The Misfits Complete Book I Synopsis/Recap

Complete Misfits Book I: Paperback, E-Book, & Audiobook

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Episode 1: “The Misfits”

"When rehab was over, they gave us a ship."

The start of our saga begins with Hale Burch, the new captain of the Yankee-Chaos, explaining the makeup of his unique crew. They include Sōsh, a half-metal moon ranger from the Lettered Systems who’d lost half his body on an ill-fated mission; Leda, also a moon ranger whose injuries included burns over the entirety of her body, severe long-term memory loss, and the loss of both her eyes, all of which were repaired using advanced biotech; and Ren, a doctor, whose deep mental scars stem from the constant loss of life and severe injuries she was tasked with repairing during the war. Burch’s ship, the Yankee-Chaos has a history too, as the ship’s resident AI is unique in all the galaxy. The disembodied pilot, Rishi, was once a crew member who was inside the Yankee when the ship was attacked. Rather than allowing Rishi to freeze to death when the ship decompressed, the ship’s original AI, an advanced Maícon clone, knew a way to upload Rishi’s consciousness, saving her life, but trapping her aboard the Yankee-Chaos itself.

On their first mission, the war-weary veterans are sent out to a planet called Texini, where a colony of pastoral purists called the Barŏs have failed to make contact with their Athosian partners back in the inner Battery Systems. Burch and the crew arrive expecting to find a world of green farmland but are met instead by a red, dusty wasteland. They approach carefully to investigate and eventually descend to the planet’s surface, where they find that all the living matter of the once-green planet has been consumed, including all the animals and people, right down to their bones. While searching for the cause of the devastation, the crew finds the exoskeletal remains of oversized bees piled up in huge quantities surrounding the skeletons of the Barŏs, indicating the insects had consumed the planet’s biomass in an out-of-control swarm.

Teixini seems completely dead and the crew is preparing to leave when Leda spots a distant plume of smoke with her advanced prosthetic eyes. She flies out to investigate in her drone suit, while Rishi picks up Burch, Sōsh, and the ship’s housebot Harold. At the source of the smoke, they find a small campfire set by a makeshift housebot outside a mountainside cave. The crew enter the cave and are shocked to discover one emaciated lone survivor barely clinging to life. The man, Kristoff Mikkel, explains that the bees, which the colonists had engineered to pollinate their crops, had undergone a rapid mutation and consumed everything in giant swarms. He’d used his skills from his previous life to prepare a hideout in the cavern where he hoped to save his friends and family, but the swarm had approached too suddenly.

After rescuing the sole survivor, Burch offers to bring Kristoff back to the inner Lettered Systems so he can be returned to Charris, the colony’s origin. Instead, Kristoff asks to remain on the Yankee-Chaos as a member of the crew.

Burch, over the course of their first mission together, begins to develop a great affinity for Rishi, who returns his affection and also appreciates having the companionship of a good crew after several years in isolation while the Yankee-Chaos was vacant during repairs.

Origins Hyperlinks: Rishi’s story, “Go Easy,” takes us through the moments leading up to Rishi’s death and apotheosis as a technological being and the pilot of the Yankee-Chaos; while backstories for Sōsh and Leda can be found in “First Day New Ship.”

Many of the stories listed as hyperlinks here can be found on the “Misfits Origins” playlist. All of the stories can be found in the channel’s archive or on RoweLit.com through the “All Stories & Links” page: https://www.rowelit.com/sci-fi-weeklies/all-stories-links

Episode 2: “Archaeologix”

The crew of the Yankee-Chaos are called back suddenly by LSS Command to pick up a passenger at Moses-Mesui on the planetary ring of Athos. They meet a very cranky archaeology professor, Dr. Bankara, who declares that the crew are to take her out on an expedition in deep space for over a year. They then proceed to Athos’s sister ring, Iophos, to pick up Dr. Bankara’s assistant, Carolina Dreeson, who happens to be the daughter of the Athosian Chancellor, Barnard Dreeson.

The crew speculate that the initial target of exploration, an asteroid in the Kappa-363 system, might be a mysterious deep-space artifact with a strange history. The problem for Burch and the crew is that the Kappa systems are filled with hostile Etteran vessels, and Burch worries about Carolina’s safety when Bankara orders the girl out on a spacewalk to explore the interior of the artifact. Burch sends Leda, Sōsh, and Harold out with Carolina for her safety. While exploring the interior, Carolina and the crew barely escape with their lives when the Etterans appear and chase the Yankee-Chaos. In the process, Dr. Bankara’s specialized sensor array gets damaged, even though she and Carolina succeed in calibrating it to scan similar such artifacts.

The close escape prompts Burch to confront Bankara about their mission. In the ensuing meeting, the crew learns that young Carolina Dreeson is actually in charge of the mission under the direction of her father—the Chancellor of Athos. They also learn that the mysterious artifact is not the only one. Carolina and Bankara are trying to uncover a network of these alien deep-space beacons that are seeded throughout the galaxy and speaking to one another. The crew turns their efforts toward interpreting the signals Carolina found on the interior walls of the Kappa artifact.

After multiple stops and starts, Rishi finally makes a breakthrough decoding the signals between the artifacts. They learn that at the center of the galaxy, there appears to be a central hub connecting all the artifacts. Burch and the crew decide to pursue the central node in the network. They jump to it and find a planet-sized alien ship, and as they approach, they seem to be teleported to the interior where a mysterious god-like alien being examines them. Even Rishi is brought with them, and she is somehow restored to her human form. The crew are then suddenly returned to their ship, only Rishi is no longer with them. Burch grows despondent over Rishi’s abduction, but suddenly, as they are deciding what to do about Rishi’s loss, the crew is instantaneously returned halfway across the galaxy to the Kappa artifact at the same moment the Etteran Starfighters had attacked them months before. Everyone on the crew remembers the six-month expedition but the chronometer shows that it never happened. Rishi has returned to her place within the ship’s server, but she claims she doesn’t remember the expedition at all.

Carolina insists on pursuing the alien ship again. Burch and the rest of the crew, however, decide that the mysterious time-lord at the heart of the artifacts has given them fair warning not to meddle with such great unknown forces. Burch decides to return Carolina and Bankara to Athos safely instead.

They drop off Carolina in Ithaca after their great adventure. She thanks Burch for his help and friendship, and Burch tells Carolina that she can always call on him if she ever needs help again. Burch notes as they part that her father, Barnard Dreeson, the Chancellor of Athos is there to pick up his returning daughter at the shipyard.

Origins Hyperlinks: Origin stories for the Kappa Artifact include “Kappa Salvage” and “Kappa Paradox,” where two separate groups of explorers venture into the Kappa artifact with distinctly different results.

Episode. 3: “Wizard of Athos”

Between mundane runs transporting diplomats, the crew of the Yankee-Chaos are contacted urgently once again. They are ordered by LSS Command to pick up an Etteran special operator with a critical mission. As they bring on the operator in Etteran space, Burch immediately takes this lone-wolf soldier for a stone-cold psychopath. Burch fears that he and the crew might be discarded as expendable as soon as the mission is complete. The operator, codenamed Transom, tells the crew that he has been tasked with tracking down a group of missing Etteran scientists who were rumored to be developing an unknown superweapon. Transom’s only lead is a small outpost with a single contact.

Burch accompanies Transom to meet his contact on Ruskin Outlet. Transom accosts a logistics technician named Trungi, who claims to know nothing specific about a weapon, but after Transom threatens him with his knife, Trungi gives Transom the name of a petty criminal, Shade, who supposedly trades with a man who is rumored to be building a superweapon. Trungi tells Transom that he can find Shade in Scout City on Danisport.

Burch and the crew take Transom to Scout City, where the Etteran operator employs Burch’s crew to find Shade. While they’re out searching, Leda reports that Transom has vanished. A short while later, the Etteran calls the crew back to the ship. Then he returns to the ship rolling a suitcase behind him with Shade stuffed inside. He tells Burch that Shade is probably alive but is definitely unconscious and insists that he must wake up inside the ship’s airlock.

When Shade wakes up inside the airlock, Transom begins to interrogate Shade. Burch has seen enough of Transom’s dark sense of humor and callous regard for human life to confirm that the Etteran is the stone-cold psychopath he initially took him for. Shade is sufficiently terrified that he tells Transom everything he knows about the mysterious partner he is trading a new type of generators with. He claims that the boss who manufactures these generators is an immortal wizard, but Shade insists he has no idea about any weapon. Shade gives Transom information about a ship transponder, which he claims should help them track the generators to their source, and possibly the middleman Shade has been trading with.

After dropping Shade at Burch’s insistence, the crew pursues the middleman, Braylon Keel, to a small moon called Minstik. Transom takes Leda with him to pose as buyers looking for power sources for an independent cylinder group the couple intends to build. They surprise Keel in his office where he has two of the mysterious generators. During the course of their conversation, Braylon Keel shakes Leda’s hand. She quickly begins to feel faint, and their cover is blown. Transom realizes that Keel isn’t the middleman but the wizard himself. Transom kicks Leda out of the line of fire and gets into a direct gunfight with the wizard.

Burch moves in to rescue Leda while the rest of the crew lay down cover fire. Transom, meanwhile, pursues the wizard while Burch orders his crew to retreat to the Yankee-Chaos.

