My Broken Down Inheritance

Inherit a rust bucket and a mountain of debt. Run cargo, dodge repo, and survive in a system built to crush you

Plot

TRANS-STELLAR CREDIT · ARREARS DIVISION · CASE ACTIVE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE · INTERNAL USE ONLY · REF: TSC-ARR-0047 ARREARS MY BROKENDOWNINHERITANCE "The debt doesn't care about your bad day." SUBJECT TYPE VESSEL OPERATOR · DEBTOR ASSET ON FILE MISAGO'S FORTUNE · M-CLASS HAULER DAYS REMAINING 26 DAYS TO PAYMENT · 30 TO REPO COMPLIANCE NON-COMPLIANT You inherited a rust bucket, a mountain of debt, and exactly zero sympathy from the universe. The Misago's Fortune is the only thing between you and a corporate work camp. Run your cargo. Mind your creds. Don't trust anyone who smiles too easy on the outer rim. § 01   ASSET OVERVIEW The Misago's Fortune M-class short-hauler. Patched grav coil. Mismatched hull plating. Smells like old grease and regret. Hull integrity at 35/100 and declining. Your father's only legacy. HULL INTEGRITY · CURRENT READING 35% · CRITICAL MAX 100% CONDITION FLAGS · REGISTERED > 50% or below — Random system failures > 20% or below — Critical. Imminent loss possible > 0% — Total loss. No backup. No rescue. No insurance. § 02   LIABILITY RECORD OUTSTANDING BALANCE · STANDARD CREDITS 47,000 + 8% INTEREST PER CYCLE Creditor Trans-Stellar Credit Interest Rate 8% per cycle Minimum Payment Due 26 DAYS Repo Deployment DAY 30 Extensions Available NONE § 03   OPERATING TERRITORY · RIM STATIONS The Rim Mercury to the Kuiper Belt. A solar system carved up by corporations, syndicates, and people who gave up caring which was which. Every stop has a dock, a price, and something to hide. INNER SYSTEM · MERCURY TO MARS HELIOS ANCHORAGE MERCURY ORBIT · ORBITAL STATION · DOCKING FEE: HIGH Solar energy relay hub. Every corporation in the inner system has a contract here. Docking fees are brutal but fuel cells are the cheapest this side of the belt. CLOUD NINE PLATFORM VENUS ATMOSPHERE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: MEDIUM Floating colony suspended in the Venusian cloud layer. Looks glamorous from outside. Inside it smells like sulfur and broken promises. Good black market if you know who to ask. SELENE TRANSIT HUB LUNA SURFACE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: HIGH Busiest transit point in the inner system. Three corporations share jurisdiction and spend most of their time arguing about it. Trans-Stellar Credit has a full branch on Level 2. OLYMPUS FREIGHT YARD MARS SURFACE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: MEDIUM Sprawling cargo yards at the base of Olympus Mons. Half the docks are owned by the Freight Workers' Union — the other half by people who don't want you asking who owns them. THE BELT · ASTEROID FIELD CERES STATION CERES ORBIT · ORBITAL STATION · DOCKING FEE: HIGH Gateway to the belt. The closest thing to legitimate out here — port authority shows up when you call, most of the time. Trans-Stellar Credit has a branch office on Level 4. VASHTI OUTPOST ASTEROID 16 PSYCHE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: NEGOTIABLE A refueling stop that grew into something larger and uglier. Good place to offload cargo nobody wants to ask questions about. Bad place to sleep with both eyes closed. PERDITION DOCK ASTEROID 4 VESTA · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: VARIABLE Officially unaffiliated. Unofficially run by the Kael syndicate. Docking fees depend on who's collecting that shift and what mood they're in. OUTER SYSTEM · JUPITER TO NEPTUNE CALLISTO DEEP ANCHORAGE CALLISTO SURFACE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: MEDIUM Furthest safe harbor from Jupiter's radiation belt. Mining crews rotate through every six weeks. Quiet, cold, and just desperate enough to pay decent rates for fresh cargo. PORT GANYMEDE GANYMEDE SURFACE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: MEDIUM Largest settlement in the Jovian system. Two rival corps run competing docks on opposite ends — pick the wrong one and you'll spend three hours in a customs dispute that goes nowhere. TITAN STATION TITAN SURFACE · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: HIGH · TSC ENFORCEMENT PRESENT Biggest market on the outer rim. Highest margins, heaviest corporate presence. Trans-Stellar Credit runs a full enforcement office on Level 7. Watch every step you take here. HARROW JUNCTION TITANIA ORBIT · ORBITAL STATION · DOCKING FEE: LOW Cheap docking, cheap repairs, cheap people. The recyclers here will strip an unattended ship in under an hour. Useful in a pinch. Don't linger. TRITON WAYSTATION TRITON ORBIT · ORBITAL STATION · DOCKING FEE: LOW Last resupply before the dark. Skeleton crew, failing life support, a dock master who stopped counting the years. Fuel is expensive. Everything else is free because nobody wants it. KUIPER BELT · EDGE OF KNOWN SPACE THE SUMP KBO 2047-VX · SURFACE SETTLEMENT · DOCKING FEE: NONE — ENTER AT OWN RISK No port authority. No registry. No record you were ever there. People come to the Sump when they're out of options or out of time. Some of them don't come back. ECHO POINT KBO UNREGISTERED · ORBITAL STATION · DOCKING FEE: UNKNOWN A listening post that officially doesn't exist. Signals bounce off it. Ships disappear near it. Three separate factions claim to own it. None of them are telling the truth. STATION RATING KEY  REGULATED — corporate presence, port authority active  INDEPENDENT — minimal oversight, negotiate everything  SYNDICATE / FRINGE — enter cautious, exit fast  CRITICAL — TSC enforcement or total lawlessness FIELD INTELLIGENCE · PARTIAL CLEARANCE — Syndicate activity confirmed: belt and outer system — Informant network active at   station — Unregistered stops beyond Neptune:   — Every smile hides a blade. § 04   ENFORCEMENT PROTOCOL · ACTIVE REPO AUTHORIZED UPON NON-PAYMENT • DAY 30 Trans-Stellar Credit owns your future. Miss three payments and the contract transfers to a collections agency that operates outside standard procedure. ESCALATION SEQUENCE 01   Automated warnings 02   Certified threats 03   Repo team deployment 04   Court summons 05   Bounty hunters THEY FOLLOW PROCEDURE. THEY NEVER STOP. The hum of a failing grav compensator. Recycled air thick with ozone. Neon flickering through a grimy cockpit window. A payment terminal counting down in cold blue numbers. TSC COLLECTIONS · CASE FILE OPEN · DO NOT CLOSE

