The Starloom Song

Helix Harbor crouched in the crook of a small gravity well like a machine folded into itself: tiers of shipping spines, bridges strung with drying nets of polymer, and the great ring at its heart that everyone simply called the Loom. The ring was older than most of the voices that argued in the market square; it glowed bone-white at dusk and sang low when freighters threaded its currents. Iris Tane had grown up with that music braided into her memory — the particular interval that lifted a hull and the soft, satisfied rumble that let a dock bay breathe out. At twenty-one, grease had settled into the lines at the base of her fingernails and a permanent smell of metal and frying algae clung to her clothes. She wore her hair clipped to one side and a grin like a small defiant flare.

She was bent over a spool of fiber in the Loom's maintenance well, hands small enough to coax a kink straight without a tool. Sparks were the Loom's punctuation; a failed spark meant a misaligned lane or a missed delivery. Around her, technicians moved like a hive whose songs had shifted just a notch too high: worried and efficient. Bright banners promised ration runs in exchange for repairs. A child under a blanket watched the ring turn through an observation slit and hummed the lullaby the Loom made when it ran true. Iris felt that lullaby in the marrow; when a note went wrong she heard it like a cough.

'You look like you swallowed a rusted bolt,' Bren said, leaning in the maintenance doorway. He was older by a dozen years, a pilot who had once outrun a banking levy. Oil scarred his knuckles and he smelled of old coffee and ship foam. 'We got a ticker from Lagrange. Freight came through with no tail-thread. Cargo lost. People at the square are hollering.'

Iris rolled the spool and listened. The Loom's hum fell away then returned as if remembering some line in the middle of a song. Her fingers paused on the filament; it felt slack.

'It's not just fray,' she said. The words had a small, brittle quality. Around them, the maintenance well hummed lower, as if the entire ring leaned toward her.

Someone ran down the ladder — Pux, a repair drone with one eye patched and a voice like wind through a vent. It clicked and handed Iris a cube that smelled faintly of ozone and courier ink. She pressed the surface and the message spun up: a clipped notice, a registry entry, a single line flagged bright red. THE THRUM-NEEDLE: REMOVED FROM VAULT 7. NO AUTHORISED SIGNATURE.

The maintenance well felt too small all at once. People kept working, of course. People always kept working. But the song of the Loom sitting thinner in the air was a new kind of silence, and Iris felt it press against her ribs like a damp cloth.