Persepolis Rising

by James S. A. Corey

  “The Institute respects that, ma’am,” Okoye-Sarkis said. “This is a very new project, but one I think has the potential to yield real benefits for everyone. I have a breakdown of our mission proposals I can leave with you and whoever in your staff wants to look at them.”

  “All right,” Drummer said.

  “And the passage agreement. I don’t mean to press, but we’re still getting our backers together, and the fees—”

  “Give us your proposals,” Drummer said. “The board can go over them. Whatever conclusion they make about reducing or waiving the contract fees will be fine with me.”

  “Thank you, Madam President. That’s wonderful. Thank you very much.”

  The scientist practically bowed himself out of the room. Drummer ticked off the last entry in her morning agenda. The afternoon’s list looked just as long and at least equally irritating. Santos-Baca caught her eye and lifted an eyebrow.

  “It’s an interesting proposal. It should make for a lively debate,” she said, meaning I see you just gave the board another issue to deal with.

  “It’s important that the board be involved in any serious decisions,” Drummer said, meaning Suck it up. Emily Santos-Baca chuckled, and half against her will, Drummer smiled. But only for a few seconds.

  She suffered through the small talk and pleasantries that came before and after all meetings like social plaque, then went back to her private office as soon as she could. Vaughn or one of his staff had left a bowl of soy pasta with mushrooms and a glass of wine for her. She started with the wine.

  She pulled up the display of the full Sol system. Planets, void cities, stations. The asteroids swirling in the complex orbital dances where gravity and system geography made pools of stability. It looked like images of a snowstorm on Earth. She’d never seen snow to know how accurate that was.

  She cut out most of the data, simplifying it enough for a human eye to make sense of. There was People’s Home, in Mars’ orbit, but not near the planet. And there, nearer the ring gate, was Independence. She placed a query, and the Malaclypse appeared—a single bright-yellow dot that seemed like it was almost on top of People’s Home. Like the ship had never left.

  It was a failure of scale. That superposition of light in the display was a hundred thousand kilometers by now. More than the circumference of Earth twice over and getting larger every second. It was just that the unbridgeable distance between her and Saba was nothing compared to the vastness around them. Here in the system, and then out in all the other systems beyond the gates.

  Even for a woman born to the void, it was overwhelming. And everyone seemed to want her to control it for them. To take responsibility for it all so that they could feel like someone, somewhere was in charge.

  She’d never have said it aloud, but there was part of her that missed the way it had been in her youth. The Belt had been the OPA. Earth and Mars had been the enemy. That had seemed overwhelming at the time. It was only everything that had happened since then that made it seem small and manageable by comparison. A nostalgia for the age that had forged her into who she was. That had given her all the skills she’d needed and then changed into a place where half the time she felt like an impostor in her own clothes.

  The Rocinante was light-hours away through the gates. Light-centuries by more traditional paths. She pictured Holden as if he were across the table. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then started the recording.

  “Captain Holden. I’ve gotten your status report about the situation on Freehold. Politely put, your proposed solution isn’t going to work …”

  Chapter Six: Holden

  Politely put,” Drummer said on the screen, “your proposed solution isn’t going to work. What you’re doing would fundamentally change the union. Jailing someone isn’t a thing we do. We’re a transport union, not a police force. We don’t have prisons. We don’t have prisoners. We don’t have judges. We have contracts. When someone breaks the terms of the contract, we object. Then we levy fines and penalties. And then, if they still won’t do what they said, we stop playing with them. What we don’t do is arrest them.”

  “She sounds pissed,” Alex said.

  Holden paused the message playback. The ops deck was dim, the way Alex liked it. The air recycler clicked and the drive hummed through the bones of the ship, as familiar as silence.

  “Yeah,” Holden said. “That doesn’t sound like her happy voice, does it?”

  Alex scratched at his beard and gave Holden a sympathetic shrug. “You want to finish that someplace private?”

