Starfield Surgical Strike quest guide – should you kill Maya Cruz?

The Starfield Surgical Strike quest is one you’ll come across once you’ve progressed a bit through the Freestar Rangers faction questline. You’ll be tasked with doing some investigation of the First Cavalry mercenaries, looking for any clues who is in charge of this elusive gang.

Before you get stuck into this medical caper, check out some of our Starfield tips and tricks as you can never have enough. And if you’re looking to try out some ohter quests, our Starfield Sabotage guide will take you through one of the hardest ones, or you could head to the Starfield Red Mile to take on the eponymous challenge. With that, let’s take a look at the Surgical Strike quest, and whether you should kill or spare Maya.

Starfield Surgical Strike walkthrough

Once you’ve completed the Shadows in Neon quest for the Freestar Rangers, you’ll be able to begin the Surgical Strike mission. Marshall Daniel Blake will propose heading to a place called The Clinic to see if one of your suspects, Maya Cruz, is hiding out there. Get in your ship and grav jump to the Narion system, where you’ll find a medical facility called The Clinic in orbit around the planet Deepala.

Once you dock, walk past the reception and into an office on the right, where you can speak to Ranger Ben Armistead. He will take you to meet Ari Miller, who he says may be able to help you out in your search for Maya.

Explain to Ari that you believe Maya might be aboard The Clinic. Ari will mention to you that they have been having issues with the patient database, and will go to check, finding that they don’t have a patient on board named Maya Cruz. He will tell you about two recently admitted female patients – Jane Nakamori and Candace Doolin. Head off to interrogate these two patients.

Jane does not talk willingly, and you’ll need to persuade her to tell you the truth. Eventually, she’ll reveal that she has a criminal record. You can either take some credits from her as a bribe, or report her to Ranger Jane. Talk to Candace and you’ll find out that she also has nothing to do with Maya.

If you’ve unlocked any Ranks of the Security skill, you can skip interrogating these two and offer simply to fix the computer terminal for Ari. Open the computer, and access the Admin Access, Active Processes, and Query: Disruptor Mk4 files. Whichever method you choose, you’ll learn the name of Catalina Rivera.

You now need to gain access to the VIP wing. Head over to Dr. Cassidy. You have three options when talking to him. If you use the Medicine skill option, you immediately receive the VIP access keycard. If you choose to Intimidate, you may or may not receive the keycard. If you choose to [PERSUADE], you’ll have to successfully persuade him to receive it. If you fail to obtain the keycard, you’ll have to steal it instead.

When you enter the VIP section, Catalina’s room is empty, and is filled with traps, as well as a hostile robot turret that you’ll need to kill. Look for a data slate named ‘URGENT – READ IMMEDIATELY’. Access the modified terminal near the door and select the ‘Command Override Mode’ option and disable the program. After this, select ‘Terminal Access Logs’ and then ‘C. Rivera, Guest’. This will inform you that Maya has retreated to an abandoned asteroid mine in the Sakharov system.

Grav jump to the Sakharov system, and head to the old asteroid mine at Eklund Site CL25. Once you land, open the locked doors using the marked buttons, and head towards an Emergency Cuttable Wall. Get your Cutter out and use it on the four pins to open the way.

Progress along the path, defeating any Shardhoppers you find along the way, until you reach a locked door. Follow a red wire you see coming out of the top of the door to find a computer. Use a digipick to unlock this Novice lock and open the door.

From here, the path becomes unclear. Climb up onto one of the crystals ahead of you, and walk across the rest to reach the next area. Be sure to follow the quest marker to show you where to go. Eventually, you’ll reach an elevator, which you can take down to an area filled with enemies.

Defeat all the enemies, including the Mining Turrets, and head up the central staircase. At the top of the stairs is a platform with a small building there, with another Cuttable Wall. Head through here and you’ll find Maya Cruz on the other side. You’ll have to fight her until she’s knocked down, which will trigger some dialogue. You now have the option to either kill her, or let her go.

Should you kill Maya Cruz in Starfield?

Whether you kill Maya Cruz or not, the outcome is the same. You receive the same rewards whether you kill her or not, so the choice is up to the player. If you kill her, you can loot her corpse to find an encrypted slate. If you let her live, she gives you the slate willingly, as she reveals she is already dying from an illness.

Take the slate back to Akila City and give it to Alex Shadid, who will investigate the information on it. That’s the Surgical Strike quest complete, and you’ll be rewarded with a nice 5000 credits and 350 XP.

That’s everything you need to know about the Starfield Surgical Strike quest. If you’re looking for some of the best Starfield ships to take on your adventures through the Settled Systems, we’ve got a selection from every class to choose from – just make sure you’ve got one of the Starfield best reactors as well. For more general help, take a look at our Starfield Entangled quest guide, Starfield how to get adhesive and Starfield Shattered Space release date guides too.