Persepolis Rising

Chapter Twenty-Three: Drummer

The ship came through the ring like an old video of a whale breaching the surface of the sea. The thousand kilometers of the ring gate was tiny in the scale of the solar system, huge by human measure, and the Laconian battleship fit between the two—too large to be comfortable in one, too small to fit well in the other. Its design seemed to come from the same uncomfortable place, neither the now-familiar eeriness of the protomolecule nor the history of human manufacture, but both and neither. Drummer watched the observations feed again and again, and it made her skin crawl a little every time.

She wasn’t ready. Rock hoppers full of gravel were burning hard for positions that didn’t matter anymore. The EMC fleet was consolidating around the inner planets and the Jovian system, but with days—sometimes weeks—left on their burns. The void cities were looping down to meet them. All of it preparation for tactical situations that weren’t on the board anymore. Duarte and his Admiral Trejo had stolen the tempo. She had to make sure the price would be higher than they’d intended to pay.

“Madam President,” Vaughn said. Drummer watched the Tempest emerge through the gate again before she spoke. It was astounding to her that something so large could make it through the gate at all. It looked big enough to break the safety barriers with its own mass and energy. Maybe there would have been a way to use that with Laconia the way they had with the Free Navy. Except that the fucking thing was already through the gate.

“Vaughn,” she said, not looking back at him.

“Communications is asking for your decision on the repeater,” Vaughn said.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly between her teeth. There were thousands of radio signal repeaters scattered through the system, but she knew which one Vaughn meant. Their clandestine traffic to and from Medina—Avasarala’s gift to her—ran through a low-energy repeater that was floating dark outside the ring gate. From Medina, its signal was weak and the wavelengths it jumped among similar enough to the gates’ usual interference that it was easy to overlook. From normal space, it was more obvious.

And the closest ship to it right now was the Tempest.

She could order her communications forces not to use it. That was easy. But the EMC intelligence forces also had access to it. And Saba’s underground. The more people who could make a mistake, the more likely that something would go wrong. And it was easy enough for her to shut it down. One signal packet would do it, like toggling a light off. It would go into a passive listening state, and someone would have to know where to look for it to register as more than a grain of sand floating in the unimaginably vast ocean of the void.

Going dark was the right thing to do. But she rebelled at it.

“What’s the point,” she said, “of having something you can’t use? Functionally, it’s the same as not having it.” On her screen, the loop ended and began again. The Tempest rising up from the gate.

“Preserving something to use at the right time isn’t nothing, sa sa que?” Vaughn said.

“Was being rhetorical,” Drummer said.

“Apologies,” Vaughn said.

“Tell them …” It was more than her window into Medina. It was her link to Saba. What if he needed to reach her? What if something happened, and his call for help died in silence because she was being too careful? Loneliness widened in her chest, stretched until it felt bigger than she was. Emptier. “Tell them to shut it down. Save it for a rainy day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vaughn said, and turned to leave.

“Have you ever seen rain, Vaughn?” she said, stopping him. Giving herself a few more seconds with the connection to Medina and Saba still there. Even if she couldn’t use it.

“No, ma’am. Never been to Earth. Never plan to.”

“‘Rainy day,’ though. We still say it.”

“Inner planet cultural imperialism is in everything,” Vaughn said.

“Rain isn’t just for inners. It rains on Titan too. It’s methane instead of water, but you can see it if you’re in the domes there. I spent my madhu chandra week there. A billion dots on the surface of the dome with the orange clouds behind it? They look like tiny dark stars. If you can see them. Saba’s distance vision isn’t good. He couldn’t see them. But I could.”

“If you say so, ma’am,” Vaughn said. Either he was mildly embarrassed for her, or she imagined he was. Well, fuck you too, she thought, but didn’t say it in case it was just her.

“All right,” she said, turning back to her screen. “Send the order.”

Vaughn didn’t answer, just walked out and closed the door behind him. She watched the Tempest pass through the ring gate one last time, looking for a clue in it. Or a ray of hope. She didn’t see one, and she closed the recording down and opened the other one.

This is Admiral Anton Trejo of the Laconian Imperial Navy, and high commander of the Heart of the Tempest. I am presently on a mission to secure Laconian interests in Sol system. We recognize the deep cultural and historical importance of Sol system, and hope that this transition can be made peacefully and with the minimum of disruption. In the event that local forces resist, I am prepared and authorized to take any actions necessary to complete my mission. High Consul Duarte and I extend our best wishes to the local residents, and ask that you contact your governments to urge them to act in the name of peace. Violence is always a loss, and the measure of that loss is entirely in your control.

