Chương 278: 115. Lawrence Shipyard 2

Two days later, Captain Maki Kushima and Captain, Third Class, Ash Vander were formally returned to the duty roster. That day, for the first time in my life, I genuinely thought the air on the bridge smelled good. When Maki came back, she wasn't fully healed yet — her movements a shade more contained than usual — but the pressure she carried into a room hadn't thinned by a single degree.

The moment she stepped onto the bridge, the whole space flipped, automatically, from interim stopgap back into someone here can actually keep this crowd in line. She asked only two questions — rotation and course correction — in a tone that wasn't even particularly forceful, and Roy's spine at the helm straightened another thirty percent without him noticing. Ash's return carried a different, more layered kind of presence.

The most infuriating thing about Ash Vander, on an ordinary day, is that he never needs to raise his voice or perform authority. He just stands there, and you become uncomfortably aware that his brain is running faster than most people's in the room, and that he already knows exactly what he's watching, calculating, and choosing not to say. In short: a deeply unlikable, deeply appropriate temperament for inheriting a disaster.

So when the temporary handover meeting began and I finally heard the formal spoken order, I very nearly let an expression onto my face that had no business appearing in regulation.

"Effective immediately," Maki said from the side station, voice clean and precise, "until Captain Tobita returns to duty, Captain, Third Class, Ash Vander assumes acting command of the Yukikaze. I resume the post of Executive Officer. Transfer of acting command authority is complete." I nearly stood up to applaud. I genuinely wanted to. If the bridge hadn't been so crowded, I would happily have handed over the seat cushion with both hands, along with a heartfelt good luck. Ash glanced at me.

He must have read something too honest in my face, because the corner of his mouth moved, very slightly.

"Good work, Lieutenant Hoshino," he said.

"Reporting to the acting captain," I said, with complete sincerity, "it was impossible not to be difficult. But it's finally possible to be a little less difficult now." Behind me, Jess's shoulders shook, visibly. Maki gave me one flat look.

"Mind your bearing."

"Yes, Executive Officer." There it was. That feeling of not being scolded particularly hard, and yet having your spine snap right back into alignment anyway. It was back. After the handover, the ship's internal structure began its formal reshuffle. CIC stayed sealed, off-limits. That damage wasn't something willpower and tape could fix — nobody was getting a functioning tactical center back before Lawrence. Which meant people had to move.

The day Harvey walked out of medbay, Victor hauled him straight into Engineering for "training." That was Victor's own word, not my exaggeration. He said it with the specific satisfaction of an old operator who'd finally landed a new apprentice, which turned Harvey a shade paler on the spot. I'd considered advocating for something more humane for him, but one look at Victor's finally, hands I can use expression convinced me to leave Harvey to fate. D got shipped straight to Security.

Simple logic: with CIC sealed, someone like D — equally obvious whether he was thinking hard or simply annoyed — had no business gathering dust outside the ward. Better to put him on patrol, access control, and watching the sealed perimeter. At least there, if something went wrong, he had institutional cover for scowling about it. As for the bridge — The new seven-person crew took formal shape. Acting Captain Ash Vander. Executive Officer Maki Kushima. Aida. Lan. Akari. Jess. And me, Hoshino Shimo.

When the roster was read aloud, the first thing that crossed my mind wasn't pride. It was something very practical: This didn't sound like an elite bridge crew. It sounded like a table of problem children guaranteed to start fighting halfway through any meeting — except every single one of them happened to be genuinely useful. Ash clearly knew this too, because the first line out of his mouth at our first formal team meeting wasn't anything inspiring.

It was:"Let me say this upfront: for the next five days, if anyone wants to argue, please form a line." I nearly laughed on the spot. Maki, at his left, added, expression unmoved: "Emotional statements are prohibited unless necessary. If necessary, lead with the point." Jess murmured to me, "Do you get the feeling those two together are basically a high-efficiency refrigeration unit?"

"Yes," I murmured back.

