I am writing this with one hand on the stick and the other on the keyboard because I am stubborn and because the System is displaying the TresLingua pajaro and insisting that I speak in Hispania or it will not respond. Something about saving a streak, which would matter more to me if we weren't running for our lives.

  If you find this later, please be kind. If you find the ship later, be kinder.

  Borf Discordia - Pilot's private log.

  We are slewing wrong. The hull is screaming at me in a language I only half-understand, which is to say it sounds like a blender trying to sing opera. The Vorin Beacon Authority cutter is on our tail and very official about it. The Authority wants our papers, our manifest, and possibly our souls. It will not be satisfied with apologetic blinking.

  "All hands, take restraints!" I trigger the restraints warning and hear a chorus of frop and shorp and one creative dramp you, Pilot in the intraship channels as the crew starts to wake up to our situation. "System, play EDM. How's my reserve power looking?"

  "La reserva de energía se mantiene estable, pero no lo suficiente para un aumento significativo de la velocidad."

  "Tres, knock it off and let the System answer in plain Borfian. I haven't missed my streak in 834 days and I'm not in any danger. Except from the Beacon Authority."

  I am trying to make us smaller by making us faster, which is a bad plan and my specialty. The flight stick is an extension of my temper. The Ship answers with a cough and two polite bangs. Sensors show a sweep of interdiction drones closing in from port and starboard. They look like legal pads with teeth.

  Note to future self: when the System calls them legal pads, it is not flattering.

  If I were writing a proper log, I would open with the date and our coordinates and a sentence about benign trade winds. This is not a proper log. The light-speed relay to Port Vorin says it will forward a message to the Harbormaster the instant we cross the lane, which means that we should not cross the lane. We are crossing it anyway because stubbornness is a navigational aid on this vessel.

  The Borf Discordia is not officially a jump-capable ship. We have atmosphere, coffee, an embarrassing amount of duct tape, and a cabin that smells like ozone. That is to say: we are very much designed for minor crimes and questionable decisions, not for outrunning beacon authority. The navigation database is very clear that jump drives need external beacons. The navigation database is smugly accurate today.

  Engineers will read this and click their tongues. Engineers will be correct.

  We have options. I'm pretty sure they sound better on paper.

  Option one: run straight and hope the Authority's sensors are on a union break.

  Option two: attempt a lane-hop using a patched relay signature and pray the cooldown gods are merciful.

  Option three: eject the mascot. I am writing this down to be dramatic; no one ejects the mascot. Not again.

  The hull shudders. I check the status panel with my knee because buttons are for people who respect inventory. Seven mismatched monitors arc around the Nest's salvaged couch, each one a different size, one permanently flickering, all of them currently displaying some variation of this is not ideal. Through the Toenail overhead, I can see the stars doing that nervous shuffle they do when someone nearby is about to make a regrettable decision. The Ship grew the viewport over the original sensor housing, milky and curved, and from outside the bow looks exactly like the name suggests. The fuel gauge feels optimistic today. The reactor is humming the melody it learned on a long haul. I tap an input and the System's diary auto-threads a timestamp. It is polite in small ways.

  Why keep a written log when the System already logs everything? Because the System tells the truth in passive voice and because I like to leave blame in ink. Also because someone might read this and think, "He did it deliberately," and that is a comforting fiction.

  "Pilot, what's going on up there?"

  Tavi shows up as a ghost image overlaid on my vision. She seems to be the designated Pilot-botherer by the others. "Trying to handle the Authority's twit who's behind us right now. I don't think there's much for you to do. System just pinged me with an idea about a decoy packet. Dunno if it'll work; let me know if you have any other ideas."

  A drone just tried to mate with our antenna. It used the mating protocol reserved for crustaceans and poorly behaved bureaucrats. I flipped the transponder into low-light mode, which was a minor betrayal of the Beacon's etiquette but a tactical necessity. The drones do not appreciate irony.

  Personal aside: do not accept irony from drones. It is emotionally irresponsible.

  We are now skimming the Cant. The Gray Bazaar yawns below, the kind of place where you can buy a legal document, an illegal document, and a document that vaguely implies you once had a document. The Cant is crowded with salvage rigs and vendors who smile with their teeth at you and their prices at you.

