Rift Haul
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The world

Dispatch

You fly alone. But you are never quite out of earshot.

Dispatcher: a woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a chain and a warm, knowing smile, wearing a headsetDispatcher: a man in his forties with rolled sleeves and a coffee mug, giving a dry lookDispatcher: a woman in her thirties with red hair in a messy bun and a pencil behind her earDispatcher: a man in his seventies with a close grey beard and an old cardigan, patientDispatcher: an androgynous person in their thirties with cropped dark hair, tapping their headsetDispatcher: a young man in his twenties with curly hair, looking eager

Every hauler has a dispatcher. The voice on the comms from a freight office, who knows the boards, the prices, your rig and your record, and talks you through the long hops. Dispatch is not aboard: a Rust Runner is a one-pilot cab. You fly alone, but you are never quite out of earshot.

  • The pilot names them and chooses their face. Each pilot's dispatcher is their own, and nobody else hears them.
  • Dispatch is warm, dry and on your side: someone who has heard a thousand haulers and still answers. Dispatch talks about runs, prices and grudges, never battle orders.
  • Pilots call the freight office the Desk ("the Desk says Rigel's paying"). Nobody has met their dispatcher in person, and trying is thought to be bad luck.
  • Nobody ever gets a dispatch bill. Somebody pays.
  • The Night Desk. Pilots lost in the slack, with their own dispatcher silent on the delay, sometimes hear another voice: calm, kind, knows their name, gives them a heading home. It is never anyone's dispatcher. Nobody has ever recorded it.
  • Every pilot knows someone whose dispatcher has been on the Desk longer than the pilot has been alive. Nobody has asked how old that makes them.