Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

“Holden here.”

“Looks like that big bastard is ignoring us as long as we stay really still and keep the weapons unpowered.”

“That’s a good sign,” Holden said. “It might mean they’re not looking to kill everyone. Just making a point of destroying anything that’s a threat.”

“Point loudly and clearly made,” Bobbie agreed. “But be aware, there is a second ship. Smaller. And it’s heading for Medina.”

“Tactical assessment?”

“Based on how thoroughly they took out our defenses,” Bobbie said, “I’d bet they do a hard breach, storm ops and the reactor room, and grab full control of the station. If their ground troops have tech like that ship does, it shouldn’t take long.”

“Copy that. I’m going to try to minimize casualties down here. Wait for me to make contact. Holden out.”

“Hard breach?” Naomi asked, though her tone said she already knew the answer.

“They’ll drop fire teams all over the station to take over access points, control centers, power, and environmental support,” Holden replied, more to the room at large than to Naomi. He turned to Daphne Kohl. “I think you should have everyone here start making calls. Get every union and planetary rep in secure locations, but tell their security details to stand down. No visible weapons. Tell them we’re not attempting to repel boarders. That’ll just get people ki

lled, and maybe piss off that monster of a ship.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Are you taking command?”

“No, I’m not. But this is the right thing to do, and we need to do it now. So we should do it. Please.”

Her expression fell a degree. She’d hoped someone in authority had arrived. Someone who knew what to do. He recognized the hope and the disappointment both.

“We’re not going to fight back at all?” Kohl asked.

He gestured toward the screens. The dust that was Tori Byron and the rail-gun emplacements. Kohl looked away. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say no.

“Not yet,” Holden said. Naomi was already collecting side-arms from the other techs in the ops center and putting them in a duffel bag. Not yet.

The second ship looked to be about destroyer sized, to Holden’s eye. It did a slow flyover of Medina Station, taking out the torpedo racks and PDC emplacements with pinpoint-accurate rail-gun shots, then dropping a dozen Marine landing craft.

As it came, Kohl did as he suggested, passing the word throughout the ship not to resist. Live to fight another day. After the last call, she seemed to sway for a moment, then turned, spat on the deck, and pulled up something that looked like a security interface.

“What are you doing?”

“Purging the security system,” she said. “No census. No biometric records. No deck plans. No records. We can’t stop the fuckers, but we don’t need to make it easy for them.”

“Fou bien,” Naomi said, approving. Holden wondered whether the forces coming in would be able to track the decision back to her. He hoped they wouldn’t.

Each landing craft held a fire team of eight Marines, all wearing power armor of an unusual design—like Bobbie’s but with different articulation at the joints, and all in a vibrant blue that made them seem like something that had hauled itself up from the sea. The Marines were methodical and professional. Where the doors opened for them, they entered without causing damage. Where they found locked doors, they breached with ruthless efficiency, blowing the door seals and hauling the plates back in a single, well-trained motion. When they passed unarmed civilians, they moved on by with nothing more than a warning not to resist. The few times they ran into someone with a hero complex who tried to fight back, they killed whoever presented a threat, but no one else. That it wasn’t a straight-out massacre was the only comfort.

Watching it all happen from his position in the ops center, Holden found that he had to admire the level of training and discipline the Laconians displayed. They left no doubt that they were absolutely in charge, and they responded to any aggression with immediate lethal force. But they didn’t abuse the civilians. They didn’t push anyone around. They showed nothing that looked like bravado or bullying. Even the violence didn’t have any anger behind it. They were like animal handlers. Holden, Naomi, and the rest of the ops-center techs did what they could to keep the station populace from panicking or foolishly resisting, but it was almost irrelevant. Nothing kept the people calmer than the calm their invaders demonstrated.

When the door to the ops center opened and one of the fire teams entered, Holden told everyone in the room to raise their hands in surrender. A tall, dark-skinned woman in armor with insignia that looked like a modified Martian colonel rank walked toward him on magnetic boots.

“I am Colonel Tanaka,” she said, her voice booming with electronically augmented volume. “Medina Station is under our control. Please indicate that you understand and are complying.”

Holden nodded and gave her his best fake smile. “I understand and as long as you continue to not abuse the people here, we will not violently resist.”

It was a deliberate provocation. If Tanaka were there to flex her muscles and show how important and in charge she was, she’d point out that her people could abuse the populace to their heart’s content and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Instead she said, “Understood. Prepare a hard dock at the reactor level of the station for our ship.”

When the dockmaster indicated that it was ready, Tanaka touched a control on her wrist and said, “Captain Singh, a berth is being prepped for docking. The station is ours.”

“I am Captain Santiago Singh of the Laconian destroyer Gathering Storm,” the young man said. “I’m here to accept your surrender.”