Quite possibly one of the oldest humans still alive today, Iridium Nova is still only physically in her teens. This is mainly due to a series of temporal mishaps and an incident involving progenitor cells. This has given her a rather unique perspective of recent history, unfortunately skewed by the fact that she wasn't technically functional for 80% of it.

Born to a couple of Fomalhaut Discers (miners who specifically operated out of Fomalhaut's debris disc), she learned the ins and outs of life in space from an early age. She learned her parents' trade but found mining boring and dreamed of the planets she rarely got to visit, and places far away from the dull rocks and debris she lived among. Her parents recognized this, and so when she turned 18, they bought her a Cobra Mk III and gave her the 100 credits they had leftover from the purchase to start a new life. It was everything they had, and they wanted her to live the life she dreamed of. She understood what they had sacrificed to enable her dream, and so the parting was bittersweet. She knew that they would be fine, after all, mining was a good and solid trade, especially in a place as rich and bountiful as Fomalhaut. Local laws prohibited manufacturing industry on Conversion, and so there was a healthy and steady economy of ore exported from the system to manufactories elsewhere. Her parents would never have to worry about finding buyers with deep pockets.

When she left, she had no idea what lay ahead for her. Making ends meet early on was difficult, but she knew her way around a ship, in that way that only a spacer does, and she could make it do things other pilots had to spend years of training and experience to learn. These skills found her many jobs, eventually, and those jobs took her everywhere she could imagine, and many more places she never could. One of these places was a small backwater colony world beyond the frontier, a place ruled by a realm known as the Shadowstar Imperium. This was a strange little empire with big dreams, like so many other little independent powers imagining themselves to be the next superpower in the making. A staunchly Feudal society, with a military culture where upward mobility was determined by acts of heroism and chivalry; adherence to the Shadowstar Warrior Code, ancient concepts often seen as obsolete elsewhere. And so it became clear to her why they were so far away from everyone else. Nonetheless, they had competition. The Imperium was always at war with someone - usually some rival colonial upstart or pirate faction. Who started it didn't matter. She didn't even know how she got involved, only that in the end she was awarded with the Order of the Shooting Star, one of the highest honors the Imperium could bestow upon an outsider. The Shadowstar Emperor, Argon Shadowstar, even bestowed upon her an Heroic Name in the tradition of the Shadowstar Dynasty: Iridium Nova, in recognition of her service, and granted her an honorary title among the Dynasty. She was so proud of her achievements that she decided to return home to celebrate with her parents.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans. The First Thargoid War was still raging across the worlds of the Galactic Cooperative, though the tide had turned and humanity seemed to be getting the upper hand now, surprisingly. As a result, Thargoid attacks had become more desperate and unpredictable. April had never fired a shot at the 'goids, for she believed the war had been instigated by human warmongers and refused to get involved. She had never been hyperdicted before - until now. Her hyperdrive malfunctioned, and her ship careened out of control amidst a psychadelic flood of colors. It was hard to tell what was happening until she heard the laser blasts screeching against her shields. She figured out what was going on pretty quickly at that point (good old pilot's instincts) and made to run. She needed to get distance. Even with her upgraded ship, she couldn't fight them if they were surrounding her. If she was going to be forced into a fight, it would be on her terms. And then she spotted it - a black hole, nearby. In space, "near" is a very relative term, but in this case it really was quite close - close enough that she might be able to slingshot past it and hopefully discourage the goids from following. It was an insane move, and probably stupid too, but she was like that back then. Funny thing is, it worked, sort of...

The 'goids blinked out surprisingly quickly as space began to warp around her. She knew she couldn't get too close - it was a black hole, after all. She began to turn away, seeing that the threat was gone. She sighed a breath of relief, her crazy plan had worked and she was safe. She pulled away from the cosmic monstrosity and saw that her ship had suffered some damage. Thargoid weapons were known for their lethality and her shields had collapsed at some point during the altercation. She felt lucky to be alive. She decided to head back to Shadowstar space, get fixed up, and then proceed with her plans. But her systems were malfunctioning. The damage was more extensive than it originally seemed. In fact, nothing looked right. The Imperium wasn't there - the system was, the planets were, but it was all different factions now. And, wait a minute - since when was the colonized frontier so much larger? Chalking it up to systems malfunctions, she made for the nearest space station - a Coriolis she had not known existed before. Strange.

And so she discovered that she had flown a little too close to that black hole, and the temporal dilation had accelerated her forward through time almost 100 years. Her ship, now a relic, was obsolete, but quite valuable. Not many pilots flew so close to black holes in those days, and historians competed with scientists to be the first to get a look at it. The offers she got were compelling, and she sold the ship to someone calling themselves The Stardreamer after they made the highest bid. She needed time to come to terms with what had happened. 100 years... Her parents couldn't still be alive. Realizations flooded into her mind and she retired from adventuring for a while. The friends she had made were gone. There was nothing she recognized anymore. The Thargoids were a distant memory now. The galaxy wasn't at peace, but it never would be. It just wasn't being invaded by the big bugs anymore. But it didn't matter. She decided to return to Fomalhaut, find out what happened to her parents. See if they left anything behind. She booked a transport and spent the whole trip in her passenger cabin. It was a long trip - especially back then. She needed the time.

