Deportees from many worlds, the colonists of Freedom's Landing have made a new home for themselves on the planet where they were abandoned. Now they have the technology they need to go back to war with the deadly Eosi -- with a surprise strike at enslaved planet Earth itself!

Kris Bjornson has come a long way since the day alien slave ships scooped her up in Denver with thousands of others. Dropped on an apparently uninhabited world with the rest, she has fallen in love with Zainal, a renegade Cattani, and has worked for years to make this fertile planet, "Botany", into a home. Now she has a house of sorts, a child she adores, and a respected place in the community. But she still feels a soldier's duty to escape and rejoin the struggle.

The Eosi overlords have tight control of many worlds; as they continue to drop their captives on Botany, however, the original colonists learn that there are freedom fighters on every captured world. There are rebels even among the warlike Cattani, and Earth is full of pockets of resistance. Now that the settlers on Botany are well-fed, and have technology stolen from visiting Cattani warships, they might be able to help.

The trip to Earth will be heartbreaking, they realize. All of Earth's major cities are in ruins. Humans with technical ability have been enslaved, or mind-wiped. Crops and animals have been herded into spaceships for the use of alien overlords, while Earth's people starve. But the colonists of Botany can load their stolen ship with grain and supplies to help the resistance fighters. Most important, they can bring hope: itis possible to fight back against the Eosi and their Cattani enforcers. Earth can again be free!