By noon, a dark, dusty commotion erupted along the orbital border line between World 40 and World 41.
Five hundred thousand tired, underfed border soldiers wearing rusted black iron armor were marched out onto the asteroid ridge dividing the two territories. Behind them floated a fleet of rusty military barges piled high with massive, ten-ton Black Star-Iron Bricks that had been stripped from the outer city walls of Worlds 41 through 45.
Standing atop a floating iron command chariot in the sky above the soldiers, Warden Iron-Whip (Rank 7 Peak) cracked his thirty-foot spiked iron whip through the air with deafening sonic booms!
CRACK! CRACK!
“Stack those bricks faster, you lazy dogs!” Warden Iron-Whip roared through a blood-red amplifying horn. “Three hundred feet high! Five thousand miles wide! Seal off every single space current, meteor ditch, and pickle-barrel drift lane between World 41 and World 40! I want this No-Escape Star Wall finished before dinner!”
Down on the freezing asteroid ridge, a burly border sergeant named Sergeant Bull-Neck wiped the freezing sweat off his forehead as he and six soldiers strained to lift a ten-ton black brick into place with rusted iron pulleys.
“Captain, my arms are shaking,” a young eighteen-year-old private named Little Sparrow whispered, his stomach letting out a loud, hollow rumble that echoed inside his dented breastplate. “Warden Iron-Whip woke us up at six in the morning to haul ten-ton bricks, and all the commissary gave us for breakfast was half a piece of black rock-bread! I…
