Chapter 15 · Signed Tomorrow

The sale order sits in the vault like it's been waiting for me.

I didn't go looking for it. I went looking for fuel routing permissions, something to explain why the Long Invoice's reserves dropped forty percent in the three months before the cryo hold went active. What I found instead was a transaction log, encrypted with a key I shouldn't have, signed by an authorization I definitely shouldn't recognize.

Mine.

My root key. The one that's supposed to be burned into my implants, unique, impossible to forge. The one that makes the Beacon Lattice think I'm the original owner, the one who can crack vaults and override lockouts and tell a four-hundred-year-old hulk that I'm allowed to be here.

It's right there in the header. Authorization code matches. Encryption signature matches. Even the timestamp format matches the old Keelwright guild standard, the kind of thing only someone with original access would know to fake.

Except I didn't sign this.

I pull the document fully open. It's a transfer of custody. Not the ship—the girl. The body I'm wearing. Contract of indenture, it says, but the terms are uglier than that.