"And for once, I'm not sitting dead center getting frozen." Akari took navigation, sensors, and fire-control resource allocation. Lan handled comms, external identification, and approach-negotiation support. Jess covered tactical support and internal coordination. I went back to something closer to my own role — tactical station and on-the-spot judgment, occasionally doubling as the unlucky point person for frontline execution.

Aida's slot filled the ugliest gap the bridge had — mid-level computation and process integration — finally lifting the whole team from held together by willpower to barely resembling a real crew. What actually made me breathe easier was this: when disagreement surfaced mid-meeting, everyone stopped turning to look at me first. It felt exactly like handing a grenade with the pin already pulled back to someone properly equipped to hold it. Beautiful.

Five days isn't long — as long as you're not aboard a half-crippled Federal warship, headed toward a facility that ticks both operates illegally and might fix you, or might point a gun at you first and ask for your papers. Unfortunately, we were. In the final twelve hours before approaching Lawrence Shipyard, the Yukikaze dropped her interior lighting, compressed external ID signals to the minimum acceptable level, and applied conservative masking to her thermal output.

Not entirely to hide — Ash had no interest in letting the other side spot a battle-scarred, Federal-registered warship from a distance and watch it roll straight in like a delivery.

"Our position is awkward," Ash said from the acting captain's chair, watching the concealed approach corridor slowly resolve on the main display through noise and broken light.

"They operate illegally. We're a registered Federal hull. Put those two together and trust doesn't develop naturally."

"A weapons lock develops naturally," Akari said.

"Correct," Ash said. I leaned at the tactical station, watching the outer identification buoys take shape. Lawrence Shipyard hid itself with a particular kind of style — not the buried-in-rock military kind, but the streetwise, seasoned kind. It used ice debris, dead station wreckage, and messy gravity-well residue to bury the real entrance under a field of things that looked like nothing at all resembling a road.

Without Victor's dubiously sourced private chart, we'd have circled this stretch of nowhere three times before realizing we'd already been spotted. Lan was building the approach script.

"Their outer perimeter's too clean," she said.

"Not empty. Deliberately silent."

"Waiting for us to show our hand first," I said.

"Exactly." Jess couldn't help herself.

"Doesn't this sound exactly like the kind of shop where they pat you down first and then decide whether they'll sell you anything?"

"Because it probably is," Akari said. Maki stood at the XO station, watching the sensor feed.

"Ship holds Condition Two. Security on standby. Weapons stay cold, but keep fire-control warm for immediate handoff."

"Copy," Akari and I said together. Roy stood by the helm in reserve, hands off the main stick, just nearby. This time, approach guidance ran through Lan and Akari; actual ship handling went back to a more standard configuration. Ash clearly had no interest in letting anything read as we came in looking for trouble be misread on entry into unfamiliar territory. Then the transmission came. Not a greeting. Not a routine ID request.

A short, hard encrypted pulse slammed back against our comm shell exactly two seconds after Lan sent the Yukikaze's outbound ID packet — like a doorman with a cigarette in his teeth, kicking your delivery crate with the toe of his boot before asking if it's hiding explosives. Lan's brow tightened. She flipped the channel to audio immediately.

A voice cut onto the bridge a second later — rough, cold, impatient, carrying the specific lazy alertness of someone who's run business in gray territory for years without ever fully lowering his guard.

"Federal-registered hull. Hold your position," the voice said.

"Push another thousand klicks forward and you'll lose an outer plate before you get the chance to lose your manners."... A very locally flavored opening line. Jess drew a quiet breath.

"Wow." Ash's expression didn't move. He gave Lan a single nod. She switched to outbound, voice level as if she hadn't just been threatened.

"Station ahead. This is the Yukikaze. Requesting limited approach for emergency repair and supply negotiations." Two seconds of silence. Then a dry, humorless laugh.

"A Federal warship, coming to an unlicensed yard to talk emergency repairs?" the man said.

"That sentence is a trap all by itself." Ash took the main channel directly.

"Understood. But if we were here to enforce anything, we wouldn't have brought one damaged hull, and we wouldn't have honestly given you our name first." Silence again — this one carrying the weight of something actually being weighed.

