The gray clouds over Spaceport Alpha did not clear after the Star-Whales swallowed the grain. A jagged web of crimson static crackled across the upper stratosphere.
High in low orbit, thirty heavy cruisers of the Blood-Tax Star Chamber formed a blockade perimeter. Their spatial interdiction pylons hummed, flooding the sector with anti-warp radiation.
A towering holographic projection materialized in the damp drizzle above the runway. It was Commissioner Garrick, sitting inside the gilded bridge of his command cruiser. His jaw was clenched, but his sneer was as venomous as ever.
“Do you really think you won, Chairman Lin?” Garrick’s amplified voice boomed from the sky, rattling the control tower windows. “You bought thirty worlds of rotting grain. Congratulations. But Star-Whales cannot carry one point five billion commuters and traders every day. Without my Subspace Warp-Gate Towers, your thirty farm worlds remain locked in an isolated prison!”
Lin Mo stood on the cracked concrete, calmly sipping warm ginger tea from a porcelain bowl Grandma Chen had pressed into his hands.
Garrick thought he owned the only road in the galaxy. Back when Lin Mo delivered box lunches on an electric scooter, stingy property managers loved locking the neighborhood gates. They would demand a five-kuai entrance fee just to let a courier walk up five flights of stairs.
