A long pause. Then: “A weapon. Deployed by the Eurydice Accord, seventy years ago. They buried it out there in case someone figured out how to break the barrier before we were ready.”
“Before we were ready for what ?”
Kael’s hands flew over the console. “Can we disable it remotely?” lightspeed blocker
“What is it?”
“No. The Blocker was designed to be tamper-proof. Once armed, only a physical override at the source can stop it.” A long pause
“That’s suicide. The Kuiper Belt is eight hours away at max burn. The countdown says three.”
Inside, the geometry was wrong. Hallways curved in directions that hurt his eyes. Gravity shifted without warning. The Blocker’s AI spoke in a voice like grinding metal. They buried it out there in case someone
The Phase-Shift Buoy was a rusted coffin strapped to a gravity lens. Kael sealed his suit, synced his neural interface to the targeting array, and felt reality twist as the buoy activated. For a sickening moment, he existed in twelve places at once, each version of him screaming different coordinates. Then the fold snapped shut, and he was there.