Early the next morning, a strange and magnificent sight moved across the starry sky of the Broken Star Belt.
Twenty Spirit-Furnace Heavy Cargo Locomotives—coupled nose-to-tail along the golden orbital highway and assisted by the twenty-foot titan Crag-Devourer pushing from behind—were towing the captured thirty-mile Ancient War-Moon Fortress toward the exact geometric center of the fifty-planet belt!
The fifty-mile yellow Planetary Wheel Boot was still clamped securely around the War-Moon’s rear thrusters, and Abacus Su’s five-hundred-foot neon-orange impound sticker still covered the front windshield.
“Heave! Heave! Keep it between the yellow lines, Big Crag!” General Tie Zhan shouted through a brass megaphone from the roof of Lead Locomotive #01. “Chief Engineer Ye said if we bump the curb stones on the Whirlpool Bridge while towing this big iron ball, he’ll make us repave the whole lane by hand!”
“I’m pushing straight! Tell Ghost King to stop painting my boots when I walk past!” Crag-Devourer grunted happily, his massive hands braced against the War-Moon’s southern crater as he marched along the golden highway, sweating out last night’s spicy beef broth.
By eight o’clock in the morning, the thirty-mile War-Moon Fortress was parked neatly at the central crossroads of the Broken Star Belt—equidistant from Planet 1 in the west, Planet 25 in the north, and Planet 50 in the east.
