All that winter, K-ships roared low over the New Pearl River. They made sudden dirty white arcs across the sky. The father took Seria Mau and her brother to the base, to watch those ships come in. It was war. It was peace. Who knew what it would be, out there on the edge of the galaxy, with the Nastic only three systems away, and unknown assets at large in the Kuiper Belt, presenting as lumps of dirty ice? The children loved it. There followed the best and worst of times, marked by parades and marches, economic crashes, political speeches, the overturning of scientific paradigms: fresh news every day. That was when Seria Mau made up her mind. That was when she made her own plans. She collected holograms—little black cubes full of stars, roseate nebulae, wisps of floating gas—the way other girls collected cosmetics. “This is Eridon Omega,” she explained to her brother, “south of the White Cawl. The Vittor Neumann pod rules there. Just let the Nastic try anything against them!” Her eyes glowed. “They have ordnance that evolves itself, generation by generation, in a medium outside the ship. Whole worlds are at stake here!” She watched herself say this in the mirror, with no idea why she looked so wild-eyed and excited. The morning of her thirteenth birthday, she signed up. EMC were always looking for recruits, and for the K-pods they only wanted the youngest, fastest people they could find.

“You should be proud of me,” she told the father.

“I’m proud,” her brother said. He burst into tears. “I want to be a space ship too.”

Saulsignon was a training camp by then. There were wire fences everywhere. The little railway station had lost its look of Ancient Earth, its flower tubs and the tabby cat which made the brother angry because it reminded him of his little black kitten. They stood there, the three of them, on her last day, awkward in the wind and rain.

“Will you get leave?” the father said.

Seria Mau laughed triumphantly.

“Never!” she said.