Chương 279: 116. Repair Costs 1

The moment Lawrence Shipyard officially let us into port, my first thought wasn't relief. It was—oh, so this is what it feels like when an illegal space station "grudgingly decides you're worth keeping alive for now." Like a very calculating animal leaning in to sniff the side of your neck, then deciding not to bite. Not yet.

The Yukikaze eased along the low-speed guidance lane they'd given us, sliding slowly into the entry passage hidden behind a belt of shattered ice, derelict framework, and artificial camouflage netting. Lawrence Shipyard had looked wrong enough from the outside. Up close, the feeling only got heavier—the sense that this place had started as a dead minor asteroid, had iron hoops bolted around it until it couldn't breathe, and had then been forced to open for business.

The rock surface was rough and cratered, but squeezed tight by layer after layer of metal ring-frames and reinforcement ribs. Pipes crawled out through cracks in the stone shell, wrapping the outer walls like veins, like parasitic roots.

Certain sections were welded over with armor plating that clearly hadn't come from the same era as anything else—different colors, different textures, different bolt specs—as if this place hadn't been designed so much as accumulated, built up over long years by generation after generation of parts that were, well, good enough. From the Yukikaze's main viewport, we probably looked about the same.

One half-dead old beast that could still bite, sliding slowly into the belly of something older, meaner, and considerably better at surviving. I stood at the rear of the Yukikaze's bridge, watching through the main display window as the berth arms extended toward us, joint by joint. They were nothing like the clean, standardized, textbook-perfect automated docking systems of a Federal port.

These were industrial grapplers, brutal and unapologetic—exposed joints, hydraulic lines running bare, end clamps still marked with old impact scars and burn scoring. The kind of hardware that could lock your hull in place and, with equal convenience, peel it open to count whatever bones you had left.

"Berth lock sequence initiating," Lan reported from the communications station, voice steady.

"They're requesting we keep external weapons control cold and suspend non-essential hatch comms." Ash sat in the acting captain's chair, elbow resting on the armrest, posture as unhurried as if he were visiting a Federal military academy hangar, not docking at an illegal repair station.

"Comply," he said.

"External weapons control stays cold. Internal backup systems remain hot-standby. Don't let them know how cooperative we're being—and don't let them think we won't bite back."

"Understood," Akari said. Maki stood at the executive officer's station, head down, reading through the freshly synchronized berth terms. Her voice was the kind of calm you use when you're scheduling a mock exam timetable for a group of problem children.

"Berth fees float with hull displacement and occupied hours. Materials billed separately. If they pull from their sealed-storage parts, add another twenty to forty percent on top." She paused, and her eyes went just slightly colder.

"And that's only the part they put in writing."

"A black market has to at least look respectable on paper," I said.

"Otherwise how does it justify taking two extra bites in the dark?" Jess stood off to the side, arms around her tablet, not looking up.

"I'm already feeling nostalgic for the Federation military's brand of gloriously inefficient daylight robbery."

"Don't get nostalgic yet," Ash said.

"That means you still have room to spare." I glanced at him. This man had a real gift for making reassurance sound like a cold-water rinse. But that was exactly the right register for this moment. Now that the Yukikaze was officially docked, the question wasn't just can we get repaired—it was who does the repairs, how far do they go, what do they use, who gets to see what, who doesn't get to touch what, how much of us is visible, and how much stays hidden.

And the worst part was that none of those questions were purely technical. Every single one of them had a power structure attached. The Gaffer hadn't lied to us. He really was someone who could make decisions. It was just that at Lawrence Shipyard, being able to make decisions didn't mean making them alone. I figured that out quickly enough once the Yukikaze was officially berthed and I followed Ash in to negotiate the first round of repair hours and materials.

The venue had moved—not the half-open trading gallery anymore, but one layer deeper, into a rock chamber that had been converted into something that was trying to be a proper meeting room. Trying, because it did have a table, chairs, a projection board, and something that could technically be called refreshments. But the essential nature of the place was still raw stone: rough walls, exposed reinforcement beams, and pipes overhead that occasionally shuddered with a sound like a heavy smoker's cough.

