The twelve three-hundred-mile citadels of the Galactic Central Tribunal hovered in perfect, triangular formation above the Perseus fault, casting immense geometric shadows across the transuranic bedrock shelf.
Their battlements were carved from immaculate, unblemished white celestial marble that radiated a cold, oppressive aura of ancient cosmic judgment. Hovering between the spires were nine interlocking rings of golden immortal law runes that pulsed with the spiritual authority of three evolutionary epochs.
From the central citadel descended a massive, floating platform of pure white jade, carrying High Inquisitor Tian Luo and sixty Astral Arbiters of the Ancient Court.
Tian Luo stood atop the platform, cloaked in sweeping robes of pearlescent starlight that dragged ten feet behind him. In his right hand, he held the *Grand Gavel of Universal Dissolution*—a five-hundred-foot war-hammer forged from condensed void-iron and inscribed with the terrifying glyphs of absolute cosmic erasure. In his left hand, he carried an obsidian stele ten stories tall, blazing with blood-red characters that read: **OFFICIAL DECREE OF CONDEMNATION & TOTAL VACATUR**.
The platform descended to within one hundred feet of the foundation pile Austin had just driven.
"HEAR AND TREMBLE, VERMIN OF THE OUTER RIM!" Tian Luo’s voice resonated through the ether, vibrating with the force of nine collapsing stars. "WE ARE THE PRE-EXISTING COSMIC TRIBUNAL OF ANCIENT COGNIZANCE! BY SACRED MANDATE OF THE FIRST EPOCH, THIS ENTIRE GALACTIC SECTOR HAS BEEN SURVEYED AND FOUND WANTING! ITS FOUNDATIONS ARE CRACKED! ITS EXPANSION HAS CEASED! UNDER THE SUPREME DECREE OF RECLAMATION, THIS UNIVERSE IS CONDEMNED AND ORDERED RETURNED TO THE VOID! CEASE YOUR IMPERTINENT BRACING, OR YOUR SOULS SHALL BE EXCISE FROM EXISTENCE!"
Down on the transuranic rock shelf, three hundred riggers of the Deep-Void Maintenance Corps froze, their knees trembling beneath the overwhelming spiritual pressure.
Even Arch-Dominus Wu Ji took half a step backward, his copper-scaled throat constricting in ancient, instinctual terror. For millions of years, the Galactic Central Tribunal had been the undisputed, absolute arbiter of life, death, and universal annihilation. When they served a Decree of Condemnation, entire star systems knelt and accepted their doom without a whisper of defiance.
Austin did not kneel.
Austin was standing beside his optical theodolite, calmly finishing a turkey-and-cheddar sandwich he had pulled from his tin lunchbox. He took a sip of black coffee from the thermos lid, chewed the last bite of crust, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
He picked up his aluminum clipboard, clicked his No. 2 yellow grease pencil, and stepped to the edge of the shelf.
Across his lower back, sixteen hundred pounds of certified lead ballast held his one-Earth-mass Kerr-Newman core in immovable equilibrium under one hundred and five Gs of localized surface gravity. The stainless steel ASME Section VIII code plate on his spine gleamed cold and bright. Over his shoulders, the twin ninety-degree star-jade exhaust diverters hummed with twenty-five zettawatts of quiet, ready potential.
Beside Austin’s left boot sat Pug.
Pug looked up at the five-hundred-foot obsidian condemnation tablet, let out a soft canine snort: *huff*, and went back to chewing on the million-year-old preserved celestial jerky he had found in the temple ruins.
Austin squinted up at Tian Luo through his dark Shade-14 welding goggles.
"Are you the designated building inspector for this sector?" Austin asked, his voice calm, flat, and completely devoid of reverence.
Tian Luo’s pearlescent robes rustled in sheer, incredulous outrage. "Building inspector?! Insolent mortal worm! I am High Inquisitor Tian Luo! I am the Hand of Cosmic Reclamation! I speak with the unyielding voice of the Universal Law!"
"Right, so that’s a yes on code enforcement," Austin muttered, clicking his grease pencil and pulling a yellow form from his pad. "Do you have a certified demolition permit for this quadrant?"
Tian Luo choked on his own breath, his celestial aura sputtering like a dying candle. "A... a demolition permit?!"
"Under Section One-Hundred-Four-Point-Two of the Existing Building Code," Austin explained, pointing his pencil toward the obsidian tablet. "Any crew attempting an emergency teardown must provide seventy-two hours written notice. You also need an environmental statement on dust control, and proof that structural bracing won't work."
He tapped his clipboard with a sharp, heavy tap.
"Furthermore, under Chapter Thirty-Four: Historic and Critical Occupancy Structures, an existing facility undergoing active underpinning cannot be arbitrarily condemned while approved foundation stabilization work is underway. We just drove Friction Pile Number One thirty-eight hundred feet into solid transuranic bedrock. Compressive capacity: eight point five quintillion metric tons. That means this structure is officially in an active retrofitting phase."
Austin pulled out **FORM CD-404: PETITION FOR CODE VARIANCE & STRUCTURAL RETROFIT DEFENSE**, waving it at the floating platform.
"You have no jurisdiction to order an emergency vacatur while active foundation underpinning is in progress," Austin said. "If you want to condemn the Perseus Spiral Arm, you can file an appeal with the municipal board of building adjustments on Ganymede. But until that hearing convenes, your condemnation order is stayed."
Aboard the white jade platform, the sixty Astral Arbiters looked at one another in stunned, catatonic horror.
