CHAPTER 489: LAWS.

"Hahaha! Who gives a damn about Nexum?" the envoy finally managed, wiping a mock tear from his eye.

"Everyone knows your corporation is made of tofu! Soft, weak, and easily broken. The only thing you people have is money, and that’s the sole reason we haven’t bothered to wipe you all out already! Hahaha!"

The insult, so blatant and dismissive, struck the wounded Champion like a physical blow. The humiliation of their laughter and the mockery of his corporation’s might while he stood there broken from a battle they had not fought boiled his blood. His face flushed a deep, angry red.

"You! You...!" he sputtered, his body shaking with a fury so profound he could not even form the words to contain it. The gulf between the sacrifice they had just endured and the casual avarice of this fleet was an injustice that stole his very breath.

"Then let us cease this meaningless chatter," the envoy declared, his smirk widening into an annoying grin.

"I will say this one final time. Surrender the void gems, and you will be permitted to leave. Otherwise..." He let the threat hang in the air, but the silent power of the surrounding fleet made his meaning devastatingly clear.

A tense silence filled the command center, broken only by the low hum of the ship’s systems and the Champion’s ragged breathing. Then, Rex stepped forward, his movement calm and deliberate.

He placed a steadying hand on the Champion’s uninjured shoulder. "Let’s give them the single gem we retrieved from that ugly place," his voice was low but carried to every corner of the room.

The Champion’s jaw tightened, his fists clenched so hard the gloves of his damaged armor creaked in protest. The order tasted like ash, but it was the only one that made sense.

With a curt, pained nod, he gestured to a nearby officer, who immediately hurried off. Several long, tense minutes later, the officer returned, carrying a reinforced stasis container. Inside, the void gem pulsed with a faint, sinister light, suspended in an energy field to prevent its volatile power from causing damage.

"I will take it to them," the Champion grunted, pushing himself up, his body protesting every movement. "You all wait here..."

Before his fingers could touch the container, Rex’s hand was there first, calmly taking hold of it. "I will do it," Rex stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "In your condition, it is too dangerous. Who knows what kind of trap those jackals have in mind?"

The Champion, knowing the truth of the words, yielded with a weary sigh, sinking back into his seat as the medics resumed their work.

In the next moment, Rex simply vanished from the command center. He reappeared in the cold, airless void of space, a solitary figure standing between the two opposing fleets. The starfield stretched infinitely around him; the lights of the enemy ships were like a cage of cold fire.

After a few moments, a shimmer of energy coalesced opposite him, and the envoy of the Free Colonies appeared with a look of smug triumph on his face.

"Well, well," the envoy sneered, his voice transmitted directly into Rex’s comm. "What an obedient little hound. My life would be so much simpler if all the dogs in the galaxy were as well-trained as you." He laughed with a harsh, grating sound as he extended his hand expectantly. "Now, the gem."

Rex remained motionless. The envoy’s hand passed straight through the container he was holding, revealing it to be nothing more than a sophisticated hologram.

"W-What?!" the envoy sputtered, his face flushing with instant, furious humiliation. "What is the meaning of this?! You dare to play me for a fool?!" In his rage, he unleashed a shockwave of raw planetary energy with a sweep of his arm, a blast meant to disintegrate a small starship.

Rex didn’t even flinch. He simply raised his own free hand, and a shield of shimmering energy materialized before him, absorbing the violent shockwave as if it were nothing more than a gentle breeze.

"I was, in fact, fully prepared to give you this," Rex said, his voice cold and even. With a flick of his wrist, the hologram dissipated, and he produced the real stasis container, letting it rest on his palm.

"But then I observed something curious. While you have us cornered, I can see on my long-range scanners that other fleets are departing the system unmolested. That suggests one of two possibilities."

He paused, letting the observation sink in, his gaze fixed on the now-seething envoy. "Either you are specifically targeting only Nexum Dynamics vessels... or, more tellingly, you are only attacking the fleets you are certain have successfully retrieved void gems."

The moment his second theory left his lips, Rex saw the confirmation flash across his helmet’s HUD. The envoy’s vital signs, which he had been discreetly monitoring, spiked dramatically.

