1) You're right, you'd think the paidhi should at least have close ties to the culture he's representing with the atevi, wouldn't you? Hmm.

2) I had totally missed that Phoenix was humanity's first colony ship. Huh. It's definitely not the Alliance/Union universe, then. (If Bren meant regular spaceflight instead of "first human in space", it's even later than 3800 right now, though.)

And yeah, quite a cliffhanger - falling asleep (or into a coma?) after meeting the awesome Ilisidi.