Hart's selection to the Unity mission was a surprise to the general public, but not a shock. While the vast majority of the crew and colonists were professionals trained and dedicated to interstellar exploration, there were plenty of figures that were selected for their renown, popularity, and clout. As an influential writer and net figure, she had all that. And according to gossip rag whispers, the committee's hidden agenda was to either frame Snow Hart as a redeemed former anarchist, an example for the masses- or to exile her into space. Interestingly enough, despite rigorous psychological, ideological, and memetic profiling of all the passengers of the Unity, she was far from the only example of someone with suspect convictions…
Hart was designated Colonist with the rank of Cadet on Unity. Like the majority of the non-crew, the official rationale for her inclusion was that she possessed vital skills for the mission (psychiatry, leadership), and talents for humanity (writing, art). The U.N. was very much concerned with having as many personnel with relevant experience in essential work- food production, emergency services, physical and mental health. Thus, Hart was designated as auxiliary psych staff to be activated in emergencies such as outbreaks of space madness, despite not being a member of the crew much less on Godwinson's team.
She was also one of the lucky randomly-chosen colonists who remained awake during the initial journey within the Solar System. This was the opportunity to become acquainted with fellow settlers and members of the crew alike. Hart quickly asserted her minor celebrity aboard the ship with some of the intelligentsia and artistic community- gazing out into the inky blackness of space, at Saturn's rings, Neptune's gaseous oceans- she composed more verse and witty ditties. Those poems she posted to Unity's datalinks along with new entries for her old column, irreverently discussing Captain Garland's dictates and the goings-on between the powers-that-be that ran the mission. While she wasn't the only civilian non-crew member of renown- her rotation included a surrealist painter, several other holovid virtuosos, and a cricket star- her writings were some of the most downloaded unofficial missives on the ship.
Hart soon found herself never without a flock of hangers-on at the mess halls, the promenade, even the small auditorium reserved for non-crew use. Those included both artistes lapping up her bon mots, and those who were intrigued by her cheerfully nihilistic philosophy and hedonistic attitudes. She attracted "culture producer" colonists like herself, bureaucrat-administrators, scientific and engineering staff. More than once she debated someone who questioned her beliefs, and walked away with a new follower. It was also rumored that she had smuggled in a cache of psychotropics onto the ship.
Nathan Weismuller was one who challenged her ideals. The entrepreneur technologist applauded her love for freedom and volition, but suggested that her vision of society went beyond the limits of what was feasible- even in a libertarian society, there had to be some hierarchy to maintain a division of labor, and someone had to enforce contracts between free parties. Hart asked what the end state of such an arrangement would look like- in the pursuit of protecting these rights, wouldn't the contracts courts and property police simply become the same government tyranny that minarchists and other government-haters feared all along? And what's a corporation but the law unto itself, a wannabe economic version of a nation? Yet another spook demanding unnecessary sacrifice from the ego of free individuals. To this, Weismuller wryly suggested that perhaps Hart's ideal society would be no more than Dunbar's number- few enough to all know each other- and living a simple hunter-gatherer existence without the necessary hierarchy that was demanded of agriculture or anything more sophisticated. And high off of hallucinogenic berries, she reminded him, with a smile.
Among the command staff, Hart was largely overlooked, save for two exceptions. Chief Librarian Élodie combined everything she detested- aristo entitlement, Euro-nationalist chauvinism, and worst of all, an authoritarian approach to the arts. Snow Hart wrote more than one satirical piece skewering her curation of Earth's works, deriding the stodgy choices of her much-vaunted Canon. True to her unflappable persona, the curator deigned to acknowledge this one-sided rivalry in any public capacity. But after her holovid parody of Élodie's poetry became the most-viewed media one week, Snow Hart discovered that several of her creations had been mysteriously reclassified, sent to less-visible corners of the datalinks away from viewers and readers. In retaliation, she launched a prank war against the Chief Librarian, culminating with her and several accomplices infiltrating one of Élodie's ship-wide gallery openings and replacing all of the Grecian urns with Warhol-styled empty ration cans, the audio recordings of Vivaldi with jungle music, and the Monets with blown-up printouts of Sex Pistols album art.
These antics were but small friction points to the mission leadership, which had bigger headaches to salve. Though Hart appeared on multiple lists as a person of interest deserving surveillance, her highly-public figure and harmless if invasive behavior made her low priority. Hart's apolitical, or rather anti-political, leanings kept her off the radar of the captain and his usually omniscient X.O. Ironically, it was the Chief of Surgery Pravin Lal who was most upset by her behavior, even more so than the Chief Librarian. As the head of the board of medical officers who had screened the crew and colonists, Lal had already flagged Hart as a poor candidate for the trip purely for toxicology purposes. He believed that breaking protocol to admit someone with a history of substance abuse, especially someone who was merely a psychiatrist and asocial writer-gadfly, improperly deprived a cryotube from someone deserving. The U.N. in its ineffable will overruled Lal, deeming her useful enough to the mission. This mere annoyance was overshadowed by reports that several of his pharmacists and an anesthesiologist had been caught doing illegal chemistry, concocting recreational psychedelics. The Chief of Surgery, suspecting but not wanting to outright accuse the roguish diva, repeatedly petitioned Chief of Security Joachim Ortega to investigate.
The security head privately believed that making nonaddictive drugs was a relatively victimless crime that could wait until Chiron, yet another one of his decisions to delay that would result in Ortega's unfortunate demise during Planetfall. But he promised Lal that the matter would be looked into. Officially opening an investigation while simultaneously deprioritizing it, Ortega assigned the case to a mid-ranking officer under his command, one Lieutenant Corazon Santiago.
Generations afterward would make much of this pre-Planetary connection. A cosmic coincidence- or conspiracy? The stories that have been spun include epic sagas of a cat-and-mouse hunt through the great ship's corridors ending in a clash of wits or brawn, larger-than-life dramas of a blood pact of sisterhood forged in a dark cryobay before the ice, even salacious vulgarities of first contact made under passions that went beyond the ideological. Alas, such lurid tales are likely debunked by the simple probability that neither future leader had ever actually met each other before Planetfall. It is true, according to salvaged Unity datacore fragments, that Santiago did honestly attempt to figure out who was behind the manufacturing of prohibited substances, discovering over a dozen individuals connected to Lal's corrupted staff. And it is true that despite this progress, she prematurely closed the case. Whether that was to allow Hart to retain free rein, or because Santiago was preoccupied with her own secret preparations, only the Colonel herself knows.
After a memorable few months among the awake, Snow Hart went into hibernation, a woman free as a bird, free in her thoughts, and with a free hand to act. And so she did.
Notes: Snow Hart's "civilian" rank being Cadet is just a pun on "space cadet", but let's just say within this story other non-managerial rank-and-file colonists are also cadets.
My conception of Hart is inspired by Cruella, of all movies. I imagine her as a crazy-like-a-fox force of chaos, her "rivalry" with Élodie is directly inspired by that film's premise.
