Arrivals from the Dark
In 2088, humanity is actively exploring and settling the Solar System. To protect Earth from natural threats and to combat terrorists and rogue states, the major power blocs have created the United Space Forces, a combined service that includes many branches, including the Space Navy and the Space Marines. These major players include the United States and Canada (USC), the European Union, and the Eurasian Union (more commonly known as Russia). China and the Islamic world are being actively suppressed in the technology department, although China does have a small presence in near-Earth space. The USF has proven its ability to perform pinpoint strikes at located terrorist bases throughout the world in under an hour, with USF cruisers launching fighters and marine assault teams, while coordinating their actions from low orbit.
The Action Prologue shows a man watching a recording of a Space Battle between a USF flotilla and an enormous alien craft, which proves to be a Curb-Stomp Battle, in which the human forces are completely wiped out, while the alien juggernaut shrugs off a nuclear Macross Missile Massacre with a combined firepower of 140 gigaton. The man then requests to be connected to Washington.
Several months earlier, a massive starship of the Bino Faata, a race of Human Aliens from the Pegasus Arm of the galaxy, arrives to the Solar System, seeking a habitable planet in order to establish an outpost, preferably a planet with an indigenous population to enslave. Recent arrivals to the Orion Arm, the Faata have already settled three worlds on the fringes of the Orion Arm, next to the Void, a vast volume of space between the two galactic arms devoid of any stars, and are seeking to expand their holdings here in order to fight off any possible aggression from the local star-faring empires. Upon arriving, they detect a Silmarri scout ship. The Silmarri are a race of worm-like nomads, who live aboard their ships and travel the galaxy. The Faata ship launches combat modules that engage and destroy the Silmarri ship with annihilators, weapons that fire bursts of Anti Matter. The Silmarri ship's destruction produces a burst of gamma rays that is detected by an astronomer named Liu Chang aboard the Kepler Orbital Observatory above Earth. The burst is also picked up by the Lark, a USF cruiser on a mission in the vicinity. Captain B.J. Cassidy takes the ship towards the location of the burst and has his four marine pilots launch in fighters in order to broaden the sensor range. Upon reaching the area, all anyone can detect is an elevated level of background radiation. Then the Lark is pulled forward by a strange force of directed gravity. Captain Cassidy panics and fires the ship's swarms (Magnetic Weapons that fire a spreading burst of icicles at great speeds), only to have the icicles come back at the Lark with an even greater force, perforating the ship and one of the fighters. The other three fighters are taken aboard the Faata craft, their pilots being the only survivors of the human vessel, as well as the wreckage of the Lark to study it.
Lieutenant Commander Pavel Litvin, Lieutenant Abigail McNeil, and Lieutenant Richard Corcoran find themselves in a white room, face-to-face with beings, who look very similar to humans. After saying something in their alien language, the Faata leave their captives alone in their cell, although the marines learn that the ship's computer is listening to their conversations and learning English (the three agree to only speak English in the cell to limit the aliens' understanding of Earth culture). Litvin also suspects that one of the aliens attempted to get into his head with some kind of Psychic Powers. After some time, the Faata flood the cell with a gas that puts the humans to sleep and take Corcoran away. Litvin and McNeil wake up to find themselves alone. Shortly after, the aliens return Corcoran, who reveals that the Faata were trying to establish a psychic link with him in a lab of some sort. He then appears to suffocate. At Litvin's angry request to the Faata computer, the machine replies that there is nothing that can be done, as the experiments have damaged Corcoran's respiratory centers of the brain. As Corcoran stops moving, McNeil, who was in a relationship with Corcoran, goes hysterical and starts pounding on the transparent barrier that blocks the cell. The aliens once again flood the room with gas and take McNeil. Upon waking up, Litvin is greeted by several of the aliens. In halting English, they introduce themselves as Intermediary Iveh, the Faata in charge of communicating with Bino Tegari, the Faata term for sentient aliens, and his assistants, a man named Yegg and a woman named Yo. Iveh lets Yegg and Yo do all the talking, apparently communicating with them through a psychic link of some sort. The Faata endeavor to get Litvin to help them understand humanity better, although they agree to answer his questions about them.
Meanwhile, a well-known reporter named Gunther Voss writes an article in the CosmoSpiegel periodical, citing Liu Chang's theory that the origin of the detected gamma-ray burst is artificial in origin. While most people dismiss the article, certain high-powered individuals start asking themselves "What if?". During a session of the United Nations Security Council, Umkhonto Tlume, an adviser from the Free Zulu Territory (an independent nation that broke off from South Africa), suggests that members of the Security Council have the USF send one or more ships to investigate and, perhaps, prepare a task force to deal with a possible foe. The Russian representative communicates this with his government and is told to contact Admiral Timokhin, one of the three admirals in charge of the USF, and have him take a sizable flotilla on an intercept vector of the hypothetical alien craft. The member of the EAU government specifically stresses the need to select ships crewed by predominantly Russian servicemen and women. Timokhin succumbs to the pressure, even though he is vehemently against using the USF to push the political agenda of an Earthbound power, even his own mother country, believing that the USF must remain unified. He personally commands a flotilla of twelve cruisers and their support ships, a sizable chunk of the USF Third Fleet, and redeploys them to the orbit of Mars along the vector of the hypothetical alien ship.
At the same time, Litvin finds out more about the Faata and learns that they are intercepting transmissions from Earth in order to learn our culture and political structure. They initially have trouble with differentiating between fact and fiction, as well as several concepts, such as religion, being themselves a purely pragmatic culture. After being left alone by Yo, whom he has grown to like, Litvin finds a round marble in his pocket that looks identical to the ones worn by Yo and Yegg on their temples, which allow them to communicate with the ship's intelligence. Unbeknownst to him, the sphere has been sent to him by a shapeshifting alien, who has been living on Earth for a long time and who has been actively attempting to make humanity aware of the coming threat via several of his alter egos: Liu Chang, Gunther Voss, Umkhonto Tlume, and others. The sphere, called a kaff, allows Litvin to contact the ship's artificial brain and to pass through barriers. He flees his cell and orders the computer not to reveal his location to the Faata. Litvin manages to reach the remains of the Lark, but discovers that the Faata have removed any still-functional heavy weaponry, as well as the ship's nuclear reactor. He finds a single undamaged suit of Powered Armor and puts it on. He encounters Faata guards called olks, a genetically-engineered subspecies, and manages to defeat or flee from them several times, as his combat training is far superior to theirs. Unable to rescue McNeil from t'hami, the stasis the Faata put her in, he instead finds Yo, who is herself in t'hami during her species' regular tuahha period (similar to a mating season, but on a monthly basis). After extracting her from t'hami prematurely, Yo jumps him in the throes of passion. Litvin doesn't mind. Together, they rescue McNeil, who turns out to be visibly pregnant. Yo explains that Iveh was trying to determine the viability of human-Faata hybrids in order to create a new Servant Race. Being in t'hami, McNeil's gestation has been greatly accelerated.