No being in ten million years had ever answered the Supreme Decree of Universal Condemnation by citing Chapter Thirty-Four of an existing building code.
High Inquisitor Tian Luo’s eyes flared with blood-red celestial fury. The five-hundred-foot Grand Gavel of Universal Dissolution in his hands ignited with terrifying, pitch-black void-lightning capable of shattering continental crusts into atomic dust.
"MADMAN!" Tian Luo roared, raising the colossal war-hammer with both hands. "You dare speak of municipal variances to the executioners of Heaven?! I shall obliterate your impertinent soul along with your pathetic iron pile! DIE BENEATH THE GAVEL OF DISSOLUTION!"
The five-hundred-foot hammer descended from the sky like a falling black mountain.
It traveled at seventy miles per second, carrying the condensed spatial obliteration energy of fifty dead nebulas, aimed dead-center at Austin’s yellow hard hat.
The three hundred riggers screamed in terror, throwing themselves flat against the rock.
Austin didn't duck. He didn't run.
He simply took half a step forward, widening his stance by six inches to distribute the load across his foundation footings. With his right hand, he unslung his five-foot titanium-tungsten pipe wrench from his shoulder.
He gripped the heavy knurled handle with both hands, brought the eight-inch hardened serrated jaw up at a forty-five-degree parry angle, and locked his elbows:
*CLAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!*
The five-hundred-foot Grand Gavel of Universal Dissolution struck the five-foot pipe wrench.
The sound was a blinding, reality-shattering thunderclap that cracked the void for a thousand astronomical units.
A shockwave of violet spatial fire exploded outward, but the moment the kinetic energy traveled down the wrench into Austin’s body, it didn't smash him into jelly.
It met the immovable, unyielding inertia of six times ten to the twenty-fourth kilograms: an entire planetary world’s worth of dense, compressed mass backed by sixteen hundred pounds of certified lead ballast. Austin’s steel-toed boots didn't slide by a single nanometer. The four-inch transuranic rock shelf beneath him didn't crack.
And then, Austin’s core reacted.
Because Austin possessed a charged rotating Kerr-Newman black hole, his electrical resistance was virtually zero. The massive energy of the five-hundred-foot hammer didn't vanish into flat space. Austin’s grounding lines absorbed it, his Penrose core inverted it, and the surge shot straight back up through the forged void-iron head in a blinding electric kick!
*ZAP-CRACKLE-BOOOOOOOOM!*
A blinding, sapphire-blue arc flash surged up the five-hundred-foot handle into High Inquisitor Tian Luo’s hands!
Tian Luo screamed in agony as forty million amperes of reverse electrical current surged through his celestial arms.
His pearlescent starlight robes exploded into smoking shreds. His crown was blown off his head, vaporizing into white dust. The five-hundred-foot Grand Gavel of Universal Dissolution shattered into twenty million jagged fragments of scrap iron that rained harmlessly across the vacuum like burnt charcoal briquettes.
Tian Luo was thrown backward through the marble spires of his floating platform, crashing onto his back with both shoulders dislocated and his spiritual sea convulsing in hysterical, catatonic terror.
*CRASH-THUD.*
The sixty Astral Arbiters dropped to their knees, their foreheads pressed against the jade deck, weeping and trembling before the solitary figure in the orange safety vest.
Austin stood calmly on the rock shelf.
He inspected the jaws of his five-foot pipe wrench. There was a faint smudge of black iron dust on the second serrated tooth, but the titanium-tungsten alloy was entirely undamaged. He pulled an oily rag from his pocket, wiped down the teeth, and slung the tool back over his shoulder.
A translucent system notification hovered before Austin’s eyes:
Austin unclipped his clipboard, walked across the rock shelf, and pulled a bright red carbon-copy violation slip from the pad: **NOTICE OF UNLAWFUL DEMOLITION ATTEMPT & MUNICIPAL CITATION**.
He walked up to the edge of the floating platform, looking down at the smoking, groaning High Inquisitor.
Austin slapped the red citation directly onto Tian Luo’s bare, scorched chest.
"Under Section Eighteen of the Solar Transit and Safety Code," Austin informed the trembling Inquisitor, "attempting to execute an unpermitted demolition while active structural retrofitting is underway carries a mandatory fine of seven hundred and fifty million spirit stones. Furthermore, your twelve citadels are currently parked within an active drop zone without proper amber navigation strobes."
Tian Luo coughed weakly, staring up at Austin with wide, bloodshot eyes that saw not a mortal laborer, but the terrifying, cosmic architect of the next evolutionary age.
"What... what manner of ancient horror are you...?" Tian Luo rasped, his voice shaking.
Austin reached to his lower back, pulled his flannel shirt aside, and pointed to the stainless steel nameplate permanently riveted across his central spine.
The stamped letters showed clear and unyielding: **ASME SECTION VIII DIVISION 2 - SERIAL # 001-KERR-SOLAR - NATIONAL BOARD # NB-994012**.
"I’m an ASME-certified pressure vessel and structural contractor," Austin said evenly. "And this universe isn't getting demolished on my watch. Not until I've finished the shoring."
Austin turned on his heel, tapping his radio headset.
"Wu Ji," Austin said.
*"YES, MASTER FOREMAN!"* Wu Ji replied instantly, his voice brimming with fanatical devotion.
"Bring out sixty white hard hats and sixty grease guns," Austin instructed, pointing back toward the sixty trembling Astral Arbiters. "We’ve got ten thousand hydraulic shoring jacks arriving from Mars this afternoon, and these gentlemen just volunteered for the lubrication detail."