Deep Space Transit Unit Ninety-Seven of the Tribunal is a spaceship made of Sifran crystal, and it needs to repair itself. To do that, it needs to fix its neural processor, and Envoy's brain is compatible. It sends out its drone – a Svartifin skeleton still held together and animated by the crystal integrated into it.

While Envoy gets some information from the ship, she is not successful at bargaining with it: she tells it about the power core and other bits, but the ship claims it can send the drone after them after it gets Envoy's brain. The drone catches her in a gravity field and seems about to crush her, but Icarus intervenes to weaken it.

When the drone drops Envoy to deal with Icarus, Envoy manages to hurl command sequences at it until it disconnects from the ship's control, just as Icarus collapses from having used all his strength to fend off the drone's attack. Once it seems Icarus is going to recover, Envoy uses a crystal to synchronize the drone to herself, and blacks out for a moment from the flood of information that results.

The ship accepts Envoy as it's primary controller, and she learns from it the goal of the Tribunal: to dominate the universe, and eliminate all races deemed not useful. She puts the ship back to sleep, and leaves the drone with it until she can figure out whether or not to repair it.

Back up at the base, she receives a letter that implies a Babelite goddess dropped by while they were gone!