Chapter 8

Kathy Turk was in the logistics center with Tameka Rydberg when the announcement blared over the public address: "Operation Pegasus is go! All ship's hands report to transfer stations. This is not a drill!"

Tameka locked eyes with Kathy. "Oh my God. I never thought they would do it."

"I did," said Kathy, with a far-off stare. "I've always felt... like we were rushing along a river towards a waterfall. Like there was nothing going to stop us from going over."

Tameka snapped her fingers in front of the other woman. "What is this 'we' stuff, white girl? You know you ain't coming. Or did you change your mind?" she asked hopefully. "I know we can make room. I got some pull there, being chief helm and all."

Kathy collected herself. "No, Tameka. It's too late. Richard has his own role in Pegasus and it's down here. It's too late to change. You know that."

"Yeah... I just had to ask, though. I guess this is it, then."

"Yes."

They embraced, for the last time.


A warm monsoon rain soaked the rusty bars that Dimitri Sereda stared at in meditation. On clear nights he had looked through them to the stars and imagined he could see the RDA orbital dock where the Saxa Voluta resided. Enzo had gotten word of the ship to him through a guard that had been systematically bribed and coerced.

The port in the door scratched back and the same guard appeared.

"Hello, Rashid," acknowledged Sereda calmly.

The guard slid in, agitated. He threw a bundle of clothes at Sereda. "Change. Quick."

Minutes later they were riding in a fetid food service delivery van past steaming fields of jungle clearcut, finally pulling up at a deserted airstrip. Sereda emerged blinking into the light to see a man pass a bundle of banknotes to Rashid while a broad-shouldered associate toting an AR-15 surveyed the landscape.

The first man turned to Sereda with impatience. "Let's go, fella."

It was Dixon.


Eighty miles above them, the Saxa Voluta was tethered to a berth in the vast complex that was the RDA's orbital dock and maintenance facility. Dozens of ships of all sizes were anchored within the dock, a network of modules connected by a web of carbon fibers defining a structure over twenty miles in diameter. The designated entrance and exit was a gap large enough for an interstellar vessel to pass through comfortably. It was also ringed with projectile launchers. The RDA's military leaning was never subtle.

Artificial intelligence engines governed the operation of much of the facility, as they had come to do on Earth over the last decade. They were as capable of making regulatory decisions as a human, and did not make mistakes. These devices were loaded with the regulations governing military and civilian spaceship safety and administration. The dock was the only such facility in orbit, so it was used of necessity also by non-RDA vessels, which paid a premium for its services.

Vorsicht had employed a simple artifice to ensure that the Voluta didn't leave without his knowledge. He had ensured that it was docked in an ISV berth, which was rated only for interstellar vessels. The inexorably literal-minded AI engines would not allow a planetary reconnaissance vehicle to leave that class of dock without the same level of authority that it took to get it in there when–apparently–no other berths were free. A routine waiver, but it required a command level signature, a human in the loop.

What Vorsicht did not know was that the AIs were too literal-minded. The regulations they were loaded with went all the way back to nineteenth century English naval law, and under certain circumstances, those would be the rules that were followed. Thanks to an exceptionally anal-retentive intern, Enzo did know that, which was why, at that moment, a member of the English aristocracy sympathetic to the environmental movement was bobbing in a spacesuit next to the Voluta, clutching a bottle of champagne and repressing incipient nausea.

Lady Sylvia Salisbury-Lytton received her cue and opened a communication channel to the automated dockyard administrator. She recited ancient but familiar phrases, concluding with, "I name this ship the TLV Spero. May God bless her and all who voyage in her." And may Eywa bless them too, she thought as she hurled the bottle at the leading edge of the renamed vessel.

The AIs took note of the ceremony, checked their records, and flipped an administrative bit.


Someone else was suppressing motion sickness at that moment. Sereda was in the tight cabin of a single-stage-to-orbit Gulfstream XII. In front of him, the bulky man was flying the craft while Dixon rode shotgun. The plane had just started a series of violent evasive maneuvers.

"What's going on?" asked Sereda.

"Fighters," said the pilot crisply. "Ten miles behind and closing. June is falling back."

"Are they space-rated?" asked Dixon.

The pilot shrugged. "Can't take the chance."

Two miles behind them June Dixon was flying a similar vehicle, attempting to draw the fighters off. She was part of the rescue for this kind of contingency.

"I can't shake them," she reported. "One's staying on me, the other one is after you."

"Roger," said Dixon. He paused, looked at the pilot.

"No choice," said the other man. Dixon closed his eyes for a second.

"Close to five thousand feet separation," he said into the radio woodenly. "Draw them in."

There was a pause, then: "Understood," said June.

Dixon pulled a safety cover off a console between him and the pilot, and inserted a key in a peculiar device, turned it from the 'SAFE' position to 'ARM'. Sereda, aware of the charged atmosphere but not understanding the cause, allowed himself to pick up the other man's thoughts, and realized with a start what this machine was, and some of its properties.

"Does she know what will happen when this is activated inside the atmosphere?" he gasped.

"She knows," said Dixon, and viciously rounded on Sereda. "You had better be worth it," he spat.

Dixon pushed a button on the inertial compensator, and a penetrating thrum built up in the plane. Outside, a white spherical glow surrounded the craft, rapidly building in intensity and radius. Sereda opened his senses as widely as he could and reached behind them: June. He felt recognition. Thank you, he projected. There was a response, an unexpectedly urgent and complex message.

The fighter pilots, now within visual range of June and the Gulfstream, saw the glow turn to an actinic pulse. It was the last thing they saw before a hypersonic shockwave pulverized their planes and June's.

Dixon turned the IC off, and the Gulfstream began climbing and accelerating rapidly. In the cabin, Sereda lay prone, motionless, eyes glazed and fixed, oblivious as the sky outside gave way to space.