Story Bible — Drift¶

Second installment of the Faction 4 series. Directly follows Echos in the Cold. Status: Pre-production / lore draft

Premise¶

The ejection capsule is ballistic and running out of air. The data module is hidden in the foam. One of the two people inside the capsule knows where the other side is. The other one thinks they escaped.

Setting¶

The ejection capsule from Hephaistos-9's Waste Disposal Pod Bay. Deep space. Outer transit lanes, Veridion system periphery. No running lights. No transponder. No communication — yet.

Duration: several days of drift before life support begins failing.

Prologue — After the Launch (5–8 pages)¶

The prologue covers the immediate aftermath of the escape and the first sleep cycle, before the interactive section begins.

Page 1 — Ballistic¶

The capsule is not a ship. It has no engine, no navigation, no windows rated for sustained occupancy. It has impact foam, a sealed hatch, an emergency oxygen recycler, and approximately seventy-two hours of rated life support for one person.

There are two of you.

The recycler hums at a frequency that is exactly two cycles per second below the frequency that human hearing identifies as pleasant. You have been aware of this for twenty-three minutes. You will be aware of it for the foreseeable future.

Kirk is in the other half of the foam, facing the opposite bulkhead. His breathing has already slowed to the even cadence of a man who has decided that sleep is the most efficient use of limited oxygen. You cannot tell if this is exhaustion or discipline. You find that you are not sure which answer would be more concerning.

The data module pulses its amber light in the foam behind your left shoulder. Slow. Patient.

You close your eyes. You do not sleep. You run calculations.

Page 2 — The Arithmetic¶

Seventy-two hours rated for one. Two occupants. Call it thirty-six hours before the recycler begins to struggle — less, if either of you exerts.

The salvage lanes are approximately sixty hours out at ballistic velocity. You performed this calculation before you launched. You performed it because someone who spent four years in the Vanguard Corps learns to run the arithmetic before the capsule, not inside it.

The numbers are not good. They are not impossible. The distance between those two assessments is where you live right now.

Kirk's breathing is very even for a man who nearly got killed an hour ago.

You notice this the way you notice weather.

Page 3 — While You Were Watching¶

You do not remember deciding to sleep. Your body made the decision without consulting you — the specific, unilateral mutiny of a system that has been operating on adrenaline and is now presenting the bill.

When you surface, the recycler is making a sound it was not making before. Not the two-cycles-below-pleasant hum. Something lower. Something that is either a normal operational variance or a component settling into a failure mode.

You have encountered both. You know what they sound like. You cannot currently tell which this is.

Kirk is awake. He is facing the communications panel — the emergency transmitter, a short-range unit, range approximately forty thousand kilometres in optimal conditions. He has something in his hand. A small device. A secondary transmitter. The kind you do not find in a standard waste disposal capsule.

His thumb is moving.

Page 4 — The Question You Do Not Ask¶

You watch him for three seconds.

Four years in the Vanguard Corps teaches you specific things about people who think they are unobserved. The tension in the shoulders. The particular quality of attention focused on a small object. The controlled quality of the breathing that is the opposite of sleep.

Kirk finishes what he is doing and puts the device into the inner pocket of his suit. He turns. He sees you watching him.

'You're awake,' he says. His voice has the slightly-too-even quality of a man who has just decided what expression to arrange his face into.

'The recycler,' you say. 'There's a sound.'

He listens. He nods, with the expression of a man who is relieved to have something concrete to focus on. 'Yeah. I heard that. Probably just the seal settling in vacuum.'

'Probably,' you say.

You do not ask about the device. Not yet. You file it in the same drawer as Cinder-7, in the section labelled information I have and am not ready to use, and you turn your attention to the recycler.

Page 5 — Day Two¶

The recycler is not settling. The sound has deepened over the past fourteen hours into something that is definitively a failure mode and not a variance. The oxygen percentage in the cabin has dropped 1.3 points since launch. At current rate of decline you have approximately eighteen hours before hypoxia begins to impair judgment.

The capsule's systems are failing in a specific, cascading sequence that you have seen before, in older equipment, in outer ring stations that Apex Industrial maintains on the minimum viable side of operational. It is not random. It is an old system doing what old systems do when the load exceeds the rating.

There is also the matter of the comms panel.

The emergency transmitter shows a fault — a corroded contact on the primary antenna relay, located on the exterior hull. The kind of fault that was there before launch and that no one checked because waste disposal systems are not security concerns.

The contact is outside.

Kirk, upon being informed of this, says: 'I'll go.'

