Storm World recap

James McGill pursues Etta and a book containing a Mogwa-killing formula, survives illegal revivals, and kills Chief Inspector Xlur while hiding the formula's loss. Legion Varus deploys to Storm World against the Wur, where McGill gains command of the native scuppers. Rigel intervenes, and Governor Sateekas makes Earth's provincial status depend on the conflict. Maurice Armel betrays the garrison and helps Claver Prime trade Florimel to Rigel. A renegade Claver-X then guides McGill toward the final Wur nexus. McGill destroys it and dies, but Sarah revives him. The leaderless Wur attack both armies, and Rigel withdraws. Sateekas keeps Earth as local enforcer only because Squanto refuses the appointment. Florimel returns by transmitted engram and admits giving Rigel the genuine formula. Varus leaves, Armel remains to rebuild, and Etta later comes home with Claver-X while the formula, Xlur investigation, and clone conflict remain unresolved.

Previously: James McGill serves as a centurion in Legion Varus under Tribune Galina Turov, with whom he also has a personal relationship. His daughter Etta wants a military life, while her parents remain divided over the dangers surrounding her. Claver is not a single ordinary adversary but part of a clone network whose bodies and memories complicate any attempt to stop him permanently. McGill has also dealt with Florimel, a near-human Hegemony scientist, and with the Mogwa officials who oversee Earth's place in Province 921. His history includes campaigns involving Blood World forces, the Wur, Rigel, and officers such as Maurice Armel and Sateekas. These relationships leave McGill caught between family obligations, legion command, and the demands of powers that can determine humanity's status.

Etta has left for Dust World after secretly selling Claver a false copy of a valuable book. Claver confronts McGill and demands the genuine volume, which contains a formula for a genetic poison lethal to the Mogwa. McGill discovers that the real book is missing, kills one Claver body, and uses its teleport equipment to follow Etta. Two worker clones attack him on Dust World and send him to his death. Etta's grandfather restores McGill through an illegal colonial revival process and warns that exposure would endanger them all. McGill then finds Etta, who returns the real book and explains that she feared its use as a mass weapon. The colony has revived one of the worker clones as a more capable Claver. It attacks McGill and Etta, destroying the book and mortally wounding McGill before Etta kills it. McGill dies again, and the physical text appears lost.

McGill returns through another irregular revival and reports to Galina Turov. Because Central has no copy of the destroyed book, he brings her to Florimel, whose eidetic memory can reproduce it. Florimel demands the revival of her dead friend in exchange. Before that bargain is resolved, Legion Varus deploys early aboard Leggett to Storm World, an oceanic frontier planet threatened by the plantlike Wur. A separate Blood World legion accompanies it. During a shipboard exercise designed to favor the non-revivable Blood World troops, McGill forces a breach and causes permanent losses on the opposing side. Galina and Graves execute him off the record, but the death also conceals a courier mission. Florimel's encrypted message was supposed to carry the bioterminator text to Chief Inspector Xlur. McGill reveals only after dying that he deleted the message without reading it. He is now committed to meeting Xlur without the data the Mogwa official expects.

McGill revives on Mogwa Prime, where Chief Inspector Xlur expects the missing formula. Xlur is an exiled official who hopes the information will restore his political position. McGill pretends that the nonexistent file requires his personal translation, using the delay to study his confinement. When Xlur moves to kill him, McGill reverses the attack and disintegrates the inspector. He then sends Galina a false confirmation of delivery, fabricates evidence that Xlur killed himself, and takes his own life so that he can be revived elsewhere. McGill returns off-grid on Earth after four months away and learns that Leggett has already departed. A former Varus officer sends him through a gateway to Storm World. He arrives inside an isolated Blood World fort during lethal tides and storms, but its hostile primus refuses to help him reach Varus and shoots him. McGill has reached the campaign, but only through another death and another concealed chain of events.

After repeated transfers and revivals, McGill rejoins Third Unit on Storm World and restores his command. Galina confirms that she concealed his Core Worlds mission and begins limited patrols against the Wur. McGill's first patrol encounters rapidly grown forest and pod walkers. The unit defeats the attack but loses equipment and personnel. Ordered to stop a scupper war party from cutting Wur trees, McGill instead faces a series of unexplained disappearances. He, Cooper, and Kivi fall into an underground transport network created by the native scuppers. Kivi dies while testing its gravity-shifting tubes, but McGill retains the information needed for her revival. Cooper and McGill learn to navigate the system and emerge far from their unit on a coastal beach. As a major storm and tide approach, hundreds of scuppers surround them at the cliff top. McGill sends the concealed Cooper away to report and remains alone to attempt contact with the native force.

A scupper leader challenges McGill's courage. McGill defeats and spares him, and the natives recognize McGill as their new First Man. He gains roughly seven hundred fighters and a deputy called Second Man. Galina allows the scuppers into Fort Alpha, but their earlier destruction of Wur trees has already drawn a large response. During the assault, McGill arms the natives and holds the eastern gate while other sections collapse. Wur acid troops and pod walkers overrun most of the fort, leaving the remaining defenders trapped in Gold Bunker. Second Man identifies a buried entrance to the native transport tubes. McGill persuades Galina to abandon the final bunker and leads the survivors underground as the Wur break in. Sixteen humans and a much larger scupper group use the network to reach Fort Beta. Its automated defenses kill Harris before McGill destroys the weapon and secures entry. Fort Alpha has fallen, but Galina, McGill, and their remaining organized force survive at the stronger Blood World position.

