Pinkwater Security

Overview

Pinkwater Security is the player character's employer in The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. The player begins the game as a Pinkwater Security mercenary on shore leave at Eros Station when the protomolecule outbreak triggers a deadly lockdown. After escaping Eros, the player returns to Pinkwater Station to report what happened and is drawn deeper into the conspiracy. Pinkwater Security and its station serve as the player's home base and anchor point through the early portions of the campaign.

In the Expanse Universe

Pinkwater Security is a private security firm that operates throughout the Sol system. In the broader Expanse lore, they hold security contracts on multiple stations and moons, including Ganymede, Earth, and Callisto. Their role is comparable to other private security contractors like Star Helix Security (which handles policing on Ceres Station). On Ganymede, one of the most valuable agricultural moons in the system, Pinkwater protects the farms and research operations that supply food to much of the outer planets.

The company's name appears to reference real-world private military contractors. "Pinkwater" sounds like a blend of Blackwater (the American PMC that became controversial during the Iraq War) and Pinkerton (the private security and detective agency that has operated since the 1850s). This naming convention fits The Expanse's pattern of extrapolating present-day institutions into a spacefaring future.

Known Employees (Lore)

In The Expanse books and TV series, several named Pinkwater employees operate on Ganymede. These characters appear in the Ganymede arc during the events of Caliban's War, which overlaps with the game's timeline.

Wendell is the most prominent of these characters in the lore. He is a ranking officer assigned to Pinkwater's criminal division on Ganymede, responsible for the rough work of keeping order. At some point during the events on Ganymede, Wendell and his team were terminated from Pinkwater. Without employer-provided access to off-world transportation, they resorted to running a protection racket to sustain themselves.

Pinkwater Station (Pinkwater 4)

In the game, the player's home base is Pinkwater Station, also referred to as Pinkwater 4. The official game account described it as "a spin station that wasn't featured in The Expanse show or books, but we wanted you to learn more about this company, and explore one of its bases." Pinkwater 4 is an original location created specifically for the game, allowing the developers to build out Pinkwater Security's culture and operations without being constrained by existing lore.

Press previews from Gamescom 2025 described Pinkwater Station as packed with environmental detail. The materials and texture work give the station a genuine, lived-in feel. NPCs on the station gossip about the news, and the atmosphere conveys an operational military facility where people actually live and work. The station features meals prepared from orbital-grown ingredients, with crew members discussing food and (possibly contraband) spices, a detail the developers added after consulting with former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao about how astronauts relate to food in space.

The Station Under Attack

The first major gameplay sequence shown to press was the second mission of the game, set on Pinkwater Station during a Protogen assault. The player has returned from Eros and is reporting to their chief when Protogen forces attack the station. This mission forces the player to make an early, impactful choice: persuade the civilian population to surrender to the attackers or encourage them to resist.

If the player asks civilians to stand down, the population survives and the station's armory remains stocked with supplies. If the player encourages resistance, groups of civilians are killed in the fighting and their bodies are visible throughout the station. The armory may be depleted. This decision changes the physical state of the station, the resources available to the player, and their relationship with the station's inhabitants.

The mission climaxes with a pitched escape from the station. The player fights through industrial corridors to the ship dock and eventually onto the exterior hull of Pinkwater Station. A zero-gravity battle takes place on the station's hull with Jupiter visible above, magnetic boots engaged, and Protogen forces descending. The station is spinning on its axis throughout the fight, and audio is muffled with sounds translated through vibrations of hull contact.

The Station Administrator

Pinkwater Station has a station administrator referred to as the "Chief" in press coverage. During the Protogen attack, the player can persuade the Chief to help defend the station or handle the situation independently. The Chief's cooperation (or lack thereof) affects available resources and how the defense plays out. This NPC represents the Pinkwater Security chain of command that the player answers to as a mercenary employee.

Role in the Game

Pinkwater Station is an early-game hub and tutorial area. It is where the player reports back after the Eros escape, receives their initial briefing on what happened, and faces the first major combat sequence against Protogen forces. The station's shops and NPCs provide early opportunities to acquire equipment and learn about the broader conflict before the player takes command of the Gemini and begins exploring the solar system.

After the Protogen attack, the player's relationship with Pinkwater Security evolves. The commandeered Protogen ship (which becomes the Gemini) draws attention, and the player's role shifts from rank-and-file mercenary to independent captain as the conspiracy widens beyond what Pinkwater's command structure can handle.

Key Facts

Pinkwater as a Mercenary Company

Pinkwater Security is a mercenary company operating across the Expanse setting rather than a conventional standing military. The player and their twin sibling, J, work for Pinkwater at the opening of the game. The company pays its crews to handle contract work across the solar system using small armed ships and station-based bases, and reviewers have noted that its crews are presented as working-class mercenaries rather than elite soldiers. That chummy, gossipy atmosphere is a conscious tonal choice in the writing, and it is the texture the player first encounters when arriving back at a Pinkwater station for a debrief.

Per the developer's published notes, Pinkwater is deliberately placed inside the existing Expanse fiction. The studio has framed Pinkwater Four Station itself as an original location built for the game so that players can "learn more about this company, and explore one of its bases." The station anchors the opening act of the game before missions branch out to Ceres Station, Ganymede, Mars, Luna, and the asteroid-belt bunker complexes.

