SPLASH!
Five hundred meters below the 999th-floor airlock of the Supreme Bullion Tower, Managing Director Ao Jin and Audit-Lord Vaelen plunged headfirst into the open hopper of Orbital Wet-Garbage Scow #44.
For three agonizing seconds, only their silk-booted legs stuck straight up out of a mountain of pickled space-cabbage, discarded shrimp shells, and fermented Void Star-Whale manure.
Then Ao Jin thrashed his way to the surface, spitting out a rotten cabbage leaf that had wedged between his wooden dentures.
His priceless golden dragon-scale suit was now dyed a mottled, steaming brown. Flies the size of walnuts buzzed happily around his curled golden horns.
“Blergh! My eyes! It’s in my nose!” Audit-Lord Vaelen gagged beside him, flailing in the manure pit as the automated scow tractor-beam towed them toward the outer-ring sewage barge.
Shivering with humiliation as thousands of Wall Street brokers pointed and filmed the garbage scow from the sky-bridges above, Ao Jin clawed at his emergency Vault #1 sub-director talisman and crushed it with his elbow.
“Lin Mo! You think buying one skyscraper on the outer plaza makes you a king?!” Ao Jin shrieked at the top of his lungs, shaking his manure-covered cast at the gleaming 999-story tower receding behind them. “Vault #1 owns the Central Galactic Commercial Star-Lane & Wormhole Toll Grid! I just activated our emergency transit embargo! Not a single merchant ship, crystal barge, or supply shuttle will be allowed to warp to or from your tower without paying a 500% punitive blockade tariff!”