Her return to Fomalhaut had been empty. Even the disc was almost gone. All that remained of it was a thin ring, and that was being rapidly depleted by legions of upstart miners. Her parents had been successful, but lived quiet lives after her disappearance. She could only imagine how they must have taken it. It was still hard to think about that. With her missing, the family's wealth had passed on to scattered relatives, at least that which wasn't eaten up by Federation taxes. She didn't care. She didn't need it. She was wealthy in her own right. Too bad it didn't make her feel any better.

A year later, she had resumed her adventuring career, having purchased a surplus Moray Hospital Ship, and kitted it out for bounty hunting as a kind of irony. She kept the hospital ship paint job. She had adopted the name Emperor Shadowstar had granted her, Iridium Nova, both out of the need for an alias, but also out of respect to his long-dead Imperium and his perhaps whimsical dreams of a spacefaring realm of questing heroes and tales of glory. Thinking of his empire made her think of the other Empire - the big Empire, the one that didn't fall apart like Shadowstar's dream. She considered joining, but she was no lackey. She had always been a free spirit. Even when she worked for the Imperium, she did so as a free agent. She couldn't give that up.

One day, she received a message from Stardreamer Systems. They were working on a prototype for a new Stardreamer device. The Stardreamer Device could place a pilot or even a crew into a kind of stasis, not merely suspended animation, but rather a form of hypersleep whereby time would seem to pass at a faster rate for those effected, the body itself being slowed in its functions and effectively preserved against aging as well. This was used as a way of passing time travelling between planets in the post-Quirium age, before the advent of the Frameshift Drive and Supercruise. With full control over the device's function and the ability for the ship to turn it off in case of danger or autopilot function, it was hoped to reduce instances of space madness, often brought on by extreme boredom as ships could take days, weeks, or even months to traverse a star system. In the case of Alpha Centauri, some trips were known to take years. They had used her old ship and the data collected from studying how it had been effected by such close proximity to the black hole to develop a new device they were calling the Stardreamer-X, a faster, smarter, quantum-synchronized version of the standard Stardreamer. They wanted her to test it. She rejected their offer. It was almost an insult. Her last encounter with time acceleration had robbed her of years, had robbed her of friends, family, everything. And then she thought about it some more. She had nothing keeping her here now. They were offering her a lot of money. She had nothing to lose. She immediately rescinded her refusal and agreed to test it. She probably should have known better.

What happened next was rather complicated. The test ship, a modified Sidewinder with some fancy souped-up thrusters, an auto-refueller, extra fuel storage, and enhanced life support, was supposed to make a short trip between Sirocco Station on the Planet Merlin in Ross 154 to Camp Elder, a Stardreamer Systems test site on the surface of the sixth planet of the system. She had never really flown a Sidewinder before. But compared to the ships she was used to, it was simple and easy. And fast too. A good pilot could be really annoying in one of these. But a good pilot would be better off flying something else - anything else. Still, it was just for the test, and it was easy money. Liftoff from Sirocco was easy, despite the crosswinds for which Merlin is well known. Everything was easy. Too easy. She entered the data into the autopilot, set course for Ross 154 6 and engaged the Stardreamer-X Prototype. What happened next was anticlimactic. She half-expected something to explode, or melt, or Thargoids to appear, or something. But it went exactly as planned. Time sped up for her. It made her feel uncomfortable. This wasn't the first Stardreamer Device she had used - they were on every ship these days. Stardreamer Systems had developed the original technology before they got ahold of her ship, but every time she turned it on, it made her uncomfortable. It reminded her of the black hole. She hadn't let herself enter any systems with black holes in them since then. She had gotten used to the idea of subjecting herself to the same damn thing every time, because without Quirium, how else could you really get around in a system without going mad? The X Prototype felt a lot more like the black hole than the run-of-the-mill Stardreamers she was familiar with, but it worked. She deactivated the device and reported her success.

Stardreamer Mission Control wasn't satisfied. They wanted to see how far the device could be pushed. She had only tried it on its standard setting. "You're one of the few pilots in the universe who has experienced the level of time dilation we're looking for here, surely you can handle it?". She didn't like the implication. But a job was a job, and, she reminded herself, she really had nothing to lose. She punched it.

