Persepolis Rising

Chapter Ten: Drummer

“Okay,” Drummer said, it felt like for the thousandth time, “but are these things naturally occurring or not?”

Cameron Tur, the union’s science advisor, was an impressively tall, gangly man with an Adam’s apple the size of a thumb and faded tattoos on each of his knuckles. He’d come into the service when Tjon was president of the union, and kept the job through Walker and Sanjrani. As old as he was and as much as he’d seen, she had expected him to have an air of condescension, but he’d only ever come across as a little ill at ease. His chuckle now was apologetic.

“That’s a good question, semantically speaking,” he said. “The difference between something made by nature and something made by beings that evolved up within nature, sa sa?”

“Difficult,” Emily Santos-Baca agreed. She was the representative of the policy council for the union’s board. Officially, she didn’t have a higher rank than any of the other councilors, but she got along with Drummer better than any of the others. It made her a sort of first-among-equals. She was younger than Drummer by exactly two years. They even had the same birthday. It made Drummer like the woman just a little bit, even when she was being a pain in the ass.

Drummer looked at the images again. The whatever-it-was was little longer than two hand-widths together, curved like a claw or a seedpod, and shining green and gray in the sunlight outside Gallish Complex on Fusang. She started the image playback, and the young man sprang into life, slotting one—claw, pod, whatever the hell it was—into another with an audible click to create an empty space roughly the shape of an almond. Light flickered into the space, shifting shapes that danced on the edge of meaning. The young man grinned into the camera and said the same things he had every time she’d watched him. Watching the light is associated with feelings of great peace and connection with all forms of life in the galaxy, and appears to stimulate blah blah fucking blah. She stopped it again.

“Millions of them?” she asked.

“So far,” Tur agreed. “Once the mine goes deeper, they may find more.”

“Fuck.”

The colony worlds had begun simply enough. A few households, a few townships, a desperate scrabble against the local biosphere to make clean water and edible food. Sometimes colonies would falter and die before help could arrive. Sometimes they’d give up and evacuate. But more than a few took root on the rocks and unfamiliar soil of the distant planets. And as they found their niches, as they became stable, the first wave of deep exploration had begun. The massive underwater transport arches on Corazón Sagrado, the light-bending moths on Persephone, the programmable antibiotics from Ilus.

Evolution alone had created all the wonders and complexities of Earth. That same thing thirteen hundred times over would have been challenge enough, but added to that were the artifacts of the dead species of whatever the hell they’d been that had designed the protomolecule gates, the slow zone, the massive and eternal cities that seemed to exist somewhere on every world they’d discovered. Artifacts of alien toolmakers that had been able and willing to hijack all life on Earth just to make one more road between the stars.

Any of it could be the key to unimagined miracles. Or catastrophe. Or placebo-euphoric snake-oil light-show bullshit. The images from the seedpods could be the encrypted records of the fallen civilization that had built miracles they were still only beginning to understand. Or they could be the spores of whatever had killed them. Or they could be lava lamps. Who fucking knew?

“The science stations on Kinley are very anxious to get a shipment for study,” Santos-Baca said. “But without knowing whether these are technological artifacts or natural resources—”

“Which,” Tur apologized, “is difficult to determine with only the resources on Fusang—”

“I get it,” Drummer said and shifted to look at Santos-Baca. “Isn’t this kind of decision pretty much within your wheelhouse?”

“I have the votes to allow the contract,” Santos-Baca said, “but I don’t have enough to override a veto.”

Drummer nodded. The question wasn’t whether moving psychoactive alien seedpods between worlds was a good idea so much as whether someone was going to lose face in front of a committee meeting. Thus were the great decisions of history made.

“If we don’t think they pose any immediate danger, ship them as alien artifacts with a third-level isolation protocol, and I’ll let it pass.”

“Thank you,” Santos-Baca said, rising from her seat. A moment later, Tur did the same.

“Stay with me for a minute, Emily,” Drummer said, shutting down the demonstration video from Fusang. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Tur left, closing the door behind him, and Santos-Baca sank back into her seat. Her empty half scowl was a mask. Drummer tried a smile. It worked as well as anything else.

“One of the things I learned working for Fred Johnson back in the day?” Drummer said. “Don’t let things sit for too long. It’s always tempting to just ignore the things that aren’t actually on fire just at the moment, but then you’re also committing to spend your time putting out fires.”

“You’re talking about the tariff structure Earth and Mars are proposing for Ganymede?”

