Dorrick has now been on Kassidor ten Earth years, a decade and forty as he tells time now, and they are living comfortably in the Yakhan. Best of all, TongSu has remained with him.
Then his old friend Bulf, with whom he'd done some light work in the past, invites him to a reunion dinner in Kex. He wonders how Bulf ever got the money to do that, but because Bulf promised that Jason and Vio would also be there, he thinks it would be nice to surprise TongSu with an all-expenses-paid trip to the de-facto capital of human space.
He doesn't think that Bulf and Jason could have an ulterior motive for this trip until it is too late. As dinner is drawing to a close, Dorrick's old friends begin to try and tempt them into performing a mission with them. Dorrick insists his ten Earth years on Kassidor have left him completely out of training and TongSu can't imagine using violence against another human being. But as they are turning it down, a commotion breaks out among a Centorin Senator's party upstairs and they never get a chance to say no. Before they know what's happening they run afoul of the Centorin military, then a force even more powerful than that.