Very presentably unpresentable. When Ash and I walked in, the Gaffer was already there—and seated beside him were three different people who clearly didn't belong to the same faction. The first type: the kind with permanent grease under their fingernails, who calculated labor hours and material costs before they looked at anything else. The one in charge was a woman with a neck thick enough to brace a hatch, half her head shaved, one eye replaced with a red-lit prosthetic, name tag reading only Mama Steel.

The moment she sat down, the air took on a particular weight—the kind that said every problem in this room eventually ends up in her hands with a wrench. The second type: cargo and parts-line people. Thin, quick, eyes always doing the math on which bolt on your body was worth more if removed. The one leading them was a wiry man in a long vest, three old ship-registry tags hanging from his left ear, with the kind of smile that suggested he'd nudge the scale half a notch in his favor while you were watching.

He called himself Ledger Crow—a name that sounded exactly like someone who would keep a record of your debts until the heat death of the universe. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The third type was the most trouble. They didn't quite read as merchants, and they didn't quite read as repair people. Dressed plainly but cleanly. Quiet. In no hurry to open with a price. No obvious weapons showing.

Which was precisely why they felt like the ones who actually controlled the order inside this station. The one leading them was older, gray-white hair cut short, long fingers, eyes flat as standing water with a lot of depth underneath. He didn't give his real name—just said people called him Ledger.... In a black market, the person called the Ledger is usually scarier than the one called the General. The Gaffer didn't waste time once we were seated.

He pulled up the berth schematic and the Yukikaze's external damage package without preamble.

"Berth, hull seal, outer plate, wiring, water cycle, medical, standard resupply—that's round one," he said.

"What you paid before was just to get the door open. Now we're talking real money."

"I appreciate how you lead with the ugly truth," I said.

"We use pretty words as packing material here," the Gaffer said.

"Use them once, throw them out." Ash didn't even move an eyebrow. He just pushed the manifest one step forward.

"Round one covers everything that doesn't require opening the core," he said.

"Main outer-plate resealing, damage-control compartmentalization made permanent, secondary power trunk re-bundling, water-cycle module restored to at least eighty percent, medical bay and engine section get priority resupply. Mid-section and below stays closed." Mama Steel scoffed immediately.

"Mid-section closed? You want me to weld the hull with my eyes from out here?" Ash looked at her.

"At your rates, I'd expect you to do more than weld with your eyes." The red light in Mama Steel's prosthetic flickered slightly. She didn't smile—but she clearly accepted that response. It wasn't flattery, but it was respect for the craft, and that was close enough. Ledger Crow was more direct. He knocked two fingers on the table.

"Parts," he said.

"Legacy-spec trunk connectors, sealant compound, outer-plate patch armor, medical supplies, filtration membranes, coolant, ration bars. I've got all of it. But there's a standard price, an urgent price, and a you're a Federal warship and I'm taking on extra risk just by having you here price."

"You probably charge three different rates for breathing," I said, before I could stop myself. Ledger Crow looked at me, and actually nodded with what appeared to be genuine consideration.

"If a client's willing to pay for it, I'll absolutely itemize it." I immediately wanted to throw him at Victor. Let Victor explain what real industrial civilization looked like. Though that would probably just result in two old operators bonding over shared philosophy and hiking our materials bill by twenty percent. Ledger hadn't said anything yet. Which was exactly what made him the most irritating person in the room. Because silence wasn't absence. He wasn't not recording. He wasn't not deciding.

In a real black market, the loudest voices are usually just foreground noise. The ones with actual weight are the ones who let everyone else finish talking first. I ran a quick mental map of the three factions across the table. The Gaffer—front-facing contact, external interface. Mama Steel—the repair faction; she held the labor hours and the real answer to what could actually be fixed. Ledger Crow—cargo flow, materials pricing, warehouse access.

Ledger—accounts, guarantees, proxy for whatever higher-order structure ran this station. This wasn't a repair yard anymore. This was a small gray city where repair work, black market trade, armed force, debt, and internal order had all been kneaded together into one thing. Ash had clearly read the same layout. Which was why he didn't negotiate a total price with the Gaffer. He broke it apart. Started with labor hours.

