Working the slack
The slack catches things, as an eddy catches leaves.
Hoppers and belters each think the other is mad. Rivalry, not warfare.
How a rumour becomes a mark: bar talk (a pilot mentions something at a dock bar) → the wire (enough people mention it and it reaches the news as a rumour) → the board (somebody with money posts a contract to go and look).
The Rim is the edge of charted space. Docks near it have fewer lights, longer waits, and everyone a bit too pleased to see you.
What's out there
a comet (cutters say a snowball)
an ice body drifting in the slack. Water, the one cargo.
Who posts it: mining outfits, ice cutters
a wreck
a recent loss: somebody's ship, maybe somebody's pilot. Claims, insurance, grief.
Who posts it: salvage crews, insurers, the Authority, the family
a hulk
an old wreck, long dead, sometimes from before anyone's records
Who posts it: salvage crews, historians, the Meridium Trust
an anomaly (pilots say a ghost)
an instrument return that should not be there: lane-time running wrong, a light with no source, a signal on a dead code
Who posts it: survey firms, the Frontier, anyone brave
a cold beacon
a dead transponder still pinging an old code
Who posts it: the Lamplighters, the curious
a glitter
a drift of Rift Glass
Who posts it: the Frontier (openly), the Syndicate (quietly)
Who works the slack
Rock hoppers
Independent prospectors hopping from rock to rock in tiny, tired ships, chasing a strike. Sociable, broke, full of rumours. A hopper who has found something is the most nervous person alive.
Belters
Settled belt crews: families, not prospectors. They live in the slack and resent anyone who treats their home as a mark. Proud, close, slow to trust, generous once they do.
Survey vessels
Company ships out mapping the slack. Rivals to you, after the same marks, and the ones who post the contracts when they cannot get there themselves.
Cutters
Ice crews working comets.
Strippers and claim-jumpers
The ones who get to a wreck or a strike before its owner.
Ice, water and fuel
Water is the one cargo every dock buys. People drink it. Air comes out of it: crack water and you get oxygen, so every station's air started as ice. Fuel comes out of it, because the hydrogen in it is the cheapest reaction mass there is. And a tank of water round a hab is the best radiation shield there is. Pilots call water "the one cargo", and nobody ever dumps it.
Cutters work comets and ice worlds in small crews and heavy, slow ships. They find a snowball, anchor to it, cut blocks with heat lances, bag them and haul them. The shifts are long, the cold gets into everything, and the money is steady and never good. Cutters are known for being quiet, superstitious and kind, and they name their ships after weather. Wezen is cutters' country. They say "ice is ice" of anything that can't be helped, and "leave the snowball where you found it" when they mean mind your own business.
Dippers skim gas giants for fuel. Riskier than cutting, better paid, and they drink more. They sell their skimmings to the refineries, which crack them into fuel cells and polymers. Their town is the Raft, at Mirach: a gas giant with no dock, where the dippers' ships lie lashed together hull to hull in holding orbit, sharing air, stores and arguments. Nothing is for sale there. Everything is bought before you come and shared once you arrive. When a crew leaves, it cuts its lines, and whoever comes next ties on in the gap.
The Kettle is what everyone calls a station's water plant. "The Kettle's low" is the most frightening thing a dockmaster can say, and it is the first line of a shortage.
The deep ores
Near the core, the belts give up what everybody knows: rare earths, palladium, iridium. Go further out and the ore changes. The further out a pilot goes, the less anybody knows what they're cutting, and the names show it. The first is an old-world element with a proper name. The other two are named by the miners for where they're found, because nobody has a better word.