Persepolis Rising (The Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  It didn’t matter. Because they didn’t matter. Not when a whole city could die in a heartbeat.

  She was in the lobby of the union’s executive offices, sitting in an uncomfortable couch with her eyes locked on nothing in particular when Avasarala found her. The old woman steered her wheelchair across from Drummer like they were in someone’s private quarters or a back porch back on Earth. There was no one else in the lobby. That was Vaughn’s doing, more likely than not. In her imagination, the decking beneath her and Avasarala bucked and split open. What had Santos-Baca thought when it happened? Had she had time to think about it at all? She was trying to understand that she would never see the younger woman again, but the thought wouldn’t take. She dreaded what came after it did.

  “I’m sorry,” Avasarala said.

  Drummer shook her head.

  “It won’t help you,” the old woman said, “but they all knew the risks going in. The chances that we would turn the Tempest back the first time we tried? Always thin.”

  “We should have waited,” Drummer said. “We should have pulled them all back. Gathered everyone together and had every goddamn ship we have attack that fucking monstrosity at the same time. Wipe it out.”

  Her voice broke. She was crying, but it didn’t feel like it was her doing it. Avasarala handed her a cloth. “You’re mistaken, Camina. The cost was higher than we wanted. Higher than we’d thought. But we did what we came here to do.”

  “Die? Badly?”

  “Learn,” Avasarala said. “How quickly the deck healed itself? That’s something we needed to know. But the places where a rail-gun round hit their PDCs, the weapons system there didn’t grow right back into place? We needed those too, and we didn’t even know to look for them. Maybe the ship can’t fix more complex mechanisms. We have a map of the armaments now. Where the PDCs are. Where the rail guns are. Where the torpedoes launch from. Next time, you can target those specifically. Degrade its attacking power, push it in ways we couldn’t this time because we just didn’t know.”

  “All right,” Drummer said.

  “They didn’t die for nothing,” Avasarala said.

  “Everyone dies for nothing,” Drummer said.

  They were quiet for a moment. Drummer coughed, blew her nose into the cloth, and then leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Since the moment she’d taken the oath of office, there had been moments—not many, but enough to recognize—that she’d been certain that her place at the head of the union was all a terrible mistake. Saba promised her that everyone felt like that, like an impostor, sometimes. It was part of being human. His words had seemed comforting before. In her mind, Independence died again. She had the sick feeling that it would die a thousand more times before she got to sleep. More when she dreamed it.

  “Did you do this to me?” she asked.

  Avasarala frowned, papery forehead folding itself like a slept-on sheet.

  “Did you manipulate me into sacrificing my people so that you’d get the data you wanted?” Drummer said. “Was this you?”

  “This was history fucking us both,” Avasarala said. “Live as long as I have? See the changes that I’ve seen? You’ll learn something terrible about this.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No point. Until you see it yourself, you won’t understand.”

  “Hey, you know what? Fuck you.”

  Avasarala laughed hard enough that her wheelchair thought something was wrong and bucked forward a few centimeters before she could stop it. “Fair enough, Camina. Fair enough. Here then. See if you can follow me. Last long enough, and you’ll see that they’re all our people.”

  “Independence and the Ontario,” Drummer spat. “Union and EMC, all one big happy family standing against the blowtorch together. Wonderful.”

  “I told you that you wouldn’t understand,” Avasarala said, her voice cold and cutting. “The fuckers on the Tempest? I’m telling you they’re us too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Holden

  The artificially pretty man who acted as the news anchor for what everyone was calling the Laconian-state newsfeed sat in somber reflection, not quite looking directly into the camera. On a screen behind him, the first battle between the Tempest and the combined forces of the Sol system played out. It was all from the Tempest’s perspective, of course. Lots of telescopic zooms and torpedo-guidance camera footage. In one, a Martian frigate, one of the Rocinante’s next-generation cousins, died in a fireball as a rail gun shot cut through it from nose to tail. In another, a torpedo camera POV hurtled through space and into the flank of a UNN destroyer and ended in a flash of static.

