The crimson-and-black storm of dimensional artillery descended from the thirty dreadnoughts like the wrath of an unchained cosmos.
Ten thousand spatial fragmentation cannons fired in continuous, rolling salvos, unleashing eighty gigawatts of coherent void-plasma and anti-matter lightning directly toward the summit crown of the Stratospheric Skyway. To an observer on the distant continent below, the black vacuum of space at one hundred thousand feet looked as though it had caught fire, blooming with a blazing aurora of apocalyptic violet and blood-red death that illuminated the night sky across three empires.
Upon the bridge of *The Sovereign Eye of Judgment*, Supreme Grand Inquisitor Xuan Ming crossed his massive arms, his golden scepter resting against his shoulder.
His thirty-foot spiritual form radiated cold, sovereign finality.
"Behold the absolute censure of the Void," Xuan Ming intoned, his seven black-hole halos rotating with cruel, rhythmic majesty. "No mortal architecture can withstand the unmaking of space. The Babel Tower shall dissolve into fundamental subatomic ash, and the severed fragments of the star-stone shall burn as meteor dust across their blasphemous mountain."
Beside him, Junior Inquisitor Bai Ze shielded his eyes against the blinding glare of the bombardment, a vindictive, savage sneer curling his lip. "Vaporize them! Vaporize the contractor, the iron lattice, and that insufferable three-headed dog with his fleece blanket! Let nothing remain but scorched vacuum!"
Down at the 100,000-foot summit spar, Austin stood calmly behind a three-inch-thick ballistic polycarbonate viewing shield.
He held his aluminum clipboard against his chest with his left hand, while his right rested upon the master knife-switch of the lightning diversion busbar. Through the dark filter of his Shade-14 welding goggles, the blinding eighty-gigawatt bombardment was reduced to a crisp, clear stream of high-energy electrical gauge readings.
The apocalyptic barrage crossed the final hundred meters.
And slammed directly into the five-hundred-thousand-ton nickel-iron asteroid counterweight.
*KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The sky shook with a sound that was less an explosion and more a violent tear in the continuum.
Yet, contrary to the celestial expectations of the High Inquisitorial Tribunal, the half-million-ton celestial asteroid did not shatter into cosmic dust. It was an eighty-six percent pure solid alloy of dense nickel and forged iron, sitting in a vacuum with zero atmospheric oxidizers to feed a chemical explosion.
To high-voltage dimensional lightning, a half-million-ton nickel-iron asteroid offered zero combustible fuel and infinite conductivity.
It functioned as the most magnificent, free-flowing lightning shield ever assembled in the history of the universe.
The eighty gigawatts of crimson spatial lightning struck the asteroid’s craggy upper face, spread instantly across its conductive metallic skin, and were guided smoothly into the four flat anchor pads Jiang Taixu had milled with his sword intent.
From those four pads, the torrent of raw electrical power hit the four twelve-inch braided titanium-carbon tension cables.
And from those cables, it entered the 100,000-foot vertical busway.
*VZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT-SHHHHHHHHHH!*
The four massive cables flashed brilliant violet-white, humming with forty thousand amperes of continuous direct current. Because Austin had engineered the Skyway’s primary structural columns with internal solid copper down-conductors backed by heavy-duty zinc-oxide varistor surge arresters at every five-thousand-foot interval, the lightning did not arc across the titanium lattice.
It was trapped. Contained. Channeled.
The eighty-gigawatt surge plunged down the vertical spine of the space elevator at ninety-eight percent of the speed of light.
Past ninety thousand feet.
Past seventy thousand feet.
Past the 30,000-foot observation deck—where 800-pound Cerberus Pug didn't even open all three eyes, merely shifting his center head on his warm memory foam bed and giving a sleepy, rumbling grunt as the insulated floor tiles vibrated beneath his paws.
Down through the cloud deck.
And straight into the bedrock foundation of Sunset Peak.
