CLANG! HISSSSS!
CLANG! HISSSSS!
Every three seconds, the hundred-mile hydraulic hammer above the White Dwarf Star dropped with a rhythmic, booming heartbeat, stamping another million-ton slab of white-hot metal into a gleaming black Dry-Well Civic Patrol Cruiser.
On the main observation deck of the shipyard, General Tie Zhan stood with his legs planted wide apart, holding a steaming basket of Old Guo’s Dragon-Marrow Pork Buns under his left arm while chewing happily on a bun the size of a cabbage.
Every time the giant hammer went CLANG, Tie Zhan took a bite. Every time the Sweet-Spring quench nozzles went HISSSSS, a fresh, mile-long black battleship glided out of the paint tunnel with its golden runes shining and [DRY-WELL TRAFFIC & TAX PATROL] painted in crisp letters thirty feet tall across its hull.
“Cruiser #680... Cruiser #681... Cruiser #682!”
Tie Zhan swallowed his pork bun and laughed so hard his black iron armor clattered. Below the observation platform, twenty thousand soldiers of the Dry-Well First Star-Patrol Division—most of whom had started out as starving desert farmers and former oasis bandits before cultivating the Furnace-Blood Scripture up to Rank 6 and Rank 7—were sprinting up the gangplanks to claim their new ships like kids in a candy store.