Drummer’s heart sank a little. She’d managed to forget about that nascent issue, and being reminded felt oppressive. “No, I mean the Rocinante problem. And how it relates to—” She jerked a thumb toward the empty monitor where the seedpod video had been. “We’ve just taken control of the governor of a colony planet. The Association of Worlds hasn’t formally asked about his status with us yet, but it’s just a matter of time. I can feel Carrie Fisk rubbing her stubby little fingers together. It would make me very happy to get out in front of this.”

“So,” Santos-Baca said. “Well, I have had some informal conversations about it. The idea of asking the UN for a charter is … it’s a hard sell. We didn’t come all this way to go back down dirtside to ask permission for things, now did we?”

Drummer nodded. The enmity between the inners and the Belt was still the biggest obstacle Drummer faced. And even she didn’t have much use for the Earth-Mars Coalition.

“I understand that,” Drummer said. “I don’t like it either. But it gives us a level of deniability for things like James Holden’s new policing schemes. What I don’t want is thirteen hundred planets deciding that the union is the problem. If the UN is behind a crackdown—even just nominally—it spreads out the responsibility. This Houston and his band of merry men can rot in a UN jail, and then we’re still just the ships that take things from one place to another. Prisoners, among other things.”

“Or,” Santos-Baca said, “we admit what we’ve been playing footsie with since we crawled up out of the starving years. We start treating the union like the government of the thirteen hundred worlds.”

“I don’t want to be president of thirteen hundred worlds,” Drummer said. “I want to run a transport union that regulates trade through the gates. And then I want all those planets and moons and satellites to work out their own issues without it gumming up our works. We’re already stretched too thin.”

“If we had more personnel—”

“Emily,” Drummer said, “do you know the one thing I am absolutely sure won’t fix any of our problems? Another committee.”

Santos-Baca laughed, and a soft chime came from Drummer’s desk. An alert from Vaughn. High priority. She let it ride for a little bit. If it wasn’t People’s Home about to break apart, another minute wasn’t going to hurt. If it was, it wouldn’t help.

“You’ve seen all the same logistical reports that I have,” Drummer said. “Expecting the union to police the whole—”

The chime came again, louder this time. Drummer growled and tapped the screen to accept. Vaughn appeared, and before she could snap at the man, he spoke.

“Laconia put out a message, ma’am.”

Drummer looked at him. “What?”

“The warning message from Laconia gate was taken down,” Vaughn said. “It’s been replaced by a new message. The report from Medina came in”—he looked away and then back to her—“four minutes ago.”

“Is it broadcast?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vaughn said. “Audio only. Not encrypted either. This is a press release.”

“Let me hear it,” she said.

The voice, when it came, was low and warm. It reminded her of a scratchy blanket she’d had once, comforting and rough in equal measure. She didn’t trust it.

“Citizens of the human coalition, this is Admiral Trejo of the Laconian Naval Command. We are opening our gate. In one hundred and twenty hours, we will pass into the slow zone in transit to Medina Station with a staff and support to address Laconia’s role in the greater human community going forward. We hope and expect this meeting will be amicable. Message repeats.”

“Well,” Santos-Baca said, and then stopped. “Didn’t see that coming.”

“All right,” Drummer said, and looked into Santos-Baca’s wide eyes. “Emily, get me everyone.”

The void city People’s Home was still in Mars orbit, down close to Earth and the sun, and hell and gone from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It took ten hours to hear back from all the experts in the union hierarchy, and five more for the system to review everything and build a unified report. Every question, every clarification, every new nuance or caveat would take about as long. Drummer was going to be spending most of the hundred and twenty hours before Laconia reopened waiting to hear from people. Their messages were flying between planets and moons, void cities and stations at the speed of light in vacuum, and it was still too damned slow.

The voice on the message matched Anton Trejo, a lieutenant in the MCRN who had gone to Laconia with the breakaway fleet after the bombardment of Earth. Yes, it was possible that the voice was faked, but the technical service tended to accept it as genuine. Medina Station reported light and radiation spikes coming through Laconia gate consistent with ships approaching on a braking burn. How many ships and of what kind, there wasn’t enough information to guess at.

Mars had lost almost a third of its ships when the Free Navy made its brief, doomed grab at power. Those had been divided between the Free Navy’s forces in Sol system and the breakaway fleet going to Laconia. In the decades since, Earth and Mars had slowly rebuilt their navies. Technological breakthroughs based on reverse engineering alien artifacts—lace plating, feedback bottles, inertial-compensating PDC cannons—were standard now. Even if the ships on the other side of Laconia gate had been able to glean some details of how the manufacturing processes worked, they would have to build shipyards and manufacturing bases before they could start using them. Thirty years without a refit was a long time.

The most likely scenario was that something in Duarte’s private banana republic had finally gone wrong enough that he was being forced back into contact to threaten or beg or barter whatever he—or whoever was in power by this time—needed to prop things up.

