Wayne gets a call from Loralai later that evening and disappears in a hurry muttering something about “urgent” and “back later”. Nate gets a call from Sasha at 2am (while still at the marshal’s) informing him that Sonya is missing and her three friends are in hospital.

Kat gives Nat a ride while he calls the others. They meet Yala, Cinque, and Gus there. Brie tells them it was gang members of Mr Big, a dealer arrested when Sonya tipped off the goldies about a sale, after he made trouble for Mags. Kat confirms he was broken out from a holding cell 2 days ago. Even though he had been arrested several months back, there had been multiple delays getting him to trial as various witnesses were tracked down, some of whom subsequently disappeared. Gus manages to trace Sonya’s communicator to a warehouse in a rundown industrial area.

Upon arriving, they get a call from Sasha. A ransom demand has been received. They ask Kat to arrange a drop. This succeeds in splitting the gang members – almost half head to the drop while the rest stay in the warehouse. Yala contacts Sonya telepathically and a plan is hatched. Cinque is able to pinpoint everyone within using his drone’s thermal sensors. The crew rush the guards on the front door, managing to incapacitate them just as those inside burst forth. A short but intense firefight ensues, from which a single gang member manages to flee. Sonya has been badly beaten. Yala transfers away enough damage to allow her to walk and they vacate the warehouse.

After bringing Kat up to speed, they decide to send the drone as backup. Cinque spots Mr Big’s second and helps Kat pin him down in an alley. Armoured troops arrive; the alley is stormed and arrests are made.

Sonya is informed of Conrad’s demise. She and the other Valkyries accept an offer to visit Bluefall aboard the Sparrow. Kat confirms the gangsters were working for Mr Big, who the department is now trying to track down. Next time he’s arrested, she will intervene to make sure his trial is expedited.

Mayhem and Cinque secure a discount on a load of rhodium. Mayhem arranges a loan of over a million Concords but neglects to inform the others of the fine print.

Preparing to starfall, they receive a hail from Thomas Kind. He offers thanks for delivering Ysala Rho into his hands last time, and gives them a free pass on their current rhodium shipment. Next time though, it will be business as usual.

Back on Bluefall, a short update on Concord’s expedition to Vethril awaits: Two pirate vessels near Lithius fled as soon as the scout hailed them. Once the main retrieval vessel arrived, rescue of the sleepers began.

The crew takes the Valkyries to Kaheina Beach Resort for a short vacation. Cinque brings enough of his workshop equipment with him to keep busy. While lugging a delivery of parts, he is intercepted by a petite platinum blonde in a StarMech uniform. “Cinque Zeroh, your nation needs you…”

To bury both past identities, Conrad applies for citizenship on Bluefall as Nathaniel Gates. Wayne applies as himself to secure dual citizenship.

Relations sour between the Thuldans and VoidCorp, with the Thuldans switching their few external support contracts over to Insight. Publicly, everyone denies the existence of an unauthorised surface-to-space laser and a rogue AI operating on a shadow Grid. The short-lived chaos is attributed to various terrorist groups. CFN release a statement taking credit and threaten more action if Concord do not close their embassy on Bluefall.

The Sparrow picks up a few passengers for the trip to Oberon – Gemini McCarthy and a pair of StarMech engineers, who Mayhem granted passage in return for a better repayment deal on the most recent repair bill.

En route, Cinque discovers a suspicious device has been installed as part of the stardrive refit. Gus confirms it is waiting for an external signal. Cinque disconnects the link from the comms system to prevent this.

In Tribon, Gus receives a bunch of 3-month-old messages from Lissa, the part-time office admin managing Carpe Noctem. Gus visits the office and discovers that Lissa had to make a costly decision in her absence. However, because of this, the contract was completed on schedule. Payment is secured, in addition to a smaller ongoing maintenance contract.

Nathaniel meets Kat and allows her to read between the lines regarding who he is. She agrees to nudge a few office staff to process his “inheritance” of Kier’s assets. They arrange to meet up that night to… finalise details.

Wayne gets a call from Loralai, who he can’t remember but whose contact details are stored in his comm. She offers in on a job she needs more hands for; recovery of some stolen documents. Wayne accepts and ropes in Nathaniel and a reluctant Cinque. Loralai will send them details of the meet as soon as she has them.

