Persepolis Rising

Chapter Sixteen: Singh

As he stepped out of the office complex, Singh made the mistake of looking up. The thin line of blazing full-spectrum light that ran down the center of Medina’s habitat drum blinded him, just a little. It cut a glowing streak across his vision, and filled his eyes with tears. Like looking into a sun, if instead of an orb several light minutes away, it was a line drawn in the sky and very close.

“Hold on a moment,” he said to his Marine escort, as he tried to get his vision back.

“Copy that,” the Marine replied, then said, “we’re oscar mike, triphammer two minutes from the cart. Rolling teams for cover to station ops.”

It took Singh a moment to realize that most of that was comm chatter to his security detail. He had nothing but respect for the Marines under his command and for the security they provided, but they did love their jargon and code names. A moment later he’d shaken most of the water out of his eyes, and the yellow-green afterimage line across his vision was fading.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“Copy that,” the Marine replied, and pointed to a parking area about fifty meters away with three electric carts lined up and waiting. Lieutenant Kasik was hurrying toward him from the carts, waving a monitor that had been extended to its full size. He met them a few seconds later, puffing with exertion.

“I have the initial defense reports,” Kasik said, handing the monitor to Singh.

“Excellent.” Singh scrolled past a spreadsheet of incomprehensible numbers. “I hope there’s a summary?”

“Yes, sir, and the tech group is waiting for you in station ops to answer any questions. But the initial findings are very exciting.”

“Tell me.”

“What we can see,” Kasik said, “is the ring system converted all of the energy from the Tempest’s field projector into gamma rays released through the rings.”

“We knew that,” Singh replied with a frown.

“But … the energy released was orders of magnitude more than the energy the central sphere absorbed. The ring system amplified it. Exponentially. If the factor is consistent, we can create predictive models for input versus output very quickly.”

It was exactly what he’d hoped. The alien rings could be made into their own defenses, and the reconstruction of the defense battery skipped entirely. The Tempest would be free to move into Sol system months ahead of the original plan. Any attack would fail, even if it were coordinated through every ring at once. One Magnetar-class battle cruiser could guard thirteen hundred gates at once and never miss its shot. The battle to seize control of every human-controlled world in the galaxy was already over.

After that, it was just administration of the new empire. Singh tried to imagine the high consul’s pleasure, the possible rewards, and his imagination failed him. But one thing still bothered him.

“Why was it, Kasik, that we heard about this from a local? If this had gone overlooked—”

“I’m sure we’d have found it, sir. But we weren’t looking at the logs. We have additional data in Operations,” Kasik said. “And I’ve requested technicians for more analysis.”

Singh realized his daydreaming of the high consul’s patronage had stretched into an awkward pause. Before he could reply, something shifted at the edge of his vision. Someone walking toward him with the purposeful stride of a messenger making a delivery. Except that the person striding toward him was Langstiver. The man who’d brought him the news of the new and glorious discovery. A small group of Belters were following him. He assumed Langstiver was coming to demand a reward for his information.

“I don’t want—” Singh began, but his Marine guard had put one hand on his chest and shoved him back. Kasik nodded at him sharply one time, then spit berry-colored saliva all over his face.

The Marine yanked Singh to the ground, hard, then knelt over him, shielding him with her body. Her knees pressed into his spine until it hurt. Singh heard her shouting orders, muffled by her helmet, to the rest of her detail. And then he heard nothing but the deafening ripping-paper sound of multiple rapid-fire weapons opening up. His guard was sitting on top of him and blocking his view, but the space between her thigh and calf as she crouched created a small triangular window on the carnage.

Langstiver and half a dozen other people were dancing backward as four Laconian Marines cut them to pieces with streams of high-velocity plastic safety rounds. It felt like the firing went on forever, like the bullets were keeping the assassins from falling. In reality it could only have lasted a few seconds. He experienced a little discontinuity in his consciousness, like he’d fallen briefly asleep, though that was impossible, and his Marine had yanked him to his feet and was shoving him back toward the administrative offices. The other members of her fire team slowly backed toward them, weapons at the ready.

Lieutenant Kasik still stood near the carts, not having moved during the entire firefight. He looked like he’d spit raspberry pie filling onto his lips, and he was twitching like an epileptic experiencing a grand mal. Singh understood something that had been eluding him.

“Kasik’s been shot,” he said. The pie filling on his face was the ruins of his lips from where the bullet had exited. The spray of red on Singh’s face and uniform wasn’t spit, it was his aide’s blood.

“Medical has already been alerted,” his Marine said, thinking he was talking to her.

“But no,” Singh said. She didn’t understand. “He’s been shot.”

She shoved him through the admin-building door and slammed it shut behind her. Just before it closed, the shocked silence that had followed the gunfire ended, and from a hundred voices outside the screaming started.