"Report damage," the man said. Ash tipped his chin, signaling Akari and me to push the pre-prepared minimum-disclosure damage packet. My fingers moved fast across the tactical panel, sending exactly the version built to say we're genuinely in trouble without saying here's the full inventory of everything you could take from us. A delicate art. Too little, and they don't believe you. Too much, and you've handed them a shopping list.

The Yukikaze, at present, offered more than enough incentive for that kind of thinking. The response took longer this time. When it came, it made every spine on the bridge tighten a fraction.

"... The Yukikaze." The man repeated our ship's name slowly, something new in his tone.

"Federal registry. Active combat hull. You've got some nerve."

"People who've made it this far usually have more nerve than they have regulations," Ash said. A beautifully delivered line. Good enough that I mentally awarded him a point for it. The man didn't laugh. He didn't hang up either. Which meant there was still something to negotiate.

On the main display, past the ice debris, the first hints of artificial structure finally showed — not a full outline, just a few rows of cold white lights buried behind masking netting and shadow, like teeth tucked at the back of a black-market alley. In the end, the Yukikaze didn't sail straight into port. That was Ash's call — and the call of anyone who hadn't entirely lost their survival instinct. The logic was simple: we didn't trust Lawrence Shipyard, and Lawrence had no reason to trust us either.

On one side, a registered Federal warship — genuinely, convincingly battered, but still a Federal warship. On the other, a gray-market yard with illegal written into its bones, even if it never once appeared on a sign. If those two shook hands warmly on first contact, that wouldn't be a miracle. It would be a trap. So the Yukikaze held outside the port.

Not the kind of outside that's basically knocking on the door — the kind with enough distance to let both sides get a few practice locks in before committing to anything. Through the viewport, Lawrence looked like a black stone heart, grown large on iron banding, pipework, and commercial malice, suspended in a shadow band of crushed ice and derelict components.

The natural rock underneath was rough, ugly, pockmarked — a skull the universe had been beating on for a few hundred thousand years without quite finishing the job. Wrapped around it: rings of artificial metal framing and huge orbital bands, pipelines crawling across the surface like veins, spherical tanks and bolt-on modules clinging to the crust, and at the very top, a dome glowing blue-green beside a comm mast bristling with dish antennas. It didn't look like an authorized facility.

It looked like a criminal organ some planetary system had grown on its own. Honestly, it suited our current half-dead state perfectly.

"If it starts charging us a docking fee in the next thirty seconds, I won't even be surprised," I said, standing in the transfer-bay staging area, checking my glove seals. Ash stood beside me, already in a lighter field uniform that still kept the clean lines of a Federal officer. One of the most infuriating things about him is that even on a ship about to fall apart, headed for a black-market yard to negotiate, he still looked like he was on his way to an expensive military tea.

"It will," he said.

"You're genuinely terrible at reassurance."

"Reassuring you now would just make you more disappointed later." I let out a short breath and looked down at the silver-gray sample case by my feet. Not large. Heavy enough to matter. Not physically. What was inside it. Frostcrystal. The luminous trouble we'd chiseled out from under that frozen planet. I hadn't brought all of it, of course. This wasn't my first attempt at staying alive. I'd brought only half — and not the most complete, most reactive half at that.

The most intact core samples, the ones with the strangest behavior, were still locked aboard the Yukikaze with Aida, sitting in a layer no public log knew existed. What I carried was the portion we'd agreed we could afford to show — enough to demonstrate value, not enough to give me a heart attack. In plain terms: bait. If Lawrence was a beast that bit, then this was the piece of meat I was holding out to see exactly how hungry it was. I checked the case's combination lock again. Ash glanced at me.

"Third time."

"I know." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"It's not going to multiply if you check it again."

"I know."

"Then what's making you nervous?" I looked up at him.

"That what I'm carrying isn't rocks. It's the odds of us not getting stripped for parts over the next few days." The corner of his mouth moved, faintly.

"That's progress."

"In what direction?"

"That's exactly the kind of thing someone who's actually served as acting captain would say." I gave him a thoroughly unflattering look.

