The story opens with an Unwinnable Training Simulation. Nicole and Paolo are running a simulation, when Nicole's air hose is clogged, and she removes her helmet to clear it. She takes longer than she should to return the helmet to her head, and the simulation at that point does everything it can to "kill" her and Paolo, starting with a massive decompression. Despite everything the computer threw at her, Nicole almost managed to avoid a collision all-together.
Dr. Elias's efforts to get Nicole to give up on being an astronaut and return to Earth seem harsh, but he points out that she violated protocol, and she did it out of arrogance and complacency, making it abundantly clear that those two things get people killed in the unforgiving environment that is space. He notes that maybe she learned her lesson, but he's not paid to gamble on "maybes". Of course, his decision was overridden by Gen. Canfield, but only because Canfield was impressed by how she fared against the computer. At no point does Canfield suggest that Elias's reasoning is wrong.
While at dinner on the moon, the group that is to crew Wanderer is accosted by a drunken Daniel Morgan. Marshal Ben Ciari, in his Establishing Character Moment, tells the man to leave, the restaurant and at his earliest convenience, the moon itself. Morgan backs down.
Morgan though a villain in the story won the Congressional Medal of Honor by saving his crew when his ship was destroyed, He kept everyone alive in a cramped shuttle until they made the Earth.
Cat Garcia, Paolo, and Dr. Shogrom sacrifice themselves to prevent an anti-matter warhead from destroying the Wanderer. Paolo even makes a pun about going out with a bang. Shogrom, with no trace of fear, simply asks Nicole to make sure that his wife gets a letter that he'd left in his quarters. It's implied her wrote the letter as a precaution, just in case anything did happen.
Hanako Murai manages to take the damaged components and cobble together a working system to maintain life support for the badly battered Wanderer.
Hana, working off of a few still photos she and Paolo had taken before the attack, had discovered a ship dropping out of warp and slowly making its way through the solar system. And when she's able to get a closer look, it becomes evident that it's an alien vessel.
