Apollo's Contact and Your First Freighter Battle
Ghosts in the Machine introduces Apollo, a pragmatic mercenary Traveller who cares far more about Unit profits and survival gear than Artemis's cosmic riddles, yet realizes that Artemis's disappearance ties directly into Sentinels and planetary Portals. Locate a Holo-Terminus via a space scan, tune into Apollo's frequency to share your logs, and plot a warp jump to the star system where Apollo's local contact waits. Because most Travellers hit five total warps and three hours of playtime right around this jump, arriving in Apollo's target system very often drops you straight into your first pirate-versus-freighter space battle. Defeat the attacking pirate fighters without straying your shots onto the friendly cargo pods, answer the civilian captain's hail, and claim your very first capital or system freighter completely free before heading inside the Space Station to meet Apollo's contact for free Salvaged Data and a Hazard Protection upgrade.
Hiring the Gek Overseer and Korvax Scientist
To crack encrypted Sentinel hardware, Apollo instructs you to expand your planetary base and recruit specialized alien staff. Teleport back to a ground base (keep all specialist terminals on one planetary base rather than deleting rooms mid-quest), construct a cylindrical room or timber hall with enough floor space, build a Construction Terminal from Chromatic Metal and Pure Ferrite, and recruit a Gek Overseer from a Space Station's side rooms or main concourse. Follow the Overseer's initial Expanding the Base requests, gathering Chromatic Metal and raiding a marked Abandoned Building for Storage Container data, until the Overseer hands you the Science Terminal blueprint. Build that Science Terminal back at base and warp to a Korvax-controlled system if needed to hire a Korvax Scientist from its Space Station.
Unlocking Acid, Lubricant, and the Forcefield
Hiring the Korvax Scientist alone is only half of the progression check inside Ghosts in the Machine, which is why Apollo's questline sometimes appears quiet while Expanding the Base sits active in your Secondary Missions list. Switch your tracked mission to Scientific Research in your log and run the Scientist's opening tasks: harvest Marrow Bulb from glowing cave flowers alongside Cobalt so the Scientist teaches you the Lubricant and Acid crafting blueprints, then reboot their disconnected memory core after the brief downtime timer. Once Acid and Lubricant enter your crafting catalogue, launch into space so Apollo calls back with the blueprint for the Personal Forcefield. Install the Personal Forcefield onto your Multi-Tool using two Ion Batteries and one Wiring Loom, extract Nanites from a marked Abandoned Building terminal to buy a Multi-Tool upgrade module at a Space Station, and listen to a cryptic warning from the mysterious entity -null- before answering Apollo's follow-up call.
Breaching the Korvax Manufacturing Facility
Apollo marks a heavily guarded Korvax Manufacturing Facility on a planet below and asks you to steal its internal Sentinel and Portal research. Land near the facility and blast down the reinforced security door on foot using a genuine Multi-Tool firearm such as the Boltcaster, Pulse Spitter, or Scatter Blaster. Avoid blowing the door open with starship cannons or an Exocraft mining laser, because vehicle weapons frequently destroy the physical door model without ticking the mission's breach objective, forcing a reload or mission reset. Step indoors immediately once the steel door shatters, as Sentinels lose sight of you inside buildings and stop firing while you work at the central terminal.
Escaping Sentinel Pursuit Into the Next Chapter
Interact with the damaged factory console, patch its fried circuits using small amounts of Sodium, Chromatic Metal, and Pure Ferrite, and download the classified anomaly schematics for Apollo. Completing the download automatically spikes your Sentinel alert to three stars, deploying an aggressive Armored Quad alongside standard combat drones right outside the entrance. Sprint straight to your parked starship rather than lingering in the doorway to organize cargo, lift off into the upper atmosphere, and cruise above the clouds until the Sentinel search timer expires before jumping fully into deep space, where Sentinel interceptors would otherwise take over the chase. Once your wanted level clears, A Leap in the Dark begins automatically.