The company: Helios Extraction Consortium — mining conglomerate that bought distressed cryo portfolios as frozen labor. Chain: Eternity Gardens (marble lobbies) → CryoGenix (an app for your pod temp) → Meridian (respectable; PE buyout) → SubZero (strip-mall storefronts) → Helios. Records mangled at every step. Sleepers were never customers — they were inventory in someone else's bankruptcy.
Helios legally CAN: hold assets to terms, re-freeze, extend for "damages," lease organs/equipment, transfer between sites. CAN'T (officially): kill assets (write-downs need paperwork), thaw without a labor requisition. Nobody says "slave."
Caught escapees: re-frozen + 50-year extension, billed as "recovery costs." Crew contracts convert to asset terms if found complicit — which is why the crew hide in their bunks and want no part of you.
Money: credits exist, but debt is labor-years only — cash can't legally buy a term down. Aboard: ration credits, med-boosters, bandwidth minutes.
Long life: gene therapy (applied during outfitting, already billed) → ~200-year expectancy. No treatment leash; the leash is the manifest and the law.
The ship: HEC Provident Yield — ~30 crew + 2 contractors + thousands frozen, autopiloting to Ledger's Rest.
Awake aboard (complete): ~30 crew, 2 contractors, Dez + Mateo (Sen stays on the Magpie), 2 PCs. Nobody else wakes.
The system: Ledger's Rest (company town) + Freeport (independent, bribable customs, everything costs). Rescue ship = only star-capable hull.
Pursuit: Recovery Services cutters — slow to spin up, relentless after. Flagged hull = countdown; deserters in hoppers rate a report, not a chase.
Legacy seams: acquisitions kept the data, skipped the cleanup — old vendor tables, service credentials, and maintenance backdoors still work. Exception: the Core (strike system).