Ekur-Tkalal grants Dafyd’s request to conduct a planetary gravity survey. The survey is a pretense; Dafyd’s real goal is to help the swarm locate a Carryx data archive. The swarm uses its unique senses to track the data signal from a cover report that Dafyd filed.

As they travel on a Carryx transport, the swarm reveals to Dafyd that it retains the memories of its previous human hosts, Ameer and Else, in addition to Jellit’s. It explains that its first conscious memory was being discovered as a silver sphere by Ameer, a girl doing a solo hike in the Kusine badlands. They follow the signal to a large, gray, featureless structure that is a physical node for the archive. Outside the transport, the environment is harsh and hot. As the swarm approaches the structure on foot, tiny filaments like hair-thin antennae sprout from Jellit’s skin. It tells Dafyd, “I can see everything” (167).

Jessyn and Garral are hiding in the cave with the group of refugees, which includes two tutors named Manta and Omco, several children, and Corvall. Garral explains that Corvall is the sole survivor of a human military unit that fought the Carryx, revealing that humans are part of a larger coalition at war with the empire. Corvall’s plan is to activate an emergency beacon at his nearby crash site, which will summon a rescue ship for the children.

However, the plan requires Jessyn to smuggle a device back to the Carryx ships that will disable them during the rescue operation. Jessyn quickly realizes that the rescuers would likely destroy the now-defenseless Carryx vessels, killing her and the other Anjiin captives aboard. She devises a counterplan, insisting that Garral must accompany the children because only he can communicate with them and negotiate the condition that the rescuers not destroy the Carryx ships that she will be on. Garral reluctantly agrees, and Jessyn prepares for her solo mission.

Aboard a Carryx warship, Rickar has an ongoing arrangement with Vaudai, who can access and share the Carryx’s tactical data from an ongoing space battle. Vaudai analyzes the situation and predicts that the final, isolated enemy command ship, facing certain defeat, will self-destruct rather than allow its capture.

Elsewhere on the ship, Campar finds that Ghati is experiencing depression due to their imprisonment. Desperate to give Ghati hope, Campar considers telling him about Dafyd’s secret resistance plan. He consults Rickar, who is cynical and dismisses the plan as “false hope,” insisting that the humans are powerless and should simply accept their fate. The battle soon ends in a Carryx victory, but Vaudai’s prediction proves incorrect: The enemy command ship fails to self-destruct, its fate left unexplained.

Surur-Tlassen, the Carryx regulator-librarian, is summoned by a representative from the private creche, a secluded area dedicated to Carryx reproduction. He learns that the Sovran, the supreme ruler of the empire, has a new daughter and that preparations for their meeting must begin. Surur-Tlassen then proceeds to the Sovran’s palace to deliver his daily report.

His briefing includes updates on production, pacification efforts, and military matters. He specifically mentions the recent enemy ship in the Ashtin-Kah system that failed to destroy itself after its fleet fled. The Sovran commands that examination of the enemy ship be prioritized and orders her forces to create a diversion to draw the enemy’s attention elsewhere. This will ensure that the “animals of service” assigned to study the vessel can do so without interruption (194).

Tonner inspects the “lamb sacks” that are gestating the next generation of human captives. He pays special attention to the fetus that is his and the late Else’s biological child. Later, during a progress meeting with Dafyd, Tonner reveals a side-project discovery: The Soft Lothark guards have a secret method of communication. They pass information-dense plasmids to one another by nibbling each other in greeting.

Two nearby Soft Lothark guards overhear this revelation and immediately attack Tonner, beating him to death. Dafyd’s personal Rak-hund guard intervenes to protect him, but the Lothark kill it as well. To save his own life, Dafyd quickly creates a formal report detailing the Lothark’s secret, bluffing that he’s about to send it, and then erases it and steps back. He offers the surviving guard a cover story: The Rak-hund attacked Tonner in a misunderstanding, and the Lothark were trying to help. The guard verbally accepts the truce and then kneels and begins eating its fallen dead. Later, the Lothark guard alters a message of alliance from Dafyd, changing “Humans and Soft Lothark can help each other” to “Humans and the Deep Lothark can help each other” (219), revealing the existence of a hidden intelligence.

Corvall leads Jessyn, Garral, and Omco to his crashed ship. There, he gives Jessyn two items for her mission, a ceramic cylinder containing a nanite swarm capable of disabling the Carryx ships and a small handgun. After a final, emotional goodbye with Garral, Jessyn journeys back to the pear orchard where she had been conducting research.

She finds a hollow in a burned-out tree and hides the cylinder there. To make her cover story of being attacked by an enemy soldier believable, she shoots herself in the side with the gun. The wound is far more severe than she intended, and she’s forced to crawl back toward the Carryx base, bleeding heavily. She’s eventually found and taken for medical treatment. The human geologist Holom Coombs is also present when she regains consciousness. When a Sinen overseer demands a report, a semi-conscious Jessyn tells her fabricated story that a black-armored monster injured her and killed Garral.