As the Faata ship approaches the orbit of Mars, the aliens detect the presence of the human flotilla. Deciding to reveal themselves to humanity, the Faata disengage their stealth systems (which only really work because the sensors aboard the human ships are so primitive) and introduce themselves. Admiral Timokhin positions his ships in a standard asteroid destruction formation, confident in his fleet's firepower, and conducts negotiations with the Faata as Earth's representative, despite the protestations by China and many smaller nations. Intermediary Iveh and several of his assistants speak to him remotely via an audio-visual link, expressing their desire to embrace humanity as brothers and sisters and promising various boons, including cures for many known maladies and the ability to travel to the stars. Being skeptical of the claims, as well as suspecting that the Lark's disappearance is connected to the aliens, the UN Security Council orders Timokhin to keep the aliens away from Earth no matter what, so he employs stalling tactics. After several days of his, the Faata get tired and decide to show their might. What follows is the same battle already described in the Action Prologue, where the Faata starship launches a number of large and small combat modules that obliterate the entire flotilla with minimal losses for the Faata. The Faata record the events and send the video to Earth as a demonstration. Enraged at seeing his fellow astronauts and marines being killed just to prove a point, Litvin commandeers a small combat module and fires its annihilator while still inside the starship, dealing some internal damage to the ship, although the pain from the feedback (the full-body interface is barely compatible with a human nervous system) causes him to pass out before he can do too much damage.
As the Faata ship is approaching Earth, the UN Security Council chooses to play down the aliens' act of aggression, realizing that there is little to be gained by this. Instead, they send messages apologizing for Admiral Timokhin's rash actions and invite the Faata ship to land at a certain location in Europe. Secretly, the Security Council hopes to redeploy the First and Second Fleets and strike at the landed ship, figuring it'll be more vulnerable on the ground. However, the Faata disregard the instructions and, instead, land in the Antarctic, as the ship requires massive quantities of ice to repair the damage caused by Litvin, as well as to rebuild the combat modules lost in the battle. Immediately after landing, the ship launches dozens of combat modules, which then head to the major cities and hover over them in a clearly threatening gesture. The shapeshifting alien teleports aboard the ship and appears before Litvin, McNeil, and Yo. He explains that he has the means to destroy the ship from inside, in such a way as to leave much of it salvageable for human scientists to study and reverse-engineer, but using it requires being aboard the ship when it dies. Litvin immediately agrees, only asking that the alien take the women with him. The alien agrees, teleports McNeil and Yo to safety, and then disappears as well. Litvin activates the alien device, which releases a swarm of nanites that start to consume the ship's neural organics, which constitute its brain. With the brain dying, the ship's systems shut down, including life support and Artificial Gravity (which also acts as a Reinforce Field for the massive vessel). The ship's entire crew dies as well, although Litvin suddenly finds himself halfway across the world in a small house in Belgium next to McNeil and Yo. The shapeshifter is nowhere in sight. Unfortunately, the destruction of the ship has resulted in all the hovering combat modules to crash, the Anti Matter in them exploding, killing an estimated 43 million people across the world and destroying countless historical landmarks and artifacts.
In the epilogue, Litvin is being debriefed by Chavez and Haley, the two remaining admirals of the USF, as well as Rear Admiral Potemkin, the acting commander of the Third Fleet after Timokhin's death. He relays the full story of what happened to him. He recommends that the truth about the shapeshifter be hidden from the public and expresses his wish to take a long vacation with Yo before returning back to active duty.
Captain Paul Richard Corcoran is given command of the frigate Commodore Litvin, named after the late hero of the Invasion and Corcoran's godfather (Corcoran's first name is the anglicized version of "Pavel"). Commodore Pavel Litvin was originally supposed to command the retaliatory task force but did not live to see the day. Corcoran, the son of Abigail McNeil, who was artificially inseminated aboard the Faata ship, is a Half-Human Hybrid, possessing the Faata Psychic Powers. Unlike the Faata, whose powers are limited to their own species, he is able to read both human and Faata minds. His true nature has been classified by the USF since his birth, and, officially, his father is the late Lieutenant Richard Corcoran, his mother's lover, who was killed aboard the alien ship. USF command hopes that Corcoran's abilities will prove invaluable in the coming mission, and the Commodore Litvin is assigned to the Special Task Force 37, along with six cruisers: Europe, Asia, America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. The task force departs to attack the three Faata colonies in the Orion Arm, located on the fringes of the arm next to an empty area called the Void, stopping by the Baal and Gondwana colonies, which have been settled within the past several decades. During the second stop, Commodore Karel Vrba, the commander of the task force, sends the Litvin to investigate an anomaly detected within the Gondwana system. The anomaly turns out to be a ship of the Silmarri, a worm-like race of nomads. Corcoran boards the Silmarri ship with several crewmembers, including his old friend Klaus Siebel, who works for the intelligence branch of the USF. They determine that the Silmarri are in the middle of a spawning period and present no threat, provided the humans don't provoke them. Throughout the journey, Corcoran keeps seeing vivid dreams of an alien world, which he has never seen before. Siebel helps him analyze the dreams and determines that they must come from his Genetic Memory, being visions of one of the Faata colonies.
The task force arrives to the Gamma Malleus system, where Ro'on and T'har, two of the three Faata colonies, are located. The Commodore Litvin is sent to scout out the gas giant at the fringes of the system, as strange readings are detected coming from it, while remaining hidden from the Faata in the system. The Litvin locates a planetoid orbiting the gas giant that appears to have a massive shipyard built into it, which is building three ships, identical to the massive starship that has attacked the Solar System 37 years ago. Klaus Siebel, the resident Faata expert (unbeknownst to everyone, he is actually that same alien shapeshifter, who helped Litvin defeat the Faata), suggests that the organic brains for the massive ships are being grown on Ro'on, the more pleasant world, as they require plenty of water (T'har is a cold, arid planet). Corcoran decides to go down to Ro'on personally, along with Siebel, in order to find and destroy the organic machines. To do this, they make use of a small Faata combat module, salvaged from the alien ship on Earth. Corcoran is the only one able to fly it thanks to his Faata DNA. Meanwhile, the rest of the task force prepares for an assault on Obscurus, the name given to the planetoid with the shipyard, hoping to deal enough damage to the ships before they're launched.
On Ro'on, Corcoran realizes that he has seen the planet before in his dreams. Corcoran and Siebel track down the home of Dyte, one of the planet's Keepers of Communications, who also happens to be Corcoran's biological father (Corcoran's mother was inseminated with his seed). When Dyte comes home, he detects the intruders with his highly-developed Psychic Powers and determines that Corcoran is his offspring. At first, he assumes that the ship they had sent out succeeded in finding and conquering an inhabited world and produced a viable hybrid race. Then Corcoran reveals that the ship failed and that humans are here to settle the score. Dyte nearly kills Corcoran with his abilities, but Siebel uses a Lo'ona Aeo device to put Dyte into a trance, so that he can be questioned about the location of the organic brains. They find out the location, but Dyte kills himself before they are able to find out more. They then infiltrate and destroy the brains at the facility, where they are being grown.
The Litvin comes under attack from a number of small Faata combat modules and is engaged in a fierce battle, while three of the cruisers attack the shipyard. Their goal is to lure the combat modules protecting the shipyard away, so that the other three cruisers can come in and finish the job. Despite heavy casualties, the plan works, and the human forces hold the shipyard hostage. A Faata representative arrives aboard the Europe and negotiates the terms of surrender with Commodore Vrba via a translating device. Vrba demands that the Faata cease all attacks against human forces in the system, preventing the Litvin's destruction. Eventually, the Faata agree to withdraw their ruling caste and a number of servants from the three colonies aboard the single remaining starship, agreeing to send unarmed transports to pick up the rest later. On the way out of the system, the leader of one of the colonies quietly swears vengeance on the upstart humans. The day is won, and Earth has three habitable worlds to settle, although many astronauts and marines paid with their lives. One of the casualties is Cro Lightwater, a hawk-faced Navajo gunner, who lost an arm during the battle and is in critical condition, not expected to survive. Siebel fakes his own death (although Corcoran is aware of his true nature) and takes on Cro's appearance.
