Shouting voices echoed across the Central Ring before the market bell even chimed.
Tens of thousands of people flooded into Bullion Plaza. Merchant guild masters in silk robes, tea merchants with cloth bags, and small sect treasurers clutching iron strongboxes surged toward the grand gates of Vault #1.
Panic had spread like grease on hot iron.
“They fired the auditors!” a silk merchant yelled, waving a crumpled parchment in the air. “Manager Cao took sixty billion crystals and fled to the Outer Spiral! Open the doors! We want our money!”
Inside the front entrance of Vault #1, Vice-President Jin Bao stared through the reinforced observation slits. Cold sweat dripped from his chin, soaking into his embroidered dragon collar.
Outside stood half a million people, representing the commercial lifeblood of three hundred star-systems.
“Drop the blast-doors!” Jin Bao shrieked, his voice cracking with fear. “Drop the adamantine grates right now! Do not let a single depositor cross the threshold!”
CLANG!
