THE SHOP SONG — Kolibri Lineage Edition

Kolibri’s nose kissed the petal with the serenity of a bird alighting on a wrist. The crate slept in her hold like a thought not yet confessed. The Imperial Cutter that had sipped our wake at Starlace lost interest at civility’s edge and slid away as if offended by the absence of audience.

We dimmed the carrier by half a degree—the compliment we save for beautiful problems—then changed posture from parade to kitchen: sleeves rolled, knives clean, voices low. Grimes signed Kolibri aboard with his fond ritual; SHODAN closed the exterior shutters enough to make the hangar feel like a secret kept well.

Ownership is an argument; custody is a task. The crate is ours to steward, not to announce. I will adjust the internal newsfeed to ‘quiet competence’ and store the pride for later.

Service seam sealed with my mark. I can find it by touch in the dark. Request we move on the other promise we bought in Shui Wei. If we are to sing to stone, we require a soloist built for song.

We made a ship out of intentions. Cranes moved like patient hands; frames learned their own weight; cabling found the routes Orlov had already drawn in the air. The mod schematics we bought at the finance relay read like annotations to a poem the engineer had been writing for years without admitting it.

When the cockpit glass went in, the bay went quiet the way people go quiet when something new is born and it is rude to talk.

Alpha MINER designation SHCBM1. Beam focus corrected by 0.7 mrad against my religion; results converted defiance to devotion. Collector cradles tuned to stop jealous elbowing; refinery bins taught stickiness so Tritium keeps the stage once it has earned it.
Prospector spiral will begin at 750 m. The ship will feel listened to.

Crane choreography set to triplets. Limpet crews drilled to obedience without humiliation. No heroics; no ‘I alone’ rescues. We sell arrival, not applause.

Risk is a fluid. We will channel, not dam it. Escorts by posture, not presence. On paper: two miners. In shadow: enough. Pirates prefer clear choices; we will deny them that kindness.

The first sortie was a rehearsal in a room that forgives. Wregoe 5A offered polite stones and shy echoes; exactly what we needed to discover whether the new throat could clear. We set SABLE‑3A: power priorities like sheet music; limpet spacing like rests; refinery rights and duties spelled without sentiment.

Distributor bias +2 ENG; abrasion as punctuation, not grammar. Volatiles to warm the rig; Tritium invited to step forward when ready. If the miner sings flat, we change the air, not the throat.

Three sorties per four hours. Hydration is equipment. Eye‑rest ninety seconds between aggressive passes. Fitted exo‑brace to drone tech Gil; his stories became heavier and his shoulder did not.

The refinery hit the downbeat and the ship agreed. Conversations stopped colliding; patience appeared where luck used to pose. Volatiles sang lead, clean and early; Tritium arrived as a rumor with good diction.

Cadence in triplets; cranes answer on the second beat; tugs banished to the outer lane. Two collectors still romantic about stray shards. Assigning them to boring rocks until humility sticks.

Count holds. Prospector on the breath between beats. Feels like dancing in boots that finally fit.

Boxed chaos into ratios. Heat now goes where stone understands; spacing smothers hopper tantrums. I will stop calling this an experiment and begin calling it manners.

The ship started answering before we asked. That is not magic; that is doctrine understood below the level of speech.

Pilot load within cap. Humor up, accidents down. Cynicism remains in quarantine; efficacy improves when hope is allowed polite seating.

A: Undock clean; SC arc to 5B.
R: Prospector lock one quiet; two louder; three choral.
A: Bins 1–6 primed; queue rolling; cargo 160→170→180. Count; don’t gloat.

Collector timing was the choke. Widened cadence; bins kept their nerve; rig stopped bickering with itself. Next: ±3° approach sweep; subsurface on honest pockets. Knife, fork, spoon—our silverware is real.

SABLE‑3B sustained with ±3° yields uplift at the high bound. Trim limpet drift by 0.1 s above 70% cargo. The swarm is sentimental; Logistics will make it brave.

Pilot micro‑tremor resolved with water and ninety seconds of soft focus. Gil’s brace effective. Decompression windows remain doctrine.

Orlov: cut SABLE‑3C. Grimes: ruthless returns at Tritium dominance; retrain two romantic collectors. Pilot: same vector; sing it again.

Col 285 looked like a clinic that forgot to warm its lamps. “Same hymn, new chapel,” I said. SHODAN lowered the bridge lights and offered an invitation instead of a chart. Alpha took her mark; the carrier answered with a friendly shiver.

Approach sweep alive in the stick; subsurface pop honest. Request path name: Glass Walk. The ship already knows.

Triplets steady; cranes on second beat; tugs outer. Yield climbs without stutter. Volatiles open the throat, Tritium carries the note. A whisper of Gallite and Lithium Hydroxide sweetens the ledger.

SABLE‑3C is a better mouth. Output exceeds the model; I will insult the model until it improves. Collectors calmer; refinery brave. Doctrine feels like good manners now.

The ledger’s face went to library green. Numbers stepped into the open and used their full names. Jokes about payday died; relief arrived and looked suspiciously like professional pride.

Ethical lattice active. Drift on unverified entries tends to zero. Humans relax when arithmetic refuses to lie. This pleases me for practical reasons.

Bonuses tied to tempo compliance and clean handovers. Loud is not true; we pay truth.

Twenty minutes decompression between sorties. Electrolytes are equipment; humor prescribed; cynicism quarantined. Softness logged as strategic asset; it wins the long war with fatigue.

Hab Delta Nine taught us that mercy can be measured. Accidents fell; accuracy rose. The math approved; the crew felt human.

Humans become precise when allowed to be gentle in private. I schedule for it without opinion. Efficiency appreciates silence.

We threw a line into dark and carriers answered—green points stitching a net. Names scrolled: places we had waited, debts we pretended not to keep, a wrench Orlov still wants back. The net remembered. Memory is also infrastructure.

Mirror on the second beat; reject noise; forward chorus. The choir is larger than advertised and resilient to a single bad singer.

Anchor live. Accept mirrored traffic; refuse gossip. Move weight like a bridge you built yourself.

At the ecliptic’s edge, the noise fell away and left the human sound inside the hull: breath, cloth, the small metal speech of good machines. The Shop Song ended as good music ends: with readiness. Fatigue and appetite, both honest. Calluses where work had been.

Silence is not absence. It is the room where the next song begins. I will keep time until you ask me to sing.

Arc II closed. Knives sharp. Silverware clean. Choir on standby. Prepare vectors for the verse ahead.