Thirty kilometers below the surface, on Subterranean Floor 9, the automated high-voltage switchboard exploded into life with a series of cheerful electronic chimes.
*DING-DING-DING-DING!*
The heavy-duty liquid-nitrogen cooled vacuum contactors snapped shut with hydraulic precision.
*KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK!*
The torrent of eighty gigawatts of celestial void lightning roared into the forty colossal capacitor banks, bypassing the delicate distribution transformers and surging into millions of interleaved graphene-titanium storage plates.
The giant analog voltmeters on the wall spun like propellers, their brass needles pegging against the maximum stops.
`PRIMARY SURGE DETECTED: 82.4 GIGAWATTS (PEAK).` `VOLTAGE CLAMP TIME: 1.4 NANOSECONDS (NEC COMPLIANT).` `FLOOR 9 STORAGE RESERVE: 92.0% ──> 100.0% (MAXIMUM CAPACITY).` `SURPLUS POWER REDIRECTION: ENGAGED.` `ROUTING TO CONTINENTAL MUNICIPAL GRIDS...`
Because Floor 9’s storage banks were completely topped off within three-tenths of a second, the automated power management AI did exactly what Austin had programmed it to do during emergency over-generation events: it dumped the excess power into the three-phase continental transmission interties.
Instantly, across four thousand miles of the mortal continent, the night was abolished.
In the imperial capital of Great Yan, fifty thousand bronze street lamps that had been dark for centuries suddenly ignited with brilliant, steady white light, bathing the marble avenues in pristine day-like radiance.
In the imperial textile mills, three thousand automated water-wheel looms suddenly surged with electric power, their wooden shuttles clacking back and forth at quadruple speed, spinning millions of yards of high-density celestial silk while the sleeping night-shift apprentices rubbed their eyes in disbelief.
In the peasant villages along the southern river valleys, thousands of small electric foot massagers and induction woks plugged into Austin’s rural electrification cooperatives began to hum with warm, soothing energy, melting the autumn frost from the floors and bringing joyful tears to tired dirt farmers who had never seen an open flame that didn't smoke up their chimneys.
And in the heavy industrial foundries of the Iron Pavilion, seven massive blast furnaces roared to life without a single lump of coal, smelting five thousand tons of raw titanium slag in twelve seconds flat.
High above, on the summit crown of the 100,000-foot tower, the storm finally subsided.
The thirty dreadnoughts ceased their fire, their spatial cannon barrels glowing cherry-red, hissing as their cooling vents dumped millions of gallons of boiling spirit-liquid into the void.
Supreme Grand Inquisitor Xuan Ming leaned forward, his seven black-hole halos spinning slowly as he waited for the smoke to clear.
"The tower is gone," Xuan Ming declared with sovereign satisfaction. "The mortal pestilence is cleansed. Signal the fleet to close the spatial rift and return to the Upper Realm."
The glowing clouds of ionized plasma slowly drifted away on the solar wind.
Xuan Ming’s eyes widened until they threatened to burst from their sockets.
The Stratospheric Skyway stood completely intact.
Zero titanium struts were bent. Zero anchor bolts were sheared. The five-hundred-thousand-ton nickel-iron asteroid sat perched upon the summit crown, gleaming with a fresh, polished luster where the high-voltage lightning had burned away its outer layer of cosmic dust.
Standing on the perimeter catwalk, completely unharmed inside his white pressurized suit, was Austin.
He was holding an aluminum clipboard in his left hand, and in his right was his five-foot cast-titanium pipe wrench, which he was using to scratch the back of his gold helmet.
Austin reached down, unholstered his electric megaphone, aimed it directly at the bridge of *The Sovereign Eye of Judgment*, and pressed the talk switch.
