Athena brings the Daughters into public relief work and the Covenant, then stays in the starving Rim to protect its people while lending Darrow her fleet.
Athena's Daughters reach Io a day after Lysander leaves and spend weeks locating collapsed bunker entrances, operating black Raa hearthcraft marked with hastily sprayed red owls. Their medical work makes the Daughters too important in the Rim to be dismissed as terrorists, though Gaia still treats their presence as theft of Rim ships and a threat to old authority. Athena herself appears in an oil-smeared laborer's jumpsuit and helmet, impatient with the armed tension Volga and Diomedes bring to the treaty table.
Athena signs the Covenant despite failing to win either abolition of hierarchy or ownership of the Deep. She sends her fleet with Darrow but remains in the Rim because she is not a warrior and the people need her rebuilding work more than ever. Her condition is unsentimental: the Garter will take decades to recover, the Rim will starve without Core crops, and Darrow must win and feed them with Martian grain, fruit, cows, and pigs while not breaking all her ships. Athena's participation makes the Covenant a practical relief alliance rather than merely a military pact.
A dense Red ultraheavy with garnet eyes and artificial seven-fingered hands, forearms tattooed with white names of the dead. She wears an oil-smeared laborer's jumpsuit beneath her helmet.
Athena is the Daughters' builder-leader, supplying the alliance fleet while staying behind to protect and rebuild the Rim's shattered civilian world.