Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

Maybe this was the way the universe showed her the errors of her ways. Taking the evil that she’d committed so offhandedly and turning it around to point at her. Her and Santos-Baca. All the refugees of Independence. All of the void city’s dead. If it was, then the universe hadn’t embraced the idea of proportional response yet.

The small, quiet part of her mind that watched all the rest knew that she wasn’t right. That there was no way for her to be right, not in a situation like this. If she’d been able to sleep, maybe. But the fear was eroding her bit by bit and taking away all the things that let her recover. Like a recycling pond with a plugged drain, she was filling with shit, and sooner or later, she’d overspill. It wasn’t a source of anxiety. It was just something she knew about herself, as if she were thinking about some different woman.

She drew her robe closer around her chest, spooled through the feeds. Watched a few seconds of the news from Loundres Nova, a few seconds out of the shipyards at Tycho-Pallas Complex, Ceres, Luna, Earth. Never enough to hear a whole story.

Weirdly, not all of it was about Laconia. There was a fire at an arcology outside Paris. A popular musician Drummer had liked as a girl had died. It was as if not everything were defined by Laconia and Duarte and her own failures. And then the top traffic on the feed would re-sort, and there was an image of the Tempest in all its threat and glory.

Holden had been right. Her plan for Freehold had been cruel, and she’d done it for the convenience of not being a government, not really. So that she could be unprepared when a navy no one knew existed arrived in force. She should have been kinder, wiser, more cunning. She should have been something other than what she was. There had to have been a moment when she could have chosen something different, when all of this could have been stopped. She couldn’t think when it had been.

Her system made its tock. If she’d been asleep, her lights would have come up.

“Ma’am?” Vaughn said. Not even his nighttime staff. Whatever it was, they’d woken him up for it first, and he’d made the decision to wake her. That couldn’t be good.

“I’m awake,” she said.

“We’ve had a message for you from the Tempest. It came in on tightbeam an hour ago. Signal intelligence says it’s genuine.”

“Not broadcast?”

“No, ma’am. Unencrypted, but not broadcast.”

Something the enemy wanted her and her people to see, but not as a press release. The switch in her mind flipped, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep forever. “I’ll take it in my room,” she said.

Her screen went dark, and then Admiral Trejo was on it, looking out at her as if he could actually see through the screen and light delay. His expression was almost rueful. That would be a pose, of course. A decision he’d made about how to appear. She hated that, even knowing that, she felt herself hoping he could be reasoned with. Wanting to like him, because then maybe he’d like her. Stockholm syndrome’s first, pale roots. She pushed the gentle impulse away and summoned up her hatred.

“President Drummer,” he said. “I hope I find you well. On behalf of High Consul Duarte, I’m asking again for the Transport Union’s ships to stand down and accept administration by the Laconian Empire. But I understand if that answer is still no. I’m going to keep asking until you change your mind, though. The sooner that comes, the less loss of life your people will suffer. Their fate is entirely up to you.

“If we do not have your unconditional surrender within eighteen hours, though, then I’m afraid things will become less pleasant. I have been ordered to deny you the use of the shipyards at Pallas Station. I’d rather get through this with the least loss of life and infrastructure. Again, entirely in your control. You can end this at any time.

“I am tendering a similar offer to the EMC, and I imagine you’ll all want to talk this over. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to do the right thing and lay down your arms. The high consul has given me a certain amount of latitude in how we bring this unpleasantness to a close, but the longer this drags on, the less freedom I’ll have. And the worst-case scenario isn’t something I relish.

“Confer with your colleagues at the EMC, and reply back to me as soon as you can. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ve chosen to protract this a little farther. The blood of Pallas Station will be on your hands. I sincerely hope and pray that you’ll be wiser than that.”

He gave a little nod, and

the message ended. Drummer’s rage was sluggish and muddy from lack of sleep, but it was hot. She made the connection request, and Vaughn picked it up immediately.

“How many people have seen this?”

“The comms officer on duty, my assistant, me, and now you. Only four.”

It was two people too many. Maybe three. Still it might not find its way onto the nets, depending on how well the EMC controlled information in its house. It was the nature of bad news to spread, and once it was out, it was out forever. She had to assume that she didn’t have much time before it did. One more chance to try being the person that the situation called for instead of just herself.

If she were the person who should be here, if she were the leader that the union and the system and humanity needed, what would she say now? How would she say it?

“Wake Lafflin up, and get Admiral Hu on the horn. We’re going to need a talk.”

Pallas Station, Trejo had called it. Not Pallas-Tycho Complex. One of the strange things about Laconian language was the decades of linguistic drift. No one had called it Pallas Station since before Sanjrani had been in charge of the union. He’d overseen the update of Pallas’ refineries and the semipermanent installation of Tycho Station as the primary shipyard of the metals and ceramics, lace and nanolaminates produced there. It had been more efficient than leaving Tycho independently on the float. There were generations of work that would need to be done, and putting everything in the same place made it all go faster.

People’s Home had been assembled there. And Independence. The void city Assurance of Peace was half-together now, its vast carbon-silicate ribs still bared to the vacuum. Thousands of families lived and worked there, and would for another few hours, unless Drummer capitulated.

“The loss of building capacity would set us back by decades,” Admiral Hu said. “Any chance we have of rebuilding and fortifying a navy relies on that station. This would cause a bottleneck that would radically change our projections.”

Drummer shifted in her chair. It wasn’t the first time she’d listened to the message.

“Deploying the full force of the EMC-and-union-combined navy can’t be accomplished in the time frame described here.” Hu’s face was replaced by a schematic of the system, each fleet marked with its time to engagement. They’d been keeping the ships scattered to deny the Tempest a single target-rich environment. Here was the trade-off for that …

“And furthermore, only three-quarters of our ships have completed resupply with the torpedo modifications based on our first engagement. Our strategic analysis is that a decision to sacrifice Pallas-Tycho Complex in order to fully prepare the combined fleet will degrade our long-term readiness, but increase our chances of making a decisive blow against the Tempest in the short term. Of course, any decision requires full coordination between the union and the EMC.”