  One by one, the ships of the Sol fleet died. From the footage, it wasn’t possible to tell if the Tempest was even damaged. And each time a ship died, a quiet gasp went through the air around Holden as he sat and watched the first act of the end of the world in a cramped metal room surrounded by the members of his little resistance group.

  The screen behind the pretty man went blank. He turned his sober face directly into the camera and said, “To address Medina Station regarding what you’ve just seen, we are honored to bring you a statement from station governor, Captain Santiago Singh.”

  The camera pulled back to reveal Governor Singh sitting at the news desk next to pretty boy. Singh lacked his counterpart’s carefully sculpted androgynous beauty, but he shared his look of quiet reflection.

  “Greetings, Laconian citizens and residents of Medina Station. I come here in a moment of tragedy for us all. I will not gloat, or brag about Laconian military superiority. I have no wish to glory in the destruction you’ve just witnessed. Instead, I honor the brave warriors of the Sol system, who died believing they were defending their homes. There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make, and I have nothing but respect for these courageous people. I ask that you honor them as well, as we have a moment of silence.”

  Singh lowered his head and closed his eyes. Pretty boy did the same.

  “Motherfucker,” someone behind Holden said. Next to him, Bobbie loudly cracked her knuckles and frowned so hard Holden worried she might pull out the fresh stitches holding her cheek together.

  On the screen, Singh lifted his head, then a moment later opened his eyes. “Laconians, and I speak to everyone on Medina when I say that, as I consider all of you my fellow citizens and peers. Laconians, the stated goal of your military is always the defense and protection of life. When the Sol system fleet ceased their attack and began a retreat, the Heart of the Tempest immediately ceased firing on them. And no element of the Laconian military—ship, soldier, or station—will ever fire except in response to threat to life or property.”

  “Or in retribution against a whole fucking system you don’t like,” someone said from behind Holden. “Hypocritical dawusa.”

  Singh leaned forward, his dark eyes imploring all who watched him. “I urge everyone with family or friends in the Sol system to contact them, to urge their political representatives to meet with Admiral Trejo and discuss the terms of their entry into the Laconian Empire without further military action and loss of life. Those who died were heroes all, but Laconia wants live citizens, not dead heroes. It is our duty—yours and mine—to do everything we can to achieve peace and safety for all of us. To this end, I am temporarily lifting the communication blackout back to the Sol system for those with family there. Please use this freedom to help your loved ones make the right decision. Thank you for your attention, and good day to all.”

  Bobbie rolled her shoulders like a boxer stepping into the ring. To her right, Naomi was staring at the screen through half-lidded eyes, like she was solving a complex math problem. Holden was about to speak when Saba stood up and walked to the front of the room. The thirty or so people of the Medina Station insurgency became respectfully quiet. Holden held his breath.

  “No reprisals,” Saba said, and Holden released his held breath in a rush. That was not what he’d expected to hear. “You savvy, coyos? Not one fucking thing. Yeah, pissed off, you.
Got reason. Got all the reason. Want to cut a throat, make somebody pay.”

  “God damn right,” a skinny man everyone called Nutter said, standing up and toying with the knife on his belt. “Maybe a lot of throats.”

  “You do,” Saba said to him, “and yours is next, and I’m doing the cutting. Mushroom food, you. Every Laconian throat you cut is ten of ours you’re bleeding out. We stay angry, but we stay smart, sabe? Stay with your missions, stay with your plans.”

  A ripple of grudging assent moved through the room. People started getting up to leave. The mutters of conversation had an edge to them, but Holden didn’t hear anyone actively planning a murder, so he’d call it a win.

  Holden caught Bobbie’s eye and then stood up to grab Saba’s arm before he could leave. “Let’s talk.”