The false gentility of the threat made her wish he’d just said he’d burn their cities and take their children. It would have felt more honest.

People’s Home was on its braking burn to meet with the EMC’s second fleet, where Guard of Passage already waited. Independence was already with the first fleet and Jupiter. The newest void city—Assurance of Peace—was half built at the Pallas-Tycho shipyards and wouldn’t be ready for another year, assuming that they had another year.

The unspoken truth was that the union had commissioned the void cities as a permanent response to the colony worlds’ interest in building their own fleets. A void city couldn’t control a whole solar system, but it could command a ring gate. Or that’s what Drummer and the union board had assumed. Now, People’s Home was only a battleship. A massive one, with greenhouses and schools, children and common space, universities and research labs. But the prospect of violence meant that none of that mattered. People’s Home was a delivery system for rail guns, missiles, PDCs. And she would drive it down to protect Earth and Mars, and be protected by their ships. She’d hate everything about it, but she’d do it.

And goddammit, she’d have to smile while she did.

The under-burn configuration of People’s Home put the meeting rooms down near the massive array of Epstein drives. The EMC was represented by Admiral Hu of Mars and Undersecretary of Executive Affairs Vanegas. Chrisjen Avasarala sat in a wheelchair at the back of the hall, eating pistachios and pretending to be dotty so that people left her alone. The lights had been set to a warm cut of the spectrum that was alleged to match a summer afternoon on Earth, and the air smelled of cut cucumber and soil. A reassuring environment that would hopefully affect the tone of the event, even if it was all engineering. The reporters and dignitaries on the formed bamboo benches all wore formal suits and dresses, as if a press conference were the same as going to church.

Maybe it was. Drummer had read somewhere that newsfeeds were where secular societies went to find out what cultural narratives were important and what could be ignored. There were thousands of feeds streaming right now, all around the system, with every variation of the ways to make sense of the history they were living through. In most, Laconia was an invading force to be resisted, but there were people who said Laconia was a liberating influence, an end to the oppression of the EMC and the Transport Union. Or that they were the true spirit of Mars, betrayed by the old congressional republic and now returned in triumph. Or that they were unbeatable, and capitulation was the only choice. Put a dozen people in front of their cameras, and you’d wind up with thirteen opinions. None of them would matter as much as hers, because she was the president of the Transport Union, and that, despite all her intentions and efforts, meant she was a war leader now.

In the green room, Vanegas was getting his makeup freshened before they went out to the cameras. Hu put down her coffee as soon as Drummer stepped into the room and hurried over to her, a grim expression on her face.

“President Drummer,” Hu said, “I was hoping I could speak with you about the board’s strategic cooperation documents?”

A steward led Drummer to a chair. A technician swung in beside her with a palette of cosmetics in his hand. She didn’t have much use for makeup, but she didn’t want to look sickly in the feeds either.

“I haven’t seen the new draft yet,” Drummer said, trying not to move her face.

“Santos-Baca is insisting on the chain of command passing through a joint committee,” Hu said. “That’s not coordination. That’s making the EMC a branch of the Transport Union.”

If they kill us all, Drummer thought, this will be why. Not their technology, not their strategy, not the invisible cycle of history. It’ll be our inability to do anything without five committee meetings to talk about it.

“I haven’t read the draft, Admiral. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll have them get me a copy. I don’t want to get this muddy any more than you do.”

Hu nodded sharply and smiled as if Drummer had capitulated. The technician touched her cheeks with a rouge brush and considered her like she was a painting. She had to fight the impulse to stick her tongue out at him.

And then it was time. Vanegas walked out first, and then Hu. They took the podiums to either side. Drummer took the center. The podium’s screen threw up an image visible only to her, running through the lines of the speech. She lifted her chin.

It didn’t matter how she felt. It didn’t matter what she thought. All that counted right now was how she looked and sounded. Let those carry confidence, and she could find the real thing later.

“Thank you all for coming,” Drummer said. “As you know, a ship originating in Laconia system has now made an unauthorized transit into Sol system. The union’s stance is unequivocal on this matter. The Laconian incursion is illegal. It is a violation of the union’s authority and the sovereignty of the Earth-Mars Coalition. We stand as one body in the defense of the Sol system and all its citizens.”

Drummer paused. In the back of the group, Chrisjen Avasarala stood up from her wheelchair and dusted the pistachio bits off her sari. Her smile was visible even from here.