Over the objections of Sōsh, Burch takes the ship into orbit. Transom is furious at Burch and the crew for abandoning the fight, but Burch insists the pursuit of this mysterious wizard was above their paygrade. He promises Transom that he will make sure he’s not stranded and calls for backup, and though parts of the crew aren’t happy with Burch’s choice, he’s satisfied that they’ve fulfilled their part of the mission and found a way to get Transom off the ship before he had the chance to cover his tracks by taking them all out.

Burch contacts LSS command, who return a communication from Athosian intelligence that they can confirm the identity of the rogue wizard as their most wanted fugitive Clem Aballi.

Origins Hyperlinks: An origin story for Transom “The First Man” follows the deadly Etteran operator through one of his many missions as a black-ops specialist during the West Battery War.

Episode. 4: “Dark Swarm”

Transom finds himself stuck on the small moon Minstik following his firefight with the mysterious “Wizard of Athos.” He’s both furious at Burch and the Yankee-Chaos crew for abandoning the fight, but he’s also mystified as to how his target escaped. Transom is certain that he’d shot Braylon Keel multiple times, and somehow he still escaped. Burch tells Transom the man’s identity—Clem Aballi. Transom realizes that his mistake was in dismissing the possibility that he was actually chasing a genuine wizard.

Aballi, meanwhile, escapes Minstik with several wounds, including a serious headshot. He orders his pilot—Kaudik—to take him to their fallback location. Kaudik questions Aballi, insisting that they may lead their pursuers to their fallback outpost by fleeing there directly, also wondering if Aballi’s judgement might be compromised by the headwound. Aballi insists on going directly, threatening Kaudik, and forcing the pilot to comply.

Transom fumes over the fact he is ordered to wait for backup—a special operations unit from the Letters Select Service called AA-Blight. It takes the unit several days to arrive. They find Transom half drunk and in a foul mood, but he insists on leaving immediately anyway.

The commander of AA-Blight claims they have intel placing Aballi’s manufacturing outpost for the generators in a small system called Granholm. They also have intel from the Athosians that identifies the generators themselves as the superweapon. The Athosians believe Aballi’s generators can be used to deliver gamma radiation, and when deployed in a swarm, they have the potential to deliver a swath of radiation that could kill everyone in a narrow linear pathway. On a straight line like the Athosian and Iophan planetary rings are, estimates show that Aballi could deploy a swarm that would kill as many as a trillion people in Dreeson’s system.

Clem Aballi’s body reconstitutes itself upon his arrival at Granholm. He sets a trap for his pursuers. After they’ve cleaned up their operation in the system, Aballi has one final loose thread to tie up. He can guarantee that he will never talk if he’s captured. He can’t say the same about Kaudik, who professes his loyalty to their cause, swearing that he is willing to die to see Clem Aballi’s plan through. Clem obliges, shooting Kaudik dead and leaving his body on the icy planet just outside the hidden outpost.

When the pursuers arrive at Granholm, Transom immediately sniffs out Clem’s booby trap. He warns the eager soldiers of AA-Blight, who send drones into the outpost instead. The base explodes, destroying every last bit of evidence. However, when Transom discovers Kaudik’s dead body out in the cold, he plans to use a secret Etteran intelligence technique that can read the memories from Kaudik’s frozen brain. They just need a currier to take the head back to Etteran intelligence, and Transom knows just the ship for the job. He calls Burch and sets up a meeting where he transfers the head to Leda, who thanks Transom for saving her life during the firefight on Minstik.

Meanwhile, as the pursuers wait for the intelligence to come back, Transom, AA-Blight, and Maícon Prime—one of the oldest and most sophisticated AIs in the Battery Systems—all search for Clem Aballi using a list of probable locations for his tertiary base made from statistical analysis. The list includes thousands of possible sites for a hidden outpost. Transom discusses the possibility of finding Aballi in time with Maícon Prime. The AI declares that it is unlikely they’ll be able to find Aballi before he can execute his plan, killing billions.

Burch comes through with the intel they need from Kaudik’s head. He meets Transom personally at a space station in the Omegas to deliver the news. Burch hands over the intel, and Transom slugs Burch in the nose for deserting him on Minstik during the firefight with Aballi but then declares that they’re all even.

Transom, Maícon Prime, and AA-Blight pursue Clem Aballi to a remote hidden outpost on a numbered planet far outside the Lettered Systems. They find the outpost with the missing Etteran scientists inside, but Transom suspects something is wrong and doesn’t follow AA-Blight inside. Instead, he searches for Clem Aballi in the surrounding foothills. He listens over comms as AA-Blight are destroyed in Aballi’s trap, and above, the ship, with Maícon Prime inside, explodes in a conflagration overhead and plummets to the planet’s desert surface. Transom continues to pursue Aballi in the foothills until suddenly he is blasted by a proximity mine.

Clem Aballi approaches Transom as he is bleeding out from his injuries. Aballi tries to recruit the Etteran operator, promising to save Transom’s life if he agrees to work with him. Transom refuses, stating that he has no intention of working for a terrorist who’s trying to kill a trillion people. Aballi reveals that he never wanted to kill anyone, only to reveal Athos as the imperial tyrant they are. He insists that once the Athosians arrive, they’ll flatten the outpost, which wasn’t ever a weapons facility at all but a factory for manufacturing modular generators that could shift the balance of power away from Athos, making the Indies and Lettered Systems wealthier and more independent. Aballi states he didn’t want to kill Athosians but Athos itself, and not with violence, but with a mirror.

Transom tells Aballi that he’d rather die than owe the wizard a debt for saving his life. Aballi leaves him to die, declaring it a waste of talent.

Transom loses consciousness, expecting to die, but after everything goes black, he’s surprised yet again by a bright light. He’s shocked to wake up once more aboard the Yankee-Chaos after Dr. Ren has patched him back together. Burch reveals that he’d asked Rishi to decrypt the intel from Kaudik’s head and decided to follow along to the outpost, sensing that something was about to go wrong with the mission. He tells Transom that he is now presumed dead by the Etterans in the fight and that he is welcome aboard the ship while he recovers from his injuries.

Origins Hyperlinks: Source story highlighting a chapter in the long history of Clem Aballi—aka, the Wizard of Athos—“Garbage Rock,” explores his escape from incarceration in Dreeson’s System. It may help to explain his resentment of Athosian society.

Episode 5: “Proper Company”

The crew of the Yankee-Chaos find a quiet, tropical world to lie low while Transom recovers from his injuries. They spend several weeks on Keneise out of contact planning to reconnect with LSS Command after decompressing following their wild last mission. Transom spends that time recuperating.

After several weeks, with Transom back on his feet, the crew decide to leave Keneise with the intention of returning him to Etteran space to rejoin the ongoing war. But before they jump out, Rishi checks their comms backlog and finds an urgent message from Carolina Dreeson. She states that she can’t say openly what’s happening, because she doesn’t know who to trust, but she asks for Burch to come and pick her up.

The crew debate whether to drop off Transom first, but it would significantly delay their trip to Athos to pick up Carolina, and Rishi states that she has some intuition that Transom has a further role to play in the unfolding events.

When they get to Athos, Carolina is despondent over the apparent suicide of her aunt Sayla Purcell. Carolina doesn’t believe the official story, and she feels like her family is lying. The crew, meanwhile, are wary of Transom crossing paths with the Chancellor of Athos’s daughter. Yet when the two speak, Transom surprises them with his manner around Carolina.

She begins to tell Burch about her many suspicions, one of which is that she believes her aunt’s death has some connection to the recent terror activity involving Clem Aballi. She’s also very concerned by the sudden disappearance of an AI who has been close to her family for many centuries—Maícon Prime—and no one in the family seems willing to discuss the matter.

Burch and Transom share a furtive look, uncertain whether to tell Carolina about what happened to Maícon out on that distant planet in pursuit of Clem Aballi. Carolina catches on and insists they share what they know. Transom explains that Maícon is dead—blown up when their ship was blasted by Clem Aballi. Carolina insists that even though Maícon’s body may have been destroyed in the conflagration, his processor would have survived. She demands that Burch take them out to the planet to search for Maícon Prime’s processor core.

Along the way, they stop for specialized hardware to build Maícon an interface that will work with his prime AI processing core. They arrive to find the remote planet where Aballi’s base had recently been is now totally abandoned. The crew search for Maícon’s processor, but Transom insists on figuring out how Aballi had gotten the better of him, exploring the foothills instead, seeking out an answer. Leda locates Maícon’s processor after an hour or so of searching with her technologically-enhanced vision and her drone suit. Transom finds out that in order to blast him, Aballi had rigged every walkable path away from his outpost with proximity mines. Transom insists on detonating all the mines so that they couldn’t harm anyone in the future.

The crew, looking for a place to reconstitute Maícon’s technological mind in secret, decide to return to Kristoff’s abandoned planet of Texini. Rishi, Kristoff, Carolina, and Harold all work together on the processor, while the others relax nearby. They all notice that Transom seems to be building a rapport with Carolina. He snaps at Leda when she teases him about it. Burch begins to grow concerned about the tensions when suddenly, the others bring Maícon back online inside the body of Kristoff’s old bot George.

Carolina discusses her concerns regarding her family with Maícon Prime, who doesn’t have specific answers, but he grows concerned about the possibilities when Carolina reveals a list of recent contacts from Sayla’s investigation into the Dreeson family. One of the names on the list is familiar: Clem Aballi.

Maícon does have a suggestion for Carolina to continue the investigation. He gives Rishi a destination for a defunct cylinder group in the Indies. Along the way, Carolina and Transom discuss his history, how he was orphaned in the war, and he even reveals his given name to Carolina—Sebastian. Burch and Rishi aren’t sure what to think of the surprising encounter.

