The campaign
16 jobs, flown in order, 29,700 credits of work. They start honest — a crew coming off shift, a load of aggregate, a man hurt underground — and then the work gets stranger.
Who you fly for
Mercy Dane is dispatch: laconic, has seen everything twice, and her affection for the pilot only ever leaks out as logistics. Ruth Holloway is the forewoman out on the claims — blunt, protective of her crews, and superstitious about the water lines in a way she will not put into words. "Cass" Cassidy is the other cowboy: all swagger on the long band, all precision on the stick. Doc Ellis is calm on a bad frequency and measures everything in time. Dr Manuel Aronowsky is brilliant, insufferable, and the only one who suspects what is under the ground. He never finishes an explanation.
Act one teaches the trade. Act two is where the work gets strange — a survey that reads too clean, an infestation nobody will name, a rival who turns out to be worth racing. Act three is consequences. Nobody ever explains the fungobots. Nobody ever will.
Every mission
| # | Mission | Pay | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shift Change Crew | 800 cr | Welcome to Ferris Station. Mercy Dane, dispatch — the voice in your ear from here on out, so we had better get along. |
| 2 | Rock, Moved Cargo | 1,000 cr | Ruth Holloway runs the claims out on the shelf, and Ladybird is hers. Seventy units of aggregate are sitting where her conveyor used to be, and the conveyor is not coming back this quarter. She has opinions about that. You are about to hear several. |
| 3 | The Long Rotation Crew | 1,200 cr | Six of Holloway’s crew at her mid claim, three weeks out. That is the long rotation, and it is further than you have flown yet. |
| 4 | Man Down 16-min deadline Medevac Fragile | 1,800 cr | Rockfall on the second level at one of Holloway’s claims. One man down — Reyes, her best driller. Conscious, which is the good news. The med hut out there is a hut, which is the rest of it. |
| 5 | Sixty Hours Crew | 1,300 cr | There is a woman at the Crew Terminal who has been there since the small hours and is not going to be talked out of anything. Her name is Ada Vance, and you should use it. |
| 6 | Nothing There Survey | 1,400 cr | Somebody wants a stretch of empty ground looked at and will not say why. Fly the marks, hold the read. |
| 7 | The Far Rotation Crew | 1,800 cr | Seven off shift at the far end of the shelf. Long haul out, longer back with a full cabin. |
| 8 | The Good Stuff Cargo | 2,200 cr | A serious load of the good stuff, off the claim with the best seam and the worst name. |
| 9 | Fungobots 14-min deadline Crew | 2,000 cr | Something has come back up through the water lines. Security team in, on the clock, nobody explaining. |
| 10 | The Lucky Strike Night Crew | 1,600 cr | A night run out to The Lucky Strike. The pay is fine. The company is the point. |
| 11 | The Other Cowboy Race | 2,400 cr | The other cowboy has opinions about who is faster, and a course to settle it on. |
| 12 | Doctor Aronowsky Survey Crew | 2,200 cr | Dr Aronowsky needs a reading held for a full minute over ground he will not describe. |
| 13 | Under the Horizon Low altitude Crew | 2,400 cr | A consignment that would rather the radar did not see it. Stay under the horizon the whole way. |
| 14 | Fresh Crater Crew | 2,200 cr | Fresh impact, still warm. Go and look at what landed. |
| 15 | A Room With A View Survey Crew | 2,400 cr | Three prospects, three marks, one flight. The last honest survey before things stop being honest. |
| 16 | Something Is Burning 11-min deadline Cargo | 3,000 cr | The ground is burning and the only thing out here that puts it out is ice. Move. |
Pay is on completion, and only on completion. A mission cannot be brute-forced past by flying it badly sixteen times, so the ship gets better at exactly the rate the story advances. The whole campaign pays about three-fifths of a full fit-out — the rest comes off the job board.
After the sixteenth
The campaign only moves forward, but the work does not stop. Finish it and the job board opens: procedurally generated contracts in batches of three — backlogs, supply runs, crew rotations, medevacs, surveys flown low and slow, and Cassidy wanting a rematch. They carry the same tags the campaign does: Deadline Fragile Race Survey Night rate, and they keep coming.
You can also refly any mission you have already finished, for the scenery. It pays nothing. That is not the point of it.