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  Troy said as they continued to descend toward the barren surface of the planet.

  “That’s right, you’ve been here before,” Katrina said.

  Troy said.

  “With Tanis and Joe,” Katrina said. “Wasn’t that right before the attempted assassination at the city hall on Landfall?”

  Troy replied.

  Katrina nodded silently. “It was mostly Tanis. I still can’t believe her pain tolerance; she melted the skin off her hands sealing those rocks.”

 

  “In better news, looks like we’re lined up right on top of the evac site.”

 

  “You got it,” Katrina said. “We’re almost home free.”

 

  “Killjoy.”

  * * * * *

  The pinnace settled down on the dwarf world’s hard regolith; nothing more than a small speck in the shadow of a deep crater on the planet’s night side.

  It had taken no small amount of work to align so many variables; the patrol routes, the personnel shifts, the orbits of the worlds—but so far, everything was going according to plan.

  Katrina expected that to end at any moment.

  She rechecked the seals on her EVA suit one more time before palming the control to open the pinnace’s hatch. The small craft had no airlock, and the air was slowly drawn out of the ship until there was vacuum within as well as without.

  Once the interior pressure reached zero, the hatch opened and Katrina stepped out, turning to grab her bag and the two cases: one containing her clothing, and the other containing Troy.

  Troy muttered as Katrina strapped his case to the one containing her clothing, and then slung her duffel over her shoulder. Once satisfied that everything was secure, she hefted the cases and began to take slow, loping steps.

  Katrina replied.

  Troy countered.

  Katrina sighed. AIs without all their memory cores powered on were annoyingly forgetful.

  Katrina said

  If it was still there.

  This entire mission hinged on a gamble: that Tanis hadn’t taken the evac ship from the Gamma Site.

  Katrina had scoured the records of the site’s cleanup and the shutdown of the mining operations on Perseus. Nothing showed the ship being extracted. Logic would dictate, then, that the vessel was still there—but Tanis was not known for missing things.

  Which was why Katrina worried.

  What will we do if there’s no ship? Katrina asked herself for the hundredth time since leaving her suite on High Victoria.

  In truth, she did not know. A part of her was determined to take the pinnace into interstellar space; though it did not have the shielding nor the fuel supplies to make that a safe endeavor.

  The only course of action with the pinnace was to point the ship at New Eden and pray that the stasis chamber would last the hundreds of years it would take to cross between the star systems.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that such a course of action was akin to suicide. But remaining at The Kap—even if she wasn’t imprisoned—would be another sort of suicide. No matter what the risk, Katrina preferred a future of her own making over all else.

  It was why she had joined the Lumins’ spy agency in Sirius. It had been an act of rebellion against her father, though he had ultimately managed to move her under his purview anyway.

  I should have left with the Intrepid, Katrina thought as she approached the location marked on her HUD as the service entrance to the Gamma Evac Site.

  Katrina saw a flash and heard a small explosion to her right. She dropped into a low crouch, looking for adversaries and incoming weapons fire.

  None came, and she rose, walking toward the location of the explosion.

  Just a meteor.

  That was the worst thing about EVA on an airless place like Perseus. Any object caught in the planet’s gravitational pull would continue to accelerate until it hit the surface of the world. On planets with atmosphere, incoming objects slowed in the air, fracturing and disintegrating long before reaching the ground.

  Here, every pebble falling from space hit with the force of a kinetic weapon, easily enough to tear through Katrina’s suit and body.

  She quickened her pace, and reached the spot marked as the entrance a minute later.

  The surface of the moon held no visible sign that there was anything out of the ordinary, but Katrina’s upgraded eyes could see a single rock that had a distinct refractive profile. She reached down and touched it. An EM signal flared from the rock, and Katrina received a response from a previously inactive network.

  The network prompted her for authorization codes, and Katrina furnished her personal key, and the token she had used while president.

  The network signaled its acceptance, and Katrina breathed a sigh of relief as a section of the crater floor sank, revealing a dark shaft. Katrina peered over the edge and saw a lift rising to the surface.

  When it arrived, she set her cases on the platform, stepped on, and pushed the lone button on the lift’s control panel.

  She took a deep breath as the lift shuddered before beginning to descend. Above, the opening slowly closed, blotting out the night stars gleaming above Perseus.

  Katrina wasn’t certain if it was poetic or a harbinger of doom, but the last star visible was Sirius.

