Monday morning, 8:00 AM sharp.
The morning sun had barely risen over the wide white-stone plaza of World 40’s Central Exchange Bank when a deafening roar of ship engines shook the clouds.
RRRRRUMBLE—!
Citizens walking to work with hot soy milk and fried dough sticks in their hands stopped and looked up at the sky.
Through the golden wormhole highway gate in high orbit, a massive black shadow came pouring down like a swarm of iron locusts. One, ten, a hundred, five hundred... a full one thousand giant cargo ships, each half a mile long and painted with the flashy emblems of thirty outer-sector billionaire clans, descended toward the commercial port right outside the Central Bank!
At the very front of the fleet sailed a gaudy flagship plated in pure silver. On its bow stood Lord Silver-Tongue in his silver-thread coat, flanked by the fat Patriarch Jin of the Gold-Toad Clan and twenty-nine other billionaire merchant bosses.
Before the thousand ships even touched the landing pads, side hatches popped open along their hulls. Fifty thousand hired troublemakers, street thugs, and loudmouthed criers dressed in fake hemp peasant clothes jumped out on wind-gliders, beating brass gongs and banging tin pots at the top of their lungs!