His blood pressure surged, and his heart rate accelerated, a classic physiological response to being caught, to a secret laid bare.

"It seems I was right," Rex said, a low chuckle rumbling in his throat. "But that only leads to a more interesting question, doesn’t it? Who is the traitor whispering secrets from our side?"

He watched the envoy’s face, hoping for a tell, a flicker of a glance that might betray the mole. But the envoy was already in motion, his own helmet materializing around his head with a sharp hiss, sealing his expression away behind an impassive mask of armor while his body tensed as if ready to strike.

Back in the command center, Cleo had been watching the exchange with an unnerving stillness. The instant Rex voiced the question of a traitor, her eyes, sharp and perceptive, darted not to the viewscreen but to the wounded Noble Champion.

She saw the minuscule flinch, the almost imperceptible shift in his posture that screamed of guilt. In the blink of an eye, she moved. A colossal arc of blue-white electricity erupted from her fingertips, not to kill, but to incapacitate, wrapping around the Champion in a crackling net of stunning force.

Before the surrounding officers could even gasp, she vanished from the command center and reappeared in the void, a silent, deadly specter at her husband’s side.

"Mmm, it seems we have found your rat,"

Rex remarked coolly, as if they had just uncovered a minor inconvenience. He gestured with a casual hand. "You can have him back."

With a deft motion, Cleo hurled the stunned, twitching form of the noble through the vacuum toward the envoy.

The noble tumbled weightlessly, his single arm flailing, until he collided with the envoy’s personal energy shield. As the stunning effects of Cleo’s attack faded, the noble sputtered back to consciousness, his outrage immediate and venomous.

"What do you think you are doing!?" he shrieked, his voice screeching over the comms. "How dare a commoner lay hands on a member of the nobility!? This is an outrage!"

Rex let out a genuine, hearty laugh. "Hahah! The audacity! I am truly amazed at how you can lie without even batting an eye. Cleo, my love, could you please bring some light to this situation?"

At his command, Cleo summoned a massive, shimmering holo-screen between the fleets. Upon it, she began to play a damning recording of encrypted communiques, timestamps matching their mission, the noble’s own voice detailing their progress and, most crucially, confirming the successful retrieval of the void gems.

"Ha... HAHAHA!" The envoy’s laughter boomed over the channel, loud and unhinged. "And so what if I have a spy in your ranks!? It changes nothing! I can simply kill all of you here, and my useful little tool can be planted again elsewhere!"

"Oh?" Rex’s tone was dangerously playful. He began tossing the stasis container casually from one hand to the other, a blatant display of disregard.

"I would genuinely like to see you try. Remember, if I wish to run away with this recording, who here could possibly stop me? Nexum Dynamics would be very interested in this evidence."

He was mid-taunt, the container arcing through the air, when it happened. A laser beam, impossibly thin and sheathed in a concentrated vortex of planetary energy, lanced out from a hidden sniper position on one of the enemy ships.

It was aimed squarely at Rex. It struck him in the chest, a precise, piercing shot that did little more than scorch a black mark on his armor.

"Pfft," Rex scoffed, looking down at the smoldering spot. "Was this your grand plan? To use a single assassin to take me out? You really underes—"

His words died in his throat. His eyes, wide with sudden, horrifying realization, saw what the true target had been all along.

The laser hadn’t been meant to pierce his armor. Its unimaginable precision and power had been calculated for one purpose only... to pierce the fragile stasis field of the container he was so carelessly tossing around.

The void gem, its containment breached, began to scream.

"CLEO! RUN!" The roar tore from his lungs, a raw, primal sound of terror. He didn’t run himself. Instead, he threw every ounce of his being, every shred of his planetary energy, not as a weapon, but as a shield, hurling it toward Cleo in a desperate, colossal wave of protective force.

The gem exploded. But it was not an explosion of fire and shrapnel. It was an unraveling. Reality itself warped, twisting and screaming around the epicenter.

A storm of chaotic, multicolored lightning erupted, not from clouds, but from torn space, devouring the void around it. The very fabric of existence buckled, and everything it touched... be it light, matter, or energy... was unmade in a terrifying, silent apocalypse.

"....Rex?"