The second round was on Ethan.
Raevis tried to protest, of course. Something about engineers having a union tradition of never letting the mercs pay. but he waved her off and flashed his data pad over the embedded transaction node at the end of their table.
"House rules don't apply when the merc in question owes his ship's life to you," he said with a half-smirk.
The system pinged. Transaction complete.
Two mugs appeared moments later in their booth via the same Rellian server. Raevis lifted hers with a small grunt of approval.
"You've got decent taste," she admitted. "This one's brewed on Telvax, fourth moon of the Ixon Belt. Engineers there run the distillery between patching ore haulers."
Ethan took a sip. Crisp. With a bit of synth-bitter after the swallow, but not unpleasant. It reminded him of something old and wooden, like a memory from a bar that no longer existed.
"Your kind of people," he murmured.
She shrugged, grinning. "Tech's a language, and we speak it better when tipsy."
They clinked glasses, more out of ritual than celebration, and let the ambient hum of the bar settle around them. Screens scrolled contract stats in the far corners, and distant laughter echoed as a few engineers argued over whose salvage op netted the most credits last week.
Ethan leaned back in his seat, the tension in his shoulders slowly uncoiling.
"You ever think about how fast it all changed?" Ethan asked, swirling the amber drink in his hand like someone who'd had this conversation before. "Shipbuilding, I mean. How it went from… I dunno, custom orbital yards to this whole era of mass production. Private megacorps, nation-run workshops, all of it competitively pumping out hulls like ration packs."
He kept his tone light, casual... like he wasn't trying too hard to sound informed.
In truth, most of what he'd just said came from half a briefing Iris had rattled off during the long flight from Kynara, while he'd pretended to listen and tried not to vomit from his first FTL jump. He didn't know much as a transmigrator. Not really. Not beyond what he'd seen, scraped together from chatter, or pieced together in bars like this one.
But if you acted like you knew enough? People who actually knew more would usually start correcting you.
And that was exactly what he wanted Raevis to do.
Raevis gave a low whistle and gestured with her glass. "That's a long topic for drink number two."
"I'm pacing myself," Ethan replied.
She chuckled and leaned forward slightly. "Alright, Walker. You want the short version or the real version?"
He tilted his head. "Give me the one you tell new interns who think ships grow on asteroid vines."
Raevis took a sip, set the glass down, and leaned back with a thoughtful breath.
"Long before the Federation, even before the Empire standardized its reach, there were the Relays."
She tapped her knuckles against the table with quiet emphasis.
"Massive things. Ancient. Nobody really builds tech like that anymore, not really. We've upgraded, re-tuned, wrapped modern systems around them like new skin, but the bones?" She shook her head. "Old. Built by civilizations we only know from ruin-charts and fractured records."
Ethan blinked, but didn't interrupt.
"The relay grid isn't something we created. It's something we inherited. What the Federation and the other nations did, what we could do, was learn to interface with it. Map it. Stabilize it. Drop supporting beacons where we could. Suddenly, you've got corridors between stars that don't eat half your fleet in the process."
She smirked faintly.
"And once you've got safe lanes? You've got trade. Politics. Conflict. People wanted ships that could run the grid fast, haul cargo, carry guns. That's when standardization really started. Corps, National shipyards. All scrambling to mass-produce vessels that could move and survive inside a growing map."
"For our good old Federation, every sector is outsourcing to the same prefab spec pools," Raevis continued, swirling her drink. "Modular blueprints. Reusable hull frameworks. The Federation issued universal docking protocols, standardized weapons mounts, cargo modules, even crew layouts."
Ethan leaned in slightly, elbows on the table. "And I assume there's a clear divide between civilian and military builds?"
Raevis gave a half-laugh, shaking her head. "Oh, absolutely. Military ships? Regulation-heavy nightmares. The big dogs, SoverTech Armaments, Brion Dynamics, Arxilon Interstellar, Veltrion Forgeworks, Helix-Karn, Sons of Orion Shipwrights, they pump out sleek monsters. High-maintenance, top-tier materials, custom power cores, you name it. Expensive as hell, but deadly and built to last."