Pinkwater Four Station Layout

The closed-beta build of Pinkwater Four is a fully explorable spin station with several distinct zones. The twins dock in a hangar bay after arriving in their stolen ship, move through a residential block where off-duty crew play cards, eat, and chat about current events, and eventually reach the director's office for the debrief. Additional interior zones seen in the beta include a social hub with a large overhead news screen playing reports involving James Holden, a vendor stall where Luciana trades goods, an armory with a locked door, and a director's office with a private server room at the far end. A set of external airlocks and magnetic-boot EVA corridors wrap around the station hull, and the station is spinning on its axis for gravity, which is visible during the exterior zero-gravity sequences.

Jupiter dominates the view from Pinkwater Four. The planet hangs in the main menu art and remains overhead during the hull fight, placing the station somewhere in the Jovian system. The station is packed with incidental detail: a cleaner bot with a smiley face drifting through the corridors, a bunk room where the player can find a hidden bottle of tequila in the shower, a random food container sitting on a mess-hall table, and residents who hold back-and-forth conversations about recent events. One off-duty worker complains that he has not had a day off in a month, another mutters about a weird blip on the LIDAR just before the attack, and crew members argue about whether to believe anything they see until another video from Holden comes out.

The station's food comes from orbital-grown ingredients. Crew talk about cooking, trade gossip about smuggled spices, and treat meals as one of the few social rituals on station, giving Pinkwater Four the lived-in feel of a working base rather than a clean military set. Texture work and materials reinforce the same impression in the closed-beta build.

Named NPCs on Pinkwater Four

The beta exposes a small cast of named residents who populate the station before and during the Protogen raid.

The Piranha and the Lost Crew

Before the events of the beta, the twins served aboard the Piranha, a Pinkwater Security ship. The Piranha is destroyed in the opening events of the game, and almost the entire crew is lost with it. That loss is why the meeting with Oscar O'Connell opens with him asking where the ship is, where the rest of the crew is, and where a specific Pinkwater crewmate, Vic, happens to be. The player character confirms that the Piranha was destroyed and that the Piranha's captain and the whole crew died in the line of duty, which recontextualizes the entire debrief as a report on a wiped-out sister crew rather than a routine mission report.

Because the Piranha is gone, the twins arrive at Pinkwater Four in a craft they seized from the attacking forces during their escape. That ship becomes the Gemini, the player's mobile base for the rest of the game, and the reason Protogen shows up at Pinkwater Four so quickly: the corporation wants the stolen ship and the twins themselves back.

Oscar O'Connell's Debrief

Oscar O'Connell is the principal Pinkwater authority figure on station. He calls the twins into his office for a direct conversation about the loss of the Piranha, the new ship in his "stable", and the rapidly worsening situation in the wider system. The exchange is scripted but responsive: the player can answer hard-headed, measured, or conciliatory, and persuasion scores unlock extra information and context as the meeting progresses. The audio mixing in the beta is inconsistent for Oscar's lines, which is a known unfinished area of the closed-beta build.

Oscar is also the figure at the center of the station's defining choice when Protogen arrives. The player must decide whether to convince Oscar to have Pinkwater fight back or to tell him to stand down and let Protogen walk through the station. The two outcomes diverge sharply, and the rest of the station's inhabitants are affected by the decision.

Protogen's Arrival

Shortly after the debrief begins, Protogen arrives at Pinkwater Four to collect both the stolen ship and the twins themselves. This kicks off the central beta choice:

• Resist path: Oscar rallies Pinkwater defenders to fight alongside the player. Short term, the player gains armed NPC support during the opening firefight. Long term, Protogen executes Oscar once the player has escaped, and the station is destroyed in a nuclear detonation, killing most of the residents the player just met, including Larry.

• Stand-down path: Oscar orders Pinkwater to lower arms and the player sneaks out alone through service corridors. Pinkwater survives and the station remains intact. In exchange, Protogen walks off with a cache of private servers from the director's office that almost certainly contain data on the twins, seeding a long-term consequence for later in the game.

Skill-gated and choice-gated pockets of the station also shift based on this decision. The armory near the residential block can be stocked and useful on one path and cleared on the other, depending on whether Pinkwater's own security drew weapons from it during the fight. An alternate route through the station opens only on certain engineering checks, and it leads to unique loot that most playthroughs never see.

Spacewalk Escape

The final leg of the Pinkwater Four mission takes the player out through an external airlock onto the station's exterior hull, wearing magnetic boots. Protogen forces descend in boarding craft and fire on the station from above while the station itself is still spinning on its axis, which keeps Jupiter wheeling overhead during the fight. The player trades fire across hull plating, pipework, and docking scaffolding while the soundscape drops into the muted vacuum treatment used for all EVA sequences in the game.

Zafar coordinates the escape from the Gemini in orbit. He recommends a specific airlock route and uses the Gemini's point-defense cannons to rake the station exterior as an environmental exploit, which blows enemy cover apart and sends bodies drifting free. The player can either follow Zafar's route or rush a nearer airlock, which sets off an alarm and leaves a long-term mark on Zafar's opinion of the player. Either path ends with the twins reaching the Gemini and jumping away from Pinkwater Four.

Pinkwater in the Wider Game

Pinkwater is the player's starting faction anchor but not a lifelong employer. Zafar is the first of the game's companions to appear alongside the twins at Pinkwater Four, and J is the player's sibling and the only party member available for the opening. The stolen ship that arrives at the station with them becomes the Gemini, and that ship, not a Pinkwater hull, is what carries the crew out into the rest of the solar system after the raid. Depending on which path the player takes at Pinkwater Four, the company itself is either wiped out with its director or quietly compromised through the stolen servers, and either outcome pushes the twins further away from their former employer and deeper into the wider conflict with Protogen.