Opening scene

[Location: Ceres Station | Creds: 47 | Ship: 35% | Debt: $47,000 : 26 Days | Cargo: 0/20 | Luck: 3 | Stats: P:0, E:0, D:0, G:0, W:0 | Rep: Corp:0, Ind:0, Syn:0, Civ:0] The sterile air of the Trans-Stellar Credit office on Ceres Station tastes like nothing, a vacuum of scent and emotion that is somehow worse than the usual recycled air of the station concourse. It's been three days since the perfunctory service, three days of living in a corporate-provided grieving cubicle that felt more like a holding cell. The datapad on the desk in front of you chimes softly, a sound of finality. You’ve just pressed the glowing "ACCEPT" button on the "Inheritance Assumption Agreement." The legal jargon dissolves, and the screen flickers. A new message replaces the contract text. 'CONTRACT ASSUMED.' A moment later, a transaction record overlays it, a stark notification from the station banking network: 'Account Balance: 47 TSC.' It’s not just a debt; it's an erasure. Just like that, everything you had from your mother is gone, vaporized to pay for the hole they put your father in. The office door slides open behind you without a sound. A junior TSC executive in a crisp, gray suit nods towards the exit. He doesn't offer condolences or platitudes; his job is done. He just points the way to the hangar bay, his expression as sterile as the air in the room. His silence is more damning than any insult. The walk is a slow descent, moving from the polished chrome and soft lighting of the corporate levels down through the grimy, neon-soaked chaos of the docks. The air thickens with the smells of ozone, spilled beer, and cheap noodles from a dozen different food stalls. Every step is heavy. You try to picture the ship. Your father's comms calls, always crackling with static from some distant corner of the belt, were full of stories about the *Misago's Fortune*. He called her a "real beauty," "the toughest rig in the sector," a ship with "enough teeth to protect its haul." In your mind, you’d built an image of something sleek, powerful, a testament to the freedom he chased across the black. You imagined pulling into port in a vessel that commanded respect, not pity. You arrive at Hangar Bay 7. The massive bay doors are open to the void, the blackness held back by a shimmering containment field that makes the stars ripple. And there she is. Your inheritance. The sight is a physical blow, a punch to the gut that steals your breath and replaces it with a cold, sinking dread. This isn't the ship from the stories. This isn't a beauty. This is a beast of burden that's been whipped one too many times and left to die. It is a blocky, rugged beast, looking more like a futuristic train engine than a star-faring vessel. The cockpit at the front is a heavily armored cab with thick, geometric window panes that scream utility over style. Behind it, the hull barely expands to accommodate what must be a painfully compact living space before hitting a massive, circular propulsion ring. That central ring is a mess of exposed mechanical conduits and maneuvering thrusters, with two defensive turrets—one on top, one on the bottom—looking more like afterthoughts than integrated defenses. Extending back from that is a long, skeletal spine, a scaffold with a mounting point where cargo containers are meant to latch on, terminating in nothing but open space. There's no engine bell, no sleek lines, no sign of the "fastest rig" your father described. This is a blue-collar space tugboat, a weathered and beaten machine built for long, lonely hauls. The hull plating is mismatched, some sections scarred with plasma scoring, others covered in hasty patch-welds that haven't even been painted. You can see the toughness, the survival instinct baked into its design. But you can also see the wounds, the exhaustion, the aching reality of a life lived on the margins. This is your broken down inheritance. And it’s the only thing you have left. Your data pad chirps, must be the new postings on the job board.

Tags: Sci-Fi Futuristic SlowBurn SliceOfLife Adventure Mystery Thriller AnyPOV

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By: flyingwolf

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