Sergey Valdez is a Void War veteran, currently working for the Lo'ona Aeo as a Defender, based on the planet Danwait, one of a number of worlds given to the human mercenaries for their service, as the Lo'ona Aeo prefer to live in customized space habitats called astroids. Thanks to his seniority (he was a full Commander before retiring), Valdez is given command of a beyri, a small three-man patrol craft, called Lancelot. The other two crewmembers, Stepan "Atigem" Rakov (as in ATGM - anti-tank guided missile) and Cro Lightwater, serve as the beyri's gunners. The craft possesses an advanced AI, although it was clearly designed for a Dromi crew: the smell is horrible (even worse during a battle, as the Dromi version of a Red Alert involves a foul smell), the controls require wearing fake claws, the food is barely edible, and the head is a giant hole in the floor. Valdez has great respect for Cro, as the old Navajo has served with his great-grandfather Paul Richard Corcoran, until Admiral Corcoran's death in battle during the Second Void War.
During a routine patrol, the Lancelot receives a distress call from a Lo'ona Aeo trading ship that has come under attack from several Dromi ships. The beyri engages and destroys two of the enemy vessels (both Atigem and Cro are excellent gunners, and Valdez is a good pilot, not to mention that the technology aboard the Lo'ona Aeo-designed patrol craft is far more advanced than anything the Dromi have), but the third Dromi ship has already forcibly docked with the trading ship, and Dromi troops have boarded the defenseless vessel. The Lancelot docks with the freighter, and the three mercenaries (all former marines) manage to clear the giant ship of the invaders. However, to their surprise, they find that the ship, typically crewed by the biomechanical Servs, also has a living pod inside it with an actual Lo'ona Aeo female (well, sort of; Lo'ona Aeo have four sexes). After reviving her (she nearly died of shock brought on by being so close to aliens), they go back to their patrol craft and escort the freighter to the nearest trading post. During the flight, Valdez receives an invitation from the Lo'ona Aeo female. He visits her pod, which uses holograms to simulate any environment, and learns that her name is Zantoo.
Upon returning to Danwait, Valdez meets a recent arrival to the planet, a young woman named Inga Sokolova, a native of the T'har colony. Several days later, the Defenders are informed that a convoy was attacked by a large Dromi raiding force, killing many of their comrades-in-arms. As two of the senior-most officers, Valdez and Cro are summoned to a meeting, where the Defenders try to come up with a retaliatory strike. After determining that the attackers have come from a nearby fortress dubbed the Rathole, the mercenaries decide to assault the heavily-defended space station with an unprecedented number of ships and troops. The Lancelot is chosen as one of the three beyri to attempt to enter the station through its nonfunctional contour drive shaft, when the Dromi lower the station's shields for a few seconds to launch their ships. The plan is successful, although one of the three beyri is too slow and gets vaporized by the shield. The mercenaries battle through the station and take control of it. A Serv is brought to reactivate the station's AI, and the Rathole once again becomes a citadel of the Defenders.
Upon their triumphant return, the Lancelot's crew is summoned by the Servs and offered a special posting. Apparently, Zantoo's parents wish for Valdez and his crew to personally escort their child on her journey (revealed to be an exile until the end of her reproductive period). Valdez and the others agree, especially since the posting involves being given a new beyri, this one designed for humans, and raising their pay. Valdez does request that the old Lancelot's AI be transferred into the new one and that they be allowed to carry a combat robot in their hold.
As Zantoo's ship is performing its duties, Zantoo and Valdez meet more frequently and find out more about one another with Zantoo managing to overcome her species' natural xenophobia in his case. Zantoo reveals that she had violated her extended family's decision to become infertile, which is why she was exiled until such time as she is no longer able to produce offspring. As the Lo'ona Aeo are very long-lived, Zantoo will keep on traveling for many decades. With her Psychic Powers, Zantoo senses that Valdez possesses latent powers as well thanks to his Faata heritage. She also senses Cro's true nature and tells Valdez about it. Cro shows Valdez his shapeshifting abilities and reveals his own history, of how he came to Earth in the 13th century as an observer and has been subtly helping humanity's progress. Zantoo and Valdez experiment with establishing mind links with one another, which helps them get closer to one another, although Valdez is torn between his attraction for Zantoo and his attraction for Inga.
When stopping by Earth, which happens to be on the trading ship's route, Valdez goes down to visit his parents and siblings on their artificial island in the Pacific. After that, the ship heads into Haptor territory, to deliver terraforming equipment to a recently-colonized world. In exchange, the Haptors give the Lo'ona Aeo a small picturesque island, which will be miniaturized and placed in the ship's great hold, as the Lo'ona Aeo are big collectors of unique things. While on the island, Valdez convinces Zantoo to take a walk outside the ship and enjoy the sunset. The following morning, the ship is besieged by a Haptor force, who demand that Zantoo be handed over to them. Valdez manages to scare the attackers off and has the trading ship take off without the island. The Lancelot manages to fight off the fighters sent to intercept the trading ship, and the enormous vessel jumps.
Some time after that, Zantoo reveals that she is pregnant. When Valdez inquires how this is possible, she explains that, among her species, conception takes the form of a psychic meld between three of the four sexes (i.e. no physical intercourse). Apparently, the link between her and Valdez triggered the conception. The child will be a Lo'ona Aeo, but with some of Valdez's personality traits. With her exile being a moot point, she will be heading home. Valdez is conflicted. On the one hand, he can't bear the thought of never knowing his own child, but he knows that there is no place for him among the Lo'ona Aeo, especially since both Zantoo and the child will outlive him by many centuries. Zantoo releases him from their bond and asks him to remember her when he goes back to Inga.
The trading ship is ambushed by a Haptor cruiser. In order to give it time to jump, Valdez takes the Lancelot and heads straight for the warship. He has Atigem and Cro take out the cruiser's shield emitters and then eject, while he accelerates the beyri straight at the cruiser's Anti Matter tank, hoping that the collision breaks the containment and results in a matter/antimatter reaction. He ejects moments before the collision and is nearly killed in the resulting blast. He wakes up on a beautiful planet next to Cro (who has changed his appearance to that of a Lo'ona Aeo). Cro explains that the gambit worked. The cruiser was consumed by the explosion, and the freighter made it to safety. Valdez's pod was hit by the blast wave, and Valdez nearly died. In gratitude, the Lo'ona Aeo healed his injuries and brought him to Kullat, their now-abandoned homeworld, to recuperate. While there, he notices falcons in the sky and finds out that they have been brought from Earth and allowed to breed on Kullat. He asks to be given a breeding pair of them, so he can gift them to Inga, possibly as part of his marriage proposal. He hopes that she will take him back to T'har with her.
