Built from Cmdr Drazyl's own flight log on Sirius, 4 to 6 October, with his permission.
The ledger made him a Hauler at ten past one, on the dock at Rigel b, and the board noticed before he did.
He had been flying surveys all morning. Aludra b, then Rigel b, sitting in orbit while the readings came in and being paid for his patience at fifteen thousand a time. The yard had already told him he could have a Needle Scout. The Syndicate had told him it was pleased with him, which it said in a tone that made him check his pockets.
Then the board offered him a parcel.
Smuggling. 29 Ghost Codes to Cebalrai b.
'You know what those are,' said Nell.
He had named his dispatcher after a hauler in a story he liked, and she had turned out to have opinions of her own.
'Transponder codes.'
'Forged ones. A ship flying one is somebody else, as far as the registry knows. Cebalrai is registry ground. Orderly fields, orderly people.' A pause. 'I'll leave the maths to you.'
He did the maths. The contract paid well, because contracts like that always do. He took it, topped up the Sledge Hammer's tank, had her hull seen to, and set course. It was twelve minutes to Cebalrai.
He came down over the farm worlds at twenty-four minutes past one, field after field in tidy squares, and docked at Cebalrai b, and customs found the parcel before the clamps had closed.
The fine was nine thousand four hundred and twenty-five credits. The Core Authority took sixty off his standing as well, which put him on the wrong side of Unfriendly with the people who owned most of the lit docks on the chart. The note that came with it was perfectly polite. The registry had identified an irregularity. The Authority would be grateful for its correction.
'Well,' said Nell. 'Now you know what the maths was.'
The second time was not his fault, and he would say so to anyone who asked.
He was mining Rare Earths at Aludra Drift the next morning, three units a tick, which was slow work even for the Sledge Hammer, when a raider came down on the field. He engaged it, and a minute and a half later it was in pieces. The salvage went into his hold the way salvage did in those days, all of it, without anybody asking him. Twelve hundred credits. Nine units of gemstones. Fifteen units of something else.
He stopped mining, because a raider in your field puts you off your stroke, and made the short hop across to Aludra Waystation to sell what he had.
Aludra Waystation is the registry's well-behaved answer to the open stops on the long lanes. It is clean, and it is quiet, and it has customs. He docked at twenty-four minutes to eleven. He had owned fifteen units of narcotics for two minutes and twenty-one seconds, and had not once looked at them.
Six thousand seven hundred and fifty credits. Another sixty off his standing.
'That one wasn't mine,' he said.
'It was in your hold,' said Nell. 'They don't do provenance.'
He had the hull patched while he was there, out of a stubborn sense that the Waystation owed him something, and then he took fifty units of claimed salvage to Tau Ceti and sold them for nineteen thousand. Claimed salvage is the legal kind. It has paperwork. He sat on the dock at Tau Ceti Orbital and looked at the paperwork for a while.
That afternoon he was out at Saiph, at the far edge of the dark, mining the drift above the Syndicate's last lit harbour, when the board told him that Stray Dog was back.
He had met Stray Dog before. It was a raider of no particular quality and great persistence, and it had taken a liking to the field. He engaged it, and it came apart, and this time the salvage did not load itself. The board laid out what was in the wreck and told him it was his to take while he stayed.
Eight units of copper ore. Eight units of Rift Glass.
He knew what Rift Glass was. Everybody did. It drifts out from the Rift's edge in shards that are faintly luminous and that nobody can say are safe. The Authority has banned it since the Glass Years, on the principle that nobody could say. The Frontier wears it.
He looked at the eight shards on the manifest for a long moment. He was in Syndicate space. Saiph Freeport was a short hop away and asked nobody anything.
He took the copper. Then he took the glass.
'Noted,' said Nell, and said nothing else.
Twenty-three minutes later Stray Dog was back again. He destroyed it again. It had nine units of electronics aboard this time and no apparent memory of the last conversation. He went back to his mining and decided that some things on the chart are not meant to be understood, only shot.
After that it was a long, good afternoon, and the glass went everywhere with him.
Saiph Freeport. Saiph b. Saiph Freeport again. Pollux Orbital, where Frontier money comes to spend itself, and Pollux b. Naos b, the Union's own yard. And at twenty-eight minutes past four he docked at Cebalrai b, the same orderly dock where the codes had been found the day before, and customs looked him over.
Core Authority customs waved you through. Nobody came aboard.
He bought a hundred and twenty-eight units of water at thirty apiece, perfectly legally, and left.
Naos. Naos again. Rigel Refinery. Kornephoros, out over the storm seas. Naos, where the ledger caught up with him at twenty-two minutes to seven and told him he was a Magnate now. Pollux Orbital, Pollux b. Somewhere in all of that the glass stopped being something he had chosen and became something he had, the way a spare part becomes part of the ship. He never sold it. He never thought about it. It sat in the bottom of the hold and was faintly luminous to nobody.
He was up early the next day for a convoy out of the Frontier, an escort to Altair b, and six minutes into it a raider dropped out of the slack and opened up on the freighter.
He took it apart in short order. The board laid out the wreck. Eleven units of electronics. Nine units of Grey Genelines.
He looked at the genelines. He thought about Cebalrai, and Aludra, and the sixteen thousand credits it had cost him to learn what was in his own hold.
He left the lot of it behind.
'Look at you,' said Nell.
He saw the convoy in to Altair b and was paid for it, and the Frontier was pleased with him, and he felt for a little while like a man who had been to school and passed. He flew a survey at Arcturus, the oldest star on the chart, where nobody owns the Waystation and nobody asks. He took a load of steel for Vega and a survey to go with it. At Pollux he sold seventeen crates of deep-water catch for nearly twelve thousand and bought cutting gear. Then he set course for Vega.
Vega is the registry's own seat. Clean docks, slow paperwork and the best hospitals on the chart. He came in at eighteen minutes to nine with steel for the yards and a survey contract for the planet, everything aboard as lawful as a hymn, and he docked at Vega b and customs came aboard.
He did not know what they were looking for until they found it.
8 Rift Glass.
It had been in his hold for eighteen hours and forty-eight minutes. It had been through nineteen dockings. It had sat quietly in the bottom of the hold at Cebalrai, under the Authority's own nose, and been waved through. He had forgotten it so completely that for a moment he did not recognise the name.
Four thousand eight hundred credits. Sixty off his standing, and he was Unfriendly again.
'You left the genelines,' said Nell.
'I did.'
'Good. That was the right lesson.' A pause. 'This was the other one.'
Ten minutes later the steel was delivered and the survey was filed, and the Core Authority paid him sixteen thousand four hundred and seventeen credits for both, thanked him, and put him back up to Neutral as if none of it had happened. He sat on the dock at Vega b and read the two notes side by side. The registry was very grateful for his work. The registry had identified an irregularity. Both of them were signed the same way.
He took a contract for palladium to Saiph Freeport, and a survey at Sabik, and before he undocked he opened the Sledge Hammer's hold and read the manifest from top to bottom, every line.
There was nothing in it he had not bought.