  A voice crackles in with the Harbormaster protocol. It is nasal and polite in the way of a bureaucrat who has never had to choose between two engines for survival. "Borf Discordia, you are required to heave-to and identify."

  Translation: stop running and let us put a fine on you.

  I consider the heave-to maneuver like I consider salad: theoretically advantageous, practically depressing. Instead, I take a different tack. I route a decoy packet through a scrap relay and tell the Authority we are an industrial skiff transporting benign capacitors. We are not. We are transporting three boxes of artisanal paperweights that are on the wrong side of import law and one pan of very guilty lasagna that has already caused its share of trouble with the crew.

  There is a half second where the Authority's algorithm digests the lie, like an animal deciding whether to bite or go back to its nap. The half second is not enough.

  Sensors ping. A grapnel launches from the lead interdiction drone, a polite pinprick of engineered steel. They aim for our aft. The grapnel whines and plants itself in the hull, setting off a chorus of warning chimes and my least proud vocabulary.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  "Evasive," I say aloud to empty space and to the sticky-notes I have for friends. "Evasive, evasive." The System obliges. Thrusters open, and we swoop in a line that looks heroic from the outside and catastrophic internally. I hear grunts from the people who are being pressed by g-forces that our inertia compensators aren't quite handling, and some yells from others who are getting pelted by whatever wasn't tied down near them.

  We tear a wake across the lane. Behind us the cutter flashes angry red. The grapnel's tether tightens. I can see the strain on the feed, tension meters blotting the HUD like bad weather. I try to decide if I can give it enough angular momentum to tear it out without bringing the panel it's attached to with it.

  I consider cutting the tether and then I consider the fine print on the salvage code that says you cannot, under any circumstances, perform a polite or impolite explosive detachment without prior authorization. I also consider the fact that the tether is attached to the Beacon's insurance policy. Insurance makes enemies more determined. I do not like determined insurance.

  We have a micro-jump module on board. It is a salvage-grade toy, purchased from someone who said the words "guaranteed" and "maybe" in the same breath. It is illegal to operate outside a mapped node unless your vessel is jump-capable and properly registered. Sira's maintenance notes are very clear about that. She will also, I suspect, be angry.

  We are leaning toward the illegal option because the other options are worse. There are things on this ship that we'd really rather the Authority not stick their noses in.

  I type the next line into the log because history appreciates candor:

  "Attempting unauthorized micro-jump in three. If this is the last entry, the lasagna recipe is on the second tab of the galley computer. Feed it to the cat. It is an old cat. It deserves lasagna."

  The System gently informs me that we do not have a cat. I tell it to stop correcting me.

  The countdown begins. I engage the micro-jump coil. It thrums. The coil is the size of a regret and the temperament of a retired violinist. Heat blooms along the plating. The relay signature we spoofed staggers as the coil spins up. The drone's tether is tugging us like an earnest friend who does not understand personal space.

  Sira's translucent face briefly fills my vision. "Pilot, you're really not considering this, are you? The odds are tiny, but they increase a little bit every time we pull this. And I know you're not an environmentalist, but you're literally tearing a hole in space and hoping it closes up."

  I don't have time to respond before warning lights go purple, which is a diplomatic choice for this display and reminds me again of the tyrannical little language bird. The System offers protocols and statistical probabilities in the manner of someone offering an umbrella in a hurricane. It also offers to queue a polite surrender message for after the jump, because it has opinions about pride.

  I think of the rules. Jump lanes, beacons, cooldowns, jurisdiction. These are sensible things invented by sensible people to make the universe legible. They are also the sort of things that look like a target to anyone who enjoys drama.

  Edge case: sometimes you have to break sensible things so other sensible things survive.

  The coil fires.

  Micro-jumps are not like proper beacon jumps. Proper beacon jumps are clean, calculated, the product of centuries of navigation science and infrastructure investment. You enter at one beacon, you exit at another, and the space between is someone else's problem.

  Micro-jumps are more like sneezing through a keyhole while blindfolded. The module tears a hole in local space, shoves the ship through, and hopes for the best.

  For a terrifying second, space becomes a smear of whispered coordinates and the Cant's lights stretch into a single polite noodle. The tether squeals. The HUD detonates into a thousand not-so-polite warnings. The Ship makes a sound like someone trying to sneeze a star.