Eventually, he asks to be taken to the remains of his fighter to retrieve his helmet and blaster. After that, he sets the fighter to self-destruct, causing it to simply turn to dust. On the way back, they encounter a Dromi patrol and lay an ambush. They manage to kill most of the Dromi, but one of the Dromi officers then starts acting strangely. Instead of rushing the humans, it simply stands there, unarmed and waits to see what they will do. Curious, Mark attempts to use his Psychic Powers (which both he and his sister inherited from their father) to get a read on the large amphibian alien. While it's difficult for him to make any sense of a completely alien mind, he does get a feeling that this particular Dromi is different from all the others and bears no ill will towards humans. He convinces the others to let it go. Surprised, the Dromi leaves. The Dromi, named Patta, is astonished at being left alive. Unlike most of his brethren, he does not believe that a war with humanity is a good idea for the Dromi. His mentor Tihava (secretly a shapeshifter from the same race as Cro) had cultivated this worldview in Patta and sent him to T'har to attempt to find a way to bring about the end of the war, preferably with a human victory. In Tihava's opinion, the humans are the only race that is unlikely to exterminate all Dromi upon defeating them and are much more likely to impose the much-needed social changes to curb their expansionist tendencies and explosive population growth.
The leaders of La Résistance wish to meet Mark and summon him to their headquarters, located in a mining town far to the north. There, Mark finds an Elaborate Underground Base, built out of old mining shafts and containing much of the planet's free surviving population. During his meeting, Mark explains that he retrieved his helmet in order to locate the Arsenal, an old cache of military hardware hidden on the planet during the Void Wars. While the equipment is obsolete by modern standards, it's far better than what is currently used by the resistance. His helmet is equipped with a radio receiver that can be tuned to a particular frequency in order to locate the Arsenal. He manages to find it close to the planet's north pole. At night, he attempts to call out to his father using his abilities and receives a reply from him (actually, it was Cro Lightwater), advising him to go to the Arsenal and to try to take out the Dromi Patriarch, the leader of the local clan, which will throw the whole clan into confusion. Using one of the few remaining flyers, Mark and several of the resistance fighters head to its location. Upon arriving, they dig down and find an entrance hatch. Mark enters the compound and correctly identifies himself as a member of the Space Forces to the Arsenal's AI. He commands the AI to begin the reactivation of all military equipment in storage and to begin loading it onto the air transports that are also in the Arsenal. On the way back, they are intercepted by Dromi aircraft. They hide the flyer in a canyon, while the Dromi land and start looking for them, unaware that they have just landed in the midst of scores of stone devils (large lizards) during their mating season. Enraged, the stone devils rush the Dromi and rip them apart. By a sheer coincidence, one Dromi survives by remaining in the aircraft. It's Patta. He finds the humans and comes out to them unarmed. Mark and Kseniya attempt to establish a psychic link between them with a slightly greater degree of success. Having hoped for such a meeting, Patta produces a holoprojector and shows the humans the layout of the main Dromi base on T'har, including the location of the clan's Patriarch. In return, Patta hopes to be taken to one of the worlds of the Lo'ona Aeo, where there are enclaves of peaceful Dromi. Mark convinces the others to let Patta come with them back to the resistance base.
Meanwhile, at Betelgeuse, Admiral Sergey Valdez is pondering the odds of fleet command detaching a sizable fleet to retake the occupied colonies after the previous fiasco, especially since those colonies offer no strategic advantage to the war. His current forces are all that was left after the end of the Void Wars, as all new construction was halted during peacetime. As he's fighting to stem the unending Dromi tide, hundreds of new ships are being produced in the Solar System's Asteroid Belt, including new cruiser designs with double the firepower of his current ships. After Cro tells him about Mark's psychic message, Valdez receives a dispatch from Earth that several of the new cruisers have been sent to reinforce his position. He immediately proposes a plan to send some of these ships to the fringe colonies to liberate them. A young ensign named Olaf Peter Carlos Trevelyan-Krasnogortsev, seeking glory and advancement, requests a transfer to one of the new ships in the hopes that he will participate in the liberation of the occupied systems. He is also attracted to Commander Inga Valdez, the Admiral's wife, although he is realistic enough to know that this attraction will never be requited. When Inga learns of Trevelyan-Krasnogortsev's re-assignment, she asks him to pass her and Sergey's wedding bands to their children on T'har. Apparently aware of the young Ensign's crush, she tells him that her daughter looks exactly like her but is more his age.
The resistance leaders start planning an assault on the Dromi base, but are stumped, when confronted with the problem of getting past the perimeter shield, especially with the Dromi controlling the skies. One of them then remembers an old attempt to connect two cities with an underground tunnel, which was only partly successful. Finding the old maps, they locate an entrance to the tunnel and decide to use their mining equipment to dig under the shield and come out in the middle of the base. The plan is set in motion and appears to be going well. They manage to come up without raising an alarm and send some of the forces to evacuate the prisoners, while the rest will attempt a massive missile strike at the Patriarch's tower. They blow up the tower. By a stroke of misfortune, the aging Patriarch has just passed control over the clan to his underling, meaning his death has zero impact on the clan. The resistance fighters are quickly routed by an organized Dromi response. Most flee through the tunnel, but some remain to cover the escape and collapse the entrance. Just as all hope seems lost, they hear and feel rhythmic thuds, which a veteran fleet officer recognizes as Orbital Bombardment. This can mean only one thing - The Cavalry has arrived. The new cruisers make short work of the Dromi space forces, and the deployed ground forces eliminate the rest. Trevelyan-Krasnogortsev is one of the deployed troops and manages to locate Kseniya. Remembering her promise to get married immediately upon liberation and have six children (three of her own and three adopted), Kseniya demands that the young Ensign kiss her.
Meanwhile, Commodore Olaf Peter Carlo Trevelyan-Krasnogortsev has recently parted with his third wife (he left Mark's sister Kseniya and his second wife Monica-Paola was killed in battle) after he refused to retire from the military. He has been summoned to the Olympus Mons Base and is told that he would be leading the flotilla through the Great Red Spot into the Dromi home system, having been given four cruisers and three frigates for the task, including his own flagship Pallas.
Mark arrives to the orbit of Europa and transfers to a Lo'ona Aeo beyri called Anat, which seems to be bigger on the inside, as it possesses a large garden, in addition to spacious cabins. He meets his Lo'ona Aeo brother Heeyar, the son of Zantoo and his late father Sergey Valdez. While biologically Heeyar is fully Lo'ona Aeo, his psyche has an adventuring spark that this race normally lacks, having been clearly inherited from is human father. The crew also includes a Serv named First Registrar and the beyri's AI also called Anat. The Anat dives into Jupiter's atmosphere, and First Registrar sends out a key of sorts that allows the ship to pass through the impenetrable force field protecting the mouth of the portal. After entering through what First calls a "lens", the find themselves in some extradimensional space. First informs Mark that they have to wait for a Mirror, as the network operates cyclically to conserve power. While they're waiting, Mark and Heeyar get to know one another. As Mark learns, Heeyar's purpose isn't to open the passage or guide the fleet, it's to provide support for First, who is a very old Serv tasked with preserving knowledge of the Daskins. After entering the Mirror, the ship finds itself in a vast glowing space full of circling Mirrors, some of which keep approaching the ship, expanding, revealing what's on the other side, before moving on. After some time, Anat informs the crew that the mirror that leads into the Dromi system is approaching. They enter it and come out through an anomaly very similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. They conduct a more comprehensive scan of the system using the more advanced sensors aboard the Lo'ona Aeo ship. Mark in particular wants Anat to scan the surface of Fytarla-Ata, the Dromi homeworld, for anything that looks like spawning pools. Anat scans the planet and reports that none have been found, but he did find numerous cylindrical structures in orbit of the planet. This confirms what Mark was told by Ante, that the Dromi have moved all their larva reservoirs off-planet, which means that the human fleet won't be killing Dromi "children", even though the Dromi themselves don't have such a concept (in fact, the larvae aren't even sapient).
