Persepolis Rising

Chapter Thirty-One: Drummer

Sleep and Drummer had developed an uncomfortable relationship. Its worst aspect was the time it left her to read the public comment boards and newsfeeds.

THIS SENSE OF PURPOSE IS EXACTLY WHAT MARS LOST WHEN THE GATES OPENED. THIS ISN’T AN INVASION AT ALL. IT’S THE RETURN OF THE REAL MARTIAN SPIRIT TO ITS PROPER PLACE, AND I AM HAPPY—FUCK, DELIGHTED—THAT I HAVE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE IT.

The way it played out was predictable. During her days, she felt like People’s Home was turning too fast on its axis. Only it wasn’t just her body that was getting spun. Her mind was too heavy to lift. She was controlling herself with a bad lag, like driving a mech with choppy software or running a waldo at the edge of its range. Meetings with the union board, with the EMC admiralty, with her own staff. Interviews and speeches in which she declared the independence of the union. She got through all of them with a physical sensation like her brain was evaporating. All she wanted to do from the start of her shift to the last moment before bed was close her eyes.

And then, as soon as she did, they opened again, as if by themselves.

THESE ASSHOLES SHOULD HAVE BEEN CUT OFF BEFORE THEY COULD GET THROUGH THE GATE. THIS IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR YEARS. A TRADE UNION DOESN’T MATTER FOR SHIT WHEN AN ARMY COMES KNOCKING. IF YOU EVER NEEDED ANY PROOF THAT THE TRANSPORT UNION ADMINISTRATION WAS INCOMPETENT, THERE YOU GO. IT’S RIGHT HERE FOR YOU, AND IN SPADES.

She’d try to rest. Try to lure sleep back. Her eyes felt gritty. Her mouth felt dry. She wanted to eat, even though she wasn’t hungry. Wanted water, even though she wasn’t thirsty. It was like her body knew it needed something, and all it could do was run through the list of possibilities over and over, hoping that something would give her solace that hadn’t the last time. She found herself craving a pipeful of marijuana, even though she hadn’t smoked in decades.

She waited an hour, maybe two, then got up and spooled through the feeds and networked discussions with a dummy account she’d made for the purpose. She told herself it was research, that she was gauging the morale of the populace. It was easy to pretend that she was somehow learning something that would help. It felt like tearing off a scab and pressing salt into the opened sore, but it was better than paging through the names of the dead. Emily Santos-Baca …

From Ganymede, an independent journalist’s twenty-minute recording on the importance of solidarity in the face of the enemy. An old Earther’s open letter about surviving the terrible years after the rocks fell and why this time was different. A roundtable discussion by an open salon on Ceres about how the union was or wasn’t able to rise to the occasion and address the Laconian threat. A dozen languages, a thousand faces and voices and rhetorical styles. If she was looking for clarity there, she didn’t find it.

MY WIFE IS ON MEDINA STATION. I JUST GOT A MESSAGE FROM HER SAYING THAT THE LACONIAN GOVERNOR IS OFFERING BETTER TERMS THAN THE TRANSPORT UNION DID FOR EVERYONE WHO WORKS FOR THEM. AND SHE SAID THE TECHNOLOGY THAT’S COMING THROUGH LACONIA GATE IS GENERATIONS AHEAD OF ANYTHING WE HAVE. I KNOW IT’S NOT A POPULAR OPINION, BUT IF THEY’RE GOING TO TREAT THE WORKERS BETTER, BRING BETTER EQUIPMENT, AND STAY OUT OF OUR BUSINESS OTHERWISE, I THINK OUR REAL ENEMY IS THE BUREAUCRACY IN THE TRANSPORT UNION OFFICES!

There were other voices—many more of them, really—that saw the attack on Medina for what it was. She read essays on defiance in the face of tyranny, listened to music designed to rally the patriotic against the enemy. A school on Luna had started a campaign where the children were dyeing their right hands red in defiance of Laconia. The symbolism of it escaped her, but the trend spread far past the school, and half of the interviewers and journalists on the feeds had some version of it. Red gloves or finger sleeves or rings.

If she’d wanted to feel hopeful or resolved, it would have been easy to find those people and spend her insomniac hours only with them. But like a tongue prodding a sore tooth, she kept reaching for the others. Laconia is the future. The conquest is inevitable. Stop the war.

Capitulate.

There were also whole subfeeds devoted to speculating on the strategy of the EMC and the union. Some of the conversations there were eerily like briefings from the EMC admiralty. Others were desperation-fueled optimism dressed as military theory. None brought Drummer any more hope than she’d had before, and some left her mood darker.

