What-The-Paper-Said
"It's a claim," Sereda Box said, when she'd read enough of it aloud that the wind took the legal words and scattered them. "A homestead water-claim. You think a piece of paper stops four rigs?"
"I think it's not my paper," Quill said. "That's the part you want to hear."
She let the silence run, because silence was the one thing she still owned outright. Then: "I borrowed this claim. It belongs to the moss-farmers at Tin Hollow — eighty-one families who filed it, all legal, back when your Combine's charter was still ink wet on a desk three star-systems from here. The aquifer is theirs by deed. Now: you can pump it. I can't stop you. I've got no gun and you've got six." She nodded at the rigs, droning, drinking the moon dry. "But the second your slurry shows ore on the manifest, that ore was processed with stolen water on a registered claim, and that, Mister Box, is not a marshal's problem. That's a *title* problem. It follows the ore. It follows the buyer. It follows every credit you'll ever try to spend it on, all the way back to the men who hold your charter — the men who can ruin you with a stamp and won't lift a finger to save you from a war over a moon they've never seen."
Box's smile had gone somewhere. "You can't prove the claim predates—"
"It's filed," Quill said gently. "On three worlds. I checked before I rode out here with nothing. That's why I rode out with