Drew woke before dawn, lungs working too hard.

  He lay still, staring at the ceiling, forcing air in and out until his body accepted it.

  No wire. No hands. No pressure.

  Just memory.

  He dressed without summoning a runner and walked to the manufacturing warehouse while the sky remained iron gray.

  Inside, the night shift moved in steady rhythm. Presses creaked. Glue cured beneath weighted clamps. Workers fed thin veneers into laminating frames, building panels that would become ribs, decks, spars.

  Drew found a makeshift desk of stacked crates against the wall. He dragged it forward just enough to sit with his back to solid timber.

  A guard shifted nearby.

  Not one of Diego’s usual men.

  Drew noted his stance. His hands. His distance from the door.

  He would ask about him later.

  The chair groaned as he sat.

  He couldn’t prove who had tried to kill him. Nueva Trujillo. A collapsing faction. Someone protecting an investment.

  It didn’t matter.

  The fastest way to hurt an enemy wasn’t blood.

  It was margins.

  Rafael fought men. Drew would fight systems.

  Cargo at Deadwake was loaded by hand. Crates and sacks of mismatched size stacked like a careless puzzle. Lift wasted on bad geometry.

  Inefficient didn’t begin to describe it.

  On Earth, shipping hadn’t been revolutionized by faster ships.

  It had been standardized containers.

  Faster loading meant faster routes. Faster routes meant profit compounding while others stalled.

  Thren and the Golden Ledger could move more without building more ships.

  And if it was Nueva Trujillo that had tried to kill him, they would feel it first.

  Their leverage over shipping would shrink. Quietly. Permanently.

  Claire had introduced plywood to Deadwake.

  Drew would show her what it could really do.

  He uncapped the inkwell, his hand trembling slightly, and opened his leather bound journal.

  Rather than waste rare timber on solid posts, he sketched laminated plywood arranged into hollow box columns, grain layered in opposing directions. Interior webbing resisted buckling. Composite corners lighter and stronger than raw beams. Common sheets turned structural.

  Scarcity was a design constraint.

  He divided the page into two standards: a half-span crate for rapid handling and a full-span container designed for controlled lowering through a belly hatch.

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  Ribbed torsion box walls.

  Palletized floors feeding weight into laminated corner columns.

  Reinforced lift lugs.

  Interlocking stacking sockets so loads traveled column to column instead of crushing wicker.

  A faint sound near the door made him glance up.

  Still there.

  Still watching.

  He returned to the page.

  A current brigantine might fit four full-span containers. Maybe fewer. The interior would need redesign.

  He didn’t need a new class of ship.

  He needed ships that wasted less lift on bad habits.

  He grabbed an existing brigantine blueprint and marked two belly cutouts sized for half-span containers, aligned between primary frames and ringed with laminated collars. Internal rails would turn the hold into a measured grid instead of a tangle of rope and guesswork.

  The worst drag came from wicker skins that let wind bleed straight through the hull. In the margins, Drew specified thin plywood sheathing glued and fastened over the ribs. A secondary skin thick enough to seal airflow and tie the frame into a continuous shell.

  Seal the hull , shed dead weight and standardize the load.

  On paper it wasn’t magic.

  It was math.

  Done right, a brig could haul fifteen percent more on the same lift. Closer to twenty if crews followed the grid.

  And they would unload faster.

  When Drew finally looked up, sunlight poured through the warehouse windows. At some point the night shift had been replaced by the day crew.

  The main doors opened. Diego entered with a cluster of engineers.

  Several Drew recognized from the Winter Trader project. Others followed like uncertain ducklings, unfamiliar faces with ink-stained fingers and cautious eyes.

  Drew narrowed his gaze.

  To scale manufacturing like Thren wanted, they needed more engineers.

  But where had these come from?

  Drew glanced toward the door.

  The new guard was still there.

  And now he was listening.

  One of the senior engineers stepped forward.

  “This is Drew Wilson. The mind behind keelweave and the Winter Trader.”

  Drew stood, gave a half bow, and nodded to the group.

  “Good to see many of you again.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “You’ve all seen the laminated hull from the Windfall Run?”

  Eager nods. Bright eyes. Hunger.

  It steadied him.

  “I believe we can significantly improve manufacturing performance and cargo efficiency. The goal is simple. More lift devoted to goods. Less wasted on structure and chaos.”

  He turned the journal so they could see.

  “For the first time in Deadwake, cargo will have rules.”

  As he began outlining the redesign, energy returned to him.

  A newcomer raised her hand.

  “Teresa I?ez. Formerly of the Free Masts.” She did not lower her chin when she spoke. “You’re proposing we rebuild the interiors of every brig in port. They were all built on different architectures.”

  Several of the engineers shifted.

  Drew studied her. Steady posture. Direct gaze. Not defensive.

  “You’re right,” Drew said. “They were.”

  A faint tightening around the room.

  “And that is precisely the problem.”

  He lifted the journal with the proposed schematics higher.

  “We are not rebuilding every brig. We are selecting which brigs survive.”

  The word survive lingered longer than he intended.

  A murmur at that.

  “Standardization isn’t universal adoption. It’s economic pressure. Ships that convert will move more cargo per lift. Ships that don’t will fall behind.”

  Teresa tilted her head. “So this is natural selection.”

  “Infrastructure selection,” Drew corrected.

  Her mouth curved slightly. Not agreement. Not yet.

  “And who decides the standard?”

  Drew did not hesitate.

  “We do.”

  Drew looked over to Diego. The man did not smile.

  Terresa’s mouth curved slightly. "Then I choose to evolve."

  She turned to the other engineers. "Who else is rebuilding their hulls?"

  Violence had tried to silence him.

  Instead, he would redesign the world around it. Drew smiled as a message popped up in his vision.

  [SYSTEM UPDATE]

  Skill: Crafting +200 XP (Industrial Innovation)

  Skill Effect Gained:

  ? Increased structural efficiency estimation during design drafting

  ? Minor reduction in material waste during modular fabrication

  Learning Source: Independent Design Application

  [SYSTEM UPDATE]

  Skill: Intelligence +150 XP (Strategic Infrastructure)

  Cognitive Effect:

  ? Improved long-term logistics projection

  ? Enhanced multi-variable load optimization awareness

  (Crafting now 14,700 / [Next Threshold] | Intelligence 3,150 / [Next Threshold])

  As the engineers dispersed, Drew caught Diego's eye and gestured toward the guard.

  Diego glanced over, then back to Drew, expression flat.

  "Ledger oversight," he said quietly. "Gets to see everything we build. Starting now."