And she hadn’t heard from Saba. Even when Medina lifted its comms blackout for propaganda, there’d been no message from him. From the others fighting against the occupation. She imagined that he was still there, sneaking between the decks like a rat made for gnawing through steel. That Medina would fall, and she’d hear his voice declaring their victory. Or failing that, that she’d hear his voice at all.

And behind it all, pressing down on her soul like a suffocating hand, the Tempest made its vast, stately way sunward. Already past the halfway point. Already braking. She understood their strategy perfectly. A single ship, making its way for everyone in every system to see. It was a demonstration of authority. Of inevitability. A piece of theater designed to humiliate, to subjugate, to control.

It was what she had done to Freehold.

That, as much as anything, kept her at the table in her quarters as the hours of sleeplessness slipped by. When she’d made the call, it had seemed like the obvious thing to do. Hard, yes, but in the service of a greater peace. A more orderly universe. Someplace where there’d be some respect for the rules.

The colonists on Freehold had made their choices. They’d broken the rules she and the people before her had set down. She’d felt justified when she sent the Rocinante. Now she wondered whether the colonists there had sat up in their beds in the night. Wondered how they would feed their children. Whether there was some way to finesse their way out of the future that was bearing down on them. Probably they had.

Maybe this was the way the universe showed her the errors of her ways. Taking the evil that she’d committed so offhandedly and turning it around to point at her. Her and Santos-Baca. All the refugees of Independence. All of the void city’s dead. If it was, then the universe hadn’t embraced the idea of proportional response yet.

The small, quiet part of her mind that watched all the rest knew that she wasn’t right. That there was no way for her to be right, not in a situation like this. If she’d been able to sleep, maybe. But the fear was eroding her bit by bit and taking away all the things that let her recover. Like a recycling pond with a plugged drain, she was filling with shit, and sooner or later, she’d overspill. It wasn’t a source of anxiety. It was just something she knew about herself, as if she were thinking about some different woman.

She drew her robe closer around her chest, spooled through the feeds. Watched a few seconds of the news from Loundres Nova, a few seconds out of the shipyards at Tycho-Pallas Complex, Ceres, Luna, Earth. Never enough to hear a whole story.

Weirdly, not all of it was about Laconia. There was a fire at an arcology outside Paris. A popular musician Drummer had liked as a girl had died. It was as if not everything were defined by Laconia and Duarte and her own failures. And then the top traffic on the feed would re-sort, and there was an image of the Tempest in all its threat and glory.

Holden had been right. Her plan for Freehold had been cruel, and she’d done it for the convenience of not being a government, not really. So that she could be unprepared when a navy no one knew existed arrived in force. She should have been kinder, wiser, more cunning. She should have been something other than what she was. There had to have been a moment when she could have chosen something different, when all of this could have been stopped. She couldn’t think when it had been.

Her system made its tock. If she’d been asleep, her lights would have come up.

“Ma’am?” Vaughn said. Not even his nighttime staff. Whatever it was, they’d woken him up for it first, and he’d made the decision to wake her. That couldn’t be good.

“I’m awake,” she said.

“We’ve had a message for you from the Tempest. It came in on tightbeam an hour ago. Signal intelligence says it’s genuine.”

“Not broadcast?”

“No, ma’am. Unencrypted, but not broadcast.”

Something the enemy wanted her and her people to see, but not as a press release. The switch in her mind flipped, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep forever. “I’ll take it in my room,” she said.

Her screen went dark, and then Admiral Trejo was on it, looking out at her as if he could actually see through the screen and light delay. His expression was almost rueful. That would be a pose, of course. A decision he’d made about how to appear. She hated that, even knowing that, she felt herself hoping he could be reasoned with. Wanting to like him, because then maybe he’d like her. Stockholm syndrome’s first, pale roots. She pushed the gentle impulse away and summoned up her hatred.

“President Drummer,” he said. “I hope I find you well. On behalf of High Consul Duarte, I’m asking again for the Transport Union’s ships to stand down and accept administration by the Laconian Empire. But I understand if that answer is still no. I’m going to keep asking until you change your mind, though. The sooner that comes, the less loss of life your people will suffer. Their fate is entirely up to you.

“If we do not have your unconditional surrender within eighteen hours, though, then I’m afraid things will become less pleasant. I have been ordered to deny you the use of the shipyards at Pallas Station. I’d rather get through this with the least loss of life and infrastructure. Again, entirely in your control. You can end this at any time.

“I am tendering a similar offer to the EMC, and I imagine you’ll all want to talk this over. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to do the right thing and lay down your arms. The high consul has given me a certain amount of latitude in how we bring this unpleasantness to a close, but the longer this drags on, the less freedom I’ll have. And the worst-case scenario isn’t something I relish.

