Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

“Get down, you idi—” Clarissa started, but whatever else she was about to say was drowned out by the gunfire.

Chapter Sixteen: Singh

As he stepped out of the office complex, Singh made the mistake of looking up. The thin line of blazing full-spectrum light that ran down the center of Medina’s habitat drum blinded him, just a little. It cut a glowing streak across his vision, and filled his eyes with tears. Like looking into a sun, if instead of an orb several light minutes away, it was a line drawn in the sky and very close.

“Hold on a moment,” he said to his Marine escort, as he tried to get his vision back.

“Copy that,” the Marine replied, then said, “we’re oscar mike, triphammer two minutes from the cart. Rolling teams for cover to station ops.”

It took Singh a moment to realize that most of that was comm chatter to his security detail. He had nothing but respect for the Marines under his command and for the security they provided, but they did love their jargon and code names. A moment later he’d shaken most of the water out of his eyes, and the yellow-green afterimage line across his vision was fading.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“Copy that,” the Marine replied, and pointed to a parking area about fifty meters away with three electric carts lined up and waiting. Lieutenant Kasik was hurrying toward him from the carts, waving a monitor that had been extended to its full size. He met them a few seconds later, puffing with exertion.

“I have the initial defense reports,” Kasik said, handing the monitor to Singh.

“Excellent.” Singh scrolled past a spreadsheet of incomprehensible numbers. “I hope there’s a summary?”

“Yes, sir, and the tech group is waiting for you in station ops to answer any questions. But the initial findings are very exciting.”

“Tell me.”

“What we can see,” Kasik said, “is the ring system converted all of the energy from the Tempest’s field projector into gamma rays released through the rings.”

“We knew that,” Singh replied with a frown.

“But … the energy released was orders of magnitude more than the energy the central sphere absorbed. The ring system amplified it. Exponentially. If the factor is consistent, we can create predictive models for input versus output very quickly.”

It was exactly what he’d hoped. The alien rings could be made into their own defenses, and the reconstruction of the defense battery skipped entirely. The Tempest would be free to move into Sol system months ahead of the original plan. Any attack would fail, even if it were coordinated through every ring at once. One Magnetar-class battle cruiser could guard thirteen hundred gates at once and never miss its shot. The battle to seize control of every human-controlled world in the galaxy was already over.

After that, it was just administration of the new empire. Singh tried to imagine the high consul’s pleasure, the possible rewards, and his imagination failed him. But one thing still bothered him.

“Why was it, Kasik, that we heard about this from a local? If this had gone overlooked—”

“I’m sure we’d have found it, sir. But we weren’t looking at the logs. We have additional data in Operations,” Kasik said. “And I’ve requested technicians for more analysis.”

Singh realized his daydreaming of the high consul’s patronage had stretched into an awkward pause. Before he could reply, something shifted at the edge of his vision. Someone walking toward him with the purposeful stride of a messenger making a delivery. Except that the person striding toward him was Langstiver. The man who’d brought him the news of the new and glorious discovery. A small group of Belters were following him. He assumed Langstiver was coming to demand a reward for his information.

“I don’t want—” Singh began, but his Marine guard had put one hand on his chest and shoved him back. Kasik nodded at him sharply one time, then spit berry-colored saliva all over his face.

The Marine yanked Singh to the ground, hard, then knelt over him, shielding him with her body. Her knees pressed into his spine until it hurt. Singh heard her shouting orders, muffled by her helmet, to the rest of her detail. And then he heard nothing but the deafening ripping-paper sound of multiple rapid-fire weapons opening up. His guard was sitting on top of him and blocking his view, but the space between her thigh and calf as she crouched created a small triangular window on the carnage.

Langstiver and half a dozen other people were dancing backward as four Laconian Marines cut them to pieces with streams of high-velocity plastic safety rounds. It felt like the firing went on forever, like the bullets were keeping the assassins from falling. In reality it could only have lasted a few seconds. He experienced a little discontinuity in his consciousness, like he’d fallen briefly asleep, though that was impossible, and his Marine had yanked him to his feet and was shoving him back toward the administrative offices. The other members of her fire team slowly backed toward them, weapons at the ready.

Lieutenant Kasik still stood near the carts, not having moved during the entire firefight. He looked like he’d spit raspberry pie filling onto his lips, and he was twitching like an epileptic experiencing a grand mal. Singh understood something that had been eluding him.

“Kasik’s been shot,” he said. The pie filling on his face was the ruins of his lips from where the bullet had exited. The spray of red on Singh’s face and uniform wasn’t spit, it was his aide’s blood.

“Medical has already been alerted,” his Marine said, thinking he was talking to her.

“But no,” Singh said. She didn’t understand. “He’s been shot.”

She shoved him through the admin-building door and slammed it shut behind her. Just before it closed, the shocked silence that had followed the gunfire ended, and from a hundred voices outside the screaming started.

Kasik died on an operating table three hours after the attack. According to the report, he’d been shot in the back of the head, the bullet fracturing the occipital lobe of hi

s skull and nicking his medulla oblongata. It then passed through the back of his throat and nearly severed his tongue, before shattering five teeth and exiting through his lips. Singh read the surgeon’s section of the incident report half a dozen times. Each time felt like the first.