Pancho's Blessing
The corridor doesn't owe you anything. You committed your Cargo, you sent your fleet, you reached the end and pulled the extract. Sometimes what comes back is thinner than what you put in. The cold ones stick with you longer than the hot ones do. Anyone who's flown a fleet knows that.
Pancho has known it longer than anyone.
He kept records on every Commander who ever sat in the chair. Not the kind the Federation publishes. His own. Quiet. Personal. And every once in a while, when the corridor played dirty against a Commander who didn't deserve it, he'd close the gap. From his own ledger. Without being asked.
That habit has a name now. The Blessing.
What it does
Pancho watches every extraction that clears the final node. He keeps a baseline. A number he considers the minimum fair return on what you committed. If your total haul (the Cargo you pulled out, plus the Fuel still in your tank) comes in below that baseline, he tops it up to the floor.
The top-up doesn't arrive as Cargo in your wallet. It lands as Fuel in your fleet, trickled into the tank of the crew that just came home. Once it's there, it's fuel like any other fuel. Yours. Ready to spend on the next deployment, or the one after, or the one after that.
It's not a payout. It's a fueling.
When it fires
Three things have to line up. All of them, every time:
| Condition | What it means |
|---|---|
| Completed extraction | Your fleet reached the final node and you pressed extract |
| Survived the run | No death, the fleet came back intact |
| Ran below the floor | Your total payout fell short of what Pancho considers fair |
Miss any one of them and no Blessing fires. A busted run gets nothing. The Blessing is a recovery line, not a resurrection. A run that already cleared the floor on its own gets nothing either. You earned that one. He stays out of it.
What you see
The extraction result shows the Blessing as its own band, glowing blue, Pancho's portrait on the left. Two numbers land on the right:
- The Cargo equivalent: what the top-up is worth at the Black Market rate. Easy to stack against the Cargo loot from the run.
- The Fuel percentage added: how much of your fleet's tank just got refilled by the Blessing.
Just below, the Fleet Status bar splits into two segments. The part in your normal Fuel color is where the run ended up on its own. The sapphire segment is what Pancho added on top. The header reads as 57.2% → 62.4%. The first number is where you'd be without the Blessing. The second is where the tank actually sits. No addition required. The bar and the label say the same thing.