Tom Corant is happy with life in the dome he was born into 24 years ago.  Tom is preparing to leave the dome where he lives with his mother, grandfather, and four brothers and sisters in order to marry his online fiancé, Jenny Salem, and move into an empty dome where he and his bride will start their own family.

Tom and Jenny have their lives violently turned upside down when they are kidnapped by a Mexican army patrol while transferring to their new dome home.  The betrothed couple is rescued by Roving Wolf, a Comanche scout working for a domed US Army officer.  Members of all Native American nations were permitted to opt out of the mandatory doming process; nearly half of the American Indian population remains Outside.

Roving Wolf takes Tom and Jenny to his village in Pecos, Texas where the couple learns the devastating news that the U.S. government will not allow them to return to dome life.  The government vigorously censors the Net for pictures and video of The Outside out of concern that knowledge of the natural world will lead many to develop a desire to break free of dome life and destroy the socialist system and egalitarian resource distribution that seems to be working so well.

The exiled domer couple learns that war is imminent between the United States and Mexico and they become heavily involved in the war preparations.  Roving Wolf is ordered to take Tom and Jenny west to the stronghold in El Paso and to scout the international border along the way.  Roving Wolf’s sister, Sun Rain, joins the team and becomes Jenny’s romantic rival for Tom’s affections.  Cousin Cloud Rider and Cherokee scouts Running Bear and Little Deer and Lakota scout White Hawk join the small scouting party as well.

As Roving Wolf’s mixed military reconnaissance and civilian escort mission moves across the desert Southwest via horse and Humvee, Tom and Jenny experience the natural world for the first time.  They have never seen the sun, or trees, or any natural landscapes, not even via videos or photographs since all visual records of the natural world are banned from the Net by the Federal Communications Commission.  Tom, once satisfied with dome life, grows to revere the natural beauty of The Outside and to value his new-found liberty.  But Jenny’s initial curiosity regarding The Outside wanes; she sees dangers and feels fear and begins to long for life under domes.

Tom soon comes to realize that the domes are prisons and he develops a strong desire to break his family out of their dome.   His goal becomes feasible when he receives an unexpected communication from his brother Steven.  Steven is one of the Federal Communication Commission’s Net police who monitor the Net for subversive material, including postings about the forbidden Outside.  Steven and the Corant family were told that Tom and Jenny perished in an accident, rather than the truth about the kidnapping by Mexicans.  Steven doubts the government's story and uses his skills and position to scour the Net for evidence explaining what really happened to his brother Tom.  Steven comes into contact with Black Shine, a clandestine anti-government group operating on the fringes of the Net that believes certain progressive political forces drove Americans into domes, not fear over weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, and disease.  Black Shine tells Steven that Tom is alive on The Outside and hacks into Roving Wolf’s satellite communications gear so the brothers can speak with each other.

Tom, Jenny, and Roving Wolf’s team of scouts work their way through rugged West Texas to El Paso to find that the 400 people who the government allowed to live on The Outside in the El Paso stronghold have mysteriously disappeared.  Unable to leave Tom and Jenny alone in a ghost town, the group continues west to the next "Outsider" stronghold located in Phoenix.

U.S. President Barbara Phillips, her national security team, and military commanders evaluate the political situation and make their plans for war with Mexico.  The United States military consists of two elements.  The first element is a force of automated ships and planes and robot warriors, all operated remotely by personnel living in domes.  The second element is a multi-tribe Native American army analogous to a National Guard that meets yearly to conduct military exercises with domed military personnel.

Roving Wolf joins an Apache scouting mission deep into Mexico while the rest of the team reaches the Phoenix stronghold headquartered in the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.  In Phoenix, the self-appointed Governor of Arizona is also preparing for the war.  A Native American war council meeting is held in Phoenix among the Indian nations gathering for war:  Lakota Sioux, Navajo, Cherokee, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho.

General Juan Mejias, the maniacal military dictator of Mexico, with support behind the scenes from China, launches an invasion of the United States by moving against Arizona—one of four distinct geographic locations in the continental U.S. where dome homes are concentrated. 

The war plays out on several fronts:  the Mexican battle tank blitzkrieg across the Altar Desert, a Navajo advance strike force planted in the path of the advancing Mexican Army, the main body of Mexican infantry marching directly toward the Arizona dome farm near the border, and a Mexican flanking force moving through Nogales then Tucson to attack Phoenix.  Tom fights valiantly during the Battle of Phoenix and he learns that holding a rifle in his hands is much different than holding a joystick and killing remotely with a fighting robot from half a world away.

While recovering from his war wounds, Tom coordinates with his brother Steven and his covert Black Shine contacts to plan the rescue of the Corant family from their dome.  Tom and the rescue party led by Roving Wolf reach the family dome but...

"I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun.  I was born where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew free breath. I want to die there, and not within walls."                                                         – Paruasemena (Ten Bears), Comanche Chief (1790-1872)