The low-Earth orbit, roughly four hundred kilometers above the shimmering blue curve of the planet, was a silent, freezing void where the absolute zero temperature of the cosmic dark met the raw, unshielded glare of the sun. In this celestial vacuum, the ancestral laws of the terrestrial packhouses and the hidden financial systems of the human banking districts meant absolutely nothing. The only anchor of artificial authority here was the Orion Vanguard Station—a classified, black-budget human space laboratory hidden behind a massive multi-layered radar-absorbing cloaking shield, entirely scrubbed from the public space agency logs by the Orion Directorate.
For decades, this orbital station had secretly monitored global military activity. But tonight, its heavy iron interior corridors humm