Kasik died on an operating table three hours after the attack. According to the report, he’d been shot in the back of the head, the bullet fracturing the occipital lobe of his skull and nicking his medulla oblongata. It then passed through the back of his throat and nearly severed his tongue, before shattering five teeth and exiting through his lips. Singh read the surgeon’s section of the incident report half a dozen times. Each time felt like the first.

None of the Marine security detail had been harmed in the exchange of fire, though several civilians had received minor injuries from bullet fragments, and one boy of nine had broken his arm while attempting to flee down a short flight of steps. All seven of the Belter radicals who’d attempted the assassination were dead. The intelligence people were digging into their past associations to see if the rebellion had roots that spread farther.

Rebellion.

The word felt wrong to Singh. The most Langstiver and his accomplices could have hoped for was his death. It would have done nothing to hand control of the station back to the Belters who’d once run it. Trejo would simply have assigned another officer to fill his place until a new governor could be dispatched from Laconia. It was all so short-sighted. So wasteful. Seven people had decided to toss their lives away on a symbol.

These are people who have a history of resisting centralized authority, Colonel Tanaka had said. He hadn’t understood. He did now. They weren’t rational. They weren’t disciplined. They valued their own lives less than the prospect of his death.

What struck him most—what offended him as much as the still-implausible idea that he’d watched Kasik be murdered—was the monstrous ingratitude of it. The hubris of believing that Duarte’s path for humanity’s future was worth killing innocent people to resist. And after Trejo had been so generous with them.

He tapped the monitor lying on his desk, and the comm officer in security replied with a crisp, “Yes, sir.”

“Please have Colonel Tanaka report to me in my office immediately.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

Singh killed the connection almost before the officer finished speaking. He looked around his office, not to take in anything new so much as to judge his own mind. He wasn’t feeling the shuddering in his hands anymore. His eyes were able to move from the door to his desk to the little ferns in their planters beside the wall without jittering back and forth of their own accord. He’d been in shock. Only a little. And only for a short time. It was normal. Natural. Expected. The physiological effects were only the consequence of being an animal in a stressful situation. There was no reason for him to feel ashamed.

And yet, when Tanaka entered the room with that little half smirk on her lips, he had to rein his anger in. Is this funny to you? He didn’t say it.

“Sir,” she said, bracing. “You wanted to see me?”

“I was almost murdered today,” Singh said. “I found your silence on the matter disturbing.”

Tanaka’s expression shifted. A little chagrin, maybe? It was hard to tell with her. Her voice didn’t have the crispness he’d expect of someone being dressed down. “I apologize. After your safety was established, my focus was on the response and investigation. I should have reported in sooner.”

“Yes, well,” Singh said. “Are you ready to make your report now?”

Tanaka gathered her thoughts visibly, then nodded to the chair across the desk from his, silently asking his permission to sit. He waved a hand. She sat, leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

“The basic facts appear straightforward. The attempt was instigated and organized by Langstiver. He was the head of security before we came, and his co-conspirators were drawn from the ranks of the local security force.”

“Why weren’t we monitoring them?” Singh asked.

“We were. But it appears that Langstiver wasn’t using the station network. My team is still digging into it, but it looks like he did his coordination and planning on an encrypted network set up in the power conduits. Physically separate from the main system the way the Storm is from Medina. Air-gapped. From what we can tell, it was put in by criminal elements in Medina Station. Langstiver also had relationships there.”

Singh leaned back a centimeter in his chair. “Criminal elements? You mean he was corrupt?”

“It’s not unusual on this side of the gate,” Tanaka said. “And it makes the investigation more complicated than I’d like. Add to that, he appears to have purged several caches of data he still had access to and inserted false entries into what we have got. And Langstiver and his little friends aren’t going to be questioned by anyone but God at this point.”

“But you’ve found the network they were using.”

“One of them,” Tanaka said. “There may be others. Part of the problem is that Medina wasn’t run as a military installation. There were—and probably still will be—competing levels of culture and infrastructure. Controlling the official channels is trivial, but even the officials were using additional undocumented frameworks. It’s not like the locals have to create ways to get around our surveillance. All those ways were built in before we showed up.”

She lifted her hands in a shrug. Singh had a stark flashbulb memory of Kasik, and with it a powerful, all-pervading dread. In his imagination, Nat and the monster were looking at a picture of him with blood spilling down his chin. It wasn’t the prospect of his own death that brought the flush of rage. It was how cavalier Tanaka was being with them.

“Well, we’ll have to address that directly, then,” Singh said. “Mandatory curfews and roaming checkpoints will be a start. And restrict the station security forces to quarters until they can be interrogated and evaluated for service. And I’ll want a list of anyone who might pose a threat moving forward for precautionary monitoring. And … hm. Yes, and coordinate that through the Gathering Storm. If we can’t be sure the local system’s clean, we should use our own. The most important thing is that the systems on the Gathering Storm not be compromised.”