When they arrive at the derelict Exos cylinders, Maícon intends to depart with Carolina and Burch, but Transom insists that he won’t allow young Ms. Dreeson out of his sight until he’s certain it’s safe for her inside the cylinder, where they are supposed to meet with a group of anti-war activists. Transom accompanies Carolina, Burch, and Maícon, causing a scene when the predominantly Trasp group doesn’t like the look of him. Ultimately, the tensions are defused when Transom refuses to back down and won’t abandon Carolina’s side.

The group brings Carolina to meet their leader, a tall, thin man who turns out to be “Sparrow” Dreeson, her second-cousin Kenn, a black sheep of the Dreeson clan. Maícon tells Burch that he and Carolina will remain with Sparrow, and Transom insists on staying on as Carolina’s personal protector. Burch decides that the arrangement actually seems fitting, as she is embarking on a dangerous road and will need a dangerous man like Transom by her side, so he leaves Carolina there in proper company.

Sparrow asks Burch to do him and his group a favor—to undertake a mission transporting an agent of their group. Burch decides he’ll bring this agent back to the ship and let the crew decide.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Cherry Coffin,” connects the backstory of how Carolina Dreeson snuck off Athos to escape with Burch on her search for the truth about her aunt Sayla’s death.

Episode 6: “Drop Mine”

Sparrow Dreeson and Maícon Prime discuss Carolina’s list of contacts from Sayla’s diary. Sparrow decides that Carolina’s best bet will be to retrace Sayla’s steps. He offers to take her from the hidden outpost on Exos to a mining colony called Pax Heavy, a drop mine where Sayla had met with Herald Wright, a miner with generational ties to the Dreeson family.

When they get to Pax, Transom, Carolina, and Maícon Prime debate going out to Herald Wright’s mining camp as a storm approaches. Ultimately, Carolina decides that they didn’t come out to Pax to waste time waiting for a storm to pass in the safety of the space tower. As they set out for their shuttle, Transom notices a suspicious person following them and subdues the man. After interrogating the stalker in his typical style, Transom coaxes his name out of him. Maícon recognizes the name—Elosh. Maícon and Elosh explain that he is a member of a secretive sect of genetically immortal humans who have taken a vow to prevent dangerous technologies from ending the human race. They are in a rush to get to the camp, so Maícon instructs Transom to bring Elosh with them to Herald Wright’s mining camp.

On the flight out to the camp, the weather worsens. They find the miners busily securing their equipment under a specialized tent designed to shield the mining camp from the approaching winds. While Herald Wright and his workers are securing the tent, Carolina questions Elosh. The wizard declares that he was simply observing Carolina because she was seen with Sparrow and his anti-war activists—as the daughter of the Athosian Chancellor taking up their cause would represent a large shift in the political climate. Transom is still very suspicious of Elosh but they must maintain the appearance of normalcy in the presence of the miners.

As Wright and his workers return, he informs Carolina that he’d met with Sayla, but he doesn’t know that she died and is shocked to learn of her apparent suicide. He informs Carolina that her family was an early investor in the mines, and because of the war’s outbreak, the timing of the investment made her family even more fabulously wealthy. As they are speaking about the company’s records and the Dreeson investment, the weather worsens further.

Transom goes out with Wright and the Miners to inspect the tent, only to find that the winds outside are so high that rocks are being blown against the tent. At Transom’s direction, the Miners and Maícon rearrange the mining vehicles to surround the shelter just before the tent is breached, sending rocks flying into the camp.

The group hunkers down in the shelter, spending a long and terrifying night inside, buffeted by flying rocks and lightning.

In the morning, with half the bots destroyed and the entire camp buried under rocks, the surviving humans crawl out to the surface. Carolina is overwhelmed with emotion, shaken by the storm and fearing that this inauspicious first step on her journey may be a sign that she should give up on pursuing the truth about Sayla.

While they are waiting to reconnect with Sparrow after the storm, Carolina sends Maícon Prime to retrieve the records of her family’s stake in the drop mine. Transom encourages Carolina to press on, to take the next step in spite of her feeling of helplessness.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Exos: Before the War” follows the history of the final weeks of the Exos cylinder group.

 Episode 7: “Archangel”

Burch brings a Trasp anti-war activist from Sparrow’s group named “Reggie” aboard the Yankee-Chaos. He asks the rest of the crew if they would be willing to transport her to Trasp space. Reggie explains that her mission is to recruit rising Trasp officers who might be willing to mediate in future negotiations that could end the war. The main reason for the war’s continuation, according to Reggie, is that dialogue has been nonexistent for so long that the parties don’t have any participants who even believe the war can be stopped. Reggie’s mission is to meet with a young rising colonel.

The crew are reluctant, but they agree to go, mostly because they all bear heavy scars from the war themselves and are willing to risk everything to help bring the fighting to an end.

Along the way to Trasp space, Reggie takes a special interest in Leda, asking Leda to accompany her to the meeting with the Trasp colonel. Leda is skeptical but willing to help do her part to end the war. Ren and Rishi devise a way that Leda can stream the entire meeting through her technologically-enhanced eyes. That way the crew can monitor the meeting.

The Yankee-Chaos lands on Raal, a once-residential outpost hollowed out by the war. Leda arrives with a deep hatred for the Trasp, as she holds them responsible for her burns and amnesia. The Trasp colonel takes an interest in her, believing Leda to be a Trasp deserter hiding within Sparrow Dreeson’s anti-war collective.

The colonel commands Leda to fight with the base’s best female fighter in order to analyze her fighting style, hoping to determine whether it’s a Trasp methodology. He also orders her to undergo a retinal scan, which proves inconclusive because of Leda’s optical prosthetics. However, when she beats the colonel in combat, he becomes so suspicious that he sends his junior officer back to the dojo to recover Leda’s DNA from her staff.

The colonel invites Leda and Reggie to dinner, ostensibly to discuss his place in the anti-war efforts. However, when they arrive, the colonel reveals that he knows where Leda was injured and how she was found. He informs Leda that the DNA test came back as a match for a Trasp officer who was presumed dead in a nuclear blast on Kendry. He also reveals that Leda still has a family, including a brother, and that she is an honored hero of the Protectorate. Leda refuses to believe the news and becomes enraged. The colonel, though, insists that she must remain with him on the base as the price for his willingness to become a partner in Sparrow’s network. He also explains that he knows Burch and her other friends are sitting outside on the Yankee-Chaos, and he tells Leda that if she doesn’t stay, he’ll simply blow all her friends to pieces.

Leda agrees to remain with the colonel in Trasp territory, and he sends Reggie back to the Yankee-Chaos alone. Reggie, who has no idea Leda has been streaming the entire encounter from her tech-eyes, tries to convince Burch that Leda had agreed to remain as part of an exchange with Sparrow’s group. Burch strings Reggie along as they depart, trying to figure out how far she’ll take the lie.

Eventually, Burch loses patience with Reggie’s deceit, and he stuffs her in the airlock, forcing her to confess that she had suspected Leda was Trasp all along and that she hoped Leda would be recognized. Reggie saw Leda as the perfect bridge between the warring parties—a Trasp war hero capable of talking to their Etteran enemies and their adversaries in the Letters on friendly terms.

Burch and Rishi ultimately decide to let Reggie live, both because they expect to need Sparrow’s help getting Leda back and because they didn’t want to become anything like the Trasp by disposing of people as though they didn’t have inherent value.

The crew take the Yankee-Chaos in search of Sparrow with the intention of putting together a rescue mission to get Leda back.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Aida the Swan,” explores the true backstory of “Leda” and how she came to be an amnesiac, moving backwards on the timeline from her recovery on Tressia back before the moments she was caught in a nuclear explosion on Kendry.

 Episode 8: “Murder Mill”

After dropping Reggie back on Exos, the Yankee-Chaos arrives on Pax Heavy looking for Carolina, Transom, and Maícon Prime, as well as Sparrow Dreeson. They find Transom and Carolina but quickly learn that Sparrow had abandoned them on Pax after Carolina and Transom got caught in the storm.

Carolina is troubled to learn that Leda has been taken by the Trasp, and they all resolve to pursue Sparrow, whom Transom is tracking somehow through his witless Trasp bodyguard. In discussing the financial records of Carolina’s family from the drop mine as well as Sparrow’s location, Maícon Prime deduces that Sparrow had stopped at an industrial outpost he calls the “Murder Mill,” which the others all know as the secret quasi-mythical source of many of the West Battery War’s strikebots.

Burch and Rishi set a course for the Murder Mill despite Burch’s misgivings about the possibility of it being a very dangerous place to approach. Instead, they find a quiet outpost hidden in a moon crater. And rather than having to fight their way in, with Carolina Dreeson by their side, she invokes the right to inspect the factory once the keeper of the Murder Mill confirms her family as major shareholders.

The keeper of the facility “Murder Bill” turns out to be a house bot with a comical moustache whom someone has programmed to speak in simple rhymes. Burch arrives at the door walking on his two clunky prosthetic legs, which he received at the hands of the very machines manufactured in that outpost, and when he finds this ridiculous robot as the gatekeeper, he finds it to be a sick joke that isn’t even a little bit funny. Transom somehow manages to keep Burch from losing his temper while Carolina copies the financial records dating back to the start of the war. And while Burch wants to destroy the whole place as they leave, Transom reminds him that even if they destroyed the source of the strikebots, the fighting wouldn’t stop, that: “once the metal runs out, they just send in the meat instead.” Ironically, it seems that keeping the strikebots coming off the line may save more human lives in the end.

