Rim Courier Gazette
En route · Lanes 9-C (sublight)
Letter From a Sublight Freighter: 'See You in Twelve Years' (Paid Burst — Read While You Can)
You subscribed to hear from people the gates forgot. I'm four years from your next berth and I'm not sorry you paid for this.
“Gates sell minutes. Fusion sells your children's childhoods — and my subscribers are the only ones who still listen.”
If you're reading this on the paid burst, thank you. If you're reading a pirated clip, enjoy the loneliness — I can't see your tip jar from out here.
I write from a berth that won't exist for another four years of ship-time. My contract pays well because the ore doesn't care how lonely you are, and because nobody else wants to be the person who answers letters twelve years late.
Everybody romanticizes the black until they price a hub-to-rim jump at two thousand credits. Then romance becomes a subscription tier they can't afford.
Sublight is real.
Fusion cruise between stars works. It also eats years — decades if you're unlucky with lane weather and drive wear. You need fuel mass, life support, spare parts, and a crew that won't murder each other over protein blocks. I file these columns when comm windows open because the Gazette's patron pool keeps my name alive in ports I'll reach long after your news cycle moves on.
Bounty hunters don't sublight. Hunters can't — their marks age, die, or get collected by someone willing to pay ₡45 per scanned forehead at a gate while you're still chewing protein in cruise.
The Concord didn't invent physics. They invented billing cycles around physics. Corporations didn't build the gates because they love adventure. They built them because time is the ultimate monopoly, and they own the shortcut.
If someone tells you they're "avoiding gate logs" by taking the slow road, ask how their garden survives the trip. Ask who holds their mortgage while they're in transit. Then buy them a drink — or fund their column. They'll need both in about a decade.
Reply on the burst if you want the next letter. I read when the window opens. The void doesn't.