Just as Kim’s plans are falling into place (well, there wasn’t a lot of planning involved) things start unraveling quicker than she can pull them back together. And when you have to ask the enemy to save you it isn’t always obvious if they'll view ‘helping’ in exactly the same way. For the hurgon if it isn’t written down and signed in triplicate it's all just meaningless babble anyway. Kim doesn’t agree.

In the middle of a civil war she helped start, Kim and the crew of the Hakahei are forced to search for allies amidst the sprawling, concrete jungle of the hurgon home world. Working out what the sides are is hard enough, working out who's on which one might be impossible.

The price for finding allies might be too high, but she'll worry about that when the time comes.