  Fifteen minutes later Saba, Bobbie, and Naomi were sipping tea out of waxy cups in the Diner. Holden tried casually leaning against the wall for a minute, then gave up and paced around the room to give his restless energy someplace to go.

  “The problem we’ve got right now is we’re all rats in a cage,” he said. “And we’re spending a lot of time and energy figuring out how big the cage is and where the doors are and how we might open one. But we haven’t got a single clue what we’d do if we actually got out.”

  “We don’t start with just getting out?” Naomi asked.

  “There was a time when I’d have said that was enough,” Holden agreed. “But that was when I was still thinking of this as a war. When escaping to join up with our side of the fight might matter.”

  “This isn’t a war now,” Bobbie said, her voice low and dangerous.

  “No?” Saba asked.

  “No,” Holden said. “The war’s over. Sol might not know it yet, and a lot of people will die so that they can feel like they gave it a shot, but it’s over.”

  “So what, then,” Saba asked. “Good Laconians, us?”

  “No,” Holden replied. “At least not yet. But it does change the nature of what we’re doing here. We’re not looking to get the Roci free and join the fight. This is a jailbreak.”

  Naomi made a clicking noise with her tongue, her eyes distant, then said, “All the same problems. The Marines, the Laconian destroyer, Medina’s scopes. But you’re saying if we can solve those, we just get as many people and ships free as we can and make a run for it. Scatter.”

  Saba nodded one fist, then gave her the two-fingered OPA salute. Holden felt a little twinge of unease about that, but this wasn’t the time to talk it through.

  “It gives us a goal,” Holden said. “Maybe we can keep everyone pulling the same direction if they understand what the end game is.”

  Saba tilted his head. There was no surprise in his expression. He’d been thinking along the same lines, so maybe he’d come to the same conclusions. “The decryption safe room.”

  “I don’t like losing it,” Holden said, looking more at Bobbie now than Saba. “We’re still getting in a lot of data from the sniffer, and I know once we move forward with the plan, we lose that. We won’t get it back. But until we can decrypt what we do have, we can’t use it. And the Typhoon? It’s due in thirty-three days.”

  “Thirty-two,” Naomi said.

  “I don’t want to die with one still in the chamber,” Bobbie said. “I’m good with the timing.”

  “Bien,” Saba said. “I’m in.”

  “Great,” Holden replied. “Get word to every cell leader and ship captain you trust. We need to have everyone ready when the time comes.”

  “This is gonna be some strange bedfellows,” Saba said as he left.

  “Find some lunch?” Holden said to Naomi.

  “Give me half an hour,” she replied. “I want to get a computer crunching the tactical data that video gave us. But after that, meet out front?”

  “OK,” Holden said, wondering how to waste half an hour in the cramped space of their little hideout.

  “Hey, Holden,” Bobbie said as Naomi left the room. “Can I hang on to you for a second?”

  Holden shrugged and sat on a crate. Bobbie sat flexing her hands and staring at the floor so long that Holden started to wonder if he’d misheard her. He braced himself. He didn’t know where this conversation was going to go, but he had a suspicion it was about her and him and the captaincy of the Rocinante, and he didn’t know what to say about any of that. So it came as kind of a relief that he was wrong.

  “Amos is going to be a problem,” she finally said. “I had the Voltaire people talked off the ledge when he started that fight. He wanted to crack some heads, and he made it happen. That’s fine for shore leave when he wants to blow off some steam, but it won’t fly when we’re under the radar like this.”

  “Huh. Okay. I’d wondered about that.”

  “It’s a problem I don’t know how to fix,” Bobbie said.

  “Me neither,” Holden said. “But give it a couple days.”

  “Not sure we have them,” Bobbie said.

  “Why not?”

  Bobbie pointed behind her back, meaning not what was physically behind her but backward in time. “You just gave us all a goal,” she said. “Something to bring us all together.”

  “I did,” Holden said. “And I’m thinking from the way you’re looking at me right now that there’s some aspect of that I’ve maybe overlooked?”