Maícon Prime informs the group that there is yet another secret outpost they need to visit for multiple reasons—to analyze the financial data from the Murder Mill, to prepare a rescue mission to Trasp space, and to get more information about the mysterious sect of wizards. The catch is that this outpost is so secret all the humans will need to consent to being knocked out so its location would remain a mystery. Burch is skeptical, but as soon as Transom learns that Maícon Prime intends to take them to the wizards’ vault, he immediately pressures everyone else to go. Burch reluctantly agrees as well and describes slowly passing out into a state of pleasant bliss.

Burch comes to in a medical facility largely disoriented. He’s confused when Ren asks whether he’d like a better pair of prosthetic legs, but he agrees, mostly because he trusts Ren. Burch wakes up again to the wonder of his new hand, which looks almost like a real hand. His new legs temporarily distract him from something he couldn’t remember that had angered him. After he settles down, he remembers that something had happened to Rishi. Kristoff, Transom, and Sōsh all try to explain, but he doesn’t fully understand until he watches the video that Rishi herself had recorded to explain.

Rishi had allowed the wizards to attempt to move her consciousness from the ship to a similar processor core as Maícon Prime. This would allow Rishi to decouple her consciousness from the Yankee-Chaos and into a technological body so she could live alongside Burch and their friends, rather than being stuck inside the ship, disembodied forever. However, the wizards had never done anything like it before and were struggling to bring Rishi’s consciousness back online.

While he is waiting for Rishi to come back, Kristoff brings Burch to the wizards’ commissary, where he introduces Burch to Verona, the wizard acolyte who had agreed to escort them into Trasp space to help get Leda back. She clearly sees that Burch is troubled and offers to help teach him to pray for Rishi. Verona brings Burch to their most sacred spot—the pool where the acolytes transition to their immortal form, the very place where Verona herself had turned Clem Aballi immortal.

In the peaceful setting, Burch notices that the pain in his back that had been plaguing him since his injury was completely gone. Transom enters to inform Burch that Carolina has a breakthrough to share. The conversation turns to the wizards themselves and how Transom had fought two of them—Elosh on Pax Heavy and Clem Aballi. Verona seems very interested in Transom.

When Transom brings them to the commissary to meet with Carolina, she reveals that the financial records of the Murder Mill indicate the presence of a group of investors that all made the same prescient trades exactly before upticks in heavy fighting. Maícon Prime declares that the odds of these investment groups all making these same trades at the same time without coordination and prior knowledge is zero. It points to a multi-system financial conspiracy with foreknowledge of the war’s major offensives.

While Carolina is revealing her discovery, a commotion calls Burch’s attention to the doorway to the commissary where Burch sees Rishi approaching. She’s conscious again and now embodied in a special new android shell. She and Burch embrace and decide to take the afternoon off while the wizard doctors calibrate their new parts.

Origins Hyperlinks: “The Vault” connects the backstory of both Verona, an acolyte in Eddis Ali’s sect of immortal tech wizards, as well as her role in the creation of the immortal “Wizard of Athos” Clem Aballi.

Episode 9: “Helicon”

With Burch’s prosthetics updated to pass in the Trasp Protectorate, the crew splits up into two groups. Burch, Kristoff, and Rishi prepare to go back into Trasp space to rescue Leda with their new guide Verona, one of Eddis Ali’s wizards based in Trasp territory. Burch and Rishi decide that of the remaining crew, Carolina is most suited to captain the Yankee-Chaos in Burch and Rishi’s absence. She, Maícon Prime, Ren, Sōsh, and Transom plan to continue their investigation into Sayla’s list with the intention of discovering the players in the financial conspiracy at the root of the war.

On the way to the Protectorate, Rishi and Verona reveal their Trasp cover identities to Burch. They’re concerned at how Burch will react to his cover, as they’ve decided it will be best for Burch’s Trasp alter-ego to have a brain injury. Burch detests the idea of adopting a fake brain injury to be put on and discarded like a costume, but ultimately, he decides that he’ll do whatever it takes to rescue Leda.

Verona reveals that the wizards often have agents within credentialing offices to better help them conceal their sect in various societies. She asks them for Leda’s Trasp identity so her contacts can locate Leda. When they respond with Leda’s real name—Aida Jemeis—Verona reveals that finding Leda won’t be a problem. The problem is that Aida Jemeis had become a famous martyr for the Trasp Protectorate when she was thought to be killed on Kendry in the nuclear blast that wounded Leda. After coming back from the dead, she became stratospherically famous. Now, Verona explains, the Trasp were using Aida Jemeis as one of their major propaganda pieces, drawing a crowd wherever she went.

Kristoff points out that they won’t need to get close to Leda and her tight security, as Leda would recognize them from great distances with her enhanced vision. They just need to draw Leda’s gaze from afar in order to let her know that they’d come to rescue her. They devise a plan to catch Leda’s attention at a recommissioning ceremony in a large arena, which they expect will prompt Leda to give them options for extracting her via the stream her tech-eyes are still transmitting.

Rishi, using her new shape-shifting android shell, adopts the appearance of Mrs. Helicon Burch, wife of Burch’s Trasp cover, the war-wounded Captain Helicon Burch. They enter the arena on Astor and sit through a long ceremony in the giant arena hoping that Leda happens to pick them out of the crowd. When she doesn’t see them, though, they execute their plan to cause a scene by activating nanites Rishi had Burch ingest to cause the neurological symptoms associated with the brain injury. Burch pulls a woman to the ground as he falls during a seizure, causing a great commotion during the ceremony’s minute of silence, prompting Leda to look directly at them.

After he refuses to go to the hospital, the Trasp Internal Security Bureau interviews Burch. He and Rishi meet a Major Hartline, who clears them when Burch insists that he feels fine and simply didn’t want to miss the rest of that special day sitting in a hospital.

Later that evening, while the crew is watching the stream from Leda’s eyes, they’re shocked to see that the same security officer—Major Hartline—turned out to be Leda’s personal security liaison. She and Leda argue about her attitude, which Hartline finds to be ungrateful and uninspiring. Leda apologizes and feigns fatigue, stating that she was dejected when she couldn’t remember her Trasp family. She asks Hartline to set up another meeting with her family on Carhall. Then, when she knows Burch and the others will be listening to the stream, Leda instructs them to “Go home,” which they understand to mean she wants them to meet her for extraction on Aida Jemeis’ homeworld of Carhall.

They arrive on Carhall, one of the most beautiful and “Earth-like” places Burch has ever visited. They continue to monitor the stream from Leda’s eyes, looking for the best time to plan an extraction. Yet as Burch watches Leda interact with Aida’s family, he becomes torn, especially when Leda can’t remember her brother Omar, who is so shaken by his sister’s amnesia that he leaves the family home to get a drink.

While Rishi prepares to approach Leda’s home in the guise of a teenage fan of Aida Jemeis, Burch makes the ill-advised decision to approach Omar at the bar. Verona tags along with Burch in the hopes of keeping him out of trouble. Burch tries to impress upon Aida’s brother without saying it directly that his sister is still very much alive in Leda and that she is well loved and has an important mission. Omar seems to sniff Burch out as a friend of Leda’s from her time in the Letters, but before they can discuss the matter explicitly, Major Hartline and her ISB agents arrive at the bar tailing Omar Jemeis. Leda’s brother notices how uncomfortable Burch and Verona become at the presence of Hartline and the ISB and he understands for certain that they’re foreign spies. He approaches Major Hartline’s table, and though Verona is certain Omar is going to turn them in, Burch’s faith in Omar is validated when he shouts at them for following him, creating just enough of a diversion that Burch and Verona could escape the bar without being seen.

Rishi, meanwhile, approaches the Jemeis home carrying the “Leda” prayer card, from which Leda had taken her name after her grave injury. Rishi pretends to be gifting Aida the prayer card to get through Aida’s personal security. She identifies herself as Rishi to Leda, who doesn’t recognize the girl but immediately recognizes the prayer card. Leda brings the curious visitor to her back garden for a private conversation only to find out that the young girl is Rishi inside her new android shell. Rishi tells Leda that they can escape but they had to leave that instant. Leda, though, informs Rishi that she has reconsidered, and as much as she’d prefer to be back with her old family on Yankee-Chaos, she realizes that her genuine identity of Aida Jemeis places her in a unique position to be able to do good and to help to bring about the end of the war through political means rather than as a fighter. She asks Rishi to give Burch and the others her love but declines to return with them.

Burch takes the news harshly when they are forced to flee Carhall without Leda. Verona and Rishi scold Burch for risking everything to approach Omar. But Burch tells them he couldn’t tolerate the idea of simply stealing Aida from them again without at least letting them know she would be among friends, loved, and doing important things. He is then forced to accept that it’s they who have to lose Leda again in that same way.

Verona, as they’re leaving Carhall, stops the ship outside the Vance nebula, pointing out to Burch and the group the star Helicon. She now asks them to make good on their end of the exchange. They ask what they’ll have to do for Verona, and she informs them they need to talk about Transom.

Origins Hyperlinks: “The Brave One” is a pre-war stand-alone story set on a touring vessel out of Carhall that meets with a great struggle to survive in the Vance Nebula right near the bright star Helicon. “Skin” follows several of Eddis Ali’s tech wizards in the pre-war Protectorate, including Verona, as they investigate the shape-shifting properties of a novel android dermis, which leads them to an unexpected source.