At Fort Beta, Galina and Tribune Maurice Armel form an uneasy alliance. A ship belonging to Governor Sateekas arrives to judge whether Earth remains capable of enforcing order on the frontier. Galina uses the gateway network to seek reinforcements. She later commands Leggett when three Rigelian transports attack. Leggett destroys one ship and escapes the missile response by entering warp, leaving the ground force isolated. Thousands of armored Rigelian troops land inside the fort while Wur forces gather outside. McGill discovers that captured Rigelian guns and extended human force blades can defeat their resistant armor, helping Varus repel the landing at severe cost. Florimel is present with Armel's near-human troops and is now partnered with a Saurian revival technician. Before the garrison can recover, the Wur attack Fort Beta. Their pod walkers climb over wounded members of their own force to reach the battlements. By the end of the assault's opening phase, the wall defense has failed and the defenders must prepare for close combat inside the fort.

Armel commits his giant troops and personally leads a counterattack that defeats the Wur breach, though the giants suffer irreplaceable losses and Kivi is trampled. Graves then sends McGill to reconnect with the scuppers. McGill reaches their vast underground city and finds a Rigelian representative negotiating with the native queen. He challenges the Rigelian under local custom, wins the unarmed contest, and gains command of the native armies. Governor Sateekas nevertheless refuses to declare Earth victorious while Rigel and the Wur remain active. McGill returns to Fort Beta with about three thousand native volunteers and begins turning them into a disciplined force. Natasha then shows him restricted intelligence indicating that Rigelian and Wur troops are occupying the same area without fighting. Armel's guards arrest them, and Natasha is killed during the struggle. McGill reports the apparent alliance to Armel and Graves. To keep their attention and gain leverage, he falsely claims that he may have a way to communicate with the Wur.

Maurice Armel reveals that he knows about the bioterminator book and wants McGill to obtain another copy for a buyer. Convinced that the Rigel-Wur alliance has doomed the campaign, he plans to evacuate the officers and abandon the garrison. When Graves objects, Armel shoots him. Claver Prime arrives under a deal with Armel, takes McGill captive, and abducts Florimel after killing her Saurian partner. He sells Florimel to Rigel for the formula in her memory and delivers McGill to Sateekas as cover for the trade. McGill attacks Claver and tries to redirect blame for Xlur's death, but Sateekas privately reveals that he already knows McGill killed the inspector. The governor regards that death as useful. He also explains that an Imperial succession crisis has nearly destroyed his former fleet. Rigel has been offered Earth's place as provincial enforcer, and humanity will be expunged if its army loses the approaching battle. McGill returns to warn the garrison and is immediately imprisoned by Armel's troops.

As Rigelian and Wur forces march together against Fort Beta, Cooper frees McGill from the brig. McGill warns Armel, then encounters a Claver who is separate from the Prime held by Sateekas. This renegade, later called Claver-X, says he created the forbidden female clone Abigail and was exiled by the primary line. He proposes destroying the final Wur nexus, the command intelligence coordinating the planet's plant forces. McGill accepts and leads Third Unit, scuppers, and Claver-X through the mountains while the main armies assault the fort. Rigelian troops inflict heavy losses along the route, and lethal tides kill more of the expedition. McGill eventually sends the heavies back and reaches the nexus on an isolated plateau. With no explosives, he attacks it using a captured shotgun and force blades. Floodwater cuts off his escape, but he penetrates the nexus and destroys it after a drone receives his final data. McGill dies inside the structure, leaving the Wur without centralized direction.

Sarah revives McGill through an accelerated procedure. Although Fort Beta is devastated, the destruction of the nexus has driven the Wur out of control, and they attack both the defenders and their Rigelian allies. Sateekas rules that Earth was inferior in direct battle and offers its enforcer role to Rigel. Squanto refuses Imperial service, so Sateekas retains Earth instead. McGill invokes the governor's safe-passage promise to save Squanto from execution. Rigel withdraws and sends Florimel's mental engram, allowing Sarah to revive her. Florimel confirms that she gave Rigel the genuine Mogwa-killing formula. Varus evacuates, while Armel's legion remains on Storm World to rebuild with the scuppers. Two months later, Claver-X returns Etta safely to Earth. McGill kills two worker clones pursuing him and conceals the encounter from Galina. She warns that Central and the primary Claver line are hunting Claver-X, while the Core Worlds are investigating Xlur's permadeath. Etta is home and Earth retains its status, but the formula, the clone conflict, and McGill's possible exposure remain unresolved.

McGill destroys the final Wur nexus and dies inside it. Sarah performs an accelerated revival, and he learns that the disconnected Wur attacked both Fort Beta and their Rigelian allies. Sateekas judges the human army inferior in direct combat, but Squanto refuses to make Rigel the province's new enforcer. Earth therefore retains the position, and McGill uses the promised truce to return Squanto alive. Rigel withdraws and transmits Florimel's engram, enabling her revival. She confirms that she surrendered the genuine Mogwa-killing formula to Rigel. Legion Varus evacuates Storm World, while Maurice Armel's legion remains behind to rebuild with the scuppers. Two months later, Claver-X brings Etta home. Central and the primary Claver line are hunting him, but McGill hides their contact and kills two pursuing clones. Galina Turov resumes her relationship with McGill while warning that the Core Worlds are investigating Xlur's permadeath. The formula's spread, Claver-X's role, Florimel's plan to seek her partner's revival, and McGill's exposure remain open.