HONK-HONK-HOOOOOOOOOONK!
Cruising bumper-to-bumper at fifty times the speed of light along the newly paved 300 Outer-Rim Golden Asteroid Highways. 360,000 Heavy Cargo Starships and 1,000 Galactic Soup-Kitchen Motherships arrived in the skies above the 300 Outermost Rim Galaxies!
Every cargo vessel flew the polished brass banner of the 36 Gu Clan Branch Systems, its holds stacked to the rafters with glowing immortal spirit-coal, thick ten-pound cotton winter quilts, prefabricated star-cedar timber. Ten billion insulated steamer crates of piping-hot pork-and-cabbage buns!
“Deliveries arriving from all thirty-six family branches!” First Grand Elder Gu Cang announced from the flagship bow, wiping a happy tear from his wrinkled cheek as he adjusted the straps of his pink floral apron.
“Look at those three hundred and sixty thousand cargo holds! Patriarch Changsheng’s call reached every cousin, uncle, and nephew of the Galactic Gu Clan across the stars!”
Yet as the cargo starships dropped into low orbit above the three billion inhabited planets of the 300 Outer-Rim Galaxies, a harsh structural challenge confronted the fleet.
Because these three hundred frontier galaxies had been ruthlessly harvested and neglected by the Seven Script-Kings for ten million years. The planetary surfaces below were barren expanses of cracked basalt, frozen mud flats, and collapsed stone ruins. Trillions of mortal families were huddling inside drafty sheet-metal shacks or damp caves while an unnatural fifth-dimensional blizzard.