Gus is approached by Jako’bek, who asks her to deliver a crystal to a t’sa called Tripwire at the Steel Grid. She was apparently recommended to him by “the Spark she employs”. She agrees but decides to check the 3D’s contents. Discovering an unencrypted cache of illegal documents – leaked classified files, banned publications, and the like – she takes a copy before going to meet Tripwire.

At the Steel Grid, Wayne and Nathaniel discover Gus and Tripwire are their targets. Before they can start trying to figure out what to do next, a trio of armed thugs enter and head directly for them. Nathaniel finally gets to try out the hallucinogenic grenades P’zu cooked up for them. They are super effective.

As the dust settles, Loralai shows up to claim the 3D. Wayne uses his personal charm (no, really) to sweet talk her into accepting a payoff instead. Gus hands the crystal over the Tripwire, who needs the data for some undisclosed, but not-at-all-nefarious, research project. Gus learns the assailants likely knew nothing about the 3D but were actually after Tripwire for an outstanding debt; he had borrowed money to pay the original data thief up front.

Mayhem finally books the Sparrow into a StarMech facility for repairs. And there is much rejoicing.

The evrem ship’s AI adopts the moniker Sonnet. Insight give it read-only access to their data cores on Haven 6. It spends most of its spare time copying files and annotating them with insightful comments such as “this is wrong” and the like. It also tries explaining to Cinque what some of the advanced evrem tech does, without revealing how it actually works.

Sofi, now having a functional grasp of Galactic Standard, briefly meets with the crew to thank them again in person. They discover that ‘some’ of her people are on their way to the Verge. Yala leaves to train for a month. Wayne is struck down by a mysterious illness which he treats with copious amounts of strong alcohol. No one is certain whether the contents of the recovered crate of Sciseed were fully accounted for.

Concord make plans to deal with the Sciseed plantation on Lithius and rescue the colonists (and pirates) hidden in cryo. Genevieve Ordu, Thereon Jason “TJ” Drolock, and Kramer “Brains” Fillabar cooperate in exchange for various levels of leniency. Megan arranges for counselling and rehabilitation for the three rescuees returned aboard the Sparrow – Rebecca Chambers, Alison Short, and Chloe Winters.

Austrin Ontis agree to Concord oversight of Conrad’s trial. He is transferred to a secure compound on Diandes. His former rank of captain is reinstated in order to prosecute him at a military tribunal. Martinus Zeta, a mechalus with eight decades of multi-national law experience, mounts Conrad’s defence. He thoroughly routs the prosecution, who ask for a recess. An offer is made, leading to an agreed resolution. The original mutineer will be courtmartialed, Conrad will accept honourable discharge and voluntarily renounce his citizenship, and his estranged family will be told of his death and relocated to a Concord territory of their choice, with entitlement to his military pension. There is also a secondary agreement where Conrad and VoidCorp agree to forget about certain events aboard various space stations.

Gus goes under the knife to get cybered up. Conrad undergoes extensive facial reconstruction to further erase lingering traces of Kerensky from existence.

Alloy reveals that Insight have a plan to deal with V0RL. Everyone is assigned various tasks and there is a week of frenzied preparation. In the end, a combined force just about manages to pull off the multi-pronged assault. Gus has a brief conversation with V0RL shortly before its last backup node is taken out. It warns her that its demise will cause certain safeguards hidden throughout AeGrid to trigger and offers her an alternative: Alter its code to allow it to save itself and it will undo the work. She agrees but fails spectacularly to accomplish the rewrite.

When V0RL’s last node goes offline, widespread technological chaos ensues. Fortunately, this is short-lived and results in relatively few casualties. V0RL had warned Gus of the most dangerous code it had placed, which would have used a secret Thuldan weapon to obliterate Nectaris Orbital Station. Thinking on his feet, Conrad gets an open message to VoidCorp placed onto AeGrid, saying they will be held accountable for the orbital’s destruction unless they stop the Thuldan weapon from firing. Twenty minutes later, Nectaris continues orbiting unharmed. No one admits anything.

