Home World recap

Newly promoted James McGill is drawn into a struggle between Galina Turov, Claver, and Central just as cephalopod forces invade Earth. A Galactic Key lets him activate stolen teleportation suits, leading to raids on enemy installations and a failed ground defense. He discovers that plant-like masters control the cephalopods and forces Claver to reveal how the teleport network can be reprogrammed. With help from the original Natasha Elkin on Dust World, McGill gains access to cephalopod destinations and destroys their capital with antimatter. After he is surrendered and remains dead for about a year, Turov uses Natasha's work, the Key, and Ferguson's final mission to destroy the masters' war enclave and win the war. Earth emerges controlling roughly 300 worlds, which draws a Galactic battle fleet. Revived McGill finally meets Etta, returns to Earth with his family, and refuses Turov and Claver's proposed mission against the new threat.

Previously: James McGill served repeatedly with Legion Varus and survived many deaths through Imperial revival technology. His record includes a Central data-core breach that erased part of his stored history, leaving authorities wary of him. He has a complicated personal bond with Imperator Galina Turov and previously promised to work for her if she investigated L-374. He also knows that Claver possesses illusion technology and operates outside normal authority. McGill carries the Galactic Key, a powerful artifact able to bypass secured systems, though its possession creates grave danger under Galactic law. His family ties extend beyond Earth: Della is the mother of his daughter Etta, who lives on Dust World, and Natasha Elkin, Carlos, Kivi, Veteran Harris, Sargon, Centurion Graves, and Anne Grant are established Legion associates. As the new crisis begins, McGill is seeking formal recognition of an adjunct commission while Central continues to examine his unusual history.

Central confirms McGill's adjunct rank, and his patron Nagata assigns him to watch Galina Turov. Soon afterward McGill finds Nagata dead and Claver searching the office in a teleportation suit. A cephalopod commando attacks Central with the same technology, leaving permanent casualties and severe network damage. Claver later confronts McGill at home, destroys his tapper, and is killed. McGill calls Carlos, Kivi, Della, and Natasha to examine the body and suit, but Natasha vanishes when the device activates. Turov and Winslade then draw McGill's group into a secret plan to surrender Earth and rule under cephalopod authority. During the planned meeting at Central, McGill takes the Galactic Key from Turov and turns against the operation. His group kills the arriving commandos, while Turov is dismembered and sent for revival. McGill conceals her capitulation attempt by presenting the battle as her heroic defense of Central. Drusus rises to imperator as a fleet battle begins, leaving McGill and the surviving conspirators committed to a false account.

Turov revives and briefly accepts McGill's cover story, then shoots Winslade and McGill. After McGill's next revival, Imperator Drusus reviews the evidence but cannot settle the competing accusations. Earth's fleet loses about half its ships in the first engagement, and McGill is assigned to Omega Team for trials of captured teleportation suits. Rourke and Ferguson die during failed activations. McGill secretly uses the Galactic Key to enable a suit, but his uncontrolled jump merges him with another person and a bench, forcing Graves to kill him. Lisa, the lead suit technician, returns the Key after McGill revives and begins a relationship with him. Further trials produce more deaths, and Graves arrests McGill for concealing how he activated the device. During the interrogation, Graves reports that Carlos and Kivi have been executed for refusing to cooperate. He kills Winslade, then apparently kills Turov permanently after she explains that the suit's dial contains very precise preset destinations. McGill remains the only human known to have completed a successful jump.

McGill preserves his usefulness by claiming Turov attuned the suit to him. Sent through a preset, he explores an enemy installation and a green-ocean world before finding a route back to Central. Graves clears him, restores his rank, and assigns him to lead a boarding team. Lisa learns that the Galactic Key enables the suits and uses it to prepare the entire squad. McGill, Harris, Kivi, Carlos, Sargon, Ferguson, Lund, and Lisa teleport aboard the enemy ship Force just as its crew prepares an attack on Central. The team gains surprise but suffers severe losses in underwater corridors. Sargon, Lund, Kivi, and Ferguson are killed during the advance. The survivors reach the bridge, and the cephalopod captain Storm submits to McGill, allowing Force to fall out of formation. Lisa escapes to Central with working suits and ship maps. When enemy vessels board, Storm revolts. McGill uses Force's weapons to destroy an attached vessel before return fire kills him. The raid secures valuable technology and intelligence, but the captured ship and most of its human boarders are lost.

After revival, McGill learns that Harris and Carlos also died aboard Force and that the Key's temporary authorization may have expired before they could escape. His next team searches an alien facility on the green-ocean world. Beneath it they discover an intelligent plant leader that identifies its species as the power directing the cephalopod fleet. It says a woman matching Natasha died there and confirms that Claver falsely represented himself as Earth's master. McGill has the plant destroyed to delay its attack orders. Earth has already lost its fleet, and enemy forces now enter through an Adirondack gateway. McGill and Harris scout the invasion zone, where McGill recognizes Claver as Old Silver operating the gateway. Another teleport setting takes them to Turov's library. Harris and Claver shoot each other, and McGill kills Claver again after rejecting his claim that cephalopod rule would free Earth from Galactic restrictions. McGill hides the conversation and stages a mutual killing. With the ground invasion advancing, Drusus ends exploratory jumps and sends McGill on a likely suicide mission carrying an automated bomb to destroy the gateway.

