported by a Kree convoy.

The Kree Empire was no easy foe, but for the sake of his adopted son and to prevent his daughter from becoming a widow, Lyan had no choice but to do whatever it took to find the boy.

He pulled every string and cashed in every favor. After countless sacrifices, he finally managed to organize the interception of the Kree convoy.

He just hadn't expected a wildcard to show up at the last moment and ruin everything.

Not only did he fail to rescue his son, but all his allies were wiped out. Now, he himself was in a hopeless situation.

A flicker of regret surfaced in Lyan's heart.

Maybe he should never have saved that kid seventeen years ago.

Some kids are just born to cause trouble.

But regret wouldn't help now. Survival was all that mattered.

What no one knew, however, was that if Josh hadn't shown up, Lyan's troublesome adopted son really would have grown up to be a "legendary" Ravager, just like his foster father.

In the original timeline, the boy would even earn a flashy title—Starhawk!

Yes, that's right—the same one played by Sylvester Stallone in the movie!

Just like professional outlaws, Ravagers may be pirates in essence, but thanks to the nature of their "work," they were still highly efficient when it came to getting things done.

By the time the two Ranger cruisers docked with the Kree cargo ships, all the Ravagers who had boarded had successfully disguised themselves and slipped into the slave holding cells.

With a loud metallic whirring, the armor plating on the cargo ships was cut open.

As the plates fell to the floor, more than a dozen fully armored soldiers in white suits stormed into the ship, accompanied by a large number of robot troops.

These white-armored soldiers wore combat suits that, in the future world of Star Wars, would be instantly recognizable—they were modeled after the iconic Imperial Stormtrooper armor.

Josh had named this elite force the Stormtroopers.

In fact, their ideology also mirrored that of the Galactic Empire's Stormtroopers—they firmly promoted a doctrine of human supremacy.

Due to the Ouroboros organization's limited manpower, both the Stormtroopers and the regular fleet crews were small in number.

Thankfully, the massive army of intelligent robots made up for it.

Each Stormtrooper basically held the rank of "Platoon Leader," with command over thirty robot soldiers.

However, this command authority was only active during combat missions. The robots had tiered permission settings, and ultimate control always remained in Josh's hands.

Therefore, there was no risk of any soldier using the robots to start a rebellion.

Meanwhile, the disguised Ravagers, hidden among the prisoners and quietly observing the situation, felt their hearts sink when they saw the white-armored troopers completely surrounded by robotic soldiers.

They had originally hoped to stir up chaos during the boarding operation of the unknown fleet, but now, faced with such tight robotic security, they didn't dare make a move.

"Inspect the ship's condition. Retrieve all data. Count all personnel!" Under the command of their respective ship captains, the stormtroopers began systematically leading the vanguard teams to take full control of the two cargo ships.

Their first priority was to confirm that the ships were safe; if the Kree had rigged them with a self-destruct protocol, things could go south very quickly.

Luckily, after a thorough sweep by the robotic units, no major hazards were found.

Once the ships were confirmed secure, more stormtroopers and robot forces began boarding to take full control of the vessels.

Thanks to Josh's prior dealings with Mar-Vell, he had already used Confusion Protocols to crack the ships' systems, the Kree language, and a massive amount of their military data. Because of this, the Ranger Fleet had no trouble taking over the two cargo ships.

In just half an hour, both ships were fully under control—even the damaged one was swiftly repaired.

After securing the cargo vessels, the Ranger Fleet didn't linger in the area. Once they cleaned up the battlefield, they left with the two ships in tow.

Roughly a day later, a Kree patrol fleet, sent to investigate the transport fleet's sudden radio silence, finally arrived at the scene.

After combing through the wreckage—debris from both Kree and Ravager ships—the Kree Empire quickly pinned the blame on the Ravagers.

The loss of a single transport fleet and 200,000 war slaves meant little to the vast Kree Empire, but losing their reputation was unacceptable.

If they didn't retaliate, they'd look weak—and every small-time faction would try to take advantage of that.

As a result, every Ravager group operating within the range of the Kree fleet's reach was brutally hunted down and nearly wiped out, caught in the storm for something they never did.

Meanwhile, the true culprit had already completed their mission.

Not long after leaving the incident site, Josh's fleet had transferred all the war slaves from the two cargo ships onto their own mothership.

Then, he programmed both cargo ships to fly on auto-pilot toward uncharted star systems.

The fleet then quietly bypassed all Kree patrol routes and left the Andromeda galaxy, returning to the Milky Way—a desolate star zone even more remote than Earth where no jump points existed.

This move ensured that aside from the rescued slaves, the last remaining evidence—those two Kree cargo ships—would effectively vanish.

And if some greedy civilization decided to intercept them, well… their bad luck.

This strategic advantage was precisely what set the Ranger Fleet apart from the major powers of the Marvel Universe—faster-than-light engines.

Thanks to those engines, even remote regions that lacked jump points—areas so neglected that not even the Chitauri would bother with them—became ideal hiding places for the Ranger Fleet.

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