No official statement is released but shares of VoidCorp-owned subsidiaries plunge on the Vessy. Insight offer free tech support planetwide for the next 5 days, taking on large numbers of t’sa immigrants to help with response times.

The crew hesitantly decide to investigate the odd orbital further. They set up an umbilical between the Sparrow and a seven-sided recess on the crystalline hull. Shortly after they start to pressurise this, the panel segments and opens, releasing a dimensional horror which they later learned had been trapped in stasis.

After just about managing to put this terrifying creature down they discover that there is but a single chamber beyond the orbital’s airlock. The cylindrical room’s curved walls are adorned by a sweeping mural, depicting lithe humanoids with gossamer wings. Within a clear ovoid capsule, one of the same winged humanoids lies motionless.

Upon being awoken, the being tries to communicate telepathically, but all the crew perceive are incoherent fragments of music, akin to the faint tinkling of bells. They radio for Yala.

The being initially recoils upon seeing Yala, generating some kind of psionic shield. However, diplomacy prevails and they discover that she can understand fraal, albeit her psychic voice employs an unknown dialect of the language, with a heavy “accent”.

When questioned, she explains that she was a diplomat from her people, the evrem, to the planet below. During her stay, its star went nova lifetimes earlier than predicted and razed the majority of the world’s surface. The remaining population hastily built the orbitals to hold half a million souls in cryo while a small number of technicians remained active, waiting for the atmosphere to freeze out. After the surface stabilised, they would establish industry sufficient to construct more orbitals and then ships. Unfortunately, something went wrong.

After communing with her ship to find out what happened, she recounts the rest of the tragedy… A massive flare hit, instantly disabling more than half the orbitals, and killing anyone not in a shielded cryo pod on the others. With no one to wake them, the survivors slept on, until a few years later, when one orbital was struck by an interstellar object. This is apparently what delivered the dimensional horror, which proceeded to shred any remaining cryo-sleepers. Eventually, it phased onto the evrem vessel, waking the ship. Within a moment, the ship assessed the situation and trapped the horror in a stasis field.

Unfortunately, this left the ship without enough power to do anything else. And so it waited. The planet drifted further and further from its former parent. With no one to maintain the other orbitals, they succumbed to various misfortunes, or simply time. The crystalline technology of the evrem proved less susceptible to the ravages of time, keeping both passenger and prisoner ensconced until the Sparrow‘s arrival.

Upon realising that the ship had the equivalent of an AI, Gus set about reaching it Galactic Standard. Mere hours later, it is explaining to Cinque the broad principles of evrem technology and instructing him on how to refuel the vessel. It also transliterates the evrem’s melodic name as TiFaDoLaSo.

By the time the stardrives of the Sparrow and Blockade Runner recharge, the evrem vessel is also ready to leave. Tifa declares that she will accompany them so that she may make contact with the current local governing authorities.

Five starfalls later, the convoy arrives in Aegis. Within moments, Conrad and Gus have received warning messages. One prompts Gus to quickly hack the Sparrow‘s transponder to fly Inseer colours.

In their absence, someone released a documentary called Kerensky, which exposes multiple alleged war crimes committed by the protagonist. Some of the footage suggests that VoidCorp had a hand in the production.

As soon as the Sparrow is picked up by the local sensor grid, ships with Austrin, Thuldan, Regency, and Concordian transponders change heading for the convoy. All hail more or less simultaneously. Each declares its intent to intercept the Sparrow, claiming to have jurisdiction. Comms traffic between the vessels suggest some disagreement over this. Wayne detects a sensor anomaly near Redcrown.

After a tense standoff, the lead Regency vessel states it has received new orders to escort Inseer Deputy Ambassador Gustaphine to Haven 6. The Concordians respond that they will comply, while the Thuldans and Austrins protest but reluctantly back down, following at a distance.