McGill teleports into a stasis-field trap and discovers that Claver survived the library encounter. Claver says the gateway has already been moved, but McGill disrupts the field and escapes before the bomb destroys the forest target. The blast damages the invaders without ending the campaign. Legion Varus deploys into the Adirondacks under the revived Nagata's overall command. Nanite swarms devastate its landing zone, killing hundreds, until Kivi improvises EMP devices and opens an escape route. The reduced legion pushes into the forest as a sacrificial reconnaissance force. Slavers locate its camp, Kivi is badly wounded, and enemy companies close in. Graves detonates a fusion charge that kills the remaining Varus troops along with thousands of invaders. McGill, Kivi, Harris, and others revive at a rally point near Albany as the legion reforms for open battle. Della admits she deliberately exposed a recruit to a slaver to create a vacancy in McGill's unit. She asks for a transfer and proposes that she and McGill establish a stable parental relationship for Etta. Meanwhile, fewer than a million Earth troops prepare to meet an invading force estimated at three million.

Varus builds a defensive line and destroys the first heavy-trooper charge, but a larger assault reaches the trenches and kills many legionnaires. As neighboring formations collapse, Graves's cohort is sent to seal a breach. The survivors enter an undermanned redoubt commanded by Olsen, where Graves dies outside the walls and Leeson becomes the senior Varus officer. McGill and Kivi trick the nearby cephalopod overseer into revealing its position, then kill it with drones. Its leaderless troops charge instead of waiting for starfall artillery. Giants overrun the fort, killing the wounded and most defenders. Olsen and Leeson fall, while McGill and Carlos die in a final plasma blast. McGill revives three days later to learn that the northern defense has collapsed. At Central, the revived Nagata strips Drusus of command, restores Turov through revival, orders Drusus imprisoned, and sentences the revived Graves to another death. Turov is now in charge despite having been believed permanently executed. Nagata demands the Galactic Key. McGill hands it over and immediately shoots him, while enemy gateways continue delivering forces toward an almost undefended Central.

The man McGill shoots is exposed as Claver using an illusion, not Nagata. Turov admits that she expected political power from a cephalopod settlement while Claver sought control of profitable transport. McGill secures reinstatement for himself, Graves, and their unit, then uses a decoy to keep the Galactic Key. He takes Turov through the final suit preset to the cephalopod homeworld. In a submerged nursery, a queen reveals that the cephalopods are themselves subjects of the plant-like masters. McGill concludes that defeating those masters is the only way to end the war. Back at Central, Graves restores Turov to command because Earth needs unified leadership. McGill then tracks Claver through his search for flower-titled library books. A grenade kills both men, allowing Central to revive and detain Claver. Claver bargains with his knowledge of teleport programming. McGill forces him to demonstrate that he licensed the destinations used by the cephalopod suits and retained control of their settings. Human forces now have a recorded method for changing teleport destinations, although they still need a specialist capable of applying it reliably.

McGill launches an unauthorized team to exploit Claver's programming, but Kivi cannot reproduce the complex procedure. He travels to Dust World for the original Natasha Elkin, a version who has lived separately since an illegal duplicate entered Legion Varus. The settlers kill and revive McGill before Natasha agrees to help. She returns with him and finds a database of prepared destinations for every cephalopod world. With Central under assault and surrender imminent, McGill takes an antimatter weapon to the cephalopod homeworld and destroys its capital. Earth revives him from relayed transmissions, but the cephalopods demand his surrender along with Earth's weapons and suits. McGill accepts sole responsibility and is teleported away. About a year later, Turov revives him. During his absence she recovered the Galactic Key and used Natasha's programming to send Ferguson with the last antimatter weapon against the plant masters' war enclave. Ferguson is presumed lost, but the strike destroys the controlling leadership. The cephalopods surrender and become Earth's subjects. Earth has won the war, and Turov has revived McGill because a new problem requires his attention.

Earth rebuilds with cephalopod labor, equipment, and money, but millions of humans have been permanently lost. Legion Varus is demobilized, Graves has become a primus, and McGill's family believed him dead during his year-long absence. Victory has also placed roughly 300 worlds under Earth's control, violating Galactic restrictions on conquest and drawing an approaching battle fleet. Turov offers McGill a centurion's rank and an undisclosed mission connected to that threat. Instead, McGill uses personal access to the teleport network to visit Dust World. He meets Etta for the first time, survives her test of his armor, and receives her acceptance. He returns to Earth with Etta, his mother, and Natasha. Claver is alive and working with Turov despite their earlier conflicts. Together they renew the offer of centurion insignia and ask McGill to join their operation against the Galactic response. McGill refuses the mission and chooses civilian life with his reunited family. The cephalopod war is over, but Earth's sudden empire and the incoming Galactic fleet remain unresolved.

McGill is revived after roughly a year and learns that Turov completed the strategy he began. Using the recovered Galactic Key, Natasha's destination programming, a remaining antimatter weapon, and Ferguson as a volunteer, she destroyed the plant masters' war enclave. The cephalopods surrendered and became Earth's subjects. Earth is rebuilding with their resources, but millions of people were permanently lost and Legion Varus has been demobilized. The victory also leaves Earth in control of roughly 300 worlds, an expansion forbidden by Galactic law, and a Galactic battle fleet is approaching. Graves is now a primus, while Turov has returned to command and Claver is alive at her side. McGill travels to Dust World, meets Etta for the first time, and brings Etta, his mother, and Natasha back to Earth. Turov and Claver offer him centurion insignia and a mission tied to the approaching fleet. McGill refuses and chooses civilian life with his family, leaving the Galactic response as the immediate unresolved threat.