The black marble plaza of Planet Ninety-Five was submerged in a sea of desperate, shouting people.
Towering one hundred stories into the smoggy sky stood the central headquarters of the Blood-Tax Central Star Bank.
Its monolithic obsidian pillars were carved with roaring dragon heads. Heavy automated turrets swiveled along the parapets, their barrels tracking the terrified crowd below.
Over ten million citizens were packed shoulder-to-shoulder across the plaza, with another forty million surrounding branch offices across thirty commercial worlds.
They were honest small-business owners, independent tailors, bakery operators, and elderly pensioners. Each one clutched a leather-bound bank passbook or a glowing magnetic deposit chip.
An elderly widowed baker named Auntie Tao knelt on the cold stone steps, clutching her passbook against her chest. She had baked bread for thirty-five years, waking up at three in the morning every single day. She had saved fifteen thousand coins to pay for her granddaughter’s tuition at the municipal medical academy.
“Please open the doors!” Auntie Tao cried out, tears washing through the flour dust on her cheeks. “The tuition deadline is at noon! If I don’t pay today, my granddaughter will be expelled!”
“Open the gates!” a blacksmith shouted, banging his bronze hammer against the riot barriers. “The digital network has been frozen since dawn! All teller machines are returning error codes! Give us our money!”