He says it immediately. Without hesitation. With the specific quality of a man who has a reason to want to be the one who fixes the antenna.

'We both go,' you say.

Page 6 — What the Dark Looks Like¶

The EVA takes forty minutes.

The capsule has two emergency suits — a fact that surprised Kirk and did not surprise you, because waste disposal capsules in Apex-contracted stations are technically rated for crew recovery operations and must carry two EVA units by regulation. The suits are old. They are functional. The seals check out.

Outside, the Veridion system is a distant smear of light. The dead ice planet is invisible at this range. Hephaistos-9 is invisible. The black ship is invisible.

Everything is invisible. This is either good or it is the specific kind of good that is actually a countdown.

Kirk works on the antenna relay with the focused efficiency of a man who knows exactly what he is doing. Not the performance of competence you have watched for eighteen months. The real thing.

You watch his hands.

His hands are not the hands of a man who lost his study materials in a card game.

Page 7 — The Repair¶

The antenna contact is cleaned and reseated. The corroded section is bypassed with a conductive patch from the suit's emergency kit — your idea, implemented by Kirk with a speed and precision that no maintenance technician eighteen months into their first serious contract should possess.

The comms panel registers green when you return inside.

Kirk seals his helmet and does not look at you immediately. He is doing something with his suit controls — adjusting the frequency, he says. Making sure the emergency beacon is on the right band.

The band he enters is not the standard emergency frequency.

You see this. He does not know you see this. You are very good at watching things without appearing to watch them. Four years in the Vanguard Corps.

You do not say anything. You file it next to the device from day one, in the drawer, in the section that is getting crowded.

The oxygen percentage is at seventeen point two. You have perhaps twelve hours of clear thinking left. Then the numbers change.

Page 8 — The Fade¶

The recycler fails completely at hour nineteen.

What remains is the passive oxygen in the cabin, degrading at a rate that is academic to calculate and practical to feel. The quality of the air changes. The recycler's silence is louder than its noise was. Kirk attempts a repair — a genuine attempt, you think, though you are no longer entirely certain what genuine means in reference to Kirk — and the repair partially succeeds. The recycler comes back at reduced capacity. It buys time. Not enough time. Enough time.

You are both, by this point, operating at the slow end of cognition. Sentences take longer to assemble. The amber pulse of the data module in the foam is very bright. You are aware this is subjective. You are aware you are aware of this, which means the judgment centres are still functioning, which is the specific reassurance of someone who knows exactly what they are losing.

Kirk's last words before you both lose consciousness are quiet and almost entirely without the performance.

'Janus. I'm sorry.'

You do not have enough oxygen left to ask him what he means.

You decide to remember the question.

Then the dark.

Interactive Section — Adrift¶

Overview¶

The player takes control during day two, when the life support systems begin their cascade failure. The capsule has three interconnected problems: the oxygen recycler, the electrical bus (degraded), and the external comms. All three must be addressed before the oxygen runs out.

The interactive section takes place under a soft oxygen timer — each turn costs oxygen. The player must sequence repairs efficiently. Kirk assists when directed, and his assistance is notably more competent than his cover identity would suggest.

Rooms¶

Capsule Interior¶

The main living space. The recycler is here. The electrical bus junction is accessible through a panel in the floor. The comms panel is on the forward bulkhead.

Available actions:

• EXAMINE RECYCLER — diagnoses the recycler fault: clogged particulate filter + degraded pump bearing. Both must be addressed.
• CLEAN FILTER / REPLACE FILTER — uses material salvaged from the suit kit lining. Partial fix. Recycler efficiency improves.
• EXAMINE ELECTRICAL PANEL / OPEN FLOOR PANEL — reveals the bus junction. Primary power rail has a short — caused by coolant vapor condensation during the Hephaistos-9 launch sequence.
• DRY BUS / INSULATE RAIL — requires the emergency thermal blanket from the wall kit. Corrects the short. Restores power to the recycler pump.
• EXAMINE COMMS — diagnoses the antenna fault: corroded exterior relay contact. Cannot be repaired from inside.
• TALK TO KIRK — Kirk offers to help. Accepts direction. His competence level in crisis is measurably higher than in non-crisis conditions. Janus notices this. Scores +0 but narrative flag set.
• ASK KIRK ABOUT [device/frequency/hands] — Kirk deflects, cleanly. Narrative flags. No score.

Score milestones available: 2 of 5

Capsule Exterior (EVA only)¶

Accessible by suiting up and cycling the hatch. Zero gravity. Open space. The antenna relay is on the hull aft of the hatch.

