“I’m still horrified but I’m also…” Hart trailed off.

“Weirdly hopeful?” Naomi finished.

Hart’s shoulders rose, then dipped. “Yeah. I want a break from Earth and all its bullshit. I want a chance to make things better. Why let Cochran come in and take the credit? As soon as there are boots on the ground loyal to him, with all the colonial baggage that implies, that’s it. There’s too much money to be made.” Hart jumped up on the autodoc, sitting cross-legged. “They’ll push us out of the way.” She counted on her fingers. “Valerie for stealing and being too damn rich in the first place, you for basically being her daughter, Lebedeva for being a foreign national of an enemy state that would also just love to lay claim to Cavendish, Hixon for being gay, and me for being bisexual and black to top it all off.” She held up her palm, five fingers splayed. “I’m tired. I’ve been tired. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Naomi whispered. “I’m tired. And scared. But still weirdly hopeful. My other fear…” She paused, weighing her words. “What if—what if Valerie isn’t the person who can make Cavendish what we need it to be?”

Hart’s head jerked back. “You’re expressing doubts about Valerie?”

Naomi shifted herself closer. The comms in the room were off, but she kept her voice low anyway. “Not doubt, exactly. But she’s still angling to be the leader, isn’t she? No one coming to the planet without her say-so. Moulding a whole generation.”

“Power corrupts absolutely, and Valerie’s already had more power than most,” Hart mused. “It sounds so rational, on one hand. They put women and children in the lifeboats first on a sinking ship. But, I mean, how does she plan to filter information to the children? What will she censor, omit, change?”

“You speak like she’ll become fascist,” Naomi said. She wasn’t sure she was suggesting Valerie would stray that far.

Hart gave a shrug of a shoulder. “I always go right to the worst-case scenario. It drives Jerrie up the walls. You can’t deny that history is written by the victors. Valerie will weave a narrative.”

Naomi tapped a finger against her lip. “It’s not like I have any better ideas for getting people to Cavendish. Do you?”

Hart made a moue with her mouth. “I mean, we’ve all got good leadership skills. That’s why we’re on the ship. But it’s a hell of a lot of responsibility I’m not sure I want. It’s not what I signed up for.”

“The four of us will have to be her checks and balances. To call her up on it if she starts believing her own mythos. We do make a good team. She chose us for a reason.”