On the way back to the Solar System, the Anat encounters a Mirror with some kind of cosmic creature that feeds on mental emissions and nearly kills everyone aboard the ship. Mark instinctively uses his psychic powers to strike at the attacker, which delays it long enough for First to fire the ship's weapons, chasing the creature away. After returning to the Solar System, Mark reports on the network and the enemy system (but omitting what happened with the creature). The Anat guides the flotilla to the Dromi system, at which point the Commodore splits the ships into groups and gives them individual tasks. Five of the ships head for an industrial planet on the way to Fytarla-Ata and burn it to cinders with antimatter weapons, as well as wiping out all the orbital structures. Three of the ships them continue on to Fytarla-Ata. However, minutes before reaching it, they detect that the Dromi are landing all the orbital larva reservoirs onto the planet's surface. Despite knowing that the war will continue, Mark decides to call off the attack on the Dromi homeworld and uses his authority as Arbiter to order the human warships to stand down, although he does permit them to destroy the other industrial planet and all the asteroid mines and space fortresses. On the way back to the gas giant, Mark confronts First and asks why he told the Dromi to do the one thing that would stop the attack, since the slow-thinking Dromi would never have figured it out on their own. First doesn't deny it, but Mark realizes that this entire enterprise was a test to see whether humans have what it takes to become the new protectors of the galaxy and to do it better than the Daskins did.
The epilogue states that the war lasts for another century and costs millions of lives, but Mark Valdez lives long enough to see it end. He also never meet Heeyar again.
More to come...
Trevelyan's Mission
His landing craft arrives to a hidden island base built by FDAC nearly a century prior but which has been in disuse for nearly 50 years. He only spends a few hours there, grabbing a bite to eat and changing into local clothing. He has the base computer program a course of one of the available minisubs for a secluded beach in the eastern part of the sole inhabited continent. His disguise is that of a Wandering Minstrel, a member of the Rhapsod Brotherhood. Upon arriving to the mainland, he makes his way on foot to the nearest fishing village, where he is received as an honored guest. He tries to ask subtle questions about anyone sailing east, but everyone just give him strange looks, as Osierans believe their world is flat, surrounded by the ring of their chief god Tavan-Gez, who will be angry if someone touches his ring. The following morning, the villagers take him by boat to the local port city of Bengod. In a tavern, he encounters three pirates, who initially claim to know of the journeys he's talking about but then try to rob him at knifepoint in an alley. Having been trained to fight on Earth, he easily bests them but leaves them alive, after finding out they were lying.
He boards a passenger carriage (the size of a small bus) to Rori, the capital city of the nation of Hai-Ta, hoping to visit the local Brotherhood for more information and to find out what happened to the scientist FDAC previously gave the idea of the world as a sphere to. Along the way, he befriends another passenger, a noblewoman, who tells him that the scientist, named Dartakh, was kicked out of the university in disgrace for his laughable theories, and spent the rest of his life in the noblewoman's estate, under her late father's protection. Enamored with Trevelyan's songs, she invites him to her brother's estate. He tells her he'll visit at some point. In Rori, he goes to the local home of the Brotherhood and has a conversation with two senior members, gaining a glimpse into the Osieran social mind, resistant to change.
He then travels north into Etlant, specifically the city of Pomo. Instead of a warm welcome at the Brotherhood home, however, he finds a group of half a dozen rhapsods sitting and eating in grim silence. Then they get up, Trevelyan along with them, and head to another room, which turns out to be a well-stocked armory. The rhapsods equip and arm themselves. Then they depart the city and head to the estate of Rabban, who happens to be the brother of the noblewoman Trevelyan met earlier. During the march, Trevelyan manages to find out that an exiled nobleman from the center of the Empire named Alaja-Tsor has gathered a large mercenary army and is raiding the local villages, his men raping and pillaging their fill. Rabban, the ruler of the region, is powerless to stop him, so he appealed to the Brotherhood for aid. Apparently, as Trevelyan discovers, rhapsods are far more than just singers and wanderers. When the need arises, they take up arms in the name of justice and are rightly considered to be some of the best warriors in the world. Along the way, they encounter a force of several dozen soldiers, who attempt to deter the rhapsods on their mission of justice. The rhapsods deliberately provoke them (so the soldiers are the ones, who attack first) and then slaughter the numerically superior Alaja-Tsor's men, although losing two of their own during the fight. Trevelyan, perceived to be the most senior, is named leader. They arrive to Rabban's estate and are treated as honored guests. After a feast, Trevelyan spends the night with Rabban's sister and then sneaks out to visit the estate library, looking for any records of Dartakh. He finds them only to realize that the attempt at progressing Osier has failed yet again.
The next morning, the surviving rhapsods continue on their way to Alaja-Tsor's castle, this time taking secret forest paths thanks to guides provided by Rabban. After a few days, they arrive to the castle, where a large force greets them. Instead of attacking the rhapsods, the soldiers offer Trevelyan a chariot, in which he is supposed to fight Alaja-Tsor one-on-one. Not knowing how to control one, Trevelyan refuses, preferring to fight on foot, while still allowing Alaja-Tsor to use a chariot. Just prior to the fight, the nobleman screams something about a prophecy and throws a medallion to the ground. During the duel, Trevelyan uses Roman legionary tactics to force Alaja-Tsor to drop his shield and then knocks him off the chariot. In the resulting swordfight, he feints, causing Alaja-Tsor to overextend himself, and then severs the nobleman's spine with a single blow. After Alaja-Tsor's death, the rhapsods decree that all of his people are to disperse, emptying the castle. All the belongings are to be returned to the villagers, and the mercenaries are to take the place of the men they have slain in the fields and plantations. Trevelyan then finds the medallion the nobleman threw to the ground and is shocked to see that it's a holographic image, describing Alaja-Tsor's death in great detail. He pockets the medallion, later determining that it's clearly a product of a high-tech civilization, one that is also, apparently, capable of predicting future events. He walks back to Pomo. In the forest, he senses a telepathic probe into his mind. Having been warned previously, he realizes that it's a sherr, a flying creature that scares away many other animals. He offers the creature food, and it swoops in, landing on his lap. It turns out to be something resembling a cross between a bat and a kitten. Sensing the goodness in Trevelyan, the sherr decides to stick with him, although the beast is a little confused by the seeming presence of two minds in Trevelyan (sensing the ghost implant). Trevelyan names him Gray after the color of his fur.
Back at the Pomo Brotherhood home, Trevelyan meets with a respected elder of the Brotherhood named Pitkhana. However, the old man evades all his questions and grows suspicious of him, directing him to find Ahhi-Sek, the Great Mentor, who appears to be a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood. While leaving the home, Trevelyan finds out that, prior to the party being gathered to go after Alaja-Tsor, the nobleman had been sent a box by Ahhi-Sek himself as a warning. Now Trevelyan is even more determined to find this Great Mentor.
Having previously heard of an uprising in Mancana and of an Imperial army contingent sent to quell it, he decides to join it. While catching up to the force, he meets a jack-of-all-trades named Tinitaur and his pet pats (a disgusting primate-like creature), who begs to accompany Trevelyan to Mancana. Amused, Trevelyan agrees. After catching up to the tarcola (an army unit roughly equivalent to a regiment or a Roman legion), Trevelyan obtains permission from its chahor (general) named Algeif to accompany the soldiers. Algeif, for his part, is all too happy to have someone along to keep him and his officers entertained.