Episode 10: “Target”

Carolina begins her command of the Yankee-Chaos by making the decision to explore the second cluster of names on Sayla’s list. These people cluster around the massacre at Lambda -Shadra. Carolina believes they can get information on Lambda-Shadra from a cartel boss on Alpha-Origgi named Mirsong Rex. They seek him out on his flagship outpost of Ash-Vedal.

The Yankee-Chaos lands at Ash-Vedal using a spoofed transponder signal with Carolina adopting an assumed name to hide their identity. She sends the crew out into the outpost to scout Mirsong Rex’s operation. When they seem to get no response, Carolina and the others assume it is safe to leave the ship together. After a dinner on the outpost, the group is attacked while returning to the ship. Carolina herself is shot in the leg. Transom is able to scare off the attackers, and the crew rush to the ship, taking off to the safety of deep space.

After Ren patches up Carolina, the scare on Ash-Vedal prompts Carolina to question her first decision as captain. Ren insists they should consult someone with investigative experience rather than bumbling through Sayla’s list without a clear purpose. She suggests finding someone who understands the history of Lambda-Shadra. This suggestion brings someone to mind for Carolina, though she claims the person who can help them is more a personal rival than a friend.

Carolina orders Transom and Sōsh to pick up this history professor on the ghost world of Damon Mines, where he is studying how that outpost came to be derelict. When they abduct this historian—Carsten Airee—Transom immediately detects a the kind of personal animosity that hints more at a deep affection than genuine acrimony.

Airee is incensed at being snatched by Carolina’s mercenaries and accuses her of play-acting like a space pirate, while Carolina insists she genuinely needs his help investigating her family’s role in the roots of the war. Though he doubts her true intentions, Airee doesn’t see that he has any choice but to help Carolina. She begins to reveal what she and the others have discovered about the war and her family’s role in it, including the financial records from the Murder Mill and the drop mine on Pax Heavy.

Airee formulates a clever theory that the conspirators need access to a bank where they could hide their transactions while still moving money. He proposes that the conspirators may be using the abandoned vacation spot of Lime Harbor where the people have left due to the star’s sudden instability. He proposes they investigate Lime Harbor in person to see what’s still there.

The crew approach Lime Harbor expecting to find the colony completely abandoned, yet when they arrive, they find that the city isn’t totally empty. While scouting, Transom and Sōsh stumble upon a young woman inside a working factory that seems to be manufacturing industrial spheres that a steady stream of bots are bringing up the space elevator to load onto a pair of automated ships cycling the system’s star. The young woman is shocked when the pair of mercenaries appear, fearing for her safety. Transom assures her they mean no harm and asks her to return to the ship to speak with Carolina. The young woman returns to the Yankee-Chaos with them where she explains to Carolina that she is visiting the city with her boyfriend Alex, who is on Lime Harbor caring for his ailing grandfather who had remained on the colony in an attempt to rescue the failing star. The young woman, Sisco, turns out to be a distant Dreeson cousin of Carolina’s, and when she explains that Alex’s grandfather Barlow Riche was sick, Carolina immediately dispatches Ren to the family home to treat the ailing man. Sisco is overwhelmed with gratitude and offers to help Carolina and the crew while they are in Lime Harbor.

Ren examines Barlow and learns that he’s in end-stage cancer as a result of the radiation from the dying star, and she can do little but make the old man comfortable in his final days.

Sisco, meanwhile, offers to show Carolina and Transom to the banks, even though she’s unsure why anyone would want to inspect banking infrastructure that had been defunct for decades. They arrive at two of the three banks to find them abandoned, but the third bank appears to have been pilfered recently when they inspect the building. It appears to everyone that Lime Harbor is a dead end.

This news comes as a particularly hard blow to Airee, especially when Carolina declares that they’ll be taking him back to Damon Mines.

Ren protests that they cannot leave Barlow in such a weak state. Carolina decides that Damon Mines is close enough that they can leave Ren, Sōsh, and Harold on Lime Harbor to care for Barlow while she, Transom, and Maícon Prime bring Carsten Airee back to his field site on Damon Mines. Carsten takes the news as a form of rejection from Carolina, and he leaves reluctantly and angrily but promises never to reveal anything about their brief adventure together. Carolina, too, privately expresses her regret but remarks to Transom that she didn’t want to involve Airee for fear that his involvement may get him hurt.

As they are departing, Transom senses that everything is not as it seems, and he demands that Carolina reveal what is really going on. Maícon Prime joins them in the atrium wearing his new shape-shifting android shell that he was given by the wizards—a similar design to Rishi’s new body. He reveals that at Carolina’s order, he was the one who’d raided the third bank the night before they searched it. Carolina reveals that they had stolen the banking keys and now held the access to all the war conspirators’ money. She promises to go after all the conspirators where it hurts them most, and now she held the power to do so in their hands. But the biggest news perhaps is that the banking data reveals the identity of a potential mastermind named Nilius, and the shock of this revelation is that Nilius is not a person but an AI.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Lime Harbor” chronicles Alex and Sisco’s first visit to the dying outpost to meet his grandfather and explore his family’s roots.

Episode 11: “Welcome to the Future”

Verona announces to Burch, Rishi, and Kristoff that she believes their associate Transom has vital information about Clem Aballi, a fugitive her sect has been pursuing for centuries. She tells them it is her intention to track down Clem Aballi, and she wants them to convince Transom to help locate him. To everyone’s surprise, Rishi reveals that she knows exactly where Clem Aballi is. When Burch asks Rishi how she could know such a thing, Rishi confesses that she’s had a connection through the artifacts ever since she came into contact with them, and she knows where Clem Aballi is because he has entered one of the artifacts. Verona asks them to hold to their word that they would help her with her mission in exchange for the help she’d provided tracking down Leda. They all agree that pursuing Aballi is the right thing to do despite reservations Burch raises about the danger of confronting the very wizard who’d nearly killed their best fighter.

Verona sets a course for the artifact where Clem Aballi has parked his ship, ostensibly to escape Athosian justice. Along the way, Burch and Rishi have a contentious conversation about Rishi withholding information from the group about the artifacts.

After several months’ travel, the foursome reach the artifact, finding Aballi’s ship parked outside. Burch suggests solving their Clem Aballi problem by blowing up his ship and leaving him stranded there, but Verona is adamant they go after him instead. So they enter the artifact thinking Aballi would most likely be back in time on Earth, as their only knowledge of the type of travel inside the artifacts was the woman who’d been sent back to Earth in the 20th Century.

Burch wakes up instead in a totally unfamiliar place. He’s disoriented and struggles to process the magnificent surroundings they find themselves in. There are gigantic trees in a park with a beautiful pink moon that reveals they were certainly not on Earth. They find colorful young people speaking a language that even Rishi cannot understand, despite her encyclopedic knowledge of human languages.

Rishi, Kristoff, Verona, and Burch explore the city. Rishi taps into a local network to attempt to figure out where they could be. The network seems very rudimentary to Rishi, almost childish. The tech in the city, which Rishi translates to “Tranchera” in their language, seems extremely advanced to the visitors, yet it doesn’t seem like the people are running the society.

Rishi approaches a welcoming young woman, Mraikhanna, who invites the group into her home. After speaking with Mraikhanna for some time, Rishi interprets enough of their language to discover that Mraikhanna is speaking in a tongue that is a distant descendant of their own language, meaning they had certainly arrived in a far distant future. Rishi realizes that the people are not in control of their society but isn’t able to decipher exactly who is.

Mraikhanna is shocked by Burch’s prosthetics, recoiling in fear and calling him a “bipal.” The visitors discuss their origins, testing the girl with place names from their time. Mraikhanna knows nothing of the Battery Systems except when they mention Athos, which the girl laughs at, calling it a legend and dismissing the possibility they could be from Athos.

Rishi insists they depart immediately, as her interactions with the city’s network has drawn the attention of the city’s overseers, the ordinals, who have human-hybrid agents called mediums who can suck all their memories from their minds and wipe them clean. The travelers fear that even though they believe the trip inside the artifact to be a simulation, these mediums could potentially destroy their minds permanently.

The four travelers flee Mraikhanna’s house, trying to blend into the city so they aren’t discovered by the ordinals or their mediums. They debate how to begin their search for Aballi in this strange future society. Rishi reveals everything she’d discovered from the network at Mraikhanna’s house—that the planet is called Murell, one of thousands under control of the ordinals and bipals—two species of technological beings who have been keeping these humans as docile, passive, members of these cultivated societies. Burch puts it more bluntly—the technologicals have turned humans into pets. Rishi also estimates that this society is likely two million years in their future.

They decide to run into the empty wilderness surrounding the city when a ship approaches. Soon after, the group is spotted, and they scatter into the wasteland. Burch is caught by one of the ship’s drones, shocked to unconsciousness. He awakens suspended in a force field on a futuristic ship. Moments later, a medium approaches to interrogate him. Rishi, Verona, and Kristoff are also in the room incapacitated.

Just as Burch believes he’s about to have his mind sucked out, a door appears in the wall and Clem Aballi enters. He scolds the medium for interrogating the foursome without his permission. He then greets Verona in a way that indicates to Burch that she and Clem Aballi are deeply familiar with each other. Clem Aballi welcomes Verona to the future.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Empty Fields” reveals Kristoff Mikkel’s history, and how he came to be a luddite colonist on Texini, as told by Kristoff himself to Verona, Burch, and Rishi on the way to the artifact. “Lost on Port Cullen” follows Carsten Airee as he uncovers the plight of the war’s refugee Trasp children aboard the free-floating “hub” of the Battery Systems—Port Cullen.

