When she had started out as the vessel’s skipper, that model had been painted as emerald green as a field of verdant grazing land. Now it was a blotchy red patchwork that looked almost as sick as the accounts of Fiveworlds Shipping. A little less healthy after every trip. Damn it, I’m not going to sell out. This ship is my life. She’s all I’ve got. But surviving meant Lana was going to have to take on cargoes that would pay better. And out in the Edge, those were just the kind of loads that would be under surveillance by TAP agents. Smuggling was a dirty business, a trade as spotted as the model of her ship, but it was also a lucrative line of work, and the universe wasn’t exactly offering Lana too many alternative choices if she was going to stay afloat. ‘Which would be the cheapest repair to carry out and remove from our most urgent register?’ Lana asked the ship’s central computer, granny.‘Our solar panels,’ said a disembodied, honeyed voice from her desk’s interface.
