High above the resort valley, the twelve Ice-Breaker Assault Corvettes of the Blood-Tax Regional Repo Squadron formed a tight firing crescent in low orbit.
On the bridge of the lead corvette, the Frost-Hammer, Lord Malve stood before the primary holographic tactical table. He had wiped the sulfur mud from his face, but his white polar bear coat was ruined, smeared with gray clay and smelling faintly of rotten eggs.
“Fire! Shatter their fake suns and turn that resort back into a glacier!” Lord Malve roared through the fleet intercom, his voice cracking with manic hatred. “Load all twelve forward railguns with supercooled cryo-missiles! I want every artificial sun shattered! I want this entire valley frozen back into solid glacier ice! Fire everything!”
His chief tactical officer, Commander Varek, hesitated at the console.
“Lord Malve, our orbital scanners are picking up unprecedented starlight signatures from the surface,” Varek warned, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “The three suns overhead are emitting high-density solar jade radiation. And the planetary energy reading... it shows an active Star Immortal presence on the ground.”
“I don’t care about fairy tales!” Malve screamed, spraying spit across the tactical map. “A backwater delivery boy cannot withstand an orbital bombardment! If you hesitate again, I will have your family sold into the asteroid salt mines! Charge the cannons!”