“I’ve already set up an encryption strong room,” Tanaka said, nodding without seeming to agree. Her sigh was like grit on his skin. “But you want to be careful about a crackdown, sir. Especially this early on. It could send the wrong message.”

“The wrong message,” Singh repeated, stretching out each syllable into a question and a confrontation.

“Belter culture and identity is built around pushing back against authority. This is what that looks like in practice. We knew something like this was possible, and—”

“We did?” Singh said, his voice sharp. “We knew that, did we?”

Tanaka’s eyes flattened and her lips thinned. “Yes, sir. We did. It’s why I had a fire team with you at all times. And, respectfully, it’s why you’re alive.”

“Pity there wasn’t one for Kasik.”

“Yes, sir,” Tanaka said. The languor in her tone was gone. She had the tightness in her voice that said that at last she was taking him seriously. “I’m sorry to have lost him. But that doesn’t change my assessment. Bringing Laconian focus and discipline to Medina Station and the other systems isn’t a matter of imposing our customs and rules on them.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

“Our discipline is ours, sir. The same actions can have different meanings in different contexts. What would be routine back home would seem draconian here. Anything harsher than routine will read as a wild overreaction. I believe the high consul would agree that underreacting to this would be a more persuasive show of authority.”

Singh stood up. He hadn’t meant to, but the need to move, to occupy the space inside his office, was suddenly overpowering. Tanaka stayed still. Her expression was like someone tracking a target on a firing range—focused, but emotionless. He walked to his sideboard and poured himself a drink since his aide wasn’t there to do it for him.

“It’s an interesting perspective, and I can respect it,” Singh said. “But I don’t share it. You have my instructions.” The alcohol was sharp and strangely acrid in his mouth. His gut rebelled a little at it. He swallowed anyway, trying to enjoy the bloom of warmth in his throat. Kasik had had a better hand at this than he did.

“Governor,” Tanaka said, not standing. It was the first time he could remember her using the title. “I strongly urge you to reconsider this. At least sleep on it before we implement it.”

He turned to look at her. He imagined himself as she saw him. A young man, off Laconia for the first time as an adult. Having been the target of enemy action for the first time. Seeing an unplanned death by violence for the first time. He must seem shaken and weak to her. Because as much as he hated the fact, he did feel shaken and weak. And naked before her implacable and judging gaze. She thought he was being irrational. Letting his fear make his decisions.

And if he changed his course now, it would prove her right.

“Respectfully,” Tanaka said, “as your head of security and a woman with a lot of years of experience in her bag? This isn’t a set of orders I can support.”

Singh took in a long breath between bared teeth. His gums went cold with it. Whether he was right or wrong didn’t matter now. He was committed.

“Your second is Major Overstreet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please send him in on your way out. You’re relieved of your command.”

There it was in the flash of her eyes and the lift of her chin. The contempt he’d known would be there. Giving in to her would only have helped cultivate it. Tanaka had never respected him. She thought herself better suited to make the policies of governance than he was. It didn’t matter whether she was right or not.

She stood wordlessly, braced, and stalked out of the room. He more than half expected her to slam the door as she left, but she closed it gently. He finished his unpleasant drink in a gulp and went back to his desk.

The alcohol did what it was supposed to do, taking his too-sharp mind back just half a degree. Letting him relax, just a little bit. He wouldn’t have another one.

He pressed his palms flat against the surface of his desk, feeling the little bite of cool fading quickly. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then again. When his calm was more or less reestablished, he opened his personal log and reported his decision and the reasoning behind it. Visible weakness to my chief of security undermines confidence in the chain of command. Tanaka’s expertise is admirable, but her placement on Medina proved unsuitable. Recommend her without prejudice for more appropriate duty.

Hopefully his superiors would approve of his actions. If not, he’d know soon enough. It was done. Time that he got back to work. He felt better now. More centered. More nearly in control. It had been a bad day. Maybe the worst he’d ever suffered through, but he was alive and his command was intact. And it was just a bad day.

He opened a fresh message, flagged it for immediate delivery. For a moment, he felt the impulse was to send his first message home to Nat. To be with her even if it was only a little bit. This attenuated, one-way presence would be better than nothing. But it would wait until he’d done his duty. Duty always came first. He routed the message for the Tempest instead of home.

“Admiral Trejo,” he said into the system’s camera. “I am including preliminary data provided by former Medina Security Chief Langstiver and confirmed by my own staff—”

His own staff meaning the dead man. Meaning his first sacrifice to the empire.

“Ah. Yes. Confirmed by my own staff concerning an unexpected side effect of our actions while securing Medina Station. If command agrees with my assessment that this windfall provides a significant defense and is willing to position a ship equipped with a USM field projector permanently to the ring space, it is my belief that the timetable for further occupation can be moved up considerably. If the Tempest adopts a more aggressive schedule, the local forces in Sol system will have a considerably reduced period to prepare defenses. We can have absolute control of Earth and Mars in weeks.”