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.

By Capt. Edda Morse · Rim Courier patron column · burst funded

“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, and the next comm window is measured in months, not moods.

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. The Gazette's patron pool keeps my name alive in ports I'll reach long after your news cycle has moved on to a prettier scandal.

Everybody romanticizes the black until they price a hub-to-rim jump at two thousand-plus credits. Then romance becomes a subscription tier they can't afford, and they call people like me "quaint."

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, a garden that doesn't quit, and a crew that won't murder each other over protein blocks. I have buried two friendships in this hull and one marriage that thought "distance" was a metaphor.

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. If your business is time-sensitive, the rings own you. If your business is ore that doesn't care about calendars, the void still owns you — just slower.

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. Every "routine hike" on the Meridian feeds is another reason someone like me stays out here pretending romance is a business plan.

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. Ask who will still know their name when they dock. 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. Tell my patrons I said thank you — they are the only reason this voice still arrives anywhere at all.