5

You pull up the recorder and begin to compose a message to Earth. It takes two hours for any file to get there, and it's reliant on a trailing wire and antenna all working as planned.

Virginia Rein is the first out of her seat. She unlatches your buckles and pulls you to your feet. You feel light in the low gravity, even lighter than on Luna.

"Time enough for all that in a moment," she says. "We did the impossible. We're here."

It truly is remarkable. Along with private donors and two large corporations, three major geopolitical factions joined together for the first time in a mission of unity. The old guard United Earth formed of the northern nations out of the wreckage of the UN, still dominated by the United States of America. The Group of 81, a loose alliance of disparate nations, mostly in the south, with wildly varying governments, united only in their opposition to the U.E. And then the upstart Libertalia, a grouping of independent city-states floating on Earth's oceans, a handful of renegade regions in Africa, South America and the Middle East, as well as their tiny outposts in the asteroid belt.

Of course, they all want something different from the colony. The liberal democracies and kingdoms of United Earth want the resources of a new frontier to revitalize their market economies. The republics and juntas of the G81 are more interested in securing new habitats for their burgeoning populations. And the Libertalian communes and city-states see in Europa a bold opportunity for new forms of human society.

You're still the leader of the expedition but your captaincy has ended with the ship's arrival. In four years' time there will be an election, but how are you now referred to?