  For a moment, the shaft was dark as the lift soundlessly descended deep beneath the surface of the planet. Then a string of lights came on, and Katrina peered over the railing, gauging the drop to be well over a kilometer.

  She shook her head with a grim smile. The Gamma Site apparently had never been visited by a safety inspector; a slip over the low rail, and she’d do an impersonation of the meteor that hit the surface not long ago.

  When the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, she pushed her cases into a waiting airlock, and signaled it to cycle.

  Troy’s sardonic tone made her smile at the AI’s neverending supply of surliness.

  Katrina said with a broad smile on both her face, and that of her net avatar.

 

 

 

  Katrina brought up the route to the ship’s bay and pushed her cases through the halls at a near run. A part of her was wracked with fear that the map was wrong, that there was no ship in the bay—that it would be empty when she arrived.

  But it was not.

  In the bay, the ship—a two-hundred-meter, interstellar-capable scout interceptor—stood on its fusion engines nozzles, mounted to a launch rail, ready to take them into the black.

  Troy commented.

  Katrina nodded as she brought up the Voyager’s readiness report. It was fueled, stocked with food and other supplies, and the SC batteries were fully charged…the ship was ready to go.

 

 

  Katrina laughed and stepped onto a lift that took her up to the launch bay’s catwalks. The lift stopped at the upper catwalk, one hundred and eighty meters above the floor of the bay. She care
fully pushed the cases along the steel grating, and then onto the gantry that connected to the ship’s waiting airlock.

  The overwhelming sense of relief that the ship really was here, that it was right in front of her, was palpable. She almost expected the Voyager to be a mirage, a hallucination that would evaporate the moment she reached the airlock.

  But it didn’t. She stepped into the airlock, and the physical presence of the ship—thankfully—persisted. Once the lock was cycled, Katrina walked onto the ship’s fourth level and searched for a convenient place to store her belongings.

  The Voyager was intended to always be under thrust, either accelerating or braking, so the decks were stacked like floors in a building, with the engines being ‘down’.

  The level she was on was labeled Deck 3, with only the Ops Deck and Flight Deck above it. Below were four passenger decks, a cargo bay, and a hydroponics and life support deck below that. The bottom deck was the engineering compartment, where the power plant, SC batts, and fusion burners were located.

  The antimatter-pion drive was at the very rear of the ship, only accessible from the outside.

  Once she had her bag and case carefully stowed, Katrina climbed the central ladder to the Ops Deck where Troy’s AI core would be housed.

  He powered his core down in preparation, and Katrina keyed in a command sequence on a panel to open the AI core housing. A panel slid open, revealing a socket for the core, and Katrina carefully placed Troy into it.

  The panel closed and sealed, and a moment later Troy was back.

 

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Katrina said aloud after removing her helmet. “I’m going to climb up to the flight deck and start the checks.”

  Troy said.

  “Wise words,” Katrina replied as she stowed the protective case that had held Troy, and then slid down the ladder back to Deck 3.

  The ship’s internal pressure was equalized with the base, and Katrina cycled both sides of the airlock open for easier passage—there was no need to wait for the airlock to triple check air pressure each time she went in or out.

  Katrina walked across the gantry to the catwalk with a spring in her step, ignoring how empty the launch bay felt with her lone footfalls echoing through it.

  It was strange to think that she was the only person on the entire planet. Katrina had been a lot of places, and seen a lot of things, but she had never been the lone human on an entire world before.

  “I really am the last woman in the world,” she laughed, thinking of all the disaster vids she had seen that touted such a premise.

  In a strange way, Perseus was a post-apocalyptic world. The only habitations burned away or abandoned, with this one small base remaining as the last functioning facility.

  She whistled as the lift lowered to the bay’s floor. Once it touched down, she stepped off and walked to the fueling station. There she entered the commands for the umbilicals to extend and top off the deuterium tanks.

  With that process underway, Katrina pulled up a map to see where the antimatter storage was—provided there were additional supplies.

  Katrina had never personally handled antimatter before; the idea was somewhat terrifying. Ten kilograms of anti-hydrogen was more than enough to obliterate the Evac Site and put a mighty large crack into Perseus.

  But Troy was right—she wanted enough fuel to continue the search as long as possible. There was no point in going out just to have to return in a few years.

  The map showed a passageway leading off the Voyager’s bay to a storage room several hundred meters away. It was marked as possessing antimatter storage systems, but there was no indication as to whether or not any was within.