Episode 12: “Safe Returns”

After dropping off Airee on Damon Mines, Carolina, Transom, and Maícon Prime return to Lime Harbor to pick up Ren, Sōsh, and Harold. When they arrive, they find that a massive dust storm has enveloped the city. Maícon Prime discovers from the bots working to save the star that there is another ship in the city that had arrived while the Yankee-Chaos was away. Transom insists that Carolina remain on the ship for safety’s sake while he extracts the others.

Transom finds Harold working in the factory manufacturing the solar orbs to help save the star. Harold is completely unaware of the other ship but informs Transom that Barlow Riche had passed away the day before. Transom brings the android with him to Barlow Riche’s house to find the crew.

Transom and Harold approach the house carefully, hoping that nobody had discovered their presence. They search the house, finding that the crew had abandoned it. Transom tracks the footprints in the dust, realizing the others had fled after Barlow died.

Transom has an idea where Sōsh might have brought the others. He tracks them to a Beta site and finds that he’s been caught on Sōsh’s surveillance camera. They wave to the camera and wait for Sōsh to appear. Sōsh brings them to a basement in one of the city’s municipal buildings where Ren is treating Alex, who is suffering from difficulty breathing after being exposed to the dust. Transom decides to escort the group off the planet, hopefully before they’re discovered by the other ship.

They carry Alex and Barlow’s body as they go, Ren escorting Sisco Dreeson through the dust. The group manages to sneak out of Lime Harbor and up the space elevator to Yankee-Chaos without being discovered. They hold a memorial for Barlow, who had asked to be shot into Aldura—Lime Harbor’s failing sun.

Carolina apologizes to her distant cousin Sisco for disrupting their lives on Lime Harbor. Sisco, for her part, is grateful to Carolina for leaving Ren to care for Barlow in his dying hours. But Sisco and Alex don’t know where to go and fear that the other ship pursuing Carolina might come after them to get to Carolina and her crew. Carolina offers to find Sisco a safe place where she and Alex can lie low while he recovers.

Carolina decides to bring their guests to a little-known outpost—the Eden cylinder group—a colony in transit between two of the Garvin systems. The group is a fortress with powerful laser defenses wary of outsiders, but they admit Carolina based on her family’s history with the colony. They agree to take in Alex and Sisco, who are both happy to stay, as the colony is famous for its clever engineers, whom Alex hopes will help him to save Lime Harbor in Barlow’s memory.

With their guests safely on Eden, Carolina resolves to return to Lime Harbor to confront the people pursuing them. She fills in the rest of the crew on the discovery they’d made in the banking data—that the architect at the heart of the conspiracy seemed to be an AI named Nilius. Carolina and Maícon Prime believe their pursuers must be working for Nilius, and they believe they can gather intel on Nilius’s network if they sneak back to Lime Harbor to confront the people working for him.

When they arrive, the dust storm has cleared, revealing an Etteran starfighter parked in one of Lime Harbor’s city squares. Transom and Sōsh descend the space tower and sneak up on the Etteran ship with Maícon Prime providing air cover from the Yankee-Chaos above.

Transom and Sōsh get the drop on the four Etterans and their strikbots, disabling the enemy ship and killing two soldiers in the process. Transom walks the two surviving Etteran soldiers into an alley where Sōsh can cover his approach. The two soldiers are an old special operator with a young female officer. They claim that their ship had gotten stuck in the sandstorm and was broken. Transom recognizes the old operator’s name—Fieldstone. He takes off his helmet and is instantly recognized as the notorious, presumed-dead, black-ops killer Transom.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Fleeing Eden” explores the story of the Exos cylinder group’s sister colony Eden and their own conflict with the Trasp at the start of the war.

Episode 13: “The Actual War”

Transom recognizes the older Etteran soldier Fieldstone by reputation. He brings both Fieldstone and his young female junior officer back to the Yankee-Chaos against Carolina’s protests. He has Ren scan them for military-grade tracking implants and then places them in the airlock as the Yankee-Chaos departs Lime Harbor again.

Transom is convinced that he can turn Fieldstone to their cause by revealing what they’d found out so far about the war—that nobody has been told the truth about what they were fighting for. He argues that bringing on another skilled operator like Fieldstone will allow them to run more complicated ops that can help them in their search for the truth. Carolina is skeptical but allows Transom to proceed because Transom states that the alternative is to kill their two prisoners.

Fieldstone is skeptical, especially because of Transom’s reputation, but he is curious as soon as he finds out Carolina’s identity. Transom convinces Fieldstone that the war had been waged under entirely false pretenses, mostly to enrich ultra-wealthy investors outside the Etteran Guild or the Trasp Protectorate. Transom proposes running an operation inside Etteran territory to help them calibrate their stolen data and allow them to learn which military orders are organic and which are coming from the outside network of conspirators. In order to run this op, they’d need help from Fieldstone and his junior officer, whom Fields calls “Elle.” Fieldstone finds the data Carolina and Transom present convincing enough that he’s willing to run the op.

Fieldstone briefs Elle, who is skeptical but seems willing to follow Fieldstone’s lead. Elle discusses her time in the war with Carolina. She struggles to believe that someone like Carolina, whose life could be extravagant and easy, would risk everything to change the course of the war. Carolina convinces Elle her intentions are true, and she agrees to help them with the op, even though it may brand her and Fieldstone traitors to Etterus.

The plan is to steal historical records of field orders from one of the Etteran military academies. This way they can cross-check historical orders to see which were genuine and which came through outside influence. This will help Carolina and Maícon to map the network of conspirators.

Along the way, with supplies running low, Carolina is forced to take the risky passage through the corridor between Trasp and Etteran space. They stop at Hoff Springs to reprovision. While stopped at the outpost, Maícon Prime makes contact with a Maícon clone whose history makes him a unique resource—he was Pitka Remera’s personal AI assistant at the outbreak of the war on Veronia. Carolina instructs Maícon Prime to order the Maícon clone to report for service, adding another resource to the team for the operation as well as a critical primary resource for information about the start of the war. As the Yankee-Chaos is picking up the Maícon clone, the ship is recognized and chased out of Hoff Springs by two mercenary warships, heightening their concern after the recent assassination attempt on Carolina.

The crew flies the Yankee-Chaos to the Etteran military academy on Selia-Akung, a satellite outpost with archives that contain a backlog of the Etteran military’s historical orders. Elle’s youthful appearance and Fieldstone’s legendary history as an operator help to win the cooperation of the cadets, who escort them to the library after-hours despite the library’s closure. Fieldstone and Elle need to collect a trove of data in a short window using the Maícon clone before anyone realizes their counterfeit orders are fraudulent or the Yankee-Chaos’s falsified transponder credentials are recognized.

The op goes smoothly for over an hour, with the Maícon clone pulling the data the crew needs. Transom is skeptical of the quiet. He leaves the ship to set charges as a diversion in case the op goes wrong. Soon after he returns, he recognizes that the air traffic is reacting to their presence. He calls out the abort codeword and orders Fieldstone and Elle back to the ship.

Fields and Elle only make it partway back to the ship before they are attacked by two Etteran strikebots. Transom and Sōsh rush out to rescue Fieldstone, Elle, and the Maícon clone with the stolen data. During the escape, Elle gets shot in the commotion, while Transom’s charges prove a vital diversion as the crew succeeds in extracting their infiltrating party. The Maícon clone’s body is destroyed in the firefight, and as the ship rushes out of the system, Elle succumbs to her injuries.

Carolina is crushed at Elle’s loss, the first death under her command. She asks Transom how to get news to Elle’s family. He responds that she can’t call the girl Elle anymore—that her name was not Elle but a designation the Etterans used. It wasn’t “Elle” but the letter “L,” which Transom informs her is a common designation in ops teams—short for “Liability.” Transom tells Carolina the girl’s real name—Lieutenant Mitchell Baye—and tells her that the custom is to honor her real name in death. The moment is a sobering realization for Carolina on the harsh realities of the war.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Age of Deception” is the personal account of Dr. Pitka Remera, who, along with her personal Maícon clone, was an instrumental figure in the inciting incident of the West Battery War. “The Riven Child” is a stand-alone story set in motion within the corridor between the two warring powers, beginning at the outpost at Hoff Springs visited by the crew of the Yankee-Chaos on their way to Selia-Akung.

Episode 14: “The Ancients”

Burch and Kristoff find themselves trapped in Clem Aballi’s cruiser in the deep future. Burch informs Kristoff that Verona has left the room with Clem Aballi. He also states that Verona and Clem seemed familiar, perhaps even friendly. Rishi, meanwhile, appears totally unresponsive after being taken by Clem Aballi’s drones.

Clem Aballi returns and asks Burch what he’s doing associating with “bipals.” Burch doesn’t know the meaning of the word but quickly intuits that Clem Aballi is referring to Rishi. They discuss this strange future and Aballi professes his desire to work for a genuine human future. Burch remains skeptical but tells Aballi that his intentions largely align with Aballi’s. Clem gives Burch and Kristoff a briefing on the nature of the “technologicals,” with the ordinal overlords who control and curate the human cities; while the bipals, a race of formerly biological humans, have utter contempt for the purely biological human form.