On Haven 6, the crew are met by Alloy, who brings them to meet with Foxy Lady and Alan Quinn. After reporting their recent escapades in Vethril, the crew is brought up to speed on local happenings. Insight has been pushing back against V0RL’s incursions onto AeGrid. The Kerensky documentary was released a few weeks ago, possibly in retaliation. Foxy Lady has been in contact with a few high-level individuals from the other powers and things will likely spill over into open sooner or later. Of more immediate concern, Conrad is informed that he stands to be tried for his alleged past crimes. He is placed under house arrest until the higher-ups finish arguing over the specifics…

The crew round up the stragglers and convince Kramer “Brains” Fillabar, the saner scientist, to recall the Blockade Runner. They come to an agreement with its owner, Genevieve Ordu, and Thereon Jason “TJ” Drolock, a pragmatic mercenary – in return for cooperation, the pair will be turned loose after reaching Aegis. The remaining pirates are forced into spare cryo-pods and loaded onto the Sparrow. The drug-addicted colonists are put back on ice and ferried up to the Arkadia. This is then hidden underground on 100268/3, the icy third planet in the system. The base is razed and a beacon transmitting a Concord locator signal is left behind.

A minor miscalculation by Mayhem, coupled with the Sparrow’s increasingly erratic stardrive, lands them nearly half a lightyear off their first neutron star waypoint. They detect a cold, dark planet even further out, slowly fleeing the stellar remnant — a planet with artificial satellites.

Entering orbit, a scan reveals that only 3 orbitals remain intact out of a suspected 23. 22 appear to have been large metallic constructs, now mostly reduced to scrap or fields of debris. The 23rd is much smaller, and possibly crystalline, but is still being powered by a beam from below the planet’s frozen surface.

A drone sent to check out one of the two intact large orbitals finds tens of thousands of cryo-pods. Every single one has been broken open; the mangled husks within are barely recognisable as the remains of some kind of lifeforms. A small, free-floating sample is retrieved for analysis…

The crew partake in some well-earned R&R on Starstation Aurora. A small convoy of Inseer vessels arrive carrying personnel, resources, and an experimental micro-drivesat relay. The Sparrow departs Walin and returns to Aegis.

They deliver some recovered n’sss tech to Concord. Deputy Ambassador Naar al-Haq briefs them on what was already known of the n’sss and their “shadowy and amorphous” ships from previous encounters at Zin Point in 2436 and Coulomb just last year (2499). Alloy fills Gus in on Insight’s efforts to patch V0RL’s breaches into the AeGrid. Conrad collects his newest toy.

After having been diverted many times, the crew finally make the long trek out to Vethril to investigate a lead they picked up from a drunken Rigunmor spacer on Highport in Lucullus. There they find a Class 5 Sleeper called the Arkadia, a Thuldan-designed colony ship incorporating t’sa cryo-sleep tech. The vessel appears to have been partially scuttled and hundreds of the cryo-pods are missing.

Shifting focus to the planet, a pirate labour camp is mistaken for a colony outpost. The crew disembark, exchange a few words, and become embroiled in a firefight while Mayhem and Yala fly the Sparrow away from the Blockade Runner, a better armed but less manoeuvrable courier ship. Little mercy is shown by either side, but the crew eventually put down the pirate leader, his second, and the madder of the two scientists.

After completing pilot training, Cinque spends the next week ignoring people, shopping for spare parts, and tinkering with tech.

Conrad re-renames his yacht the Vagabond and takes Kat for a joyride. Once off-planet, they discuss the TransTechnic execs that went missing after VoidCorp’s takeover.

Gus sets up a company to deal with the government security contract she inadvertently secured. She then hires a bunch of random mechalus hackers to do the coding while she’s away.

Wayne spends quality bounty hunter time making contacts in various bars. Unfortunately, after he sobers up, he can’t recall any of their names.

Mayhem puts together a deal for 2 cargo units of rhodium. This allows him to finally stop dwelling on the excessive bill for repairing the Sparrow’s airlock, which he damaged trying to show Conrad how to dock at Mindara Station.

Yala assists Ambassador Veil assessing the situation with the Greater Minshore Crystals on Leen. She spends her remaining free time offering aid to help the less fortunate in Tribon.

Samantha stays on Lison. The crew set her up with a clerical position in the Concord embassy. Conrad puts her and his niece in touch.

Sonya informs Conrad that the dealer who caused trouble last time got arrested after someone tipped the goldies off to one of his meets. Just before the Sparrow leaves, she messages to say she’s gotten a job but doesn’t reply when questioned about it.