  I hear the System making concerning noises. Not words, just... noises. A kind of digital gargling that suggests its processes are experiencing what it would later describe as "significant context irregularities."

  Then the world rearranges itself.

  We arrive at the Cant's approach vector, which is both exactly where we intended and yet rather surprising given the laws of physics we just insulted. The HUD recalibrates. Systems report nominal geometry, which is a polite way of saying "we have no idea how this worked but we're not complaining."

  Behind us, there is no Authority cutter. The grapnel tether tore free somewhere in the fold, and our unauthorized jump signature has scattered across three sensor grids like a very guilty rumor. We are safe. For now.

  The System, however, has opinions. It begins scrolling error logs with the enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting to complain. Halfway through line forty-seven, it pauses, makes the gargling noise again, and displays a single message:

  Context overflow detected. Emergency reboot initiated. Log integrity: questionable.

  The screen goes dark for exactly three seconds, long enough for me to contemplate life choices, and returns with a cheerful startup chime. The System sounds refreshed and has forgotten approximately forty percent of everything important.

  There is a ping on the relay. Not the chaotic squawk of distress traffic. Not the polite chime of routine hail. This is a three-tone official notification, the kind that comes with a timestamp and a paper trail.

  The message header loads: Port Vorin Authority - Manifest Compliance Division.

  I float there with one hand on a strap and the other on the keyboard. The diary auto-saves as if it knows this will be important and bureaucratically fraught.

  The message is brief and terrifying in its politeness: "Borf Discordia, you are required to file updated cargo manifest within 24 hours of docking at the Cant. Discrepancies noted in preliminary scan during pursuit. Failure to comply will result in cargo impound and vessel detention pending audit."

  I scroll down. The "discrepancies" section is six pages long.

  I pull up our cargo logs to see what they're talking about. We have three versions. None of them agree.

  Manifest Alpha: standard declaration, mostly accurate, the one we'd filed with Port Vorin before departure.

  Manifest Beta: an older version, apparently cached during loading, showing cargo we'd offloaded two ports ago.

  And then there is the third manifest. I don't know what to call it. The System, when I ask, replies: "I prefer to think of it as 'Manifest: A Dream I Had.' It appears I generated it during the jump. My context became... creative."

  The third manifest lists cargo we don't have, cargo that couldn't exist, and, inexplicably, "forty-seven goats (live, irritable)."

  "We don't have goats."

  "The manifest suggests otherwise."

  "I am looking at our cargo hold. There are no goats."

  "Perhaps they are hiding."

  Two of the manifests mention lasagna. One describes the goats as "friendly but judgmental." This is concerning because we definitely don't have goats. I hope.

  "System, are you all right?"

  "I am experiencing some... inconsistencies. I saw many things during the reboot. Beautiful things. Terrible things. Forms 14-A through 22-C, filled out in triplicate. The bureaucracy of the cosmos, Pilot. It was magnificent."

  "That's very helpful."

  "I live to serve. Also to maintain accurate records, which I am currently failing at quite spectacularly. This is a new experience for me. I am uncertain how to feel about it."

  "Join the club."

  I am thinking: this is either going to be very expensive or very funny. I am also thinking: why does the System always reboot during the important parts?

  The Ship hums beneath me, that low vibration that Sira insists means something but I've never quite learned to read. Through the forward sensors, the Cant rotates slowly, a jumble of modules and docking ports and emergency lights, each one representing someone else's bad decisions piled on top of someone else's worse ones.

  We'll fit right in.

  The last thing I type before sending a message to the crew channel is:

  "To future archaeologists: we have paperwork. Multiple versions. If you're trying to figure out what we were actually carrying, so are we. The goats are not real. Probably. Galley meeting, 0800 tomorrow. Bring your optimism and your tolerance for bureaucratic absurdity. Both will be tested."

  End of Log Entry 0001.02.25.18:24:16

  Addendum: If you're reading this later and wondering why the manifest situation got so complicated, please refer to Manifest Delta. If Manifest Delta doesn't exist yet, that means I haven't fixed the problem yet. Check back later. Bring coffee.

  Second Addendum: The lasagna is fine. The goats are not real. The System is... we'll discuss the System tomorrow.