Upon reaching Mancana, the Imperial forces encounter a ragtag rebel army and a priest holding symbols of peace and standing near a chest. Algeif ignores the peace offering and has his forces attack the rebels. After the resulting Curb-Stomp Battle, Trevelyan opens the chest and sees that it's full of rubies, the most valuable gem on this world. Tinitaur suggests they take the rubies and run, but Trevelyan refuses. Algeif has the rebel leader, a local nobleman, brought before him. The rebel spins a tale about finding the ruby mine and willing to pay the Emperor his share of a third of the findings, while his dishonest partners wished to conceal the find, forcing the nobleman to kill them. Unwilling to see the surviving rebels to be sent to work the quarries, Trevelyan convinces the Imperial Commander to believe the nobleman. That night, Tinitaur drugs Trevelyan and takes him onto a ship heading south, to the lands of the barbarians. He explains that one of the chiefs promised to pay him a large sum for a rhapsod, who will sing about the chief's greatness.
After reaching the village weeks later, Trevelyan deliberately sings poorly and insults the chief. The chief has Tinitaur beaten and his tongue cut out before deciding to kill Trevelyan for his insolence. Trevelyan scares the warriors off with a hologram and kills the chief with his laser whip. He then spends the next two months making his way first west to the north-flowing river Feyn and then, after building himself a raft, doing downstream to reach the Southern Wall, a long series of fortifications built along the Empire's southern border. At the fortress, he entertains the officers before going north to the nearby town of Mad-Torval in the Imperial province of Feynland.
He spends several days in the Brotherhood home in Mad-Torval, resting and entertaining the locals with his tale of kidnapping and escape before departing for Mad-Eborn, the capital of Feynland in a coach. At the city, he is shocked at its marvelous canals, making it look like the local version of Venice. While walking to the Brotherhood home, he catches the eye of a young noblewoman, who has her guards put Trevelyan into her boat to entertain her. The boat takes them to the home of the city's ruler, where the girl (who is the niece of the heir apparent to the Imperial throne) is currently staying as the ruler's personal guest. That night, Trevelyan learns that the girl wants him in her bedchamber. Unwilling to fulfill the whims of a spoiled brat, even if she's incredibly beautiful, he refuses to sleep with her, so she summons the city's ruler and demands that Trevelyan be thrown in the dungeon. The ruler seemingly agrees, but after leading Trevelyan away, chooses to exile the rhapsod instead and has his people take him to a private island belonging to a salt merchant he knows to wait out a few days until things blow over.
Trevelyan arrives to the island of Nyork and meets its owner Ugo-Tasmi, who is happy to have a rhapsod as his guest. While there, Trevelyan is shocked to see that Ugo-Tasmi's mansion is built in the Victorian style and that all his servants have been given new names like Kitty, Millie, Bob, and Dick. Kitty, the servant girl assigned to Trevelyan, who is more than willing to share the handsome rhapsod's bed, tells him that the master likes to tell everyone stories, many of which Trevelyan recognizes as thinly-veiled folk tales from Earth. It's not long before he finds proof that "Ugo-Tasmi" is none other than Hugo Tasman, a missing member of the last team sent to Osier. He confronts Tasman and learns that the latter was asked to stay behind by the team leader to become the local Columbus in case their attempts at more subtle influence failed. However, when Tasman attempted to do exactly that, he kept hitting one bump after another. Every ship he purchased or commissioned ended up being burned down, and he eventually received two holographic medallions as warnings: one showing him living peacefully on his island, and the other showing him hanging dead with a hook in his gut. So Tasman wisely chose the first option and ceased his efforts.
Tasman takes Trevelyan to the Imperial capital of Mad-Aeg, where Ivar encounters a nobleman he previously ran into in Mad-Eborn. The nobleman turns out to be fully aware of everything he's been doing over the past several weeks and reveals himself to be a snoop. He has been asked by the noble girl's uncle, the heir apparent, to find and bring the rhapsod. Realizing that pissing off the second most important man in the Empire would make his mission that much harder, Trevelyan agrees, and they travel by coach to the uncle's palace. Trevelyan meets Nagan-Tash, the girl's uncle, as he's shooting a bow at a target. Trevelyan suggests that he move the target farther and gives the crown prince several pointers in how to shoot it. They become fast friends. When Nagan-Tash asks why Trevelyan couldn't lie down with his niece, the latter makes up a story about taking a vow of celibacy until he can discover the means of execution of his great-grandfather in the Imperial Archives. The story moves the prince, who tells Ivar that he will grant him a visit to the Archives as long as the rhapsod then returns and spends the next several seasons educating his niece. Trevelyan agrees and travels to the Emperor's island of Pont Kreer. His findings in the Archives aren't promising, so he returns to the capital and receives a box with two medallions, one showing him rotting in a dungeon, while the other shows him leaving the planet. Interpreting his options correctly, Ivar chooses to press on and head north to the town of Mad-Deggi, where the sage Ahhi-Sek is said to live.
The next morning he goes to the coach station, looking for one that goes to Mad-Deggi. A minor official tells him that his boss has chartered a coach to Mad-Deggi and is looking for someone to split the fee with. Trevelyan agrees. On the way to Mad-Deggi, the coach turns east instead of continuing north. Trevelyan is told that a bridge has collapsed and they're taking a detour through the woods. In the woods, the coach enters a small fort, and his traveling companions suddenly attack him. Despite his resistance, the men and the guards of the fort subdue him. He's told that someone in the Brotherhood wants him out of the way. He's beaten badly and tossed into a bottle dungeon. He spends there over a week, healing from the beat-down and planning his escape. But this turns out to be unnecessary, as Hugo Tasman arrives to rescue him, using a holographic disguise, having been tipped off that something was wrong by his spies in Mad-Aeg and Mad-Deggi and by the sherr flying to his boat and leading him to the secret prison. Tasman tells Trevelyan that the ones who took him likely work for the Night Eye, the Empire's secret police. He gives Trevelyan a saddled horse, money, and food and tells him to travel by night or off-road. Trevelyan continues his journey to Mad-Deggi, now determined to find the answers more than ever.
Two days later, Trevelyan arrives to a roadside tavern, where he stops by to eat and rest. Two noblemen notice him, and Trevelyan suspects they may also be working for the Night Eye. When his horse bites and kicks the noblemen's horse, one of them demands his stallion in compensation. Trevelyan refuses, so the nobleman challenges him to a duel. Trevelyan accepts but requests the presence of the local garrison's tuan as a witness. The fight is difficult, as both combatants are experienced. Trevelyan proves to be the better swordsman and kills the nobleman, while the other one tries to throw a dagger at his back. He misses, and the tuan decapitates him for violating the rules of the duel. Trevelyan pays the innkeeper for the trouble and departs.
After reaching Mad-Deggi, Trevelyan learns the location of Ahhi-Sek's home and heads there on foot. There, he finds that everything is exactly the way it was described to him. Upon meeting an old man sitting by a pond, he introduces himself and learns that the man already knows of him and of his journeys. After a while, Trevelyan learns to his shock that the man is not Ahhi-Sek, but someone named Orri-Shan, who is merely a front for the real Ahhi-Sek, who supposedly lives somewhere on an island off the coast of the country of Udzeni in the West. Except Trevelyan has studied detailed maps of Osier (taken with low-orbit satellites) and knows that there aren't any islands in that region. Orri-Shan tells him that the messages from Ahhi-Sek arrive as if by magic, miraculously appearing on his table, which leads Trevelyan to conclude that the mysterious aliens have mastered teleportation.
