“One more scoop of mango ice for the big fella in the back!”
Old Guo leaned out the kitchen window of the lead Star-Train locomotive, waving a long-handled brass ladle. Behind him, fifty armored cargo cars sat parked on the high stone viaduct of World Thirty-Five’s north orbital port. The warm breeze blowing up from the former poison swamp below smelled like ripe Dragon-Blood Mangoes, roasted peanuts, and sweet mint tea.
On the open flatbed car right behind the kitchen, a twenty-foot-tall giant with dark gray rock-skin sat cross-legged on a pile of iron reinforcement bars.
Star-Lord Crag-Devourer—once the terrifying ruler of thirty worlds, now dry-concrete mixer number one for the Dry-Well Municipal Road Crew—wore an extra-large bright yellow cotton vest stitched together from thirty normal Debtor tunics. A heavy black-iron collar with a glowing red tax meter sat loosely around his thick neck. He held a galvanized washbasin in both hands and slurped down ten pounds of shaved ice topped with golden mango chunks in a single gulp.
“Brrr! That hits the spot!” Crag-Devourer smacked his rocky lips as cold yellow juice dripped down his chin onto his yellow vest. Above his horned head, his floating status bar pulsed with warm green light:
