Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

“Aye, sir,” said the officer at sensor control, and the main screen shifted from the docking map to a telescopic view of the approaching ship.

Someone let out a quiet gasp. Even Davenport, an officer with nearly a decade in the fleet, took an unconscious half step back.

“Good God, she’s a big one,” he said.

The Heart of the Tempest was one of only three Magnetar-class ships to come out of Laconia’s orbital construction platform. The Eye of the Typhoon was assigned to the home fleet and the protection of Laconia itself. The Voice of the Whirlwind was still being grown between the spars and limbs of the alien orbital arrays. And while the fleet now consisted of over a hundred ships, the Magnetars were the largest and most powerful by far. The Gathering Storm, his own ship, was one of the Pulsar-class fast destroyers, and he was fairly certain the Tempest could fit a dozen of them inside its hull.

The Pulsar-class destroyers were tall and sleek in design. To Singh’s eye they were almost reminiscent of old Earth naval ships. But the Heart of the Tempest was massive and squat. Shaped like a lone vertebra from some long-dead giant the size of a planet. It was as pale as bone too, even where the curves fell into shadow.

Like all ships built by Laconia’s orbiting construction platforms, it had the sense of something not quite human. The sensor arrays and point-defense cannons and rail guns and missile tubes were all there, but hidden under a self-healing plate system that made the surface of the ship seem more like skin than not. Grown, but not biological. There was something fractal about its geometry. Like crystals showing the constraints of their molecular architecture in the unfolding of shapes at higher levels.

Singh wasn’t an expert in the protomolecule or the technologies that it spawned, but there was

something eerie in the idea that they’d built things partly designed by a species that had been gone for millennia. Collaboration with the dead left questions that could never be answered. Why did the construction array make the choices it made? Why place the drive here instead of there, why make the internal systems symmetric and the exterior of the ship slightly off? Was it a more efficient design? More aesthetically pleasing to its long-vanished masters? He had no way of being certain, and probably never would.

“Tempest acknowledges,” the comm officer said.

“Remote piloting for dock now,” his helm added, and the main screen shifted from telescopic shots of the battleship to a wire frame course ending at the Tempest.

“Very well,” Singh said with a smile. The admiralty had entrusted him with one of Laconia’s state-of-the-art ships, and they’d filled it with serious and focused officers and crew. As a first command, he couldn’t have asked for better.

That he and his ship were the tip of the imperial spear was just icing on the cake.

“Admiral Trejo sends his compliments,” the comm officer said. “He asks that you join him for dinner in his private mess.”

Singh turned to his XO. “Stay on the Storm and keep the crew alert. We have no idea what reception we’re getting on the other side of the gate, and may need to deploy at a moment’s notice.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Rig for docking. I’ll be in the bow-crew airlock. Mister Davenport, you have the con.”

The Tempest’s operations officer, Admiral Trejo’s third in command, was waiting for him on the other side of the airlock. Technically they were the same naval rank, but as a ship’s captain, tradition dictated that Singh be treated as the superior officer. She saluted and granted him permission to board.

“The admiral would have greeted you personally,” she said as she led him out of the airlock and they floated down a short corridor to a lift. The walls in the Tempest looked like sheets of frosted glass, and glowed with a gentle blue light. Very different from the bulkheads of the Gathering Storm. “But this close to the gate he doesn’t like to leave the bridge.”

“Fisher, right? I think you were a year behind me at the academy.”

“I was,” she replied with a nod. “Engineering track. Everyone said logistics was the faster path to command, but I just love working with exotic tech.”

She stopped and tapped on the wall panel to call a lift. While they waited, the bulkheads began to pulse from blue to yellow.

“Grab a handhold,” Fisher said, pointing to one close by. “Drive is about to come online.”

A moment later they both drifted to the deck, and Singh felt his weight grow until it was about half a g.

“Not in a hurry,” Singh said, and the elevator made a gentle beep and the doors opened.

“The admiral’s a cautious man.”

“Speaks well of him,” he said as they began to rise.

Admiral Trejo was a short, stocky man, with bright-green eyes and thinning black hair. He came from the Mariner Valley region of Mars, but the traces of his accent were almost imperceptible. He was also the most decorated officer in Laconia’s military, with a career that stretched back to pirate hunting for the Martian Navy even before the gates opened. They studied his tactics in the academy, and Singh thought the term military genius was justifiably applied to his career.

He’d expected the private mess of an admiral and fleet commander to be larger, more luxurious than the one he claimed on the Gathering Storm. It turned out to be a table that pulled down from one bulkhead in Admiral Trejo’s slightly larger office/living quarters. The aesthetics were different only because the ship itself was.

“Sonny!” Trejo said, waiting to return his salute and then grabbing his hand and shaking it vigorously. “Finally all the pieces are in place. It’s an exciting time. Would you like to sit, or do you want the tour?”

“Admiral,” Singh replied. “If there’s a tour to be had, I’d be honored to see a little more of the ship.”