"Thank you. I'd like this particular growth experience to happen exactly once in my life." The internal line chimed — not the bridge's main channel, but patched through under XO priority. The projection lit, and Maki's face appeared, half-transparent. Duty uniform, no field gear, shoulders straight, expression as calm as if this weren't a negotiation with half the ship's survival on the table, but her fifth routine roll call of the day. I still straightened up, slightly. Pathetic. Also automatic.

"They've confirmed they'll only receive two of you," she said.

"The Yukikaze holds outside, Condition Two maintained. If you're out of contact for more than seven minutes, we treat it as a failed negotiation."

"That failed carries a lot of weight," I said.

"Because it does." Her eyes dropped briefly to the case at my feet.

"Don't let it out of your hands."

"I know."

"Don't show all your terms up front."

"I know." She paused half a second, then added: "Especially — don't let them set the pace. Black-market deals aren't really about price. They're about rhythm." I nearly laughed.

"Executive Officer, you're starting to sound like a parent sending her daughter into a dangerous social event." Ash gave a very soft cough beside me — a reminder about bearing, probably. Maki's expression didn't shift.

"If you'd prefer the standard order-format version, I can repeat it."

"No, this version's perfect," I said, fast.

"Very helpful." She didn't take the bait. Her eyes moved to Ash instead.

"Acting Captain. You lead external negotiations. If they request boarding — stall. Don't agree."

"Understood," Ash said.

"If they push for staggered payment, review terms before committing."

"Understood."

"If anyone tries to take Shimo off on her own—" She stopped there. Something warmed, briefly, in my chest. Then, calm as ever, she finished the sentence.

"—that means they're dumber than I expected." I wanted to laugh and felt cheated at the same time. This woman. One line to spike your pulse, the next line not romance but threat management. Infuriatingly, I still liked it.

"Copy, Executive Officer," I said. Before the line closed, her eyes came back to me one last time.

"Shimo."

"Mm?"

"Report back when you return."... There it was. That line still hit exactly as hard as it always did. I'd meant to answer with something light. What came out instead was a plain, honest: "I know." The projection cut. Ash stayed quiet two seconds, then said, unhurried, "Should I pretend I didn't hear any of that?"

"Say one word and I swap your negotiation brief for the mess-hall menu."

"Relax," he said, mild.

"I don't have that much interest in your private disasters."

"That somehow sounds worse."

"That's me preserving your dignity." I shot him a look, and the hatch ahead of us slid open. The shuttle was ready — not one of the Yukikaze's own auxiliary craft. A yard-side tender, sent over remotely. Short, squat, ugly, hull covered in weld scars, ground-off registry numbers, and armor plates from what looked like three different decades. It made its purpose clear: not passenger transport. Risk transport.

"Charming," I said.

"At least it confirms they genuinely don't trust us," Ash said.

"That counts as good news?"

"It does." He stepped in without looking back.

"If they'd been warm from the start, that would be the actual problem." I picked up the case and followed. Hatch sealed. Clamps released. The Yukikaze fell away. Through the aft window, our old ship hung in the dark, battle patches and emergency lights like wounds barely stitched closed. Not beautiful right now. Not imposing. A little ragged, honestly. But looking at her, I felt the entirely honest, entirely stupid surge of that's my broken ship — touch her and I bite you first....

People really do get trained into strange loyalties by shared suffering. The shuttle had no automated announcement. Just a man's voice, rasped like sandpaper had gotten stuck in his throat, coming through the cabin speaker.

"Feds. Sit tight," he said.

"We don't guarantee delivering customers in one piece."

"Truly welcoming customer service," I muttered.

"Don't complain," Ash said.

"At least he gave notice."

"Are your standards for black-market hospitality set a little low?"

"Are your expectations for the frontier set a little high?" The shuttle lurched hard sideways right as he finished. I nearly went flying with the case still in my arms. Between the harness and a surprisingly functional survival instinct, I avoided becoming the first Federal officer to debut a backward slide before her first outside contact even started.

"... I officially hate this place," I said through my teeth.

"Hold off," Ash said, watching Lawrence's silhouette grow through the forward window, flat as a weather report.

"You'll find more reasons very shortly." He was right. Ten minutes later, we were deposited into a temporary transfer lock on the yard's outer shell. Calling it a reception area would have been generous. It was more of a screening box — the kind you're locked into first, to be judged on whether you're worth letting further in. Four walls of unreasonably thick plate, covered in old pipe runs and freshly rerouted cable bundles, weld seams layered like scar tissue.

The overhead lighting wasn't stable white — yellow, dim, flickering on some private schedule. The air held metal dust, old machine oil, coolant, and cheap disinfectant, all mixed together — like someone had tried to dress a garage up as somewhere you could do business, and only half succeeded. When the inner door opened, the first thing I saw wasn't a person. It was guns.

Specifically: three men, six rifles, and two units bolted into the corners that looked, from the outside, like security cameras — but were obviously also capable of putting a hole through your chest on command. Good. Finally, some proper formal meeting atmosphere. The man in front stood under the dirty light — tall, lean, somewhere between forty and fifty, hard to say exactly, since half his face looked like it had been sanded down over the years by bad frontier air and cheaper liquor.

He wore an old captain's coat, black-gray, collar frayed but kept meticulously straight. An old faction badge hung at his throat, its original allegiance long unreadable. A metal fingertip capped his right index finger — the kind of thing a person develops from years of tapping it against tables, glass, or other people's teeth. He gave us one look — eyes to Ash first, then down to the case in my hand. In that instant, I knew this man wasn't going to be easy. Because his eyes weren't greedy. Weren't eager.

They were calculating. The way a merchant looks over goods. The way an old wolf reads a fence line. The way someone who's survived far too many betrayals sizes you up as guest, problem, or future carcass to be slowly picked apart.

"Gaffer." He gave the name himself, voice low and deliberately unfriendly.

"I'm the one handling intake for your battered Federal ship."... Not a real name. But real names carry no particular value in a place like this. Ash didn't offer a hand. Just a slight nod.

"Ash Vander. Acting Captain, Yukikaze." I followed.

"Hoshino Shimo. Lieutenant." Gaffer's eyes lingered on my face half a beat longer than politeness required.

"So it's you." Something shifted in me. I kept my face flat.

"I'm famous?"

"Not many people lead a team down to an ice ball to dig water for a half-crippled Federal warship, then show up at a place like this to negotiate," Gaffer said.

"Names stick to that kind of thing." Ash cut in, tone level.

"It seems our arrival drew more attention than we expected."

"Anything out here that can fire a cannon draws attention," Gaffer said. This kind of exchange is exhausting — every sentence a handshake with a blade check built in. But that's the etiquette here. At least it's the etiquette in this particular corner of nowhere. Gaffer didn't invite us in yet. He looked at the case first.

"That where you're keeping your 'good faith'?"

"Part of it," Ash said. Gaffer smiled. Not happily — the smile of someone thinking of course nobody's dumb enough to bring their whole hand on the first visit.

"Good," he said.

"I don't like fools. Fools die too fast. Bad for repeat business."

"Funny," I said.

"We don't like people who are too friendly either. Too-friendly people usually want your parts to restock their shelves." Gaffer actually looked at me properly this time. For the first time, something like real interest showed in his eyes.

"You talk better than you look."

"I usually waste that skill on the wrong audience."

"Then we might get along." Ash glanced sideways at me. Light. But I read it fine: don't get comfortable. We haven't reached the stage where trading insults counts as friendship. I wanted to tell him I knew. This wasn't the moment for demonstrating telepathy. Gaffer raised a hand. A guard stepped up with a portable scanner.

"Routine check," Gaffer said.

"No pat-down, no touching personal clearance devices, no removing rank tabs. That's my version of polite."

"And if we say no?" I asked.

"You go back to your ship," Gaffer said, "and we go back to guessing at each other from a distance until somebody gets bored and fires first."... Reasonable. Very black-market. Ash nodded.

