Thermodynamics did not care about royal bloodlines.
Inside the fifty-foot dome of black ice, the cannon’s terrible cold poured into Austin’s containment mesh.
On the Sun-Slayer, Grand Admiral Meng and his formation masters were preparing to celebrate. They believed the comet frost could extinguish stars and shatter immortal souls.
Austin’s system filed the attack under a different category.
Deep in Austin’s dantian, the Sol-Class Golden Core barely flickered.
You don’t put out a blast fire with an ice cube. You just boil the ice cube.
Since ignition, Austin’s cooling system had been running at full speed. All eight radiator fans had screamed through the night. Towers 3 and 4 had reached ninety-two percent of their rated load, and their bearings were getting hot. Austin had been preparing to flush the system with three hundred gallons of fresh coolant.
Then the Imperial Navy arrived and handled the maintenance for free.
CLACK-HISS.
Intakes in the containment mesh opened. The black stream of comet frost flowed into the tiny exchange channels around his core.
TSSSSSSSSSS.
The cold hit the stellar fire like well water on a red-hot skillet and vanished. In less than two seconds, the mesh absorbed the excess heat pressure. Austin’s core temperature fell by a hundred and fifty thousand degrees and settled into a stable balance.
On the plaza, all eight radiator towers slowed.
WUUUUURRRR-shhhhhh.
Their painful shriek dropped to a quiet hum.
Inside the control bunker, Tie Kuang dropped his clipboard.
The red warning lamps above Towers 3 and 4 went dark. Green lights clicked on.
“The fan load is falling,” he said. “Return temperature down eighty degrees. Main line pressure is normal. Master Chu wasn’t destroyed. The cannon flushed his cooling loop!”
Jiang Taixu clutched his chest. “That was the weapon that froze the Great Boiling Marsh! The Absolute Zero Cannon!”
“And those royal idiots just gave him free HVAC service!” Tie Kuang laughed.
Outside, the black dome shuddered.
CRACK.
A thin split appeared at its top.
Then another.
CRACK-POP.
On the flagship, Meng stopped laughing. The formation masters crowded against the rail.
“Admiral, the comet ice is breaking!”
“Impossible! That ice can hold a sovereign dragon for a thousand years!”
CRACK-SHATTER-POP!
The dome did not explode into shards. It turned into billowing white vapor.
Mist rolled over the plaza. The oppressive heat of the morning gave way to cool, clean air that smelled of pine and rain.
Heavy footsteps sounded inside the fog.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
Austin walked out.
His denim clothes were unharmed. His hard hat sat level. The pipe wrench rested on his shoulder, and the pink citations under his arm remained crisp and dry.
He pushed his welding goggles onto the brim and took a long breath.
“Haaaaah.”
He rolled his neck until it popped. The cold had eased the pressure in his core, but it had done nothing for the lead digging into his hips. Cooling was one problem. Gravity was another, and it was getting worse.
“That’s like stepping into a walk-in cooler after four hours of laying asphalt in July.”
Austin wiped condensation from his glasses and looked up at the flagship.
“Hey, Admiral!”
Meng stood frozen on the bridge. His scrying telescope slipped from his hand and shattered on the deck.
Behind him, formation masters fell to their knees.
“He walked out.”
“No armor. No defensive talisman.”
“He looks refreshed!”
Austin pointed his pipe wrench at the smoking cannon.
“Was that a complimentary service call? Towers 3 and 4 were about to cook their bearings. Your coolant flush dropped my core temperature by a hundred and fifty thousand degrees and cleared the whole heat backlog!”
He gave Meng a broad smile and an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“You saved me three hundred gallons of coolant and half a day of maintenance. That’s five-star customer service, Admiral!”
Then he opened his citation pad.
“Since you provided such timely HVAC support, I’m taking twenty percent off your noise fine. Your fleet now owes four hundred and eighty thousand copper, plus forty for the shingles.”
Meng stared at the smiling man and the raised thumb.
“Twenty percent discount?” he whispered. “A service call?”
Three centuries of imperial pride finally overloaded his mind.
SPURT!
Dark blood burst from his mouth and sprayed across the golden dragon carvings.
Meng dropped to his knees, clawing at his armored collar.
“HE USED THE SACRED COMET CORE,” he screamed, “AS AN AIR CONDITIONER!”