Foreclosure

Earth has been foreclosed. The Galactic Bank charges for oxygen.

[GALACTIC BANK: ASSET NOTIFICATION]

Transaction processed. 45 Credits deducted for 'Oxygen Over-consumption.' Breathe slower, Asset Vance.

Marcus Vance was elbow-deep in a dead satellite when the universe decided to repossess his home.

Ninety miles above the Pacific Ocean, strapped by a frayed carbon-fiber tether to a junker ship named the Rusted Pail, Marcus was doing what orbital garbagemen do - scraping dead alien tech out of commercial lanes for eleven dollars above the poverty line. Then the sky tore open along a golden geometric grid, the Galactic Bank's enforcement fleet dropped out of hyperspace, and every human on Earth got an Asset Value, a Credit Score, and an implanted kill-switch. Fall to negative 15,000 and the countdown starts. Hit negative 30,000 and it fires.

Marcus started at negative 10,000. Inherited planetary debt. Welcome to the galaxy, Asset Vance.

He has seventy-two hours to hustle, scavenge, and cheat his way off Earth before the Bank's algorithms do the math on his carbon content. He has a plasma torch, a roll of industrial duct tape, a broken collarbone, cracked ribs, and exactly one weird advantage: Lady O, the Officially Registered Arbiter of Cosmic Law and Etiquette - an absurdly powerful cosmic intelligence who downloaded her entire consciousness into a cheap novelty vacuum cleaner to escape a galactic audit, and who now treats Marcus like her bumbling butler.

Lady O refuses to use contractions. She speaks ten words when two would do. She is also the only thing in the galaxy that can hack the Bank's DRM and jailbreak illegal cybernetic powers directly into Marcus's body. The catch: each jailbreak lasts 30 seconds, leaves Marcus in muscle-seizure lockup for two minutes afterward, and puts Lady O offline for fifteen minutes while she recharges from ambient radiation.

It is not enough. Not against Collector drones that bill Marcus 2,400 Credits per volley of incoming fire. Not against Enforcement Mechs guarding the impounded spacecraft at McCarran. Not against the Vulkran Auditor who can levy 25,000-Credit fines from orbit and broadcast Marcus's kill-switch countdown live on the Stream for shareholders' amusement.

So Marcus does what scavengers have always done when the system is rigged. He cheats the system.

He punches a holographic billboard in freefall because its photon matrix is the only thing in the sky that will catch him. He weaponizes the Bank's terms and conditions against itself. He uses a dead Chinese satellite as a kinetic thruster against an Auditor's shield. He hustles the alien Stream audience for Tips mid-combat. And when he leaves Earth's atmosphere for the last time, he takes a ragtag crew of survivors with him into the Wild Sectors, where the real horrors are waiting.

Foreclosure is Book 1 of The Junk-Tier Vanguard - a twelve-book sci-fi LitRPG series about a blue-collar garbageman, a cosmic queen in a novelty vacuum, and the universe's most aggressive billing department.

Full-length novel. 85,000+ words. Forty chapters of monkey cleverness, system exploits, and escalating economic horror.

For fans of sci-fi LitRPG with:

• Crunchy progression mechanics (without the spreadsheet dumps)

• Blue-collar everyman protagonists who solve problems with duct tape

• Absurd universes and grounded characters

• Brutal economic world-building

• Injuries that persist and stakes that bite

• A rigid, dangerous system and the cleverness to exploit it

The Bank owns everything. Marcus owns a plasma torch and a bad attitude.

Start the series today.