Season 5 · Episode 2

Line Captain Tissadelle Shepherd carries a data exchange to Tír na nÓg under the Celtic Union's standing agreement with the Survey Corps, then stays on for personal leave. The uniform comes off at the council house door. What she notices on her mother's hillside afterward does not. The survey she files on her return sends a hull to the Threshold approaches ten days later, and the episode ends where every chapter of the two seasons after it begins: at Dock Seven, looking back.

• S05E02C01 What the Hill KeepsTír na nÓg, Boirinn Uplands — the Shepherd holding, then the Union shuttle gateLine Captain Tissadelle Shepherd carries a data exchange to Tír na nÓg under the Union's standing agreement, then stays on personal leave — finds the boundary she was trained to name waiting in her mother's back hollow, and, a morning later, is escorted back to Star Rangers custody by a Union guard detail that makes plain whose planet this still is.
• S05E02C02 A Fraction of a SecondThreshold Station, Boundary Survey ArchiveBack on duty, Line Captain Shepherd reviews a cross-site anomaly bulletin and recognizes a marker she has personal, unfiled reason to know — and has to decide, in front of her own chain of command, what a Line Captain does with a fraction of a second she can't account for without explaining how she knows it.
• S05E02C03 What Came Off the ShipThreshold Station, Dock Seven, and the boundary beyond itThe fleet-priority survey Shepherd filed ten days ago finds something else entirely: an aperture that will not close, and a licensed concern working the thin place off Dock Seven for stock. She convenes a Field Triumvirate, gets every soul off her ship, and stays. What answers the intrusion spares the Rangers without explaining why, and is recorded by every witness present as dragons.