Many moons ago, the Cesaille family left Earth. In search of the long-lost brother of Rik Cesaille. who disappeared, thought to be dead. while putting Zefram Cochrane's recently designed spaceship—equipped with the recently developed "space warp generator"—through testing.

Fighting off alien pirates and mining asteroids to survive in the uncharted, frequently hostile regions of space. They traded and sold the materials they had collected along the way to all the intriguing new cultures they encountered.