  “Here’s hoping,” Katrina said as she followed the markers on her map, and she eventually reached a large, sealed door.

  It had occurred to her on the walk that if there was still antimatter here, leaving such a substance stored on a forgotten base may not have been the safest move. When the containment vessel finally failed—granted, that would take hundreds or even thousands of years—any antimatter within would come in contact with normal matter. An event that would make for a very bad day if anyone was nearby.

  Before opening the door, Katrina queried the Evac Site’s systems to get a reading on the antimatter containment. She was relieved to see that it reported full power and 100% containment.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” she muttered and opened the door.

  Inside were five ten-kilogram antimatter cylinders, all standing atop a unit that kept their containment systems powered.

  She examined the cylinders and was glad to see that they had onboard superconductor batteries capable of powering their containment fields. The batteries reported a full charge—enough to last a few hours.

  she asked Troy over the Link.

 

  Katrina sent an affirmative response and grabbed a transport case from a rack on the side of the room. A cart stood next to the door, and she set the case on the cart. Then she opened the case and turned to the first antimatter cylinder. The command to detach it was simple, and Katrina keyed in the instructions, and then twisted the cylinder counterclockwise before pulling it free.

  One-by-one she detached each cylinder and set it into a slot in the case. A bead of sweat ran down her face, and she wiped it away. If she never had to handle antimatter again, she would be more than happy.

  She placed the fifth cylinder in the case, and then closed it, carefully locking the latch. She looked at the case on the cart and found a strap to wrap around it as well. No need to risk an accidental trip or a bounce in the planet’s low gravity sending the case off the cart.

  Katrina knew that the chances of anything bad happening were remotely slim, but it was antimatter, after all. The energy resting inertly on the cart was greater than that of half a million nuclear bombs.

  At least if something goes wrong, I won’t even know it.

  Troy said.

  A thousand horrible things raced through Katrina’s mind in the time it took her to respond.

 

  Katrina replied.

  Katrina did some quick math on timing. There was no way she could get the antimatter to the ship before the Primacy Soldiers—she assumed it would be soldiers—made it to the Voyager’s bay.

  She pulled up the map once more, double-checking the location of the armory she had spotted previously.

  It was further from the bay.

  She left the cart of antimatter in the storage room and dashed down the hall to the armory, which turned out to be little more than a closet with two powered suits. She shimmied out of her EVA suit and clothing. Once naked, she quickly pulled on a ballistic base layer before backing up to the armor rack. The system activated, and Katrina drew in a deep breath as powered armor folded around her.

  A hundred years, at least. That was how long it had been since she’d worn armor. Firing a weapon in anger? That was even further in her past. She dredged up a few mnemonics to help get her ready, and steadied her breathing as the armor system slotted in the additional ablative plating.

  Katrina asked as she ran through a quick system check on the armor while looking over the weapons selection.

  this site. I suspect they’re gonna blow it. You in EVA?>

 

 

  Katrina selected a pulse rifle and a multifunction rifle capable of firing both low velocity pellets and ballistic projectiles.

  She didn’t want to kill any of the soldiers being sent after her—they were still her people—but she wouldn’t be deterred from her course of action. Not when she had made it this far.

  She sprinted down the corridor back to the antimatter storage room, the armor’s maglock boots allowing her to run at full speed without bounding into the ceiling.

  Once inside the room, Katrina unstrapped the antimatter case from the cart and tucked it under her arm.

  Carrying fifty kilos would have been a difficult endeavor in just her EVA suit, but the powered armor’s actuators made it a breeze. Given that she would be taking fire very shortly—and, by extension, the antimatter case—maneuverability was key.

  The ground shook beneath her feet and Katrina knew that her guests had arrived. She pulled up the Evac Site’s feeds and saw a dozen Primacy soldiers flood through the airlock. A second later, the base’s decompression alarms sounded, and pressure doors began to drop.

  Katrina swore.

  Troy replied.

  Five troops. I can do that. I’ve faced worse odds in my years.

  Katrina deployed the armor’s probes and sent them ahead to scout the first of the four intersections between her and the Voyager’s bay.

  It was clear, and she sent a probe down the cross passage to make sure it stayed that way. The last thing she needed was the enemy flanking her.

  The next intersection was clear as well, but the probe she sent down the third corridor stopped responding as soon as it turned the corner.