"Run it." The scanner swept us once, confirmed no live weapons, no high-yield explosives, no second miniature reactor stashed under a jacket, and only then did Gaffer's eyes return to the case.

"I look at the goods first."

"I look at the venue first," Ash said.

"You're standing in it."

"No," Ash said.

"I want to know whether we're going to the trading concourse, a bonded hold, or the room you use specifically for making guests disappear." Two seconds of silence. Then Gaffer laughed — this time carrying a distinct trace of fine, this Federal officer isn't entirely for show.

"Outer ring of the concourse, first," he said.

"You don't enter the core. My people don't touch your ship. That's phase one." Phase one. Wonderful. Everyone here is very skilled at phased mutual trust — like two packs of dogs circling the same bone, sniffing before committing. Ash nodded.

"Deal." Gaffer stepped aside.

"Then come on. Don't stare too obviously. People here don't like being counted like inventory."

"Depends whether the inventory's worth counting," I muttered.

"Shimo," Ash said, calm.

"I know. I'm being quiet."

"No. Your quiet usually means your brain's running somewhere it shouldn't."

"... You're getting more insufferable by the day." Ahead of us, Gaffer caught that and the corner of his mouth hooked, entertained.

"Your ship doesn't feel like the kind that shoots each other in the back."

"We prefer doing it to each other's faces," I said.

"Good," Gaffer said.

"Saves on cleanup." We followed him inside. Past the first heavy lock, Lawrence Shipyard 's real interior — its actual smell and shape — hit me all at once, like a bucket of dirty water to the face. This wasn't just a repair station. It was a living, gray-market nest. The corridors had been carved straight out of native rock, then patched everywhere with artificial plating and surface-run cable bundles. The deck grating underfoot mixed old eras and new, sounding different with every step.

Overhead, bundled pipes ran in parallel — red, blue, yellow, a few still weeping condensation. Further down, at a junction, a faded sector sign hung with handwritten corrections scrawled over the original print — as if the rules here had never once been printed to begin with, only enforced by whoever happened to be holding the gun. There were a lot of people. And not one of them looked like a simple technician. There were mechanics in work coveralls with holsters slung shamelessly on their hips.

Loading bosses dressed like freight men, hands laced with old scar tissue. Middlemen behind data lenses, tracking us the whole way without blinking. And the unlucky travelers—the kind you could spot as outsiders on sight, working way too hard to look like regulars. Every corner ran together—metal striking metal, welding sparks, low haggling voices, trashy music leaking out of portable speakers, and the black market's own body heat, brewed out of oil, smoke, sweat, and cheap liquor.

If a Federal regulation port was the textbook, Lawrence Shipyard was the back page—the one somebody had scrawled full of swear words and cheat notes. I hated it. I also couldn't quite deny that it had a kind of order all its own. The Gaffer talked as he walked, voice easy, like he was pointing out the scenery. Nothing about the content was scenic.

"Left side's the day-labor zone. Anybody willing to take short-term work drifts around in there. Prices swing hard, and lives run cheap. Further in, that's modders and parts dealers' turf—don't ask where anything came from, nobody's going to answer anyway. Upper level, near the dome, that's where the counting house, the cargo escorts, and the big outside clients sit down to talk. If your luck holds today, you'll only see the first two kinds of faces."

"And if it doesn't?" I asked.

"Then you'll see the third kind," the Gaffer said.

"What's the third kind?"

"People who smile very politely." Fair enough. Ash had stayed quiet the whole way—properly quiet, the way he got at a negotiating table: listening, cataloguing, giving nothing away before he had to. This kind of place suited him. He wasn't like Tobita—the kind of unhinged superior you could tell at a glance not to provoke. He wasn't like Maki either, the kind of officer who could flatten a room just by standing in it and dropping the temperature.

He was more like the cold glint of metal resting quiet inside a sheath. Easy to ignore, most of the time. But the moment you actually reached for it, he'd take your fingers off first—very politely. I walked beside him, carrying the case, looking like his second—which was more or less the job I was actually doing. Watching.