"Outer plate and hull seal—your quote." Mama Steel threw out a number immediately. The number was high enough that I almost wanted to applaud—either she was quoting labor hours or pre-booking our next-life redemption installments. Ash looked it over and asked one thing.

"Is this priced for one ship, or a whole fleet?" The red dot in Mama Steel's prosthetic flickered.

"Priced for that old carcass of yours."

"Then you've padded in thirty percent decommission contingency," Ash said.

"And you split two sequences that could run concurrently and re-billed them separately. Re-calculate the hours." I leaned back in my chair, and felt a very honest warmth rise in my chest—the warmth of oh good, for once I'm not the one sitting in the middle taking the hits. Ash was genuinely built for this. Not the aggressive type, not the theatrical type. He gave you no emotional surface to grab onto.

He just looked at numbers, structure, and gaps—like stripping away all the decorative packaging until the bones were sitting on the table—and then asked, very calmly: so which part exactly were you hoping to overcharge for? After two rounds of back-and-forth with Mama Steel, the labor hours came down. Then came materials. Ledger Crow opened harder this time. He even had line items for things like "in-station transfer risk fees," written in plain sight without any apparent embarrassment.

Ash didn't immediately counter. He let Ledger Crow finish, let him lay out the whole black-market logic structure—and then, slowly, spoke.

"Fine," he said. I almost turned to look at him. Fine? That fast? Then the next sentence arrived.

"Then remove the last three items—'undisclosed-origin indemnity deposit,' 'internal circulation scarcity coefficient,' and 'Federal identification supplemental risk.'" Ash said.

"If you're running a long-term operation, don't treat your first client like disposable waste." Ledger Crow smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. But it clearly carried a trace of something like oh, there's someone worth talking to.

"Captain, you've worked outside the system before?"

"No," Ash said.

"You just didn't write it clean enough."... Damn. That was a little impressive. I decided not to say so. That was when Ledger—the quietest person in the room from start to finish—finally spoke for the first time.

"For round one payment," he said, "you're still using that icefield stock?" His voice was low, almost mild. But something went quietly cold along my back. Not because of the question itself. Because of how he asked it. He didn't say those crystals. He didn't say the goods you brought. He used a classification that sounded like something an insider would use—icefield stock. Natural. Familiar. Which meant what, exactly? It meant this wasn't his first time seeing it. Or at minimum, not his first time hearing about it.

Ash didn't let the pause stretch.

"Depends on the terms," he said. Ledger looked at him, then shifted his gaze—precisely—to me. More specifically, to the case sitting beside my leg.

"Is the source stable?" he asked. The moment that landed, something invisible in the room changed, very quietly. Mama Steel didn't move. Ledger Crow didn't cut in. The Gaffer didn't interrupt. And it was exactly that silence—everyone holding still at once—that made the question feel like a thin needle pressing slowly into the center of the table. I didn't speak right away. Not because I was rattled. Because I was watching. Watching who looked at whom.

Watching which name went unspoken but was already present in the air. Is the source stable. That wasn't just a question about the goods. It was asking: do you have another batch after this one? Did you stumble onto this by accident, or do you have a route? Is there a deposit somewhere? A supply chain? Something deeper behind it? And I was starting to understand, with considerable clarity, that someone inside this station had an interest in Frostcrystals that went well beyond using them to offset repair costs.

This wasn't a standard high-value-material reaction. It felt more like someone confirming a piece of information. Or following up on an old thread. Ash stayed even.

"For the purposes of the round-one repair work you're doing for us right now, stable or not isn't a necessary question," he said.

"All you need to know is that we can cover round one, and part of round two." Ledger looked at him for a few seconds. Then he nodded.

"That works," he said. That wasn't normal. I flagged it immediately, internally. Because someone like Ledger shouldn't fold that easily. If he stepped back, it meant whatever he'd come here to confirm today, he'd already confirmed enough of it. This wasn't the end of a price negotiation. It was a round of much quieter weighing—and it had just finished its first pass without anyone announcing it.