Quite Possibly Alien

When graduating senior Ciarán Mac Durmuid intervenes and rescues a fellow spacer from alien assassins he breaks the Freeman Federation's unwritten law - mind your own business.

When Ciarán's mysterious damsel in distress demands to know his particulars he breaks the Freeman Federation's unwritten law again - keep your mouth shut.

Now a single decision will determine Ciaran's future.

He can surrender his lifelong dream of winning an interstellar merchant's license and escaping his dreary farm-boy destiny.

Or he can apprentice himself to the black sheep of the powerful nic Cartaí clan, a young woman who is almost certainly a pirate, aboard a sentient starship that is almost certainly insane, on a mission that will almost certainly get him killed.

Ciarán has to decide.

Does he bring his cat, or should he leave her with friends?