Logging faces, logging exits, logging whose eyes lit up too fast at the case, whose mouth twisted wrong at our uniforms, and who still had the nerve to stand their ground while the Gaffer was leading the way through. The black market doesn't care about dirty. The black market cares about being read wrong. And right now, what I was most afraid of was missing the one person in here who actually counted. Eventually, the Gaffer led us into a half-open trading gallery.

"Gallery" was generous. It was closer to a natural cavern that had been hollowed out and then forced to hold three tiers of platforms and a ring of metal partitions. The center was a bare platform for staging cargo, ringed by hanging crane arms and scan frames. The second-level perimeter was lined with semi-transparent observation windows, shapes moving faintly behind them. Nobody spoke, but the feeling of being watched—by more than one set of eyes—was unmistakable. The Gaffer stopped.

"Neutral enough here," he said. Ash nodded.

"We can start." The first real round of negotiation finally hit the table. The Gaffer opened without preamble.

"What do you need?" Ash skipped the officer's version of a warm-up too.

"Hull structural repair, outer-plate resealing, a full re-bundle of main data lines and secondary power distribution, water-cycle module recalibration, medical consumables and standard ration resupply—plus a safe exit route cleared for use in this sector."

"The Kamikaze engine?" the Gaffer asked. Ash looked at him.

"That's not on the first-round list." Something flickered briefly in the Gaffer's eyes. He knew. He knew we were carrying worse damage than that. Ash just wasn't going to show it first. Good. That's what not being an idiot looks like.

"What are you paying with?" the Gaffer asked. This time Ash didn't answer right away. He just tilted his head. The meaning was clear enough. I stepped forward and set the sample case down on the center platform. It didn't land heavy against the metal, but it felt more like a beginning than I'd expected—like finally putting something down in the middle of the table that nobody could quite put into words, but that everyone would stare at anyway.

I keyed in the first-layer code, released the outer lock, and stopped there. The Gaffer watched me.

"Only half open?" he asked.

"First meeting. Letting you see the light at all is already good faith," I said. He gave a short laugh and, surprisingly, didn't push. Which meant he understood. So I nudged the lid open, just enough. Blue-white light spilled out of the case at once. Not blinding, not theatrical—but it had a texture that was hard to pretend you hadn't seen. Like electricity trapped inside ice. Like the heart of a dead planet still beating, slow.

The handful of chosen Frostcrystals lay quiet in their shock-mounted racks, their edges throwing back a cold, clean shine under the gallery's dingy yellow light—an almost insulting kind of beautiful against all the grease, the weld scars, the general grime of old metal around it. The Gaffer didn't change expression. But I saw it. The finger on his right hand, the one capped in metal, paused—just slightly. For a man like him, that much of a pause was already close to surprise.

Up on the second level, two or three of the shapes behind the frosted windows visibly shifted angle. Nobody in the gallery said a word. But the air had already changed. Whatever suspicion they'd had—about whether we were trouble, whether we were Federal—had just gotten quietly buried under something else. Not friendliness. Weight. They were finally doing the real math: whether the case in our hands was worth bending a few rules for. The Gaffer stepped forward but didn't reach out.

"... Icefield stock?" he asked. Ash said, flat: "You could read it that way."

"Which rock you dug it off of, I won't ask." The Gaffer's eyes stayed on the Frostcrystals, voice still steady.

"But I need to know one thing first—is this your only batch." It was an important question. Important enough that it was basically asking: are you desperate enough to sell your own lives, or do you actually have leverage. Ash didn't answer right away. He looked at me first. It wasn't him passing the question off—it was a reminder. This line needed to come from whoever was holding the case. So I lifted my head and looked at the Gaffer.

"Not the only batch," I said.

"But not so much that you get to scoop it up like sand, either." The Gaffer finally moved his eyes from the Frostcrystals to my face.

"That's the kind of answer a real dealer gives."

"No," I said.

"It's just the answer of someone who's tired of getting shorted." The Gaffer was quiet for two seconds. Then, for the first time, he actually dropped the half-lazy attitude that had been treating us like Federal trouble cargo, and waved seriously to the side. A short, heavyset old man with a monocle loupe came trotting in from a side door, like a rat that just heard a cracker bag rustle. He didn't touch the case—just crouched down, leaned in close to the thin line of blue-white light, and drew a very quiet breath.

