A few thousand miles beyond geostationary orbit, the old Void Realm ley-currents looped back on themselves. A belt of captured asteroids drifted through the black like a field of sleeping stone giants.
To the Daoist astronomers of the mortal empires below, these wandering rocks were the Grave-Mounds of Fallen Stars. They were cursed omens, said to bring ruin and famine whenever their paths crossed the heavens.
To Austin, squinting through a surveyor’s scope on the navigation bridge of Dreadnought 03, they were something far more sacred.
Free, unmined construction material. No overburden to strip. No environmental impact statements to file.
“Look at that beauty at bearing zero-eight-two,” Austin murmured into his helmet microphone. His grease pencil tapped his aluminum clipboard. “Roughly sixty thousand metric tons. Seventy-eight percent high-tensile nickel-iron, fourteen percent magnesium silicate, and four percent cobalt. No groundwater to contaminate. No permits from the Bureau of Land Management. That’s enough raw alloy to frame three hundred solar mirrors in one afternoon.”
Tie Kuang stood beside him in a white pressure suit bristling with heavy pneumatic clamps. Southern Sword Saint Jiang Taixu stood on his other side.
Jiang wore a sleek white-and-silver EVA suit. A clean white ANSI hard hat with a gold visor covered his head, and a Class 3 fall-arrest harness circled his hips. His legendary family sword hung across his back. Its blade now had a padded fiberglass grip and a braided wrist tether to prevent dropped-object hazards in orbit.
