Fifty thousand miles beyond the orbit of Star-Gold Planet floated the nightmare of every merchant caravan at the edge of the Broken Star Belt: Blood-Skull Island.
It was a hollowed-out iron asteroid thirty miles wide, carved into the shape of a grinning demon skull with two jagged horns. Cursed blood-colored mist swirled out of its hollow eye sockets, and three thousand rusted merchant shipwrecks were welded onto its outer shell like grisly trophies.
At 8:00 AM sharp, a cheerful golden whistle echoed across the dark void:
TOOT-TOOT!
The No. 10 Pioneer Construction Train glided right up to the giant skull asteroid along a freshly laid extension of the Moon-Spider Sky-Rail.
Inside the left eye socket of the skull fortress, two thousand left-behind pirate sentries jumped up from their dice tables in panic as the warning bells clanged.
“Enemy attack! Wait—what is a train doing in outer space?!” the sentry captain yelled, rushing to the firing console of the Skull-Eye Blood Cannon. “Prime the main array! Blast that black iron centipede to smithereens!”
Before the sentry captain could press the red firing button, the front window of the locomotive slid open.