  “I don’t think that’ll make it better.” Holden took the pause back off, and Drummer sprang back into motion.

  “The other thing we don’t do is let everyone who captains a ship on our registry make their own policies for the union as a whole. What you did on Freehold doesn’t get to set precedent for what I have to do on every other system that decides to break the rules. I sent you out there with a mission to deliver a message. Not negotiate. Not broker deals. You were there because it was important for everyone else who’s watching—and everyone’s watching—to see what happens when you break the terms of your contract with the Transport Union.”

  “So it was theater first, and then an execution,” Holden said to the screen. Not that she could hear him. Still, she paused, looked down, and gathered herself as if she had.

  “My problem now,” she said, “is how to fix what you’ve broken with the least amount of damage. I will be consulting with the board and our legal counsel, and when we decide what needs to happen, I’ll tell you. And you’ll do it. I really hope this is clear enough that it doesn’t confuse you.”

  “I’m getting the feeling she may not actually like me,” Holden said.

  “She’s working herself up a little,” Alex said. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  “For now,” Drummer said, “I am instructing you to proceed on to Medina with Governor Houston. I will have someone ready to meet your ship when you dock. At that time, I will expect you to read a statement that I will put together for you. It may be an apology. It may be a clarification of the Transport Union rules. Whatever it is, I’ll deliver it to you before you get there. And you’ll recite it word for word.

  “You don’t get to make the universe be what you want just by saying it, Holden. There are other people who live here too. Next time, show some respect.”

  The message ended. Alex blew out a long, slow breath. “Well, maybe take it a little personally,” he said as Holden closed the message out. The screen returned to its series of rolling system reports. Drive output, environmental stability, waste-heat management. The Rocinante doing what she did best. What she always did. The knot in his stomach sat there, quietly. He couldn’t tell if it was anger or disappointment or something altogether else.

  Alex cracked his knuckles. “You’ve got that look,” he said.

  “No, I don’t,” Holden said. “I don’t look like anything.”

  “She’s got a point. There’s a lot of colonies out there. If we’re going to start hauling in bad guys from all of them … well, there’s a lot of mission creep in that. Telling them they can’t come play if they won’t play nice? It’s rough, but it doesn’t change what the Transport Union is, you know?”

  “It’s more convenient,” Holden said more sharply than he’d intended. “It is. No, I see that. I understand that it’s easier to run the union if everything’s in terms of who’s violated the terms of the contract and withholding service and … and give it a few more decades so the colonies are all able to support themselves, maybe cutting off trade will be a slap on the wrist. But the fact of the matter right now? It’s a death sentence.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said. “What I heard about Bara Gaon Complex and Auberon, they’re already—”

  “This isn’t Bara Gaon Complex or Auberon. This is Freehold. If we cut them off for three years, the colony would collapse, and they’d all starve. So right now, yeah, she’s saying we should ki
ll them. Only she’s phrasing it so it sounds like it’s just the natural consequence of their choices and not also ours.”

  “Well, yeah,” Alex said, but Holden wasn’t done. The words kept pushing their way out of him.

  “They didn’t vote for Drummer,” he said, tapping hard on the screen. “They can’t appeal her decisions, and she has the power of life and death over them. She needs to be held to a higher standard than ‘whatever’s most convenient.’ And in every military service in history, when the commander gave an immoral command, it was the duty of the soldiers to disobey it.”

  “Every military service in history?”

  “All the good ones.”

  “All right,” Alex said. Then a moment later, “They didn’t elect us either.”

  “Exactly! That’s my point.”

  “Right,” Alex said.

  “So we’re agreeing with each other.”

  “Yes. But it still kind of sounds like we’re fighting.”

  “It does,” Holden said, and leaned back. His crash couch shifted under him, hissing. The tightness in his gut hadn’t lessened at all. He’d really hoped it would. “Shit.”

  “You think she’s going to shut them out again? Put the quarantine back in place?”