Lakota Sharpe contacts them. The renowned exobiologist, Angelika Minshore, has arrived and is partnering with her to study the Greater Minshore Crystals. To say she is ecstatic is an understatement.

Eventually, Veil gathers them for an update. She has an uneasy feeling that the enemy’s tech may be more advanced than previously thought. One of her techs has has some success reverse engineering the klick bio-tech from Mindara Station. She hands over a prototype interface gauntlet, along with full schematics. (Cinque later manages to duplicate the device, after sending several thousand Concord’s worth of hardware to Silicon Heaven.) They agree to ferry her aide, Tapo’al Ifuurl, to Bluefall so he can report to Deputy Ambassador Naar al-Haq on Sirensea.

Escorted by a pair of Concord scouts, the Sparrow leaves Oberon with the Illumination, which carries the contents of the Gallagher vault, as well as Hadley, Joseph’s cryo pod, and Gemini McCarthy. They starrise in Aegis on New Year’s Eve.

Gus learns of some unsettling repercussions from uncovering V0RL’s existence. Conrad buys himself a New Year’s present. Mayhem clears a profit. Hadley gives the crew a cut of the sale, per Joseph’s instructions.

At Alloy’s request, they take a small delivery to Walin. Wayne thinks he picks up something at the edge of sensor range but is unable to pinpoint it. A few hours after docking at StarStation Aurora, three unidentified ships suddenly appear nearby. Breaching two airlocks and the shuttle bay, each delivers a group of five unknown aliens in environment suits who immediately attack anyone in sight. The crew of the Sparrow deals with one group, Kurch leads the few veteran Inseer security personnel to the shuttle bay, and the trainee recruits plus the remaining security bots tackle the third group. The invaders are described as “things of nightmares”.

Although the defenders take heavy casualties, all three battle groups are defeated. Shortly before the last attacker goes down, the three ships detach from the station and simply vanish. SALAI confirms their disappearance looked like the sensor anomalies Wayne detected earlier. Mayhem becomes hysterical when he sees one of the fallen intruders, eventually calming enough to explain that they are monsters of legend who appeared from the skies and attacked the t’sa many centuries ago — the n’sss.

Back at the Sparrow, the crew learn that a sesheyan and three humans were asking questions of the ground crew of the Victores, a Solar military vessel grounded nearby. Coincidentally, on the way to the caves with Lakota, Wayne spots a sesheyan heading in the same direction with a few humans.

Lakota finds the entrance, hidden by a holographic image as suspected. Just as Conrad is about to step through it, the sesheyan opens fire from the forest, soon joined by the 3 humans. After the crew take down the sesheyan, the others attempt to flee; two are successful. The downed bodies have tattoos of a ghost.

Investigating the caves, the crew find the equipment Lakota’s team left behind, discover the bodies of two colonists, and make first contact with fully sentient Greater Minshore Crystals. Yala is able to communicate to some degree with the Minshore’s Elder. At the Minshores’ request, Cinque fixes the locator beacon that Ysala left with the treasure; they seem to benefit somehow from the “music” it emits. In return, the Minshore guide Cinque to the contents of the vault.

It turns out Ysala has also returned with her crew to reclaim the treasure. A running firefight ensues. Conrad tells Mayhem to broadcast a message about the Mindaran Ghost being sighted, in the hopes that Thomas Kind might be listening. Taking heavy losses, the pirates retreat from Conrad’s and Wayne’s formidable arsenals. Ysala makes it back to the Ghost and uses its weapons to collapse the northern entrance. Mayhem follows her into orbit, noting three other incoming ships before returning to the surface.

Lakota returns to Mahatay with the two dead colonists. The crew enlist the assistance of the Illumination, a freighter the Sparrow had landed near, to transport the treasure back to Lison. Interference from Kerri Lansing prompts Conrad to call in a favour from Ambassador Veil. After thwarting her scheme, he sends her a message telling her not to overreach.

After confirming there will be enough for Joseph’s needs, Hadley begins to make arrangements. Once the rhodium ore is processed, the Illumination will haul everything to Aegis, accompanied by the Sparrow.