After agreeing to work with Aballi for the time being, Burch and Aballi come to a truce. While Rishi is still unconscious, Burch, Verona, and Kristoff are reunited. Aballi brings them to a secret outpost he has built as a refuge for humans to learn to be fully human again—beings with free will and self-determination, rather than the pets the ordinals had turned all the humans of this distant future into. Aballi gives the trio a tour of his outpost—Mercury Flats—and he outlines the struggle he went through to build it over four centuries since his arrival in the distant future. The people of the future welcome the new arrivals, while Burch and Kristoff struggle to reconcile this version of Clem Aballi with the terrorist they knew him as in their time.

While they are socializing with the vibrant community of real humans in Aballi’s secret city, Rishi suddenly appears and joins the welcome celebration. She passes herself off as human, and Aballi doesn’t know how to react, as he’s never met a “bipal” like her. He now believes Burch that Rishi had traveled with them from their time in the Battery Systems, but he is still suspicious because all the bipals of the future have a deep hatred of humanity, and Rishi clearly doesn’t.

Rishi joins the others and Aballi for a discussion in his spaceship over his plans for his outpost and the future of his breakaway group of “free-range humans.” Rishi and Aballi come to the realization that the best step forward in his nascent revolution would be to find one of the ancient AIs to act as a potential bridge and agent for the people, with the ability to infiltrate the technologicals’ society. Though Aballi is skeptical about even locating any of the Ancient AIs, Rishi insists that she can talk to the ordinal network and locate the Ancients easily.

Aballi plans to bring the new arrivals to Rechler, one of the ordinal cities where he’d spent decades cultivating relationships with the people there, teaching them about self-determination. The group have to walk from outside the desert and hide in a cave on the outskirts of the city before Clem Aballi’s contact Tellent can bring them into the community. During the walk and their time hiding in the cave, Burch grows curious about Aballi’s liberated medium, whom Clem has name Arch. The creature had been programmed by the ordinals as a tool of control over the humans, his job being to wipe and re-write human memories. Aballi liberated Arch and began to teach him to think of himself as an individual being with free will, yet his awkwardness reveals that he has a long way to go.

Verona, meanwhile, is struggling with her past life course. The future they are witnessing is testament to the ultimate failure of her sect, as human civilization has ceased to meaningfully exist in this time and the technologicals have taken over. Her demeanor ever since she spoke with Aballi also makes Burch think he had shaken Verona’s ideological foundations deeply somehow.

After a week in the cave, Burch and the others are brought into the city as guests of Aballi’s human friends. Burch and Kristoff end up in a home with Zii and Enga, while Rishi’s home in Rechler is with Aballi’s long-time companion Tellent. They hide within the city while searching for any evidence of the “Ancients”—better known to Burch and friends as the Prime AIs of their time. Rishi uses the city’s network to find the location of the Ancients—the ordinals’ storage archive of human artifacts deep in one of the city’s municipal buildings. Rishi devises a scheme to dig tiny nano-sized tunnels through the walls of the archive in order to locate the Ancients. It takes time, but Burch and the others are enjoying their quiet time with the gentle people of the future.

After burrowing into the archive, the group fails to find the Ancient AIs for months. Clem Aballi laments their struggle one day, remarking that the ordinals had even stored a box of rocks as a mockery of the height of human culture. Rishi immediately recognizes that those “rocks” are the Ancients’ processing cores. They widen their microscopic tunnels in order to extract the processors furtively. Rishi prints a special box to hold the processors with twenty-one spots, only Burch counted twenty-two processors. Burch asks Rishi about the missing core. Rishi sends Tellent out of the room and holds up the missing processor for Burch, revealing that the smooth, round rock-like processor is Rishi herself.

Origins Hyperlinks: “Failsafe” offers a glimpse into the future worlds Burch and the crew visit in search of Clem Aballi. In “The Salt Mine,” Clem Aballi discusses the many turns he’s taken since his first encounter with Verona, his struggles with loneliness, anger, and immortality, as well as a surprising love of art.

Episode 15: “Old Folks”

Burch’s mind begins to wander as he ages in this distant future. He’s moved back to Clem Aballi’s hidden city Mercury Flats after he and Kristoff had begun to grow old—a conspicuous trait among the un-aging humans of the future that would have outed them if they’d remained in Murell or Rechler. As the end of his natural life in this distant future nears, Burch recounts his previous brief death during the war on the day he lost his legs. As he remebers his life here in the future, Rishi interrupts, reminding him that the Ancient AIs are convening for an important meeting.

The AIs gather, and as the meeting begins, some of the Ancient AIs advocate for making the underground movement known to the technologicals, revealing the existence of their revolution, which they believe would open opportunities for travel and further infiltration. Others fear that raising their profile would endanger their existing agents throughout the human societies. During the meeting, Clem Aballi returns. The meeting continues in a normal debate until an unexpected ordinal ship enters the city. The ship’s pilot is Maícon, who announces that not only has he stolen this ordinal ship, inside it, he’s transporting four stolen mediums that he’s abducted with the intention of liberating and reprogramming as infiltrators. Maícon’s aggressive and surprise move throws all plans into flux. He declares that their time as an underground movement was closing anyway, and he decided to act aggressively in abducting those mediums while that opportunity was still available to them. The debate gets heated. Burch realizes part of the argument stems from the fact that the AIs are trying to strategize how they might take advantage of Burch and Kristoff’s approaching deaths to further the new human revolution against the technologicals.

After the meeting, Burch and Rishi have a difficult discussion about her struggles watching Burch grow infirm and suffer as he ages. In this distant future, Rishi has seen that aging can be cured, and she tries to impress upon Burch the grief she will endure after he dies. She tells him her technological mind won’t allow her to ever forget Burch or how much she loves him. She tries to convince Burch to undergo the procedure to become biologically immortal and remain in this future, but Burch still views himself as a regular person who will inevitably die, and he also, especially, wants to return to his real life in the Battery. Nilius enters Burch’s flat, interrupting the conversation before Burch and Rishi can truly address the issue.

After Clem Aballi arrives, he, Maícon, and Nilius pull Burch aside and ask him if he is willing to confront the ordinals directly himself. They fear that the Ancients will get the humans killed because they do not understand the mortal peril these gentle people live under in the ordinals’ society, and, as immortal technological beings, the Ancients don’t appreciate that the ordinals will simply wipe out the humans and start over if the people become a problem. But Burch’s history, which they won’t directly reveal, makes him the perfect person to deliver terms to the ordinals in a manner that will make them sufficiently wary of this new uprising that they won’t retaliate. Burch grows frustrated and angry, as he’s growing older and cognitively slipping, and he can’t fully follow the argument. Nonetheless, Burch agrees to help them confront the ordinals, allowing Maícon, Nilius, and Aballi to use his death in the manner it helps the humans’ cause most.

Burch then goes to meet with Kristoff, who himself is already dying. Burch notices in his mood that Kristoff seems to be checking out mentally, but they have a deep discussion about what matters most in life. Kristoff decides that he has unfinished business back in the Battery. His thoughts keep going back to Texini, where he never returned to bury his wife and his friends who died in the sudden apocalypse. He vows to go back and put them all to rest before he grows too old in that life.

Rishi plans to return with the others by removing her processing core at the same time Burch and Kristoff die, sending them all back to the Battery simultaneously. Rishi had never told anyone that she and Burch found her own two-million-year-old processor in the box with the Ancient AIs. She and Burch now plan to wake up Rishi’s Ancient counterpart after they remove Rishi’s processing core so that her future version can join the Ancients in their fight against the ordinals and bipals. As soon as Kristoff dies, Burch’s first duty is to remove the Rishi from his time and replace it with her ancient counterpart.

While the ancient Rishi is rebooting, Burch does his best to console his human friends in Mercury Flats. These humans don’t know anything about grieving, as they are functionally immortal and have never lost anyone as important to them as Kristoff and Burch. As he is consoling his friends, the Ancient Rishi wakes up. She’s understandably confused after being offline for so long, but she doesn’t know how to process meeting an elderly version of Burch so far in the future, as this Rishi had struggled for millennia with the exact type of eternal grief his own Rishi had been trying to warn him she would suffer from.

Maícon calls upon Burch to put their plan into motion. He and Nilius pick up Burch to transport him to the ordinal homeworld. They have Clem Aballi’s medium Arch implant a code in Burch’s brain that only the ordinals will be able to extract. The process will kill Burch, but they expect the code and the identity of its messenger to deter the ordinals from destroying the nascent human revolution here in the future.

Before he departs, Verona tells Burch that it’s her intention to stay with Clem Aballi in the future to help him fight for this human society alongside the ancient AIs. Verona tells Burch that he and Rishi and Kristoff should not wait for her and that they can take her ship when they get back to the artifact in the Battery.

Rishi is incensed when she finds out that it’s Burch’s intention to leave her again so soon after reviving her. She tells him that he and the Rishi of his time have no clue what they’re doing, that they don’t even understand who their real enemies are, and she seems irrationally angry when he continues with his plan to confront the ordinals. The last sight Burch sees as the pillbox closes before he leaves is Rishi’s furious eyes.

Burch travels in deep space inside the pillbox to the ordinal planet. He infiltrates their world using the pipeline they use to program their mediums, only they are shocked at his identity when they open the pillbox expecting another medium and get Hale Burch. It is only at this point that Burch realizes how large a historical figure he must be to the ordinals. As expected, the ordinals try to read his mind, and in unlocking the code in his mind, Burch’s life in this future ends.

