We met the captain of the Grass Ark and the Tree Spirit observer stationed here by the Empire in a customs office at the civilian starport. It was this observer who had reported the Ghost Ship component.
This civilian starport had a great many modular customs offices. Any ship docked here for more than a week could apply for one free of charge, using it to handle official business and exchange all kinds of intelligence with the Empire's administrative departments. Naturally, they could also be used for business negotiations. Many "special" merchant ships traveling through the Macro World conducted their trade directly at starports. They traveled from one starport to another, their cargo holds always filled with goods that remained in constant circulation. They were middlemen and transporters, and aside from downtime, they never left their ships or set foot on any planet. These interworld merchants called themselves "starship peddlers," and their slogan was, "We don't produce resources; we're merely nature's porters." But those starship merchants had nothing to do with these Forest Spirits. I was rather curious why they had applied for an office too. They met the requirements, but as merchants, they had no cargo, no intelligence to hand over, and no business partners to receive. An office like this seemed utterly pointless for such a down-and-out group of traders.
The merchant captain, who looked no different from any other mimosa, answered my question with remarkable shamelessness. "It's free, so why not use it? My ship and cargo are both gone. You won't even let me take a little advantage here?"
Right then, I felt that these crafty merchants who had been among the first to conduct trade in the Macro World had probably all been stamped from the same mold. In this mimosa, I saw the shadow