When framed for murder on Earth, Frank Compton travels to another world to rescue a young girl, finding a new polyp colony that the Modhri is intent on destroying at all costs, including Compton’s life.

Like the previous book in this series, I find that the author is overly complicated in his plotting, twisting and turning seemingly just for the sake of it, not with any real sense of where we are going. The main character makes things up as he goes, and the story reflects that, in a dizzying set of logical and illogical choices. At a certain point, I almost gave up trying to figure out why things were happening. This book passes through the midpoint of the series, and I wondered almost right from the start why the Modhri would even entertain speaking with Compton, much less make yet another deal with him. But he does, and more than once. Even though the Modhri explicitly states that Compton can’t be trusted to follow through on his deals, he makes another and another and another, even as, from a human standpoint Frank becomes even less reliable than before. Still, the author knows how to write good action, and great aliens –this book is no exception, even though it mainly takes place on human worlds.

Past the midpoint of this series, I cannot say that it’s growing on me. After two books of the Modhri being fooled by Compton, and after specifically saying that it will not trust him because he is unreliable, Compton manages to make yet another deal –not just once, but several times- which the Modhri agrees to.

A new plot element is introduced, that being a renegade colony of the Modhri, which is trying to be smuggled to its new homeworld, but is trapped when a Modhran colony shows up on New Tigris. It takes Compton and his scheming and his ability to manipulate the Modhri to get Rebekah offworld and onto the Quadrail. Then he gets arrested, weasels his way out of that, and smuggles the colony to a world where it won’t be found, hiding it in various ways.

The first half of the book felt long, but interesting, as Frank meets with the face-changing McMicking (from one of the previous books), who bails him out of jail as a person of interest for murder. His weapon was found at a double-murder, because a woman stole it while waiting for him, looking for his help.

Reluctantly, he follows her trail backward to New Tigris, a run-down human colony where he’s to look for her sister. He also meets back up with Bayta, who couldn’t track down the Modhran colony from the end of the previous book. Seeing Modhran walkers everywhere, Frank devises a backtracking route to get to their destination, though Modhri sees through it. At least the alien is learning. This is when they make their first deal, that Frank would take care of the Abomination without alien interference. In an astonishing move, Modhri has all of his walkers leave the Quadrail train.

At New Tigris, of course, it seems that Modhri betrayed them, just as Frank would have betrayed him. A small colony of coral is already on the planet, in the hands of the governor, ready to be sold to clients. He also has a bunch of alien Fillians on the planet, each with a bit of coral, trying to triangulate the location of the Abomination. It’s a cool idea, but not well executed, unfortunately.

Of course, while the reader gets no information, Frank easily figures it out. He has a run-in with police, sneaks into the governor’s house, has a shootout with the Fillians at the same house as well as the bar where Rebekah is hiding. Her secret it out.

She refuses to leave without her twenty large cases, which derails Frank’s plan to sneak her offworld quietly. So Frank runs around town trying to get more information, discovers the coral colony, and returns in time for the shootout. The leaps of intuition were a bit much for me, but it remained interesting enough as a story.

All through this part of the story, and later, Bayta has befriended Rebekah, and gets very upset at Frank for being suspicious of the ten-year old girl. Of course, he’s right to be so, as it turns out she is a Modhran colony that somehow severed its link to the main mind. Rebekah can’t leave the coral cases behind because she isn’t sure if they would revert without her presence.

It seems that everybody loves Rebekah, obviously through a thought-virus influence. Bayta is no exception, but Frank doesn’t enlighten her until much later.

When they escape, Rebekah influences the customs agent and police to look inside three decoy cases so they don’t find the coral. After another shootout, and some destruction at the spaceport by McMicking, they get on board the Quadrail. Frank has once again set schemes upon schemes in motion, hiding the coral as decoys near their stateroom. He finds himself in a room with a dead agent who ends up having sacrificed himself for Rebekah, because Modhri had agents waiting for them.

On the Quadrail, he finds two more dead bodies, and this time comes under the scrutiny of a Juriani, those aliens who believe in justice above all. Out of options, Frank puts another scheme in place, allowing himself to be taken prisoner, but at a specific hotel in a specific room. This is presumably because he can see the train being moved and cars shuffled from his window. What he sees confuses him, so he sends Bayta out to investigate, but a Modhri walker captures her, and now starts to dictate terms.

Paradoxically, Frank turns the tables on the walker, presenting flawed terms of his own, and Modhri agrees to allow him back on the Quadrail so he can lead them all to the place where the abomination’s coral is hiding, their new homeworld.

Frank finds Bayta, and takes Rebekah off the train. The spiders help with this, and Frank wins the race to the back of the train, when it seems that every walker on the Quadrail, which is just about every passenger, chases them off, then back on again. Very strange, but exciting in its own way.

From the last car on the train, they transfer to a service trolley, where Rebekah’s true coral, or Melding, is hidden, and is being taken to its new hidden homeworld. But not before Frank confronts the Chahwyn who is hiding on the trolley, learning that it was the Chahwyn, not the Modhri, who created the Melding, much as they merged Bayta with their own symbiont years ago.

I’m having trouble keeping interest in this story, as it seems to be the same thing over and over again, with little differences. I’m not enamored with any of the characters, nor the villain. The story, for what it’s worth, is well written, and the technology and aliens are typical Zahn, which means wonderfully complex and real. Unfortunately, the story is unnecessarily complex, and leads to many places where I just couldn’t suspend disbelief any longer. An observant detective is one thing, but I think Frank is partially telepathic, to see ways out of difficult situations that are crazy and too often don’t make any sense.