Valerie was so many things to Naomi—her boss at Hawthorne, her captain. Long before that, she’d taken Naomi in when she was nine, her father dead and her mother unable to care for her. Once the world found out what they had done, Naomi would never escape the nepotism whispers that had followed every step of her career. Naomi had once moved away from Hawthorne to prove herself but was lured back to Project Atalanta as though by a siren’s song.

Valerie had handpicked the first all-female crew into interstellar space.

Just not the first authorised crew.

The government had dangled the project before Valerie, let her spend her money, her expertise, before snatching it away and replacing the crew with last-minute substitutions from NASA. It was physically impossible for the five men to do as much training, to run through the simulations, to know the ship from the inside out. President Cochran was so determined to keep those five women off the Atalanta and their destination of Cavendish, he was willing to risk everything.

Oksana Lebedeva, lead engineer, the cosmonaut who left the Roscosmos to work for Valerie under suspicious circumstances. Jerrie Hixon, their lead pilot and mathematician, who quit NASA when President Cochran was sworn into office. Her wife, Irene Hart, who followed suit when NASA edged out most of its women a few months later as Cochran’s policies began coming into effect.

It hadn’t happened in a moment, but a series of moments, as slow and insidious as the melting of the ice caps. Women had been ushered out of the workplace, so subtly that few noticed until it was too late. There had been no grand lowering of an iron curtain, with passports voided and bank accounts emptied. There had been a few men in sharp suits quoting scripture with silver tongues, but it was cursory, just enough to wrangle part of the Christian vote. Really, they were afraid of women. Or hated them. Wasn’t that much the same thing? The country saw those angry men as a fringe movement right up until one was elected president.

“ETA to the Atalanta ten minutes,” Hixon said at one point, voice clipped. Naomi could almost feel their brains ticking, their thoughts swirling through the cramped cabin.

Finally, their true ship came into view on the cameras: the Atalanta. Valerie smiled. Hixon allowed herself a triumphant clap, muffled by her gloves. Naomi, Hart, and Lebedeva stayed silent and awed.

It was a beautiful craft, all smooth and white metal. A sleek, bird-like body formed the ship’s central axis, the bow showing the disk of the bridge, quadruple-reinforced windows dark, and the ion and plasma thrusters strapped to the side.