- Ilse Vanterpool
- Pilot of Pelican, the reader's vehicle. Mid-career veteran, procedural to the bone, thinks in checklists and times. Trusts instruments over people — right for flying, wrong for everything else in this book. Speaks in short declaratives and proper names; never uses an emotive adjective about danger.
- Dai Ruvalcaba
- Flight engineer of Pelican. Notices discrepancies. Keeps a personal log of everything that does not add up, which becomes the only near-untainted record anyone has. Qualifies every statement ('nominally', 'within tolerance'); corrects timestamps out loud. His best skill turns out not to be actionable.
- Soraya Kell
- Team lead and race strategist of Pelican. Makes the delta-v calls. Every stranded crew is stranded because of a decision she made correctly with the information available. Speaks in budget terms; says 'we' when she means 'I decided'.
- Tomas Bekkers
- Second pilot of Pelican, youngest on the crew, called Bek. Asks the question the reader needs asked and still expects authority to mean something. His questions are how the league's misinforming reaches the crew. Arc is the loss of that expectation.
- Mara Dessens
- League race director. NOT a villain: a good director running a race that should have been stopped, and not stopping it because stopping is a decision and continuing is a procedure. Warm officialese, professional passive voice, never says anything she does not believe. She is not lying.
- Hennik Voss
- League safety delegate. Has raised the debris-environment review as an agenda item for three years and had it deferred each time, correctly, for budget reasons. Has a folder that is the most damning object in the book and names no one. Never says 'I warned them'.