ReDawn recap

Able to hyperjump at last, Alanik returns to her homeworld of ReDawn, where the UrDail live in cities grown into enormous floating trees, and finds her people on the point of accepting Superiority membership. Rinakin, the leader of the faction opposing it, has been taken, the resistance is scattered, and Alanik cannot get anyone in authority to listen. Her old acquaintance Quilan offers to help. Out of options at home, she goes back to Detritus and persuades Jorgen to bring Skyward Flight to ReDawn, and human pilots end up fighting over an alien world. Quilan turns out to have been working for the Superiority all along, and the occupation of ReDawn becomes open. With an entire tree city about to be destroyed and no way to evacuate it, Alanik, Jorgen and their taynix hyperjump the tree itself to safety. ReDawn is not free, but the surrender is stopped, and the UrDail resistance and the humans leave the fight as allies.

Previously: humanity survived on the caverned planet Detritus, penned there by the Superiority, a galactic government that ranks species by aggression and hoards faster-than-light travel. Spensa Nightshade turned out to be cytonic, infiltrated a Superiority fighter program on the platform of Starsight, and learned that hyperdrives are living creatures called taynix and that the official Winzik meant to control the world-killing delvers rather than defend anyone from them. She escaped with a hoard of taynix, giving Detritus hyperdrives and a shield, while Winzik gained a fleet and emergency powers, and she has since left to chase the delvers' origin and is out of contact. Alanik, a cytonic pilot of the UrDail from the planet ReDawn, had flown to Detritus looking for allies against the Superiority, was shot down and spent months unconscious there. The humans have since found and trained enough taynix to jump ships between stars and have beaten off a Superiority attack, and Alanik is finally able to go home. Jorgen, flightleader of Skyward Flight, has proved to be cytonic himself.

Alanik hyperjumps home to ReDawn, a world where the UrDail live in cities grown into vast floating trees above an atmosphere nobody can breathe, and finds the political argument she left behind almost over. The faction that wants ReDawn to accept Superiority membership is close to carrying it, presenting the Superiority as protection rather than ownership. Rinakin, the leader of the opposition and the man who sent Alanik looking for allies in the first place, has been taken, and his supporters are scattered or frightened. Alanik's account of the humans, a species the Superiority classifies as a contagion, does not help her case; to most of her people, arriving with news of human friends is proof that she has lost her judgement. Quilan, an old acquaintance with connections on both sides, offers to help her find Rinakin and get her a hearing.

Working with Quilan, Alanik tries to reach Rinakin and to force the question into the open before the vote is finalized, and learns how much of ReDawn's government has already been quietly arranged around a Superiority presence. Every route she takes closes ahead of her, and the pattern is too neat to be luck. It becomes clear she cannot save her planet with the resistance she has left, so she does the thing her people would consider unthinkable and goes back for the humans, asking Jorgen to bring Skyward Flight to ReDawn. Jorgen, already stretched between the DDF and a National Assembly that wants him where it can see him, commits anyway. Human pilots arrive over an alien world, working with taynix hyperdrives and with Alanik as the only translator anyone trusts, and Alanik and Jorgen begin to find that their cytonic abilities work better together than apart.

The Superiority stops pretending. Its forces move on ReDawn openly, the membership faction welcomes them, and what was a political argument becomes an occupation. Alanik's efforts to protect the cytonics among her own people become urgent, since the Superiority's interest in cytonics is proprietary and permanent. The humans, fighting over unfamiliar terrain in an atmosphere that will kill them if they descend too far, are outnumbered and cannot be reinforced quickly. Alanik's suspicions about how thoroughly her movements have been anticipated finally have an answer, and it is one she does not want: someone close to her has been reporting everything.

Quilan is revealed as the Superiority's agent; his help was a means of mapping the resistance and delivering ReDawn's cytonics. The occupation turns into an attack, and an entire tree city, with all its people, is about to be destroyed with no way to evacuate it. Alanik, Jorgen and their taynix jump the tree itself to safety, a hyperjump on a scale nobody had attempted. ReDawn is not liberated and the membership faction is not beaten, but the surrender is halted, Rinakin's cause survives, and the Superiority's claim to be a protector is much harder to make on ReDawn now. Alanik gets what she originally flew to Detritus for: an alliance with the humans, made between people who fought together rather than between governments. She and Jorgen finish the battle able to work as a cytonic pair, and both worlds go on facing the same enemy, who will not let the result stand.

Quilan is exposed: he has been working with the Superiority throughout, and the help he offered Alanik was a means of tracking the independence faction and of delivering ReDawn's cytonics into Superiority hands. The occupation escalates into an open attack, and with the population of an entire tree city at risk and no way to evacuate it by ship, Alanik, Jorgen and the taynix do something nobody has attempted: they hyperjump the tree itself out of danger. ReDawn is not liberated, and the faction that wants Superiority membership is not finished, but the surrender is stopped, the resistance survives with Rinakin's cause intact, and the argument that the Superiority protects rather than owns its members is much harder for anyone on ReDawn to make. What Alanik went looking for she finally gets: an alliance between the UrDail resistance and the humans of Detritus, made by people who fought beside each other rather than by governments. Alanik and Jorgen come out of it able to work cytonically as a pair, which will matter more than either of them yet realizes. Both worlds now face the same enemy, and both know that Winzik will not accept the result.