Vector Run

You know the Vector by the smell of burnt copper and the way the hull sings when you push power through the old drives. The ship is small, patched in places, beloved in others. Its cargo hold doesn't hold crates this time but a prototype reactor crate wrapped in sensor fuzz and corporate secrecy — worth more to half the system dead than your ship is worth alive.

Thor‑9 sits on the ragged edge of settled space: one sealed dome, an underfunded research team, and a slip of a docking throat that's overdue for maintenance. You accepted the job because they paid in terms you couldn't turn down — and because someone you owe needs the money. The reactor is unstable in ways the paperwork didn't mention, and its containment protocol hums like an argument underfoot.

They're on you already. Raiders tipped off by a syndicate broker picked up your beacon two systems back; corporate patrols passed you by, uninterested in a prototype until trouble started. You'll have to thread narrow gravity wells, choose whether to fight or cut through a contested jump corridor, and listen to the reactor's odd tick like a second heartbeat. The clock isn't a countdown for diplomacy—it’s the reactor's patience.

Bring the Vector into Thor‑9's docking throat and hand over the prototype reactor with its containment systems online before interceptors disable you or the reactor breaches.