Veil invites the crew to meet her and fills in some details, including the destruction of a klick ship near Mindara Station and her suspicion that there is likely at least one more in the system. People split up to take care of various personal tasks.

TJ invites the crew out to celebrate his promotion to Master Sergeant, along with the half dozen remaining Concord marines on Lison. The rest are split between searching for any trace of klicks on Bauble and safeguarding the techs refitting Mindara Station.

Concord techs provide a partial reconstruction of the data from the 3D fragments, confirming the corsair Ysala looted the Gallagher vault. They learn she moved its contents to Leen and marked it with a locator beacon.

Samantha gets command pins commissioned for the crew in the shape of sparrows – gold for Mayhem as captain, and silver for the others, except Conrad’s one has gold trim as de facto first officer.

People finally discover Hadley is mute, as opposed to merely not talkative. Fortunately, Sam knows sign language. It later turns out that she also speaks Aleerin. No one thinks to enquire about this.

Conrad gets a call to say his “niece” has been arrested. He and Cinque go to bail Sonya out. She took the fall for Mags, a friend of hers caught up with a dealer pushing Sciseed, known locally as Red. Conrad fills her in on his contingency plans and they find out she lives in a small 2-bed apartment in one of the dodgier areas of Upper Tier. It’s relatively well kept, given she’s a teen living alone. She offers them the main bedroom if they need somewhere to crash; it’s been unoccupied since her mother’s death.

Cinque makes some headway on his pilot training, but takes a break to go treasure hunting on Leen with the others. They are able to track the locator beacon to the Solar colony of Mahatay before Ysala contacts them with a threat to desist and kills the signal. When sensor scans reveal little more of use, they land at the settlement, claiming they are setting down to fix a botched repair.

A customs inspector named Armando Fuentes gives the ship a once-over, tells them not to bring any serious firepower into the town, then gives them a lift to the dome. He is a mine of information, but only while booking rooms at La Siesta do they discover that a terraforming team recently discovered a treasure in underground caves. The team brought back a few bars of rhodium as proof, but were unable to locate it again when they returned with heavy-lift equipment. Now, hundreds of colonists are spending their downtime treasure hunting.

Conrad and Cinque go to speak with the team’s scout, Lakota Sharpe. They confirm the rhodium forge-bar she found came from the Gallagher vault. She has been researching the local wildlife and thinks Minshore Crystals have camouflaged the cave entrance. They warn her that pirates stole the treasure and may be about to reclaim it. She proposes working together to prove her theory; they can keep the treasure in exchange for her making contact with the Minshore. With all in agreement, clandestine preparations are hastily made.

The crew of the Sparrow accompany the Concord strike force back to Bauble. Along with a squad of 8 marines and a team of 3 techs, they cautiously make their way through the vault and sweep the tunnels beyond. Whatever had been occupying the complex is gone. Plasma scorched walls, piles of organic ash, and signs of equipment having been mounted in places are the only traces of an External presence. A few shards of a shattered 3D are found among some fragments of human (or mechalus) cybertech. These are taken back to Lison for the Concord techs to analyse.

Joseph has made arrangements with a t’sa physician to go into cryosleep. He will give it a little more time, just in case a lead emerges; otherwise Hadley has been given instructions.

Wayne finally gets his ghost-hunting trip to Mindara Station. TJ, a marine sergeant who is curious about the rumours, accompanies them. He brings three recruits, ostensibly as a training exercise. Aboard, they find the supernatural trappings serve to mask the presence of a group of klicks. Worse, they discover that a human turncoat, Lt Tuslow, has been supplying the enemy with sensitive Concord data. After a protracted firefight and some tinkering with the environmental controls, the klicks are downed, the traitor apprehended, and the station secured. Cinque acquires some new old toys. Conrad claims “salvage” on Tuslow’s personal yacht, the Star Skimmer. Veil sends in reinforcements, allowing the Sparrow to return to Lison.

Gus gives a presentation to the government’s archival division. With a little help from Cinque, she is offered first refusal on a security contract. Kerri gets a promotion to replace the department head who has suddenly decided to retire.

Cinque undergoes intensive pilot training through Concord.