There was a time, many years ago, when Cassandra Rose thought she wasn't made for the life of a spacefarer. She'd look to the stars from her childhood home in Bayard City on Port Meredith and watch the blinking of passing trade ships of the Commune, taking notes and watching the transponder radar sites on the Stellarnet. Sometimes, she'd get to see a Fleetcomm Security ship, the Terran equivalent of other country's naval forces. By 19, she knew the types of ships that passed by the Spacedock in Bayard City.

Which made it all the stranger when a different kind of starship came tumbling out an emergency witchspace breach, flaming and damaged, and had to be towbeamed into port. Cass was 20, and despite her best efforts, the safety officers wouldn't answer her questions about where it came from. That ship was the EC Telescopic Glow, one of the Commune's first deep space exploration craft. It had disappeared in a witchlane emergency in 2197, and exploration didn't commence again until 3 years later. She never did get an explanation to why it crashed down that day after nearly 41 years adrift in witchspace.

She saw it as an omen. Cass, who thought space would be a fun thing to watch, decided that day she needed to be up there, dancing between stars, breaching the frontier of Terra's science and the Friendship Accord as a whole. When she was 21, a year later, she realised she wasn't the boy she always thought she was. For all the Terran progress, her family wasn't on board, and they grew apart slowly.

It hurt her. She never really recovered, and took to the stars with a crew she didn't even know when she was 23, in 4189. It didn't go well.

Then Cass met a lady named Ilondren at a spacedock bar in New Uruk. Ilondren, Fourth Journey, she called herself. She was an Elf, from Indor, and lost and afraid in a Terran colony.

Ilondren had grown up in a conclave on Ealdas Angrolien, in dedication to Elven spiritualism. Elves mature socially in stages, called Journeys. In a Journey, an elf takes a meander through space and learns things about themself; Ilondren, on her Third, wandered into a Khell restaurant somewhere in their outer frontier. It shook her to the core, in the best way possible. Khell, to other mammalian peoples, look like furry felines, and they're socially communal in a similar fashion. The restaurant, or bar, was full of tall, beautiful, and handsome Khell ladies dancing to a Terran jazz tune. It was Terran night, they said, and Ilondren could lie and say she just loved Terran music, but it was actually seeing people, seeing women, dancing and kissing and enjoying themselves that drew her in. Conclaves aren't controlling, in Indori society, and the very next day, Ilondren sent a notice that she was finding a new purpose.

Ilondren, she explained to this Terran lady called Cass, had finished her Fourth Journey two years prior. She'd been duped out of something important by a scam artist from Tris Norar, but she had a starship, and that was her ticket to freedom. Cass asked, without thinking, if she'd ever think of having a crew; Cass was a good engineer, she swore, and a half-decent pilot. Ilondren laughed and told Cass to buy her a drink first. Cass bought her extremely fancy whiskey from Angor Five. Ilondren thought that was really sweet, and suddenly the Valentine had a crew of two.

K'Sari doesn't talk about her past, and Cass and Illy don't pry. She needed a getaway card, to do something good, something noble and graceful. When two girlfriends and a third-wheeling Bohoy robot put a call out on Fleetcomm Auxiliary Corps channels for a third crewmember, K'Sari was the first to answer. Cass joked it was quick. K'Sari said she's quick where it's important, and slow where it's needed.

That made Cass blush, which earned a laugh out of Ilondren and their robot friend, who was apparently called Akarn. If you can be that deft, Cass said, you're on, gal.

The year is 4192. The starship Lucent Valentine received a call from the Fleetcomm Investigations division. K'Sari insisted they answer it, and then so did Akarn. The others folded fast.