Eighty miles to starboard of the central star-highway, hidden deep inside a swirling purple cloud of radar-jamming dark-matter dust, floated three sleek, black-hulled warships painted with grinning silver skulls: the Black-Skull Poacher Squadron.
On the bridge of the lead poacher frigate, a forty-year-old Rank 6 Peak space pirate with a jagged scar across his nose and a mechanical iron hook for a right hand. Poacher-Captain Hook, chief beast-trapper under Sector 6’s Admiral Black-Skull—peered through his periscope screen with a cruel grin.
“Captain Hook, look at that!” a gap-toothed poacher lieutenant snickered, pointing at the tactical display. “Not only did we trap Merchant-Guild Master Qian’s five-thousand-ship cargo convoy, that weird flying brick courtyard that Admiral Black-Skull warned us about just parked ten miles in front of the Whale Matriarch’s nose!”
“Hahaha! Talk about delivering themselves right into the meat grinder!”
Poacher-Captain Hook clanked his iron hook against the brass control console where a massive red dial labeled [BLOOD-BARNACLE NEURAL AGONY CONTROLLER (UNITS #1–#10,000)] was currently set to Level 4.
“Two days ago,” Captain Hook sneered, “Chosen One Mo Fan over on Worlds #6 and #7 paid us fifty million Spirit Stones to test his new batch of ten thousand [Iron-Toothed Blood-Barnacles] on this Void-Whale pod so we could drive them into his beast-taming traps! And then Admiral Black-Skull sent word from the Sector 6 border offering a ten-billion-stone bounty to anyone who delays or crushes that Gu Family Flying Courtyard!”
