The team are Pontefract, and everyone (especially Fenella) is rather pissed off over the ongoing non-ownership of Sutton Hoo situation. Everyone staying at starport coffin-hotel, until they decide to hire an apartment.
Fenella took the data they'd received from the ethnologist on Khassandhra to the local offices of the Court of the Oikumene (Colonial Department, Office of Sentient Indigenous Affairs). There she met Justice Syn Pannandraha Jahamal Allallamurti, the functionary in charge of the ongoing investigation into the colonial situation on Khassandhra. A degree of bureaucracy ensued; the wheels of justice grind extremely slow.
The team decided to head off to Alphanor, where they can stay on Fenella's estate for free. They caught a commercial passenger freighter off-planet.
Arrive in Alphanor space; problems arise when Talya attempts to get through customs without any valid ID. She is quarantined on an orbital customs station, and within a short time her dubious genetic heritage is revealed. The rest of the team lose contact with her, but are assured that everything is "just routine".
Everyone else lands on Alphanor, and are met by Moffat, the butler, and Fenella's Rolls-Royce limousine. The Captain gets his first taste of the attitude of the conservative core-worlds towards cyborgs, when Moffat refers to him as his mistress's "creature" and apologises for not having arranged for any livestock transportation. Sutton Hoo is installed in the garage, and is connected to the household LAN. Rather a step down for an AI with more brains than you can shake a stick at.
Captain Joe does some spending, buying himself a sturdy Hardy-DeVissin skybike substantial enough to carry him in his battlesuit.
Fenella contacts her aunt, Camilla Houten van den Trouen, a very wealthy and artsy socialite who lives on her estates on Old Earth. Camilla knows everyone, and Fenella hopes that she might be able to find them a ship. She's in luck; one of her aunt's cronies is an elderly admiral of the Patrol, whose responsibilities include the disposition of obsolete equipment. Camilla uses this as a lure to emotionally blackmail Fenella into coming to Earth to attend a soiree with her, hopefully to find herself a "suitable" husband. (Camilla simply doesn't understand why Fenella wants to lark about the galaxy as she does, when all the excitement and adventure one could desire can be found at the annual Hunt Ball at Throxton Manor). She sends Fenella tickets on a fast luxury liner for herself and her valet (who else but the Captain).
Trouble starts when they go through immigration. Old Earth, the most conservative and rigidly structured of all the Oikumene worlds, has no use for cyborgs, and this is made abundantly clear to the Captain. Unfortunately, they can't actually prevent him from landing, and he is allowed through. Once they arrive at the estate, he is assigned quarters in the stables, while Fenella is given a luxurious suite of rooms overlooking the estate. Captain Joe is somewhat miffed.
Trouble continues when, his request for a bottle of Jim Beam and a TV ignored, Joe went up to the house to see what was going on. He encountered a young houseboy in a passage, who dropped his tray in terror and ran off into the bowels of the house screaming bloody murder. The response from the House Guards was prompt and efficient; Captain Joe was taken into custody at gunpoint, instructed that he may not leave his quarters without authorization by a hard-arsed and patronizing Guard Captain, and escorted back (incandescent with suppressed rage) to the stables. He did get his booze and videos, though.
Fenella was in the lap of luxury, and attended the soiree in one of the designer gowns picked out for her by her loving aunt. The party was a success as far as she was concerned; she met the Admiral, wheedled an old scout ship out of him, met her cousin Portia (another terrible disappointment to her poor mother), and managed to avoid becoming engaged to any suitable husbands.
Meanwhile, back in orbit over Alphanor, Talya had been thoroughly scanned, prodded and tested, and had been approached by Military Intelligence to work for them as an agent. After carefully considering the alternative — being microtomed into slivers and put away in bottles — she accepted. They provided her with ID and cover, and let her land on Alphanor.
Fenella arrives back on Alphanor, having made arrangements to have their new (old) ship freighted there. Captain Joe sent off some letters to one of his old mates, now a supply sergeant in the New Amsterdam Militia, hoping to be able to get some equipment to refit the elderly vessel.