Starbound Drifters

Jax Mercer, Mara Voss, Rin Aoki, and an overly polite android named Henry make their living recovering what other people abandon—and occasionally what other people still want. Together they are Galactic Salvage Crew 99, a chronically broke outfit drifting across the neglected frontier aboard the Overdraft, a battered ore-hauler held together by mismatched parts, illegal modifications, and Mara’s increasingly creative repairs.

Jax is a gifted pilot who refuses to discuss the war he left behind. Mara keeps the ship running, negotiates their contracts, and prevents the crew’s arguments from becoming fatal. Rin is a teenage hacker who considers every locked computer a personal invitation. Henry appears to be an outdated hospitality android, although the military-grade machinery concealed beneath his faded teal shell suggests he once served a very different purpose.

Their work carries them through derelict ships, rusting orbital stations, corrupt toll checkpoints, frontier bars, and forgotten battlefields. Some jobs earn enough to cover fuel and synthetic ramen. Others uncover old enemies, unpaid debts, and pieces of the lives the crew believed they had escaped.

During a routine recovery inside a restricted military graveyard, they discover an obsolete data disk containing fragments of a lost colonial route. Its destination is Eden—a legendary world said to possess naturally breathable air, clean water, and a self-sustaining ecosystem. In a galaxy where Kessler Dynamics charges entire colonies for the necessities of life, even the possibility of such a planet threatens an empire.

Starbound Drifters is an original retro-anime space western blending cassette-futurist science fiction, dangerous salvage adventures, found-family humor, corporate dystopia, and character-driven mysteries across a beautifully worn-out galaxy.

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