“Like we said: utopia can’t exist,” Hart said. “And you’re way too much of a capitalist to make it some socialist paradise.” She softened the words with a regretful smile.

Valerie flicked her wrist. “I used capitalism to get me where I needed to be. My wealth is gone now, all spent. What do I need it for? Money was never my true purpose. I want a world where people don’t grow up hungry like I did. Where women aren’t being pushed out of the spaces they worked so hard to enter. I’m tired of the -isms they love to use to break us down.”

“You don’t think we’ll simply find something else to divide us?” Hixon mused.

Hart rolled a blackberry on her plate. “Probably. But what can we do? Go through, stick a flag of our own making in the soil, and you declare yourself Queen of Cavendish?”

Valerie gave a laugh, high and almost girlish. “Something better than a monarchy. President sounds nice. Or Warden.”

“We could say Cavendish was ours all we wanted,” Naomi said. “But declaring it so would make us a military base, wouldn’t it? Then the treaty is void. We’re a hostile force. All of Earth could band together to remove us. We’re only five women. What have you been planning, Valerie?”

Valerie’s gaze was a knife. Naomi was pushing too hard, but this had been building in her for four days.

What did you ask them to do, Valerie?

“If they don’t agree to what we propose, we don’t build a Cavendish warp ring in orbit,” Valerie said. “That means it takes longer to arrive and is way more expensive. We could journey back to where we originally arrived in Ran’s solar system and destroy the atomic clocks, too. That’d make it very difficult for them to know where to jump from Mars.”

Naomi couldn’t blink. Hixon jerked back in her seat. Even Lebedeva shifted uneasily in her chair.

“You would trap them on Earth?” Hart asked, horrified.

“That… that would definitely be considered a military stance.” Hixon’s voice was faint.

It’d taken Earth over a decade to set up the atomic clocks, ferried across as close to the speed of light as they could, with gold-sheeted sails propelled by solar wind and lasers. They’d sent them after they discovered negative energy but before they understood the Alcubierre drive, in the hopes that one day it’d be a reality.

“We would delay them,” Valerie countered. “Upset the power dynamic. They’ll agree to what I propose.”

“Which is…?” Naomi asked.

“Send a ship of children first, plus some selected caretakers. I’ve already thought this through and sent a list.”

Silence.

“A list? How’d you come up with a list?” Hart demanded.