He didn't say good stuff. He didn't say valuable. He just looked up and gave the Gaffer a single nod. Just one. But that was enough. The Gaffer straightened and looked at Ash.

"First-stage trust—we'll call that cleared." The moment he said it, my shoulders loosened, just a little. Only a little. Because I knew it didn't mean we were safe. It just meant we'd been upgraded from probably getting thrown straight back out to being worth slowly fleecing as customers. By black market standards, that was real progress. Ash's tone didn't change.

"Then let's talk the first deal." This time the Gaffer didn't stay put. He reached out and pulled a floating display panel over, the motion clean and efficient, like he'd finally decided to promote us from suspicious figures at the door to negotiating partners who were, for now, worth talking to at the table.

"First deal, we only handle what's urgent," the Gaffer said.

"Outer-plate resealing, a berth in the yard, basic medical resupply, rations, and water-treatment parts—I'll front those. Everything else goes to round two. As for price—half of this batch, up front."... Right. Steep. But not steep enough to have no floor. Ash didn't even blink.

"One third."

"Half."

"What you're giving us is a patch to keep us alive, not a full rebuild. One third."

"You're a Federal warship. A battle-damaged one. Just letting you dock means I've got to keep three layers of people quiet."

"That's your overhead. Not my panic tax." There it was. This was Ash's arena. His negotiating style was nothing like Tobita's. Tobita was the type to put a knife through the table first and then ask how you wanted to work out the math. Ash used a calm, clean voice to squeeze every drop of emotion the other side tried to pump into the price, until only the countable part was left. Not pretty. But it worked. I stood off to the side, holding the case, in charge of two things.

First, watching those faceless shapes on the second level, checking whether any of them moved too hard right after Ash read off our list. Second, being ready, if it came to it, to remind everyone in the room with the Frostcrystals in my hands: we weren't here begging for a handout. We were here to do business. The Gaffer finally stepped back half a pace.

"Forty percent," he said.

"Berth, security codes, first-round sealing and resupply, plus not asking about whatever else is wrong with your ship that I shouldn't be asking about. That's my entry price." Ash looked at him. Then said, flat:"Deal. But unloading, inspection, and the supply manifest—our people are present the whole time."

"Fine."

"Your people don't enter mid-section or below on the Yukikaze unaccompanied."

"And your people stay out of my counting house the same way."

"Fair enough." The Gaffer looked at me.

"The case." I didn't hand it over right away. Instead, I pulled out one of the fixed inner trays, took out the pre-sorted batch of Frostcrystals, and set them into the shielded container they'd pushed across. Blue-white light glowed quietly inside it, like a small piece of cold night, cut out and boxed. That was the first deal. The first Frostcrystals we'd actually spent. Not a sample. Not a secret. A payment.

The moment I snapped the container lid shut, it hit me, very clearly—once something gets used as a means of trade for the first time, it never goes back to being a simple "research sample." It starts having a price. It starts having a direction. People start remembering it. And I was the one pulling that line open with my own hands. The Gaffer took the shielded container, and this time actually gave me something like a real smile. Not friendly.

But at least the kind of smile you get after closing a first deal—the kind that admits you're not an idiot.

"Welcome to port, Federal," he said.

"Don't get sentimental about it, though. These doors only ever open for people who can pay." I looked at him and smiled back, a little.

"Funny," I said.

"Right now what we're most afraid of isn't a closed door. It's the door being opened by someone too cheap." The Gaffer let out a low laugh.

"Fair. That mouth of yours is worth some berth fee." Ash added, flat as ever:"Then apply it to our repair hours." This time, even the Gaffer really laughed. And I knew, only at that moment, that we'd actually earned Lawrence Shipyard 's first-stage trust. Not friends. Not allies. Not even safe. Just—the other side had decided we were worth something, not urgent enough to eat right away, and worth treating as customers for now. In a place like this, that was already enough.