More than half a month passed before Yelena finally came to Larkspur Haven for the first time, and when she did, she did not do so quietly.
A long convoy followed her, controlled by the ship girls under her command, loaded with construction materials, copies of technical archives, industrial modules, civilian technology packages, extraction plans, and the three engineering hulls built at the family yard.
Aurelian watched the arrival from Black Crown's command display and did not look particularly surprised.
He had expected it to take time.
If anything, he had originally thought it might take closer to a month, not because the triplets were slow, but because this time the scale was different.
Occupying a world was one thing. Building it into something stable was another.
Construction always moved more slowly than conquest, and it always needed more than people first guessed.
