His fingertips brushed against the dried-up mech grease on the twisted, cloud-patterned grip of the Scorching Cloud Twin-Point Tactical Assassination Dagger. Kassu’s amber pupils narrowed to pinpoints in the flickering emergency red light of the derelict “Shadow Seven” space station. As a top-tier interstellar bounty hunter for the Federation, he had been tracking Vaughn—the renegade military engineer who’d stolen a prototype jump-core chip capable of slashing interstellar travel time by 70%—for three weeks, following faint energy traces through the asteroid belt all the way to this abandoned outpost in Pluto’s orbit. This twin-point dagger was more than just a weapon; it was a trophy captured three months earlier during the Titan Belt conflict from a defeated rebel mech commander. The cloud-patterned grip concealed a miniature energy conduit, while the flame-carved blade could unleash a targeted electromagnetic pulse upon contact, instantly disabling even the most heavily armored mechs⚡. With a slight flick of his wrist, he slid the dagger back into its hidden forearm sheath and pushed open the rusted vacuum-sealed hatch. Inside the command pod, Vaughn’s cold body lay slumped over the control console, two precise, parallel wounds on his chest perfectly matching the dagger’s twin points. Kassu clenched his jaw—someone had beaten him to it. He crouched down to examine the corpse; before his fingers even touched Vaughn’s icy neck, the dagger in its sheath suddenly grew scorching hot, searing his skin. He yelped in pain as he drew the blade, staring in shock as a tiny, faintly glowing microchip popped out of a hidden slot in the grip—exactly the jump-core chip. Just as he stood transfixed, staring at the chip, the station’s alarm blared shrilly, and his wrist communicator crackled with the cold, mechanical voice of Federation Command: “Bounty Hunter Kassu, eliminate all witnesses and recover the asset. Failure will result in being designated a rogue operative.” Kassu’s grip tightened around the dagger, the metal growing hotter by the second🚨—after years in the trade, he found himself for the first time doubting that he’d walked straight into a trap from which there was no escape.