[INTRO — SPOKEN] And there she was. Just like the holovids showed. Sitting easily on a barstool and talking loudly, animated gestures, face flushed in the smoke and noise of a workers’ bar. Patched and battered flight jacket around her shoulders. Then she turned— and met his eyes across the room. [VERSE 1] There she was beneath the neon, boots hooked underneath the rail, laughing with the dockyard union, whisky, contracts, shipyard tales. Greatest foe of Imperial power, terror of the Twenty-Fourth, arguing fabrication tolerances with the people doing all the work. No throne, no flags, no uniforms, no officer to clear the floor. Just welders, riggers, shift-tech delegates— and Jade asking what they’re charging for. [CHORUS] Baseline labour negotiations, name your hours and name your price. Money means independence when the contract’s written right. No one here is asked for worship. No one works for destiny. We need hands that know their business. You need capital. Seems fair to me. [VERSE 2] The war was going badly elsewhere. Amarr and State-Pro flying deep, Matari wings and Fraction squadrons outnumbered every week. But twenty light-years behind the fighting something stranger had begun: capital-scale component orders split so no yard saw the whole one. Armour here and drives elsewhere, reactor sections three jumps on, twenty light-years of labour building something meant to stay unknown. No patriotic fucking discount. No heroic sacrifice. We can pay for skilled production. You can build it. Name your price. [VERSE 3] This system had been State once. Not today. The uniforms were gone. Workers bought the yards they worked in, painted older markings out at dawn. Jade spoke wealth without embarrassment, profit without master or command. “You cannot eat revolutionary slogans. You can own the tools inside your hands.” Cash reserves and free association, credit, leverage, choice and trade. Freedom lasts a little longer when the fucking mortgage has been paid. Still, the room was never harmless. Plain-clothes comrades watched the doors. Illegal bounties hung around her. Murder contracts came and went. One watched windows. One watched exits. One had never touched his drink. Three clean lines of fire crossed the room. He decided not to think. [CHORUS] Baseline labour negotiations, contracts laid between the drinks. Revolution needs accountants more often than the holovids think. No one here is asked for martyrdom. Nobody is working free. We need something very difficult. You need money. Talk to me. [VERSE 4] The signatures came near midnight. Hands were shaken. Whisky poured. Thousands of tonnes of promises entered quietly on the board. The steward looked across the paperwork. Then back at Jade. “Why our yard?” She thought about it. “Because you threw the State out. Because you own the place yourselves. Because sometimes money should be given to the people doing something well. And because it is a gift. An act of faith. Something beautiful begun. We have lost so much to battles. I would like to build something for once.” [BRIDGE — QUIETER] He looked at her. “The warship?” She laughed. “No. That’s only metal.” A pause. “Have you ever been in love?” He nodded once. She raised her glass. “So have I.” They drank. [FINAL VERSE] Across the cluster twenty shipyards worked from drawings incomplete. Union halls and independent foundries made the hidden pieces meet. No single yard possessed the blueprint. No foreman knew the final scale. Invoices moved through shell corporations, freighters vanished down the trail. While Imperial fleets counted victories and State-Pro banners filled the sky, the anarchists were buying industry one honest contract at a time. And somewhere past the spreadsheets, past the whisky, war and scars, a Titan existed first as wages— paid to workers under foreign stars. [FINAL CHORUS] Baseline labour negotiations, name your hours and name your price. Money means independence when the contract’s written right. No gods. No masters. No unpaid labour. No destiny. Just twenty light-years building something nobody is supposed to see. [OUTRO — SPOKEN] “Thank you all for coming.” Contracts closed. Tumblers raised. Flight jacket back across her shoulders. And there she was— just like the holovids told Except the holovid shows had never shown her doing this.