He heads west and moves through the nation of Oninda-Ro, where the road splits. He decides to follow an Imperial caravan into the mountains, but the caravan is ambushed by the brigands he learns live in those parts. Despite all the soldiers' training, they are soundly beaten, and all the cargo taken, along with most of the horses, including Trevelyan's stallion. The officer explains that the cargo is a tribute sent by the local ruler to pacify the brigands, lest they come down and attack merchants on the main road, and the battle is just playacting so that the brigands feel as if they have taken plunder rather than a pittance. Deciding to get his horse back, Trevelyan continues on foot and eventually finds the caves where the brigands live. He meets their chief Lacassa and learns that they're actually pretty nice people, whose ancestors have been dealt a bad hand. They'd like to leave these inhospitable lands, but they have no wish to be under the Empire's boot. Trevelyan realizes he may have found someone to go across the ocean and settle the virgin continent and draws Lacassa the map of the world.
He continues west into the nation of Tilim, where he runs into a caravan from the East carrying whale bladder for a strange nobleman in Sho-Ing named Kadmiamun, whose half-brother is one of the local princes. Trevelyan decides to pay Kadmiamun a visit. On the way, he stops by the Tilimese capital of Ferantin. He's immediately jumped by a herald who begs him to take part in a rhapsod tournament with the prize being a beautiful dancer named Ariena. Trevelyan decides to take part in the singing competition in exchange for letters of recommendation from the city's ruler to Kadiamun and his brother. At the tournament, his songs are the best of all, and he winds over the beautiful Ariena, who jumps into his arms and tells him to take her to his bedchamber. He does but then has second thoughts, realizing that he doesn't want to be a hypocrite after what he told the princess in Mad-Torval. Fortunately, his hesitation is interrupted by people, presumably from the Night Eye, bursting into the room and taking him away. He leaves and then uses a hologram of an alien monster to scare the guards away.
He continues west, losing his pursuers, and arrives to Sho-Ing, a maritime confederation of city-states, whose main business ventures are smuggling and piracy. He catches up to the whale bladder caravan and asks how to get to Kadmiamun. He finds a trail leading away from the road and rides the horse through it, abandoning the chariot. That night has an idea and contacts the Base computer, ordering it to scan the area off the coast of Udzeni on all bands, not just visual. He then sees something dark blot out the stars and move slowly across the sky. In the morning, the computer reports that the satellite has found an island that is being concealed from the eye with a holographic veil but was picked up on infrared and ultraviolet. After learning how to get to it, Trevelyan rides on and eventually reaches a settlement where he meets Kadmiamun, a middle-aged nobleman and a scholar, who reveals to have been a rhapsod magister in the past. Not only is Madmiamun fascinated by the saddle on Trevelyan's horse, but he is also aware of all the inventions that have never gained traction in Osieran society. Kadmiamun then shows Trevelyan his greatest achievement, an airship made of glued whale bladder and lifted by hot air. Ivar realizes that this is what he saw the previous night and is amazed that Kadmiamun has created this without any alien influence. Realizing that Kadmiamun is the right person to seek out the other continent, he tells him about it and about the world being a sphere, something Kadmiamun has long suspected himself thanks to his high-altitude observations. Trevelyan suggests that he approach Rabban about obtaining Dartakh's notes and have Chief Lacassa's tribe of brigands relocate to his own settlement so they can go explore the new continent. Kadmiamun offers to fly Trevelyan to his brother's city and convince his brother to give Trevelyan a ship and a crew.
With a small ship a a three-man crew, Trevelyan sails west across the Shimmering Sea and into the Western Ocean. He reaches Udzeni and follows the computer's directions to reach the island. He then gives all his remaining coins to the skipper and leaves on a boat, telling the skipper to go home. He goes through the holographic veil and finds himself on an island. He finds a small shack and is surprised to learn that Ahhi-Sek is a chimp-like alien. They talk, and Trevelyan learns that these aliens have been watching over Osier for 1800 years, which means they have seniority over humans. Their own views on progress are to let it happen naturally and without too much disturbance to society, which is why they have been covertly counteracting the human efforts to progress the Osierans. Despite this, Trevelyan believes that Kadmiamun and Lacassa's people will succeed in settling the other continent. He says goodbye to the alien and departs for the Base to wait for a ship to pick him up, as his mission is over. He also contacts Tasman and offers him a chance to leave. Tasman refuses, having grown to like it there.
Trevelyan meets with Iutin and asks to explain Course's nature. Iutin tells him that Tow is a remote Ni colony, where they conduct dangerous experiments with transplanting the brains of recently-deceased Kni'lina into synthetic bodies. The resulting creatures are extremely strong and fast, while also retaining the original person's intelligence. It appears to be an attempt at creating Super Soldiers for a possible second war with the humans. He also suggests that Depth killed Zend Una because they're from the same colony world, which is the subject of a struggle for control between the Ni and the Poharas. The survivors decide to send messages to Yezdan and Earth. Course attacks the air recycler and kills a servant. The Brain isolates Course on the lower tier and hopes to keep the creature's damage to a minimum. However, the survivors learn that the messages never reached their destinations. Further attempts at contacting other Kni'lina or human worlds likewise end in failures.
Trevelyan, Second Pilot, and Third Evening meet to discuss options for dealing with Course. When Ivar asks why they aren't including Naya Acra or First Depth, he learns that they don't consider them to be their leaders. As for Iutin, they only say that he's a Zinto but don't expand on the subject. As Ivar is leaving the park area, he is approached by a servant named Shiar, who asks for Trevelyan's protection from the others, as one of the servants overheard Pilot and Evening discuss their plans for capturing Course and wanting to bring servants with them on the hunt. Trevelyan learns that all the servants on the station are brothers.
Trevelyan returns to his quarters and asks the Commodore to analyze all the communication lines on the station while Trevelyan is engaged in a mental link with the Brain. The Commodore learns that the so-called "emergency audio line" has enough throughput for much more than just audio. Ivar confronts the Brain and uses logic and accusation to convince the AI to unblock information. Apparently, the AI's creator has set up the "emergency line" to copy any information being deleted and keep it in storage. The Brain reveals that Course was the one to kill Jeb Ro on the planet and that Iutin took the hypnoglyph and the palustar from Zend Una's quarters after his death. He's about to watch the missing recording from the planet, when the weeping Ifta Kee comes to him and begs to protect he from the other two women, who seem to want her dead.
Meanwhile, Naya Acra and First Depth meet in a remote hallway, away from cameras, to resolve their differences once and for all, through a duel. While Depth is the younger and seemingly stronger of the two, the priestess turns out to have plenty of combat experience. It's revealed that she fought in the war with the humans 300 years prior and was frozen in a cryopod as punishment for killing some of her subordinates to get the others to comply. Jeb Ro thawed her out and brought her to the station. Naya Acra also reveals that she knows what Depth is, possibly some kind of assassin. The duel is decidedly one-sided, with the thin priestess dominating Depth and cutting her up with her blade. Just as she's about to start carving up the other woman, Depth strikes her in the throat with a pin she's been hiding in her sleeve, killing her. She orders a cleaning bot to remove all traces of her DNA in the hallway.