  “I don’t know,” Holden said. “Except if she was going to do that, she’d probably make us take Houston back to die with his friends. And it doesn’t do great things for your political dog-and-pony show when the captain of one of your pet gunships starts refusing your orders. She’ll have to give us this one.”

  “That sounds right,” Alex agreed. “Next one’s going to be interesting, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were quiet for a moment. He knew Alex was going to speak even before the words came. Decades of living and working in the same place meant you never had to ask for someone to pass the salt at galley time. This was just the same.

  “If you want, we could yell at each other some more.”

  “Thanks,” Holden said. Alex nodded. It was an open invitation, and only half a joke. He consulted his gut again, then pulled himself up and headed for the lift. Alex didn’t ask where he was going. He probably knew.

  The galley still had the ghost of the ginger tea Clarissa drank to soothe her stomach, but neither she nor Amos was there now. The food dispenser showed their supply levels, and he saw them without really seeing them. He’d lived on the Rocinante longer than anyplace else in his life. He knew the ship better than he knew himself.

  As he walked down the corridor to their room, he tried to shrug off the bitterness and the anger. The sense of guilt that was rising in his throat. Even so, he knew she’d see it.

  Naomi was in the crash couch, her arm thrown over her eyes, but her breath didn’t have the deepness of sleep. Her nap was already over or else it hadn’t yet begun. She smiled, and the deep lines at the sides of her mouth were beautiful.

  “How bad is it?” she asked even before she took her arm away.

  Holden took a deep breath and let it hiss out through his teeth. His gut didn’t loosen, but it did shift. The anger turned toward something deeper. Grief, maybe. He crossed his arms. She shifted to look at him. The gray at her temples had started appearing a few years ago, and was slowly spreading. There were lines at the corners of her eyes that the antiaging meds they all took now weren’t going to rub away. They were beautiful, too.

  “I think it may be time for us to do something else,” he said. “For me to do something else, anyway.”

  She shifted, the crash couch moving to adjust to her. If there had been a joke waiting, an impulse to lighten the moment, it died when she looked at him. Seeing her reacting to him told him how serious he really was. How bad he looked.

  “Walk me through it,” she said.

  He gave her the basics—what Drummer had said, what he and Alex had talked about, what sense he’d made of it—and with every word, every phrase, he felt a confusion he hadn’t known he was suffering start to clear. Just saying it to her, knowing that even if he got the words or thoughts wrong, she would hear the meaning underneath them, let him find his own clarity. The tightness in his gut didn’t go away.

  “When we were hunting down pirates, I could accept their surrender,” he said. “Even the Free Navy could have set down arms and we’d have arrested them. But now I’m working for a bureaucratic system that’s willing to kill people as a matter of policy. I don’t feel like I’m enforcing rules, I feel like an executioner, and … I don’t think I can do it.”

  Naomi shifted, making room for him on the crash couch. He lay down beside her. The couch adjusted to their combined mass. She made a low sound, part hum and part sigh. “Tough to do our jobs, then.”

  “These colonies? They’re all dependent on the Transport Union, and maybe they won’t always be. But until they’re self-sustaining, they should have a voice in how the union makes the rules. How it enforces them. They didn’t elect Drummer.”

  “They didn’t elect any of them. Walker, Sanjrani, Pa.”

  “The others weren’t cutting off trade. Drummer is. And yes, I know. Looking at it, this was probably inevitable. Maybe it’s a miracle it took this long to happen. But now it has happened, and …”

  “And when one thing changes, other things change too.”

  A voice came from the galley. Bobbie, talking to someone—Alex or Amos or Clarissa. He didn’t hear the response, but Bobbie laughed a little at it. The knot in his gut grew heavier.

  “I can put out a press release,” he said, and the words seemed to sink him deeper into the gel. “Get the message out to all the colonies about what Drummer wants to do, why I think it’s wrong. Try to lead some kind of … I don’t know, reform coalition. Maybe talk to the Association of Worlds, see if they want to take it on.”

