<blockquote> <p> The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil. </p> <p> Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a grossly overpopulated planet. On Bezer'ej, the handful of native aquatic creatures who survived extermination must take extraordinary and terrible steps to ensure the future of their kind . . . </p> <p> And the interlopers from a distant planet called Earth can only watch the chaos they helped, in part, to create—knowing their home world will be next to suffer. </p> </blockquote> <p> The day of reckoning is rapidly approaching when the powerful <i>Eqbas</i> will remake the Earth at the expense of its dominant species. And Shan Frankland—once a police officer, once human, now something much more—must decide where her loyalties truly lie: among the <i>gethes</i>, on a planet she once called home, or here, where a dying species presents her with a new and unexpected crisis. </p>