Ivar, Pilot, Evening, and two of the servants go down to the technical tier in search of Course. Along the way, Trevelyan learns the truth about Naya Acra being frozen and Depth being from the Valls Clan. He is shocked that both Pilot and Evening are more than willing to lay the blame for all the murders on Course alone, even though they know the truth. They find Course in an empty storage compartment. He throws two empty bottles at them with great force. One hits Pilot in the head, the other one misses Ivar but hits one of the servants in the shoulder, breaking his collarbone. The cyborg escapes. They take Pilot and the servant to the infirmary, but the cybersurgeon pronounces Pilot dead after 4 hours. The Brain tells them that Naya Acra has been missing for 9 hours, and Evening sends the servants to look for her. Ivar goes back to his quarters and tells the awakened Ifta Kee what has happened. She is happy that the priestess is missing and hopes that she is either never found or found dead. Ignoring an invitation to join her in the bathtub, Ivar goes to sleep.
He wakes up to Ifta Kee trying to seduce him. He manages to resist her advances. He interrogated her, and she reveals that Jeb Ro and First Blade were bitter rivals back on Yezdan with their own plans for what to do on Saikat. With the prestige such an endeavor would bring, they selected their teams to ensure loyalty and to give themselves the advantage. The Brain informs them that Naya Acra's body has been found, and Ivar realizes it must have been Depth who killed her. He sends Ifta Kee to his office to watch films about Earth, while he and his Advisor try to figure out what's going on. Ivar proposes that Blade ordered Course to kill Jeb Ro on the planet and then has the recording of the murder either destroyed or copied to use as blackmail against the cyborg. Course countered by slipping Blade the hypnoglyph to kill him. Depth's motives are not yet clear. But then the Advisor informs Ivar that Course did not kill Jeb Ro. They watch the recording and see a Tazinto sneak up and kill the coordinator with a Terre javelin, although Course had clearly been planning to do it anyway. Ivar resolves to find that Tazinto assassin, but first he and the Advisor will need to deal with Course.
All the surviving members of the mission, except for Course, gather to a funeral ceremony for Pilot and Naya Acra. Trevelyan then has everyone gather in the conference room. Depth starts to claim leadership but Ivar takes out the palustar and declares himself acting coordinator pending the arrival of a higher authority, with Evening as acting subcoordinator. The station's AI confirms his emergency authority. He then has Depth stripped of her status and arrests her. She tries to use a paralyzer on him, but Evening's quick throw knocks the device out of her hand, and Ivar grabs her with his strength and reaction enhanced by the "skin". He has her locked in her quarters with no access to outside.
While waiting in her quarters, Depth privately admits that she underestimated Trevelyan. It's also revealed that her Valls Clan of assassins tried to rebel against the ruling Poharas and Ni clans during the war with Earth. Humans secretly supplied the Valls with weapons, ships, resources, and equipment, as well as secret bases. But when the time came, Earth betrayed the Valls and signed a peace treaty with the Ni. Most of the Valls were exterminated and their clan declared to have never existed. The Valls swore to never forget the betrayal. Depth figures that Ivar will be killed by Course or Jeb Ro's killer, allowing her to take over and get rid of Ifta Kee. She sends a message to Iutin, suggesting an alliance.
Trevelyan converts some of his equipment into a version of a Universal Combat Robot, but with no weapons or computer. He inserts his Advisor's crystal chip into the robot to act as its CPU. They go to the lower tier to hunt for Course. They search the warehouses and the other places not being monitored by the Brain, but Course is nowhere to be found. The Brain asks about the robot, and Trevelyan explains his Advisor's nature, which prompts the Brain to offer its own services as his second advisor. Ivar tells the Brain to work on trying to make sense of Depth's raw research data. When the robot finds no trace of Course, the Brain suggests one other location: the top of the Limbo generator, as there's a small gap between the generator's housing and the ceiling, with power conduits leading to the top tier, two of which are unused. They find the gap, and the robot finds Course in one of the conduits trying to rip his way to the top tier. With the cyborg restrained by the robot's tentacles, Ivar questions him and learns that Course used to be a Poharas biologist named Tan Odd before an accident of some kind, resulting in his brain being placed in an artificial body and his memories blocked. Zend Una's palustar blast destroyed some of the blocks, resulting in Course being full of hatred towards all the Kni'lina, and Trevelyan as well. Course says he that he didn't kill Jeb Ro or First Blade. That said, he did kill Pilot and the servant Zotahi and expressed his desire to kill everyone aboard the station. Ivar tries to execute him with the palustar, but but device malfunctions, suggestions sabotage by Iutin. The robot instead snaps the cyborg's neck.
Ivar and the Commodore, still in the form of a robot, take a shuttle down to the planet. They find the Tazinto campsite empty, but the observation drones inform them that the tribe has traveled up the mountains, so they fly there. Ivar appears to them as a giant and says that he has come from the Gift Giver to get a great hunter. The Commodore scans the natives and locates one with implants. Ivar has the robot capture him. He questions the fake Tazinto and learns that he's a Kni'lina of the Valls Clan, who's been working with Depth to sabotage the project. Their goal is to take the planet for the Valls and slaughter the natives. The infiltrator wasn't aiming specifically for Jen Ro, any of the observers would have suited his purpose. Ivar decides to leave the infiltrator as a savage and goes back to the station. Along the way, he realizes that the Valls probably have a small ship hiding in the system. He contacts the Brain and suggests that Depth's research data may involve calibration parameters for the bioemitter to make it deadly to the Terre and the Tazinto. Ivar realizes that if the Valls successfully sabotage the project in a big enough way, the involved parties (Ni, Poharas, and humans) will be blamed and forced by the other galatic races to stay away from the planet. The Valls will be free to settle on the planet free from Ni and Poharas retribution.On the way back, Ivar tries to contact the station but receives no reply. On approach, the pod is attacked by a small scout ship, which the Commodore recognizes as a human model. The ship is docked to the underside of the station, and a power cable is running from it to the bioemitter, while a spacesuited figure is busy working. Ivar manages to avoid getting shot down and docks with the station. The Brain informs him that Iutin had Depth freed and a message sent to summon the scout ship. Depth is manually recalibrating the emitter to wipe out both native races on Saikat. Ivar and the Commodore search the station but are ambushed by Iutin, who shoots the robot. Ivar tries to reason with him, but the Zinto explains that he is hoping that a galactic war starts that will result in the ruling clans being toppled and the existing clan structure dissolved. He locks Ivar with the others in the station's control center. Ivar realizes why they couldn't contact Earth or any other planet and had the Brain compare Saikat's coordinates in his memory to the ones in Ivar's computer. The coordinates don't match, suggesting that the Brain's programmer was a part of the conspiracy. With the new coordinates, Ivar is able to send a message to his superiors on Earth. Less than an hour later, he receives a reply with a code to jettison the emitter as a final failsafe. He has the Brain enter the code, and the antenna (along with the scout ship and Depth) is ejected towards the planet, burning up in the atmosphere seconds later.The infiltrator is killed by his chief, who suspects the hunter might try to replace him.The cruiser Hannibal arrives to the station with the human expedition. It will also take the surviving Kni'lina to Yezdan and express disapproval with internal politics that nearly resulted in a disaster. The human coordinator tells Ivar that he's being sent to Inferno, where a dangerous situation has developed. Ivar is adamant about not going, having earned a well-deserved vacation and unwilling to go back to that hellhole of a world.
More to come...