  “Big fight to pick,” Naomi said, neither approving nor disapproving. Just saying it because it was true.

  “It’ll mean grounding the Roci or keeping to one system for a while. There’s a lot of trade between Earth and Mars, still. Ganymede. Ceres. Maybe there are some colony worlds with enough infrastructure in place that we could find a niche there. Or make one. Or I could tell a few people what’s going on—”

  “They already know,” Naomi said. “Drummer sent us out here to make a statement. Everyone’s already watching. Nothing you’ve said isn’t already on news and discussion feeds all around the colonies.”

  “So maybe I could let someone else take point on this battle,” he said, closing his eyes. “Just get some in-system contracts and see what happens. It’s important. But … I don’t know. But I’m tired. Too tired to fight this one.”

  “Or.”

  He opened his eyes, turned to his side. Her head was tilted the way it was when she hid behind her hair, only without the hiding. Her mouth tensed. Her eyes met his.

  “You remember when we first got the Roci?” she said. “We were on the run from, oh, I think everyone? Flying this stolen ship. You asked if we wanted to sell her, split the money, and all of us take an early retirement.”

  He chuckled. “She was worth more back then.”

  “‘Retirement’ meant more years back then too,” she said. She wasn’t laughing. “What if this isn’t a decision you need to make for everyone?”

  “Meaning?”

  “We both know Alex’s going to die in that pilot’s chair. Bobbie’s at home here. Clarissa’s health isn’t great. And I don’t know, but if she decides to try a skilled-nursing facility on Ceres or something, I get the feeling Amos may go with her.”

  Holden let that idea sink in. He didn’t understand the bond between Amos and Clarissa except that it was fierce and platonic and had lasted through years. If it was love, it didn’t look like any version he’d ever experienced, but it didn’t look like anything else either. He ran his mind over the idea of Amos still on the Rocinante without Clarissa. He’d never considered it before. It was a melancholy prospect.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Holden said. Then, a
moment later, “Yeah.”

  “We’re getting up to the same age Fred was when he stroked out on a burn. And you’ve been on daily anticancer meds for more than half of your life now. It doesn’t matter how good they are, that’s going to take a toll on your system. Leave you a little more fragile. So the other thing we can do? Sell our shares. Head down to Titan, pick a resort, and enjoy our retirement.”

  No, Holden thought. No, I will never leave this place and these people. This is my home, and no matter what the dangers and threats and fights are, I will stand this ground. This is where I belong. Where we all belong.

  Only what came spilling out of his mouth was “God, that sounds wonderful. Let’s do that.”

  Naomi leaned forward, her brows furrowed. “Really? Because I’ve got a half dozen other arguments I’ve been working on for why it’s not a terrible idea.”

  “Oh yeah, hold on to those,” Holden said. “I’m going to flip my opinion back and forth for weeks. But right now, living in a dome on Titan with you sounds like the single best idea anyone has ever had.”

  “You wouldn’t feel like it made you less of a man?”

  “Nope.”

  “That you were letting the universe down by not taking on every fight there was? Because I worked on that one for a while. I’ve got some good lines practiced up.”

  “Keep ’em,” Holden said. “You’ll need them later. But right now, I’m sold.”

  Her face relaxed. He could still see the woman she’d been when they were on the Canterbury. Time and age, sorrow and laughter had taken some of the curve out of her cheek, left her skin a little looser at her neck. They weren’t young anymore. Maybe you could only really see that someone was beautiful when they’d grown into themselves. He moved to kiss her—

  —and drifted off the crash couch.

  With the thrust suddenly cut, leaning up had pushed him into the cabin, twisting as he floated. He reached back with his foot automatically, trying to hook it into one of the holds, but the ship was flipping, so it took a couple tries. Naomi had already braced herself on the frame of the crash couch.