Synopsis
| - Ensign Katar Hol is practicing with swords when Commander Byth Rok arrives, complimenting him on his martial prowess. Byth tells Katar they have discovered who the person helping the downworlders get guns is and he wants Katar to join Byth in confronting the man and making sure he does not survive the experience.
Later, Katar goes to meet his father and Shayera at an eatery. Katar goes to the terrace with Shayera Thal, they kiss and he returns to get drinks from the bar when a bomb goes off, killing many people. Among the dead is Shayera.
That night, Katar and Byth stop an arms deal between a downsider alien and a man in robe and cowl. Byth holds the alien and Katar runs after the other man. After shouting a warning to stop, Katar shoots the man dead. As Katar approaches the body, he sees that he has killed his father. He flies away, trying to come to grips with the reality of the situation.
At home, Katar finds his father's video journal and begins playing it, revealing that in fact, his father was behind the arming of the downsiders. Byth and other wingmen arrive and arrest Katar. Katar is sentenced to exile on the Isle of Chance. A ship drops him there.
A few days after becoming a new inhabitant of the island, Katar comes across an alien, collecting feathers and attaching them to sticks to make a set of crude wings. Katar waits until the creature has completed the wings and then kills it with a boulder, claiming the wings for himself.
Another creature of the same kind approaches and tells Katar the one he just killed was making the wings for Katar. Ashamed, Katar realizes he is not ready to leave the island. He befriends the second creature, trains with a sword and lives a monk-like existence on the island. Before he knows it, ten years have passed and a ship crewed by wingmen arrives and picks him up, returning him to the city, to downside.
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