As I mentioned earlier, something you don’t see in a lot of sci-fi is people worrying about money or trying to make ends meet. So I wanted to specifically address that in some subtle ways. Roka fired all his escape pods during the chase scene, but now he has to buy more, and that’s money he doesn’t want to have to spend.

I lump cloaking and lightspeed technologies in the same fashion. They’re out there, but either expensive for the hardware itself or resource-intensive to use. Since a lot of Runners occurs while the ship is en-route to destinations, I didn’t want them to always be able to just jump there in an instant. So I figure there’s a cost associated that makes them choose a slower and cheaper route unless absolutely necessary.

I thought the life pod recall drive would be something interesting to throw in. For a money-conscious person like Roka, it makes sense to have something like that to reclaim property. The backstory I had in my head was that remote-controlled lifepods would be part of a decoy ruse concocted by Cember and Bennesaud back in their pirate days, and they convinced Roka of its merits, given the danger in their line of work.