  “Some of us are Katria Mendez and her mad bombers.”

  Holden felt a coolness down his spine. “Yeah. That could be interesting,” he said.

  “Right?”

  He found Amos in a narrow side hall, a welding torch in his hand. The big man’s arms showed little pocks of red where sparks had landed, but Amos hadn’t done so much as find a long-sleeved work shirt.

  “Hey,” Holden said. “How’s it going?”

  “Doing all right,” Amos said, gesturing at the conduits that textured the wall. “Saba’s folks said we should reroute the power. Makes it a little harder for the cops to track down where they’re losing it from if it keeps moving.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Decent plan in theory,” Amos said. “In practice, kind of an ass-pain, but whatever.”

  “I can see that,” Holden said, then paused.

  The truth was, in spite of decades flying the same ship, Holden still had very little idea what made Amos tick. He liked food, booze, meaningless sex, jokes. He seemed to like palling around with Alex, but when their pilot had decided to try being married again, Bobbie had been his best man. Amos treated every word out of Naomi’s mouth as if it were gospel, but the truth was all of them did these days.

  Amos found the conduit he was looking for, lit up the torch, and opened a six-centimeter length of it, exposing the plastic-sheathed wire inside it without so much as melting the insulation. It was a good trick. Amos killed the torch.

  “So,” Holden said again. “How’s it going?”

  Amos paused. Turned to look at Holden.

  “Ah,” the big mechanic said. “Sorry there, Cap. Were we having a conversation and I didn’t notice?”

  “Kind of, yes,” Holden said.

  “Babs ratted me out.” Amos’ voice was as calm as the surface of still water. Holden was pretty certain something big was swimming underneath it.

  “Look,” he said, “we didn’t get where we are by me prying into things you didn’t want pried into. I don’t want to change that now. But yes, Bobbie’s worried about you. I am too. We’re going into some pretty dangerous times here, and if there’s anything that you need to get off your chest, now is a better time than later.”

  Amos shrugged. “Nah, I get it. I got a little happy when we went on that last run. Opened up sooner than Babs would have liked. I’ll rein in some if it makes her feel better.”

  “I don’t want to make an issue of it,” Holden said.

  “It ain’t an issue, then,” Amos said, turning back to the conduit. He took a thick pair of pliers from his pocket, clamped them over the power cable, and started wrestling it out like he was
getting crab meat out of a shell. It looked really dangerous. “I’ll play nice. Cross my heart.”

  “Okay, then,” Holden said. “Great. Glad we had this talk.”

  “Anytime,” Amos said.

  Holden hesitated, turned, and walked away. Bobbie was right. He didn’t know what was going on in Amos’ mind, but something definitely was. He was hard-pressed to think what the good version of that looked like. And if Amos was finally coming off the rails, he had no idea what would cause it or how to fix it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bobbie

  The representatives from the Voltaire Collective entered the meeting space like they were anticipating an attack. She would have felt the same if the positions were reversed. Three in the front with unencumbered hands, three in the back looking around like tourists coming to a casino for the first time in case something interesting or threatening would come from behind, and in the center, Katria Mendez. Her face was the expressionless calm of a player at a poker table. The kind that always left with more chips than she came with. Just seeing her made Bobbie’s cheek throb a little. Psychosomatic pain, but pain all the same. She registered the sensation but didn’t let it bother her.

  Saba stepped forward, Holden at his side, and greeted them, waved them forward with smiles and Belter salutes. He let them check him for weapons first as a kind of social courtesy, and Holden did the same. The old phrase from back in the day came to Bobbie’s mind: There’s OPA and there’s OPA. Same now as it had been then. It was always a little eerie to see how comfortably the men and women of the Transport Union fell back into being criminals. And how well she and the crew of the Roci fit in with them when they did.

  Amos stretched his shoulders and neck.

  “I know,” Bobbie said. “I don’t like it either.”