BANG!
Down on the black-hole brick square of Municipal Impound Lot #4, Abacus Su rapped a small wooden gavel against a portable folding table.
Standing in front of the table in a neat, hundred-mile-wide square formation were Harvester General Jin Ge and all one hundred thousand of his Upper-World Harvester crewmen. Every single one of them was wearing a bright neon-yellow Debtor Vest over their gleaming golden armor, standing at attention with their hands behind their backs while five hundred Void Whales floated overhead like giant black police blimps to make sure nobody wandered off.
Abacus Su pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles up his nose, unrolled his thirty-foot red scroll with a dramatic flourish, and spoke into the galactic broadcast microphone so every citizen across five hundred galaxies could hear the verdict.
“Case Number 858-A of the Dry-Well Municipal Debt & Traffic Court!” Abacus Su announced in his crisp, polite bookkeeper’s voice. “The defendant, Jin Ge of the Upper-World Heaven-Reaping Ministry, along with one hundred thousand accomplices, stands convicted of the following municipal violations:”
“Count One: Tearing an unpermitted hundred-light-year hole in Northern Public Airspace Sector #350 and blocking Municipal Signal Tower #350 during the noon cooking broadcast!”
“Count Two: Firing an unlicensed Ten-Thousand-Sickle Extinction Beam at a residential farming hub with intent to turn two trillion taxpayers into pills!”
