Dawn broke over the high-rises of Planet Eighty with an eerie, unsettled quiet.
Inside the executive suite of Blood-Tax Mega-Mall Number One, Chief Financial Officer Mordecai was not drinking wine.
He was gripping the edge of his mahogany desk with trembling claws, staring at thirty computer screens flashing emergency red error prompts.
“What do you mean, empty?” Mordecai screeched, his voice climbing to a hysterical pitch. “I authorized five trillion coins of emergency strategic stockpiles yesterday afternoon! That was enough grain to feed twenty planets for a decade! Where did it go?”
His chief logistics officer knelt on the carpet, sweating through his uniform.
“The buyers returned at midnight, CFO Mordecai!” the officer stammered in terror. “They came with three thousand heavy bulk-freighters! They paid spot cash! Every grain silo, every medicine vault, and every fuel tank across all thirty planets was cleared out before three in the morning!”
A dozen board directors representing ancient merchant families barged into the office. Their velvet robes were rumpled, their faces purple with fury.
“Mordecai, you fool!” an elderly aristocrat roared, brandishing a gold cane. “Our family invested three hundred billion coins in your retail syndicate! Our warehouses are stripped bare, and our suppliers are pounding on our doors demanding payment! We are taking a thirty percent cash loss on every sack of grain you sold!”