Burch comes to once again back inside the artifact. He isn’t surprised to hear his Rishi speaking through his space helmet’s comms. But he is shocked to find that he’s not alone inside the artifact. Clem Aballi and Verona are with him as well. They tell him that even though they intended to stay behind, Rishi—the future version Burch had revived—had murdered them both in the future, sending them back to the Battery before Burch had even reached the ordinal planet. They’re now forced to grapple with the prospect that their own Rishi may be destined to betray them all someday.

Origins Hyperlinks: “The Next Layer” connects the backstory of the human resistance in Murell to a deeper revolutionary movement in the far distant future. “Darkness” follows a human recruit to this distant future revolution as he discovers an even further unknown threat in the depths of space.

Episode 16: “Athos”

After their close escape from the Etteran military academy on Selia-Akung, Carolina is rattled by the loss of Fieldstone’s junior officer “Elle.” The data they’ve stolen is beginning to reveal a story, but Carolina is convinced that in order to get to the bottom of that story, they’ll need to be able to move about the Lettered Systems freely. She believes that in order to do so, she’ll need to confront her father, whom Carolina believes to be the only person in the Battery powerful enough to clear such a path for her. She resolves to take the Yankee-Chaos back to her homeworld—the planetary ring of Athos.

When Fieldstone hears of Carolina’s decision, he offers to remain behind in the Lettered Systems to track down a lead he thinks they should pursue. He believes that a retired deputy chief of Etteran intelligence is hiding out in the Letters with knowledge of the multi-system banking conspiracy at the heart of the war. Fields wants to track down this retired chief Akop Hernan while Carolina and the others go to Athos. They drop Fieldstone in the Kappas, promising to pick him up again after they meet with Carolina’s father, the Athosian Chancellor Barnard Dreeson.

Carolina takes the Yankee-Chaos back to Athos, arriving in her home system—Dreeson’s System—running a spoofed transponder to hide their identity. They are immediately confronted by the Athosian Approach Command demanding their true identity. Carolina reveals that she is the Chancellor’s daughter and demands a meeting with him. The way they respond surprises the crew, who are used to dealing with Carolina as one of their own. This special treatment from Approach Command is their first real glimpse into Carolina’s incredible fame. Transom, meanwhile, is forced to change his appearance from rugged mercenary killer to a passable Athosian gentleman. This rapid transformation amuses everyone except Transom, especially when Harold finishes the process with a properly stylish Athosian haircut.

As soon as the Yankee-Chaos lands in Ithaca, the Chancellor’s Guard swarm the ship. They try to separate Transom from Carolina, but she insists he remain by her side throughout the visit. The Guard make that concession, but they demand Transom turn over his knife.

Carolina and Transom get escorted through the city by the Chancellor’s Guard. The Athosian capitol city is unlike any place Transom has ever visited, but he tries not to betray his wonder to the curious guardsmen.

Along the way, Carolina spots an unexpected sight—the appearance of graffiti on the side of a famous opera house in the Sondomme district near Carolina’s home in the Ibiri Quarter. Carolina is furious at the sight of vandalism in a way that Transom has never seen before. Her reaction is the first time he’s able to see Carolina as Barnard Dreeson’s daughter.

They arrive at Carolina’s home—the Dreeson estate Carolina had occupied during her time at university. She and Transom are greeted by one of Carolina’s oldest childhood friends—Triss Ball, who immediately becomes infatuated with Transom. Triss asks Carolina to recount all her adventures in a manner that seems unserious, as though her genuine efforts to get to the root of the war were a source of entertainment. Triss also cannot get Transom’s name right, even as she makes very thinly veiled advances toward him, mistakenly calling him Samson even though Carolina introduces him properly as Sebastian. She also tells Carolina that the graffiti they saw on the way to the estate was not an isolated incident, that it has been popping up all over the ring ever since the “terrorist incident” with Clem Aballi.

The following day, Carolina sends Sōsh and Ren with Maícon to investigate another appearance of the graffiti, which is a cruder version of the same writing she’d seen the night before in the Sondomme. The writing says “MELAS,” a word whose meaning even Maícon can’t make sense of. Sōsh finds that his appearance is bringing a lot of unwanted attention on Athos, with many people rudely staring at him and whispering behind his back.

Meanwhile, Carolina and Transom meet with Barnard Dreeson inside the Chancellor’s offices. Barnard arrives exactly to the expected second. Father and daughter engage in a mild bout of verbal sparring before she demands that he back off—no more mercenaries chasing her ship. Barnard claims to know nothing about her encounters with these outer-system mercenaries and insists that he doesn’t have the power to call them off. She doesn’t buy his denial, and he does admit that he could have some influence if she can persuade him to extend that influence. In exchange for his protection Barnard demands a full debriefing from Transom on the Clem Aballi incident, and from Carolina he demands she promise that she consult him first before publicizing any of the information she discovers in her investigation. He also demands that she make an appearance before the media in Ithaca, as well as visit with her family before she departs. He suggests that she do so by attending her cousin Essia’s wedding. Carolina agrees to her father’s terms, expecting that this will clear the path for her ship and crew to travel the Letters without any further encounters with dangerous mercenaries.

When they return to Carolina’s estate in Ibiri, the Guard inform Carolina that Ren has brought a visitor back to meet her. When they enter, Ren and Maícon introduce an “artist” named Guy Rudin. They speak in code, as Carolina expects her father’s intelligence service is listening to all their conversations. The artist, they all understand, is the person responsible for the graffiti. They know because one of Maícon’s clones knew the artist’s identity but didn’t turn him in because the clone found the development interesting. Carolina, of course, very much detests Rudin and his “artwork.” She asks him directly what his motivation was for his art and what the inscription “MELAS” means. Rudin insists that Carolina hasn’t really seen his artwork yet and that it is her duty to see it, but he doesn’t reveal the meaning directly. Carolina allows the vandal to leave without turning him in.

Carolina must make good on her promises to Barnard before they leave Athos. On the way to her cousin’s wedding, she stops to meet with the media gathered to snap pictures of the famous Dreeson family and their connected friends. She makes sure that Transom is perceived as her security and not her date to the wedding. At the wedding, Transom feels even more out of place, standing to the side as Carolina meets with her siblings, cousins, and friends. Toward the end of the evening, Carolina’s friend Triss Ball grabs his ass, calls him Samson again, and promises to pay him double what Carolina is paying him plus “fringe benefits.” Carolina pulls Triss away before Transom loses his temper on her.

Soon after, Carolina takes Transom back to the Ibiri estate. On the way back, they have a contentious conversation about Athos and her people.

Late that night, Transom is awakened by a commotion at Carolina’s door. He goes downstairs to investigate and finds Triss Ball extremely drunk and begging the Guard to admit her to the house. Transom tells Triss to go home but she is so disorderly he can’t hear Carolina coming down the stairs. Carolina has the guard let Triss in and leaves to get dressed while Maícon shows Triss to the sitting area. Triss again comes on to Transom, mistakenly calling him Samson as she slurs her words and tries to grope him. Feeling disrespected, he throws Triss to the floor and begins to yell at her. Carolina arrives and defends her friend, ordering Transom to back down.

In her drunken state, Triss declares that she only came by to show Carolina something she knew she’d be interested in seeing: a picture she’d taken of a new graffiti. This one includes the familiar inscription “MELAS” encircled in a ring, but it also includes a unique phrase underneath it: “Bright-towered by the sea.” Maícon cannot recall the phrase but decides that it is unique enough he should be able to track down its origin if it is a specific reference. Transom and Carolina are both angry about the encounter, he because of the disrespect he perceives, she because she doesn’t care to apologize for her people. They agree not to fight about it, and Transom goes to bed.

The following morning, Transom wakes to find Carolina preparing to return to the Yankee-Chaos. She asks Transom as a favor to watch an apology video Triss had made for him. He agrees but he finds that Carolina is noticeably sullen. He asks her if she is okay and she confirms that she’s not okay but prefers not to discuss the matter until they’re back aboard the ship.

When they get back to the Yankee-Chaos, they find Sōsh in a great mood, as he’d left the capitol and visited the nearby lakes region with his bodyguard, declaring it one of his favorite places in the galaxy. Carolina, though, is still noticeably upset and retreats to her cabin for hours before re-emerging.

She comes out for dinner and declares that she was shaken by the visit home but doesn’t want to hide that fact the way her father would. She decides to be an open leader and share her struggles with her crew. When they ask her what bothered her so much about the visit she reveals that Maícon had found the meaning of the graffiti—that “MELAS” was in fact the word “OMELAS” a literary reference that led back to a story. Maícon reveals that the story’s moral reflects a similar willful blindness to the Athosian people, which was why it hit Carolina so hard. Yet as they prepare to eat, despite the down mood, the crew realizes that they got everything they wanted out of their trip without having to sacrifice much at all.

The crew ends up in a decent mood, toasting their successes, as well as their missing friend Leda, their lost compatriot “Elle,” and finally Burch, toasting with Sōsh’s new favorite drink—Vodkaberry—which he’d brought back with him from his trip to the lakes. The first book finishes with a call coming in from Burch on the long-distance array with “interesting news.”

Origins Hyperlinks: “TechJools” explores an earlier era on Lime Harbor, when the outpost was a booming vacation spot and an enterprising jeweler ran afoul of the controlling corporation by building a vibrant business right under the company’s nose. “Schism” chronicles the break in the Dreeson family at the founding of the

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