“You think she’ll agree to that? She does not like being told she’s wrong.”

“I’ve done it before. It’s difficult, but if I make my case, she sees reason.” Naomi hesitated, then barrelled on. “I’m the reason she shared the clemency deal with the ship. She wasn’t going to. I found the message and confronted her.”

Hart whistled. “I wish I could say I’m surprised. If she’s already hiding stuff, that doesn’t bode well, does it?”

Naomi hunched her shoulders. “I know. I can’t stop asking myself what else she’s not telling us.”

Hart sucked her teeth. “You saying we should try and find out?”

Naomi hesitated, then nodded. The movement felt like a betrayal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

126 Days After Launch

5 Days to Mars

123 Days to Cavendish

“Everyone, to the rec room,” Valerie sent on the comms. “We have a message from Earth.”

It was an hour before they were all due to have their evening meal. Lebedeva slouched against the wall, arms loosely around her knees. Hixon and Hart leaned against each other, Hixon rubbing Hart’s palm with her thumb in a soothing, circular motion. Naomi stood to Valerie’s right, resisting the urge to cradle her stomach.

Valerie’s skin looked stretched tight across her bones. “I haven’t opened it yet,” she said. “We’ll all read together.”

Her eyes didn’t flick to Naomi, but Naomi felt the rebuke as much as Hart’s silent bristling.

Valerie reached forward and the message scrolled on the wall of the rec room. They read in silence. Earth had reiterated their original stance. Cochran’s fury bubbled through the officious language more than before. What the president was really saying was essentially he had been more than generous, and the Atalanta’s levels of disloyalty to America, to Earth as a whole, knew no bounds. They would not package up an exodus ship of children to send their minds to be warped on Cavendish. Basically: no deal. The Atalanta 5 were traitors, and there would be no mercy once the Atalanta II arrived on Cavendish.

He was calling their bluff.

“Well, we tried,” Hixon said. “It was ballsy, but that’s that. Prison beckons.”

“There are still options,” Naomi offered. “We can go public through Evan, can’t we?”

“We could,” Valerie agreed, narrowing her eyes at the message. “I’m not sure it’ll do much good. Even if plenty of people want to send their children, it’d take protests on a massive scale. So many still don’t believe the Earth is truly under threat, even with all the evidence in front of them. They wear the filter masks and hire private firefighters and proudly declare the sky is not falling. They’re still stuck in the system that we are trying to break. Too many people in power are in the way.”