Inside the central dispatch hall of Dry-Well Interplanetary Train Station on Planet Canglan, a red warning bulb above the giant wall map started blinking with a loud beep-beep-beep.
Abacus Su pushed his brass spectacles up his nose, holding a three-foot-long jade abacus in one hand and a thick stack of yellow paper bills in the other. Before he could even open his mouth, the heavy iron doors of the dispatch hall flew open with a CLANG.
Hong Ling marched in wearing her red-and-gold Minister of the Planetary Treasury coat, two fused laser-cleavers strapped to her waist, and a deep frown on her face. Behind her came Old Guo in a grease-stained white chef apron, waving a giant iron soup ladle, followed by Boom-Pot Sun, whose eyebrows were still smoking from his morning alchemy shift.
“Young Master!” Hong Ling slapped a thick ledger down on Pei Xuan’s oak desk. “Someone is stealing our spirit-coal! Three days ago, Vault Number Four had two million tons of high-grade spirit-coal from the Gravel-Yard Asteroid Belt. Today, it is down to three hundred thousand tons! Tell me who took it so I can chop their fingers off!”
“Hold on, Girl Hong, nobody stole anything!” Old Guo yelled, tapping his iron ladle against a sack of beef-wheat flour. “It’s the boilers! Yesterday at noon, right when my Central Kitchen was steaming four million buns for the afternoon commuter trains, the fire under Steamer Matrix Nine went weak! The dough came out half-flat! Do you know what…