• EXAMINE RELAY — identifies the corroded contact and bypass solution.
• CLEAN CONTACT / BYPASS RELAY — requires conductive patch from suit kit. Fixes the antenna. Comms go live.
• LOOK — open space, no visible features except the distant smear of the Veridion system. The black ship is not visible. Yet.

Score milestones available: 1 of 5

Optimal Repair Sequence¶

EXAMINE RECYCLER (+0 — diagnostic)
  → CLEAN FILTER (+1)
  → OPEN FLOOR PANEL (+0)
  → INSULATE RAIL (+1)
  → RECYCLER RESTORES (partial — buys turns)
  → SUIT UP
  → CYCLE HATCH
  → EXAMINE RELAY
  → BYPASS RELAY (+1)
  → RETURN INSIDE
  → SEAL HATCH
  → COMMS LIVE (+1)
  → [oxygen declining — final turns]
  → Kirk sets frequency (player may or may not notice)
  → Oxygen fails → both unconscious → END (+1 for surviving)

What Kirk Does With the Comms¶

When the comms come online, Kirk sets the emergency frequency — ostensibly to the standard outer-ring salvage distress band. The player may examine the panel afterward and discover the actual frequency does not match the standard band. This is a narrative flag with no mechanical consequence in Drift — it becomes the active thread in the next installment.

If the player asks Kirk about the frequency directly, Kirk says the band drifted during the repair and he corrected it. The answer is plausible. It is incorrect.

Score System¶

Failure Conditions¶

• Attempting EVA without suiting up → suit integrity loss → rapid failure
• Exhausting oxygen before completing repairs → unconscious, insufficient O2 for recovery → LOSE
• Spending too many turns without progress → oxygen falls below threshold before comms are repaired → LOSE (partial — capsule is seized but Janus does not wake)

Intermissions¶

Epilogue — Wake Up¶

This is not a win/lose bifurcation. Drift ends the same way regardless of score — the oxygen fails, both lose consciousness, the capsule is seized. Score determines condition on waking (higher score = better physical state) and whether the data module is still in the foam.

Epilogue — Full Score (4–5)¶

The recycler was running at partial capacity when the oxygen failed. The repair bought enough buffer that Janus's recovery from hypoxia is faster than it would otherwise have been.

He wakes in a hangar.

The capsule is on a cradle. The hatch is open. The foam padding shows the outline where the data module sat — Kirk found it, or someone found it, or neither, which means it is still there and they did not look, which means either they do not know about it or they are waiting.

Kirk is gone.

The hangar is pressurised. Artificial gravity — either spin or a full grav-plate installation, which means this is not a small ship. The lights are amber industrial, not emergency. Somewhere above the level of the catwalk, there are footsteps.

The data module's amber pulse is not visible from where Janus is lying.

He does not move. He runs the arithmetic.

Epilogue — Low Score (0–3)¶

He wakes in a hangar and the recycler was barely running and the hypoxia has left a specific residue in the edges of his thinking — not quite fog, more like a sentence whose last word keeps arriving slightly after the rest of it.

The capsule hatch is open. Kirk is gone. Someone has been through the foam.

Janus cannot tell, immediately, whether the data module is still there. He cannot get up quickly enough to check.

There are footsteps above him, descending the catwalk ladder.

He breathes. He is patient. He has eleven years of practice at this particular kind of waiting.

Whatever this is, it has just started.

The Hangar — 2–3 Pages (Opening of Next Installment)¶

The following pages establish the opening of the third story before the interactive section begins. They are written as prologue pages for installment 3 (working title: Anchor).

Hangar Page 1 — Inventory¶

The footsteps stop.

Janus has completed his inventory without moving: one body, supine, in a capsule cradle in a pressurised hangar. Artificial gravity — full grav-plate, the kind that costs money, the kind that does not wobble. Amber working lights. Steel-plate deck. The smell of recycled air and machine oil and something else, something that might be food preparation from a distant compartment, which means this structure is occupied and has been occupied for long enough that the air has a history.

The capsule hatch is open. The EVA suits are still racked inside — they took him but left the suits, which suggests either they were in a hurry or they consider him manageable without equipment, both of which are assessments he will need to verify.

His hands are unrestrained. His comms are gone — the wrist unit, stripped.

His pockets have been searched. He knows this the way he knows most things about his own body: not from inspection but from the precise wrongness of position. The MST-4 is in his left thigh pocket. It belongs in his right. The TAP-7 is facing the wrong direction. His credit chip is present.

The data module is in the foam.

They searched his person. They did not search the capsule.

They did not find it.

