Death, the wreck and the wake

What death costs

One thing: what was in the hold. Everything else survives - it is the same ship, repaired, with the fitting still on it; credits, level and experience are untouched; hull and shield come back full. Death is an expense with one line on it, not a punishment. The footer of the death screen says it on every death, because it is true on every death: DEATH 3 · THE HULL AND THE FITTING CAME BACK WITH YOU.

A death is counted, and a house keeps its own roll of the dead.

The spill

The whole hold - ore, elements, spare guns - comes apart where the ship did, scattered within a few dozen metres, so one pass through it collects most of it. Three facts about it, and the screen says all three:

• It holds ten minutes. Mining litter dies in 75 seconds; a wreck’s spill gets its own, longer clock, because you have to fly back to reach it.
• It is nobody’s. There is no claim on it and it waits for nobody: the first ship through takes it - you, whoever killed you, or the Fallow, who come to a wreck in a sector.
• Issued gear stays issued. A salvaged starter cannon flies, and no counter will buy it.

Value is not deleted from the world; it moves. That is why killing somebody is worth doing, and why flying back is worth doing.

The screen

The write-down has three layers. The facts: where you came apart, how far off which station (or in open space), where you are now, the stacks that spilled, and a clock - The spill is 1.4 km off, and anyone’s in 9:12, or The spill is back in <sector> when you woke somewhere else. With an empty hold - every new pilot’s first death - it says Nothing was aboard. There is nothing out there to go back for.

The ledger, when the server has an engagement on record: damage dealt, damage taken (split shield and hull), seconds, how long the trigger was down and how long it was on target; how many you took with you and how many were on you. Then who took the most off you - whoever did the most damage, not whoever fired last - what it was (a drone, a pilot, a station’s battery, a yard, a convoy, a Sentinel), and one finding: Most of your fire never reached. Close the range.

The register: what the colony that raised you calls the loss. Entered. / Counted. / Booked., and a sentence in that voice.

There are no buttons: the ship is already rebuilt when the screen opens. Esc, Enter or R closes it. If you woke in another zone, the course ring on the HUD already points at the zone of the wreck; inside that zone, nothing marks it.

Where you wake

Beside a station in the zone you died in, if it has a counter open to you. Most zones have none; then the nearest one that will have you - fewest lane jumps first, the shallower zone on a tie, then the one closest to the wreck. You stand off the dock port facing out, never berthed; at your own home you come in over your Citadel, as on your first day.

Nobody wakes beside another Compact’s station - of any kind. A raider whose front holds a foreign Belt still does not wake at that Belt’s Mining post, and a besieger does not wake at a standing home’s counters; Freeports and outposts that speak for nobody wake anyone the zone admits. A pilot sworn to no Compact wakes only at those. A Sentinel is never a wake point, not even for its own side, and a Compact Shipyard wakes its own Compact’s dead only while no foreign front reaches its sector. If nothing qualifies, you wake at home.

A jump you were winding up when you died is cut, and the lanes it took from the tank are spent - a jump pays one lane per leg at the start of its wind-up. An in-system warp takes nothing. Any quay fills the tank again, free.

Salvage

Fly into somebody else’s spill, or cargo thrown with K, and it is drawn into your hold like ore. Scooping a wreck’s cargo shows one line in your own colony’s voice: Recovery of registered goods. If they were yours, file. If not, file faster. - or the Kindred’s The rite: what the dead carried is carried on. Carry it well., or the Concern’s cargo at a discount.

Being killed by a pilot pays them 30 XP (levels) and counts for the war; if they are sworn to a Compact you are Wanted by, it also pays them a bounty and halves your debt there. Being killed by a drone pays nobody anything. Either way the spill is the whole of the cost. Combat.