Maybe a little too hard. She wasn't exactly sure what happened next. Later on, she pieced it together. The autopilot had malfunctioned - catastrophically. It was supposed to pull her out of Stardreamer when it reached the planet. But it flew past the planet. In fact, it flew right on out of the system. The ship was still accelerating, in fact. On the maximum setting of this new prototype, her reaction times were so slow that by the time she disengaged the malfunctioning thrusters, she had already overshot the destination by at least a light year. She tried to disengage the device: every inch her hand moved took months in real-time, even if her movements felt more-or-less normal to her. The Stardreamer-X didn't respond. She chastized herself for not trying to disable it immediately once she realized what was happening. Panic hit her like an Imperial Clipper at full burn. "Nothing to lose." she repeated to herself desperately. This wasn't fear for losing anything, it was post-traumatic stress reminding her that it was still there. It never really leaves. It didn't help that she was helpless here. She was a seasoned pilot. She knew how hard it could be to spot and intercept a ship, especially one this fast, back then, and her current velocity was higher than anything she'd ever experienced, and she was now in interstellar space. It was all happening too fast. The damn thing wouldn't deactivate! She wondered if Mission Control had even bothered to try to stop it. Didn't they have a kill switch? It really didn't help that the speed she was travelling at, even with the acceleration stopped, was probably somewhere in the relativistic range. Did she outrun the stop signal? Was that even possible? She couldn't be going faster than light, surely... The hyperdrive was offline because of the Stardreamer-X hogging the power priorities. She thought about disabling power to the damn thing to force it to shut off, even though that'd probably cause some horrible injury or something. Nope, looks like that part was hard-wired, or at least not designed to be operated by the pilot. Damn Corporates, only thinking of the bottom line. Can't have a panicking pilot screw up the expensive test ship. She disengaged all non-critical systems, or the ones she had access to anyway. At this rate, her ship would run out of fuel and then life support would run out. She was immediately thankful for the auto-refueller and the extra fuel. She knew the Stardreamer effect would slow her body's use of life support resources, but even then, it wouldn't last forever. Even with the extra reserve, eventually the ship would die, and her with it. She didn't know what else to do. In truth, there wasn't anything else she could do.. Years ticked forward on the clock as she watched the stars drift by, helpless to stop it.

Something weird happened. A sound? Some kind of loud thud. Did something hit the ship? She blinked and shook her head to regain her focus, and there was a ship floating nearby. The Stardreamer Device was deactivated. She looked around. She had no idea where she was, but there was a signal coming through from the other ship. It looked like an Asp - but had clearly had some modifications done.

"You Iridium Nova?", a mysterious male voice asked.

"Umm, who's asking?", she replied.

"Look, lady; I'm just doin' a job here. ID says you's Iridium Nova. This is a -- let's see -- Stardreamer something-something. Looks like a relic. Not even picking up a Frameshift Drive in there. How you get all the way out here?", the man asked.

"I was just doing a job.", she replied.

"Heh, tell me about it. Well, all they told me was fly to yer signal source, and push the button on this device here. So I done that. I'm gonna go get my money now. Wish I could help yas, but you ain't got no Frameshift and your -- what is that? Old model hyperdrive? The hell... Look, miss, you gonna have to find your own way back to civilization. They didn't say nothin' about no towing. I ain't equipped for that.", he explained.

"Uh, okay...", she said, still trying to wrap her head around her situation.

"Oh and don't activate that thing again. They told me to tell you that. Dunno what that is, but there ya go. See ya.", he said

The ship turned and flew off. Then, it flashed out in a brilliant streak of light like nothing she'd ever seen before and was gone. No hyperspace cloud... Almost reminiscent of the Quirium space skip, or the way Thargoids would pop in and out of hyperdictions during the war. What was a frameshift drive? She sighed. It's happening again. I always dreamed of the future. This isn't what I dreamed of.... The hyperdrive was functional, so she was able to make it to civilization. She was still in the "bubble", as they called it now. Her old ship had been stolen decades ago. It was 3300 now. "Nothing to lose." Except everything she had. Well, with the exception of this Sidewinder. She didn't know exactly who had paid that guy to rescue her. Clearly he was a freelancer like her. How many missions had she done like that in her career? A quick study of maps and history showed that Stardreamer Systems still existed, but their influence had diminished significantly over the last 40 years. They could have just left her to drift through space forever, but they didn't. She tried to contact them but just got the runaround. Was she just an unresolved line item? Did anyone there even remember her? Was her rescue simply the act of a corporate machine wrapping up old loose ends? It didn't matter. She still hadn't been paid.

In the years since, she has continued to adventure across the galaxy. She has continued to hone her skills and amass wealth, building up an impressive fleet of custom starships and working for everyone, but really only working for herself. Her old mantra of "Nothing to lose" died with her old Moray. That kind of thinking was what got her into so much trouble to begin with. These days, she tends to mix adventurousness with healthy caution, always torn between living a dangerous life of excitement and being careful to weigh risk versus reward, though lately it seems she's been taking more risks. She avoids black holes and temporal technology like the Stardreamer, and hates to think about time. She returns to Fomalhaut on a somewhat regular basis, to honor her parents, and finds herself in Yemai from time to time to continue her legal battle with Stardreamer. Some part of her still holds on to that whimsical dream of chivalry and heroism across the stars but the Shadowstar Dynasty is long gone by now.

And she still hasn't been paid.