She paused, pointing a finger at him.
"Now, merchants and mercs? That's a mixed bag. The rich ones can afford clean lines and fresh off the dock cruisers. Some even buy downgraded military specs legally, or not so legally. But the rest?" She gave a small shrug. "Patchwork rust tubs. Ships cobbled together from junked mining rigs, salvaged imperial and Federation wrecks, old war-era dreadnought plates. Even a few crashed alien haulers if they're lucky."
"And they still fly?"
"Barely," she said with a grin. "But in the fringe, flying barely is still flying. Those parts might be outdated, but they're sturdy. If the builder's good and the pilot knows the quirks, even a scrapyard special can keep running longer than some flagship from Helix-Karn."
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, watching as a trio of grease-slicked salvagers hauled a massive engine housing across the far side of the bar like it was a hunting trophy.
Ethan swirled the amber liquid in his mug, then set it down.
"Production times must be insane," he said.
Raevis smirked. "They are. A capital ship used to take three years, five planets, and a dozen angry contractors to finish. These days? With the right supply chain and up-to-date fabrication codes, you can spit out a destroyer in eight months and have it fully armed and ready for patrol within a year."
She leaned back, stretching her legs under the table.
"Not saying it'll be pretty. But it'll fly. And it'll kill."
Ethan let that settle, thinking of the massive vessels orbiting distant worlds, sleek destroyers patrolling the Ashen Sector borders.
Then he chuckled.
"What?" Raevis asked.
"I was just thinking of the ships that don't follow the rules," he said, a small grin tugging at his mouth. "What did you call them again?"
Her brow arched. "Patchworks?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Patchworks. The ones that look like they were built in a scrapyard with duct tape and a prayer."
Raevis smirked. "That's pretty much accurate."
They laughed. It was a sharp, knowing sound. One that belonged to people who'd both seen ships held together with ductile welds and hope. Ethan took another sip.
"I saw one docked on Valeris once," he said. "Called itself the Iron Widow. Had four engines, three working and two from different manufacturers. The hull was stitched together from at least five wrecks. It looked like it could fall apart from a strong sneeze."
Raevis grinned wide. "There's a kind of poetry to that. Junker pride. You ever see the Voidborn ships?"
Ethan's gaze sharpened. "Never heard of them."
"They're like a myth," she said, her voice lowering. "They aren't built. They're… reanimated."
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
"Old wrecks from the Separation Wars. Warships that were too expensive to recover but too dangerous to leave floating. Some engineer or madman, depending on who you ask, found ways to reignite their cores. Filled the dead zones with scaffolding. Patched holes with smart matter. Plugged in half-alive AIs."
"Ghost ships."
"More or less," Raevis said. "They operate mostly in unregulated sectors. No registry. No allegiance. Rumor says some of them don't even have crews anymore. Just protocols and guns."
Ethan looked down into his drink.
"That's comforting."
"They say one of them, The Hollow Crown, still uses the same shell it wore when it bombarded the Arctov colonies during the third campaign."
"Good PR," Ethan muttered.
Raevis gave a dark little laugh. "Scares the hell out of traders. Some say the Federation even tried to hunt a few of them down years back. But it's hard to kill something that doesn't need to breathe or eat or dock."
"Or answer to anyone," Ethan added.
They let that hang for a while.
Around them, the bar clattered and hummed with talk, screens, and the sound of drinks being poured. Ethan liked this part of the station. It was alive in a way the polished halls weren't.
After a while, he leaned forward again.
"Thanks," Ethan said.
Raevis glanced at him. "For what?"
"For making all this feel less… corporate. Less processed. The station's efficient, yeah, but down here? It's real."
She smiled. "That's why I like this block. The bar might be crap, but the people talk straight."
Ethan raised his glass.
"To straight talk and still-flying ships."
Raevis clinked hers against his.
"To the Wraith," she added. "May her hull stay tight and her weapons cycle clean."