RUMBLE-ROAR!
Space shook across the eastern edge of the Broken Star Belt as the thirty-mile-wide Ancient War-Moon Fortress tore out of Planet 50’s orbit at full throttle.
Black furnace smoke billowed from its twelve rusted exhaust towers, and its spiked iron hull crushed three drifting meteor showers into powder without even slowing down. On the dashboard inside the command bridge, the Golden-Crow Syndicate’s brass mileage meter spun so fast that sparks flew out of the gears: Click-click-click—Fifty million Spirit Stones! A hundred million Spirit Stones!
“Full speed ahead! Don’t stop for any red lights or bamboo bars!” the Blood-Moon Monarch howled, his hands locked around the steering wheel as his white-streaked crimson hair whipped around his face. “Today, either Pei Xuan dies, or I die!”
“Your Majesty! We are approaching the outer toll plaza of World 40 and the central wormhole junction to World 30!” Elder Blood-Eye shouted, hanging onto a rusted iron pipe so he wouldn’t be thrown against the plastic-wrapped captain’s chair. “Look ahead! That’s Wormhole Toll Booth #40!”
Directly in front of the roaring War-Moon Fortress sat the gleaming stone archway of Toll Booth #40, where four lanes of golden space-highway met the border of Planet 50.
