CRACK! CRACK!
Two barbed spirit-whips snapped across the smoky red sky of Cinder-Rock World (Planet Eleven) as Chief Overseer Scar-Belly Ma—a bloated Rank 6 Peak Golden Core tyrant wearing a fur coat stained with wine and grease—strutted along the edge of the high iron watchtower.
In one fat hand, Scar-Belly Ma held a roasted chicken leg he had imported from the First Star-Lord’s capital world. In his other hand, he held a brass amplifying horn aimed down at the two billion hollow-cheeked miners packed into the ten-mile-wide star-iron pits below.
“Did you deaf moles hear me?!” Scar-Belly Ma bellowed, taking a greasy bite of his chicken leg while spitting a bone down into the pit. “That red iron train belongs to the Flesh-Eating Demon Pei Xuan! My cousin in the Black-Claw Gang told me that whenever Pei Xuan lands on a new planet, he puts all the miners into a giant iron grinder and turns them into lubricating oil for his train wheels! If you want to live—and if you want your evening ration of half a mold-moss cake—charge that train and smash its boiler with your pickaxes!”
Down in Pit Number One, a grizzled old miner named Uncle Shi looked down at the lump of greenish-gray, sour-smelling mold-moss cake in his palm, and then looked at his ten-year-old grandson Little Stone, who was shivering beside his leg and trying to chew on a piece of boiled leather belt to stop his stomach from cramping.