“And the union,” Drummer said, “will dedicate all its resources to the defense effort.”

Just like you told us to, you old bitch, she thought. She didn’t say it.

In her dream, Saba was dead.

She didn’t know how he’d died or where, and with the non-logic of sleep, she didn’t question that. It was simply the truth: Saba was dead and she wasn’t. She’d never see him again. She wouldn’t wake up beside him. The rest of her life was emptier and smaller and sadder because of it. In the dream, she knew all of that. But what she felt was relief.

Saba was dead, and so he was safe now. Nothing bad could happen to him anymore. She couldn’t fail him or abandon him or feel the weight of his disappointment. She woke into darkness, a moment’s confusion, and then a wave of overwhelming guilt. The darkness, at least, she could control. She moved the cabin lights up a quarter. Dim gold, faint enough to leave everything in monochrome.

She could feel the thrust gravity when she turned. The absence of even trace Coriolis telling her what she already knew. She wanted to send a message out. To tell Saba she was thinking of him, and not quietly longing for the failures that would lose him forever. But she’d cut that line of communication, and having a weird subconscious wasn’t a good reason to change that policy.

Instead she stretched in the near dark. Only half of her sleep cycle was done, but she wasn’t interested in diving back into the pillow. Instead, she showered and ordered up a bulb of tea and a tortilla with fruit jam. Comfort food. Then she checked the system map.

The Tempest was still out in the vastness between the orbits of Uranus and Saturn. A billion and a half kilometers between the ring gate and the first human habitats of any real size, even if Saturn and its moons were at their closest. Having come through the gate so much earlier than she’d hoped, the Tempest wasn’t burning hard for the inner solar system. At its present acceleration, it would take weeks to reach her. Drummer pulled on her uniform and went out into People’s Home. The tube station was near her quarters. The void city knew where she was and arranged a private car for her without her even having to ask for it. Her security detail shadowed her with the practice of years. Even at the height of a shift change, she moved through the city like it was a ghost town. Only the litter and smell of bodies and old curry in the tube lingered as a promise that she wasn’t as alone as she felt.

The arboretum was a restricted-access zone. Some of the trees were experimental, and being in a high-traffic area would have affected the data. But one person or a handful? That was within tolerance. It was warm there, the air thick with moisture and the novelty of oxygen that had just been breathed out by another living thing. It was a strange place, exotic and surreal. Like something out of a child’s fantasy.

Usually, she was the only one there.

Avasarala sat in the shade of a catalpa. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her eyes were unfocused until Drummer stepped onto the black rubber walkway in front of her.

“The fuck are you doing here?” the old woman said. “Don’t you sleep?”

“I could ask you the same,” Drummer said.

“I don’t sleep anymore. It’s one of the things you lose at my age. I’m not incontinent yet, though, so I don’t get to bitch.”

Drummer leaned against one of the trees, folded her arms. She didn’t know if she was pleased the old woman was there, or annoyed by her, or both. “Is there a reason you’re still on People’s Home?” she asked, but her voice wasn’t biting.

“Thought I might need to firm up your resolve. But I didn’t. Now I’m only here because I hate fucking space travel. You’re going my way. I’ll get out when the last leg of the trip home is shorter.”

“So not just looking to stick your nose in my business?”

“Not until you fuck up,” Avasarala said. “Sit down, Camina. You look exhausted.”

“No one calls me that, you know,” Drummer said, but she sat on the bench at Avasarala’s side.

“Almost no one.”

They sat for a moment with only the sound of dripping water and the tapping of leaves that moved in the artificially controlled breeze. The wisps of her dream haunted Drummer’s mind like the afterimage of a strobe.

“One ship,” she said. “They sent one ship. They didn’t hold ground at Medina. They didn’t fortify. They didn’t build supply lines or prepare a flotilla. They sent one big-ass ship through by itself. Like a boast.”

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Avasarala said. “Though I feel like I shouldn’t be. I actually read history. It’s like reading prophecy, you know.”

“All we have to do is deal with this one ship, and everyone will see that Duarte’s not invulnerable. He’s not infallible.”

“That’s true.”

Drummer laced her fingers, leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.

“All we need is one lucky break,” she said. “One thing to go our way, and your logistical mastermind who would never overreach loses his capital ship in front of everyone who’s watching. And I think everyone is watching.”

“They are,” Avasarala agreed with a sigh. “But …”

“But what?”

Avasarala’s smile was thin, hard, and bitter. Her eyes flashed with an intelligence poisoned by despair. “But it isn’t hubris until he’s failed.”