For forty-eight hours, the thirty converted shipyards climbed the old Void Realm ley-current. Their presses kept stamping as they rose. By the time they reached orbit, twenty-two thousand miles above the mortal continent, the first stage of the Dyson Swarm was ready.
Inside the mile-long warships, sixty vacuum induction furnaces melted five hundred tons of asteroid iron every forty minutes. Stamping presses worked without pause. Rolling mills produced miles of silver-steel tubing, while automated coating chambers covered thin graphene membranes with pure, reflective aluminum.
By dawn on the third day, the fleet had completed one thousand parabolic solar mirrors. They sat in the warships’ open deployment racks like stacks of polished silver saucers.
Austin stood on the flagship’s open command bridge and checked his stopwatch. His white foreman’s hard hat was secured by its four-point chinstrap.
Around him, twelve reformed Void-court technicians watched glowing monitors salvaged from the Skyway’s spare control equipment. They tracked orbital paths, thruster pressure, and reaction-wheel readings.
Tie Kuang stood beside Austin with a heavy pneumatic cable cutter. Junior Inquisitor Bai Ze held his grease pencil over a fresh deployment checklist.
Cerberus Pug floated nearby, tethered to the handrail by a nylon shock cord. His custom yellow flight harness supported three clear bubble helmets, one for each head. The eight-hundred-pound hound lazily paddled all four paws in zero gravity. His center head chased a loose cube of freeze-dried beef liver around its helmet until he trapped it against the plastic with a wet clack. His stumpy…
