The characters are on their way to Bannockburn, via the Stigmata gate, when they notice two al-Malik assault landers and a frigate escort making their way towards the Shaprut gate as well. Pitt gets a crazy idea and decides to try to blow them up. Well, in one of the best fits of creativity and engineering I've seen in a long time, they rig a cardboard tube at the end of a stunner gun, and pack a magnetic boot with plastic explosives. The idea is that the tube funnels the kinetic energy and launches the boot, which Pitt later detonates. So Pitt hijacks a spacesuit, gets in the airlock, and launches two boots. One attaches to an assault lander's engines (he done good!) and the other attaches to the frigate. Pitt detonates both, effectively destroying the assault lander and killing the troops on board, while the frigate takes some damage and turns around for repairs. Yeah, it was sorta dumb but it was a lot of fun. Anyhow, they reach the Bannockburn system, and Pitt notices there's a Decados noble on board, while Phalton finds out Janosh is on board. What a strange coincidence... Janosh says he has a small ranch on Bannockburn, and invites Phalton and his buddies to come visit him sometime. At some point the liner is boarded by troops claiming to be from House Hawkwood, looking for Myra Decados. Pitt decides it would be bad not to defend the Decados, so the group slaughters the boarding party (Phalton does so in a most gruesome way too...ugh..), and Myra proceeds to congratulate Phalton and Pitt in the Decados way... Hours later, they are on final approach to Bannockburn when a missile comes from the planet and kills the pilots and damages the controls. Kantarra and Phalton barely manage to crash-land the ship (again, with more of the Prophet's Blessings), and begin making their way to the nearest city, with Myra tagging along. No sign of Janosh is found.
So after a 2-day trek through some light jungle, they make it to the city of New Edinburgh, where they find the "village Eskatonic" and learn that they need to go to a place known as Gormac's Maw, a valley far to the north. Some of my favorites from the scene with the Eskatonic : the characters bring a map to him and ask him to point out the site, the Eskatonic takes a marker and says, "see this page-" and proceeds to color in the ENTIRE page, "it's not here." He turns a few pages and rips out another page, saying, "see this page-" then he EATS the page, "it's not here either..." Some drunken misadventures are had in town, and they eventually decide to go to the largest city on the planet, Moytura, to get some hoverbikes. In Moytura they have more misadventures in bars (and the hostel they stay at), and eventually head out with 3 hoverbikes. On the way they find a refueling station for al-Malik gunships, raid it, and manage to steal one of the gunships (yeah baby!). Phalton flies the gunship while Kantarra mans (womans?) the weapons, Pitt and Myra proceed on two hoverbikes. At some point Kantarra blows up some al-Malik armor heading northward, and Phalton decides they're going to crash-land the gunship because they're low on fuel. Pitt finds a hidden mountain fortress, but decides to pass by it since he has Myra with him, and she's not very street-smart. He does, however, notice the same "Hawkwood" ship which attacked the passenger liner they were on, this time it is landed at the mountain fortress. Phalton and Kantarra manage to crash-land with few injuries (she's really using those blessings now), and they meet up with Pitt, and decide to proceed on foot because al-Malik air patrols would spot them on hoverbikes. On the way, they fight some al-Malik rangers and a Xyll warbeast (not unlike the one they found in the lab). They find a crashed Hawkwood cruiser sticking up out of the jungle, and salvage what they can from it, mostly a few clips and a sword.
They reach a strange clearing, small in size, with an odd Ur ruin in the center. After some jiggling, tinkering, and cursing, Phalton gets it to reveal a small black crystal. Upon grasping the crystal, he re-experiences the trauma of birth for about a minute. Kantarra takes the crystal and claims to see the Empyrean, Pitt is too paranoid to touch the thing after that, he keeps Myra out of that too.
Finally they make it to Gormac's Maw, only to find a pitched battle on the other side of the valley involving al-Malik, Muster, and barbarian forces of some sort. Pitt sneaks up on a Kestral-class Hovertank and kills the crew, the group jumps on and enters the valley. In the valley they find a small scout-ship with no markings, guarded by some al-Malik troops. They of course make short work of the guards and check out the ship. At about this point the sky is starting to darken because of an eclipse that only happens once every 800,000 years or so. Phalton discovers the ship to be of Second Republic design, though for some reason there is no power. After more poking around, Phalton finds out that the chip he recovered from the computer on Shaprut is the key to the ship, which he starts up and prepares for liftoff. Meanwhile, the others are off looking around the valley, when the eclipse enters its zenith, they find the ground around them is lit-up in a strange pattern. Pitt starts taking pictures with his spy camera, and they make out the pattern to be the jumpweb, with some extra planets and jumps that don't exist in the current Known Worlds, as well as what looks like a map of where the other artifacts are placed. About this time al-Malik forces start to move into the valley, and Phalton informs the others that they should look into leaving very soon. They all pile into the ship, Kantarra flying (she has pilot starship now, at 2), and they enter orbit, only to find the al-Malik destroyer Alejandro's Fist coming about to meet them. After fightin' words are exchanged over the radio, Phalton decides to hit some buttons (since there's no way their little scout ship will out-fight a destroyer), firing some sort of electromagnetic pulse at the destroyer, disabling it. Kantarra unloads the gatling blaster (yeah, this was before Noble Armada came out) into the destroyer, and the others use the medium blaster cannon turrets, causing the Destroyer to spiral into Bannockburn...