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A refugee ship. A 65-year crossing. Nothing out here but people.

Coming to Mac, Windows and Linux.

A long queue of refugees with their children and luggage, watched by armed guards, waits to climb the lit ramp of a ship.

Departure staging hall

There are more people at the ramp than there are berths.

She was not built for this. She is whatever could be converted to carry the people who had to leave.

The crossing takes 65 years. The ship cannot make the things that keep her alive. She can find them, trade for them or take them.

The refuge may be habitable. It may be a port that has to be argued with. It may be nothing at all.

There are no aliens, no monsters and no malevolent machine. Everyone aboard is trying to survive.

Aboard

Everyone aboard wants something.

A group forms when enough people share a need, and it stays after the need has passed. Nobody aboard waits to be asked.

  1. Petition
  2. Warning
  3. Refusal
  4. Seizure
  5. Revolt
Growers
a fair share of clean water for the farms
Medical staff
medicine reserved for the sick
Security detail
parts for armour and weapons
Ration clerks
a say in how rations are issued
Engineering bloc
spare parts kept back for repair work
Navigation guild
the voyage pressed onward
The Devout
the dead remembered and the archive kept
Enders
the voyage brought to an end
The Cramped
room to sleep that is not a corridor
Passage Holders
the passage they paid for honoured and the ship brought to the refuge
Those who fled
the captain's word that nobody aboard will be handed back to the regime
The born-aboard
a say in the voyage they were born into

What the captain does

The captain’s identification and history, on paper.

Is somebody

Seven histories. A space pirate sails with 650 credits and a name somebody recognises. A freighter captain has 3,200 and knows what a berth is worth to a frightened family.

The ship broker’s listings and a ship inspection.

Buys a hull

The broker sells what is lying there: stripped hulls, half-fitted hulls, ships whose owners ran out of route. One seed deals one market, the same for every captain on it.

A deck plan being fitted out, compartment by compartment.

Fits her out

Every berth bay is nine squares of deck that could have been a farm. An empty hull will sail if that is what was chosen.

The voyage screen: one deck of the ship, with the ship’s vital signs above it.

Keeps the clock

Food, water, air, power, parts and propellant. A decision does not stop the days. They keep passing while it stands.

A turn-based fight across a deck plan.

Holds the decks

Raiders and uprisings are fought room by room, a turn at a time, against a turn clock, with whoever is on that deck.

The Council screen: the organised groups aboard and what they want.

Answers for it

Groups petition, warn, refuse work, seize stores and move on the ship. Command is an office. The ship outlives whoever holds it.

A voyage is measured by how far she got.

It ends when the ship fails, when her life runs out, when nobody aboard is left alive, or at the refuge.

Begin a voyage

Coming to Mac, Windows and Linux.

There is no phone version.