With most of the McCawleys now dead, Pilar, Alak and baby Luke manage to escape. Pilar finds a trailer in the wilderness and promptly kills the occupants. When Alak awakes in the night, Pilar and the baby are nowhere to be found. In Defiance, Doc Yewl tries to mend the newly arrived purple-skinned alien, Kindzi, though she does so reluctantly. She knows them as an early Votan race known as the Omec, vicious creatures known for eating those they conquer. Kindzi's father T'evkin is soon in town and Amanda has a proposition for him: they will return his daughter provided they share the gulanite. Stahma and Dalak Tarr meanwhile have to deal with General Rahm Tak who wants them to be his spies in the city.