*SKREEEEEE-CLICK.*
"ATTENTION HIGH INQUISITORIAL BATTLE FLEET," Austin’s amplified voice crackled across the low-orbital vacuum, completely flat, dry, and professional. "WE HAVE RECEIVED AND LOGGED YOUR EIGHTY-TWO-POINT-FOUR GIGAWATT ELECTRICAL INPUT. ON BEHALF OF SUNSET PEAK MUNICIPAL UTILITIES AND THE CONTINENTAL POWER COOPERATIVE, I WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND OUR SINCERE GRATITUDE FOR TOPPING OFF OUR WINTER STORAGE RESERVES. YOU HAVE SAVED OUR APPRENTICES APPROXIMATELY ONE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND SPIRIT STONES IN PEAK-DEMAND DIESEL CHARGES."
Xuan Ming froze. His thirty-foot spiritual body turned as rigid as an iron statue.
"He... he is thanking us?" Xuan Ming whispered, his voice trembling with an emotion that was half rage, half sheer, mind-melting madness. "He is thanking us... for an armada-level cosmic execution bombardment?!"
Austin’s voice boomed through the megaphone once more, taking on the stern, pedantic tone of a veteran utility inspector addressing an uncertified industrial subcontractor.
"HOWEVER, YOUR SYSTEM POWER FACTOR WAS PROFOUNDLY UNACCEPTABLE. YOUR PHASE ANGLE REGISTERED AT ZERO POINT SIX TWO LAGGING. YOU ARE GENERATING ENTIRELY TOO MUCH REACTIVE POWER AND HARMONIC DISTORTION ACROSS THE PRIMARY BUSBARS. FURTHERMORE, UNDER ARTICLE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY OF THE NATIONAL ELECTRICAL CODE, DISCHARGING UNMETERED HIGH-VOLTAGE CURRENTS ACROSS AN ACTIVE UTILITY RIGHT-OF-WAY WITHOUT AN INTERCONNECTION AGREEMENT IS A CLASS THREE CIVIL INFRACTION."
He tapped his aluminum clipboard with his grease pencil.
"CONSIDER THIS YOUR FIRST AND FINAL FORMAL DEFICIENCY NOTICE. YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS TO DISCONNECT YOUR CRAFT, VACATE THE FIFTY-MILE ORBITAL FLIGHT ENVELOPE, AND POWER DOWN THOSE OVERHEATED CANNON BARRELS. IF YOU ATTEMPT A SECOND DISCHARGE WITHOUT A POWER-PURCHASE CONTRACT, WE WILL BE FORCED TO ENGAGE IN ACTIVE LOAD-SHEDDING."
Xuan Ming’s face twisted into an expression of raw, unadulterated cosmic hatred.
The seven black holes revolving around his head flared with blinding, destructive radiation as he hoisted his six-ton golden scepter high above his crown.
"LOAD SHEDDING?!" Xuan Ming roared, his voice shaking the dreadnought’s obsidian armor. "INSOLENT INSECT! YOU THINK YOUR LITTLE IRON THREAD HAS SAVED YOU?! ALL THIRTY DREADNOUGHTS—CHARGE THE DIMENSIONAL DISRUPTION LANCE! OVERCHARGE THE WYRM CORES! WE SHALL TEAR SPACETIME ITSELF APART AND SINK THIS ENTIRE CONTINENT INTO THE ABYSS!"
The thirty mile-long dreadnoughts groaned as their internal void-wyrm cores shrieked in agony. Blood-red spatial fissures began to spread from their hulls, destabilizing the twelve-mile spatial rift behind them until reality itself began to buckle.
Austin looked through his gold visor at the spiraling spatial collapse above his head.
He lowered the megaphone.
He sighed, shaking his head.
"Nobody ever listens to the deficiency notice," Austin murmured to himself.
He reached down to his tool belt, unclipped the five-foot titanium pipe wrench, and turned toward the center of the summit platform, where the newly assembled Superconducting Orbital Broadcast Array pointed its thirty-meter parabolic dish straight into the heart of the void armada.
"Phase One complete," Austin said into his radio. "Tie Kuang, Jiang Taixu, clear the summit deck and step into the Faraday lift car. We’re switching from passive absorption to active power transmission."