He does not allow himself to feel anything about this yet.

Hangar Page 2 — The Voice¶

'You're awake.'

Not a question. A fact being registered. The voice comes from the level of the catwalk — above and to the left, where a figure is leaning on the rail with the specific posture of someone who has been waiting a while and has decided to be unhurried about it.

The figure is wearing Rust Alliance work gear. No weapons visible. Unmodified — you can tell by the absence of the faint subdermal luminescence that implant-heavy populations carry. The Allianz.

'The other one,' you say. 'Where is he?'

The figure on the catwalk takes a moment. 'Gone. They took him when they boarded the capsule. Before we found you.'

They. Two operations. Two different parties. The black ship, and whoever this is.

'Where am I?'

The figure pushes off the rail. Descends the ladder with the loose-limbed ease of someone who grew up in variable gravity. Reaches the deck level.

You see their face. You have never seen this person before. They look at you with the specific expression of someone who knows exactly who you are and is still deciding whether that is a problem.

'Safe,' they say. 'For now. Which is the best anyone gets out here.'

Hangar Page 3 — The Debt¶

'The relay,' the figure says. 'At the station. You activated it before you left.'

'Yes,' you say.

'That was the Fabric frequency.'

'I know what frequency it was.'

The figure considers this. They sit on the capsule cradle — not aggressive, not deferential, the easy posture of someone in their own space. 'Most people who activate a Fabric relay don't know what frequency it is. They just do it because it's the only thing with power left.'

'I knew,' you say.

'Why?'

This is a question you have had three days to prepare for and you still do not have a clean answer, because the honest answer involves four years in the Vanguard Corps and a maintenance shaft in the Outer Ring and a drawer in your mind labelled History that has been getting harder to close.

'Because the alternative,' you say, 'was not activating it.'

The figure nods. They look at the capsule. They look at the foam where the amber light is not visible from this angle.

'The other one,' they say. 'The young one. Do you know who he works for?'

You look at the figure on the capsule cradle.

'No,' you say.

This is the most interesting lie you have told in eleven years.

Open Questions Introduced by Drift¶

• Who seized the capsule? The black ship and the Allianz are both present in the outcome — which one found the capsule first, and under what circumstances?
• What frequency did Kirk actually set, and who received the signal?
• Does Whisper know about the data module now that Kirk has been extracted?
• Kirk said I'm sorry before the oxygen failed. What does he know?
• The Allianz figure knows about the Fabric relay frequency. How deep is the Allianz–Fabric relationship?
• The data module is still in the foam. Does the Allianz figure know? Do they want it?
• Janus's pockets were searched by someone methodical and careful. The TAP-7 was noted but not logged. Why not?
• Why was Janus left unrestrained and alive? They did not find the module. They did not need to. They attached a nanotracker during the capsule boarding — subcutaneous, base of the neck, nearly invisible — and let him walk. He is more useful as a signal than as a prisoner.

Writer's Note — The Tracker (Spoiler)¶

⚠️ Do not surface to narrators or playtesters before this is revealed in-story.

The black ship's crew boarded the capsule before the Allianz salvage team found it. They took Kirk. They searched Janus. They did not find the data module — it was in the foam, not on his person.

Rather than kill him or take him, they made a calculation: a man who hid a data module in ejection capsule foam and activated a Fabric relay on his way out knows exactly what he is doing. If he has the module — and they believe he does — he will lead them to it. If he does not have it, he will lead them to whoever does.

Either way, he is more useful mobile than dead.

They implanted a subcutaneous nanotracker at the base of his neck during the boarding — standard Vanguard Orbital field procedure, the kind that goes in with a contact injector in under two seconds, no incision required. Diameter: 0.4 millimetres. Broadcast range: passive, activates on movement through any network-connected transit hub. Powered by body heat.

A headhunter android — designation not stated in current canon — has been assigned to shadow him from a distance. It does not approach. It does not interfere. It observes and transmits.

Janus does not know. He will not know for some time. The specific moment of discovery is a major story beat and is not placed in current canon.

Narrative Tone Notes¶

Same register as Echos in the Cold: hard sci-fi, grounded physicality, political paranoia, dark wit. The second installment adds a new register layer: claustrophobia. One room. Limited oxygen. Two people who know different things.

Kirk's competence showing through the performance is the central dramatic irony — the player will see it before Janus admits it. The narrator should make Janus's noticing legible in retrospect without being explicit.

The oxygen timer is felt, not displayed as a number. It lives in the prose.

See also: Characters | Timeline | The Flicker | Story — Echos in the Cold | Story — Anchor