Two hours later, the jagged, sinister ambushing ground of the Broken-Tooth Asteroid Belt was completely unrecognizable.
Every floating boulder within five miles had been swept clean of cosmic dust, painted with reflective white curb stripes, and arranged into neat two-way shipping lanes.
Forty-nine disarmed Black-Claw pirate warships had been welded end-to-end into a gleaming, horseshoe-shaped orbital service plaza. Hanging across the archway of the plaza was a thirty-foot neon spirit-sign that Grandpa Yao and Ye Xiao had wired up using the pirates’ spare searchlights:
[GU FAMILY INTERSTELLAR REST STOP & TOLL STATION #01 “Hot Soup, Clean Airlocks, & Honest Hull Repairs — Stop On By!”]
Out on the newly graded asteroid shoulder, Rank 6 Peak Captain Scar-Claw wiped honest sweat from his scarred forehead with a pink floral hand towel Auntie Qin had tossed him. Wearing his bright-orange reflective safety vest and yellow hardhat, the former terror of the Canglan space-lanes waved a pair of glowing green traffic wands to guide merchant ships into the parking bays.
“Easy on the port thrusters, friend! Back her in nice and slow!” Scar-Claw shouted cheerfully into his headset mic as he directed Merchant Captain Hong’s Silver Carp
into Bay #1. “Rat-Eye, take Squad Three over there with the buffing cloths and polish the gentleman’s windshield! Remember, smiles on your faces, lads—every five-star review takes ten spirit stones off our chicken-fright debt!”
