Ten miles up in the low atmosphere above World 15: The Heavy Forge Zone, three hundred massive, ugly warships rumbled through the yellow cloud layer, blotting out the stars.
These were the warships of the Black-Rust Fleet. Every single galleon was a thousand-foot-long monstrosity welded together from stolen sect warship hulls, armored with five-foot-thick plates of jagged scrap iron, and bristling with rusty grappling chains and harpoon cannons.
Standing on the front skull-deck of the lead flagship—the Vulture’s Claw—was Warlord Bald Vulture, a Rank 7 Peak Planetary Lord who controlled the entire garbage and salvage racket of the central Broken Star Belt on behalf of the First Star-Lord.
Bald Vulture had a head shiny and hairless as a greased cannonball, a hooked nose like a carrion bird, and a heavy cloak stitched together from ten thousand tarnished gold sect medallions.
“Bwahaha! Faster, boys!” Bald Vulture cackled, rubbing his scarred hands together as he peered down through a brass spyglass. “Some runaway noble brat just spent four days cleaning up my four trash planets! My spy on World 19 told me they somehow melted all those cursed, rusty swords into pure spirit-steel ingots!”
Beside him, his first mate—a cross-eyed Rank 6 Peak pirate named One-Ear Jack—licked his cracked lips greedily.