The flag in the intelligence report speculating about the fate of the active protomolecule sample that the Free Navy had stolen from Tycho during the war tripped Drummer up a little when she read it. She remembered that day. Fighting in her own corridors, her own station. Even now, she remembered the cold rage that came from discovering betrayal in her ranks. And Fred Johnson’s leadership in the face of it.

She still missed Fred. And, sitting in her crash couch with the intelligence reports waiting patiently on her monitor, she wondered what he would have made of all this. Not just Duarte and Laconia, but all of it.

Her monitor chimed and the orange temporary-priority flag appeared. A new report from Medina with the updated analysis of the drive signatures from the far side of Laconia gate. She blew out a breath and opened it. Certainty factors were still thin, but the drives were either unregistered or altered so much they no longer matched the database. She ran her finger over the accompanying text to keep her tired eyes from sliding off them. There had been at least one Donnager-class battleship in Duarte’s stolen fleet. Given the size of the incoming plume, it was possible this was that ship. Older, yes. Worn down. But still a powerhouse.

She stood, stretched. Her back ached from between her shoulder blades up to the base of her skull. She’d been spending too much time reading reports that she should have given to Vaughn. Digesting information down to the critical pieces was part of his job, after all. Used to be, it had been hers too. She trusted herself more than she did him.

She located Emily Santos-Baca on the ship. It was late, but the younger woman hadn’t left for her quarters either. The system put her in the administrative commissary. The idea of food woke her stomach, and a hunger she hadn’t noticed rose up like a flame. Drummer sent a quick message asking her to wait there for a few minutes. She shut down her monitor, put it in security lock, and made her way out.

The hallways of People’s Home still had a sense of newness about them. The foot- and hand-holds on the walls didn’t have the wear of a lived-in ship or station. The lights all had a brightness, subtle but unmistakable, that spoke of recent installation. Not enough time for anything to age or break. Their great floating city would develop all of that in time, but for now, it and the others like it were the bright, perfect Singapores of their age. The well-regulated city. Now, if she could just push that out as far as the stars, everything would be just ducky.

She found Santos-Baca sitting with an older man in a gray jumpsuit. He nodded to Drummer as she approached. When she sat down, he left. Santos-Baca smiled.

“You look like you could use some food.”

“It’s been a while since lunch. I’ll get to that in a minute. You saw the reports?”

“I’m not quite caught up. But yes.”

“Where’s the board on this?”

The younger woman settled into herself, thoughtful and closed as a poker player. When she spoke, her voice was careful. “It’s hard to get too worried about a fleet of out-of-date Martian warships commanded by the remnants of a decades-old coup. Frankly, I’m a little surprised to find out there’s anyone alive there.”

“Agreed.”

“The message isn’t coming up with any particular flag of high stress in the vocal patterns. Or any demands, at least not as yet.”

“I know, Emily. I read the reports. I’m asking what you think of them.”

Santos-Baca opened her hands, an old-school gesture that said, It’s right here in front of you. “I think we’re about to see a bunch of self-centered assholes who’ve realized that their glorious independence isn’t going to work out in isolation. If we can keep them from losing face, we can probably find a negotiated path to reintegration. But Mars is going to be a problem. They’re going to want all of them trotted back to Olympus Mons and hung as traitors.”

“That’s what I was thinking too. Any idea how to approach them about this?”

“I’ve been trading some messages with Admiral Hu. She’s Earth, but she has friends in Martian high command,” Santos-Baca said. “Nothing formal. And McCahill in security.”

“Of course.”

“The other possibility is that they’re going to try force.”

“With ships that haven’t resupplied or seen a shipyard in decades,” Drummer said. “And with our rail-gun emplacements all warmed up and ready to poke holes in anyone that gets too rowdy. Are we thinking that’s a realistic possibility?”

“It’s not the odds-on bet. Even when their fleet was new, taking out the rail-gun emplacements would have been a mighty tall order.”

Drummer considered. “We can get a couple ships as backup, just in case. If it turns out Laconia needs its ass kicked, I’m not sending our ships through their gate. But it may make that charter an easier sell. Let Mars smell blood and vengeance and see if the EMC gets more interested in enforcement and policing than it was before?”

“It would be a very different case,” Santos-Baca agreed. It was good that they were on the same page with this. Drummer had half-feared that the board was going to come up with their own strategy. Her job was herding kittens. Only thankfully not this time. She was trying to avoid being a police force. She sure as hell didn’t want to command a full military. If there was going to be a war on the far side of Laconia gate, let Mars fight it.

“All right then,” Drummer said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”