The Cairn · Vessel
MV Kedge
Civilian Motor Vessel, commercial charter – THE HULL THAT CARRIES NO EMBARKED AUTHORITY.
Designation
motor-vessel
T5 The Guttering Age · 2312–2349 Merchant derived
What her era can carry. Full ordinary armament: coil and rail accelerators · finite kinetic magazines · guided munitions and interceptor missiles · point-defence guns · defensive and sensor-directed lasers · drones, decoys and electronic warfare · advanced kinetic boarding and surface weapons.
The boundary-weapon family exists and is constrained — expensive, signature-heavy, politically fraught. Most hulls of this era are civilian and carry nothing. ⚠ Ordinary traversal needs no chain; a merchant hull is a merchant hull.
Merchant. Holds and margins. Ordinarily unarmed; a merchant with a magazine is a plot point, not a default.
⚠ A ceiling, not a fit — what a hull of this class could carry in this era, derived from the capability ladder rather than stated for this ship. She may well carry less; she is never shown carrying more. Source: Era tier T5 (bible/48 §2) · role inferred from class/description.
The record
Class and design
MV, commercial charter. Carries NO embarked authority — hers came off her in 2338. On a traffic board she is indistinguishable from Tallow, Fettle and Capstan.
Service history
• B1 · 2334→2335 — Rusnak is a competitor and a colleague and nothing has broken yet. • B2 · ~2336–2337 · Mireth — Already there, on charter, carrying the outside carriers' assay party and their gear for the works-ground let. He got the job precisely because Mireth's road was unauthenticated, and Kedge goes where nothing is. Wells de-authenticates the approach with his people on the far side; he takes Kedge across anyway; he gets most of them; he does not lose the hull; he loses some. His authority comes off him afterwards — 2338 — in an office, over paper, in ten minutes, neither party raising their voice. NEITHER IS WRONG AND NEITHER WILL EVER SAY SO. • B3 / Cairn B5 · 2342 — SHE DOES THE THING THE CAIRN PROSCRIBED ITSELF FROM DOING WITH PAPER. - Asked at by Kade, through her network — the thing the government cannot do. He took Kade's ask before the chamber sat. - Clears the docks at, during movement control. THE BERTH IS MORROW'S — a lawful Concession berth booking and a card issued at the desk in the ordinary way. NO FORGED DOCUMENT (G-2). Nobody in the scene notes that it is the same move Morrow made in 2334, and Kade pays her ledger price again. - On station at — nine days, against §3's seven-to-ten-working-day leg. A Kedge asked on the day she relays is a hull travelling at the speed of the plot. - She is out past a boundary on nobody's authority, on station where the plan assumed Fettle was. - WHAT SHE HEARS: the far end's schedule traffic stops at an hour Rusnak can state, and does not resume inside the time he stays on station; one booked identifier he had been hearing does not come back either. HE HEARS THE STOP. HE DOES NOT HEAR THE CAUSE, AND THERE IS NO HOUR FOR A CAUSE. - The relay goes to Kade, arrives at the relay heart where Espinoza is standing, and it CANNOT BE RECORDED. - After: paid, intact — and no more forgiven than she was (P-W5). • B4 · 2342→2343 — Rusnak takes the job that requires no authentication: going behind a stripped road. Without a word of debate.
Compiled from the canon file for this hull. Only sections that are settled canon are shown — drafting notes and anything belonging to an unpublished book are held back.