“Confer with your colleagues at the EMC, and reply back to me as soon as you can. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ve chosen to protract this a little farther. The blood of Pallas Station will be on your hands. I sincerely hope and pray that you’ll be wiser than that.”

He gave a little nod, and the message ended. Drummer’s rage was sluggish and muddy from lack of sleep, but it was hot. She made the connection request, and Vaughn picked it up immediately.

“How many people have seen this?”

“The comms officer on duty, my assistant, me, and now you. Only four.”

It was two people too many. Maybe three. Still it might not find its way onto the nets, depending on how well the EMC controlled information in its house. It was the nature of bad news to spread, and once it was out, it was out forever. She had to assume that she didn’t have much time before it did. One more chance to try being the person that the situation called for instead of just herself.

If she were the person who should be here, if she were the leader that the union and the system and humanity needed, what would she say now? How would she say it?

“Wake Lafflin up, and get Admiral Hu on the horn. We’re going to need a talk.”

Pallas Station, Trejo had called it. Not Pallas-Tycho Complex. One of the strange things about Laconian language was the decades of linguistic drift. No one had called it Pallas Station since before Sanjrani had been in charge of the union. He’d overseen the update of Pallas’ refineries and the semipermanent installation of Tycho Station as the primary shipyard of the metals and ceramics, lace and nanolaminates produced there. It had been more efficient than leaving Tycho independently on the float. There were generations of work that would need to be done, and putting everything in the same place made it all go faster.

People’s Home had been assembled there. And Independence. The void city Assurance of Peace was half-together now, its vast carbon-silicate ribs still bared to the vacuum. Thousands of families lived and worked there, and would for another few hours, unless Drummer capitulated.

“The loss of building capacity would set us back by decades,” Admiral Hu said. “Any chance we have of rebuilding and fortifying a navy relies on that station. This would cause a bottleneck that would radically change our projections.”

Drummer shifted in her chair. It wasn’t the first time she’d listened to the message.

“Deploying the full force of the EMC-and-union-combined navy can’t be accomplished in the time frame described here.” Hu’s face was replaced by a schematic of the system, each fleet marked with its time to engagement. They’d been keeping the ships scattered to deny the Tempest a single target-rich environment. Here was the trade-off for that …

“And furthermore, only three-quarters of our ships have completed resupply with the torpedo modifications based on our first engagement. Our strategic analysis is that a decision to sacrifice Pallas-Tycho Complex in order to fully prepare the combined fleet will degrade our long-term readiness, but increase our chances of making a decisive blow against the Tempest in the short term. Of course, any decision requires full coordination between the union and the EMC.”

Whatever she chose, they would do the same. In the midst of the apocalypse, the military brass on Luna were still playing cover-your-ass. That seemed like the most optimistic thing about the whole report. They still thought they might have careers worth losing when this was over.

Drummer could remember living on Tycho Station. She could still walk through the corridors in her memory. The layout of the engineering decks the way they had been before the refit. The smell of the habitation ring. The office she’d inherited from Fred Johnson after his death. He’d had a personal cabinet there with a few things—an old book, a bottle of brandy, the physical copies of some of his personal initiatives that had foundered after he’d gone. She’d been the head of Tycho Station for three years before she’d cleared that out, and she still remembered how it had felt when she had. Like a widow finally selling off her dead husband’s suits.

When she looked at Pallas-Tycho Complex, she felt the same way again. She wanted a way to save it. She kept looking for the clever move that would put it out of the enemy’s hands, only there wasn’t one. It was already too late. She could hand it and any chance of freedom away, or she could see it destroyed. One or the other. And she had to choose.

“Vaughn?”

“Madam President?”

“We need to put out an emergency evacuation order for Pallas-Tycho. Everyone who doesn’t have their own craft, put on Tycho and break it away from the complex. No one is to be left in the Pallas structures, and the highest possible burn for all ships and Tycho Station is recommended.”

She looked over at him. His face was grayish. His eyes were dead as a shark’s. He didn’t argue, though. He only braced, turned, and left the room to carry out her order. Even if he disagreed with her, he was probably glad he hadn’t had to make the call. She would have been.

She set her system to Record, considered herself on the screen. Her eyes were sunken with exhaustion and despair, but not as badly as she’d thought they would be. Her skin had a waxy look in the bright light of her private office. She’d want to have the communications staff get her some powder and rouge before she made the public announcement. God, there would have to be a public announcement. But that was later. That was next.

She keyed in the reply code, and the high-security link to Luna showed Ready. She coughed and looked into the camera.

“Admiral Hu, I have given the evacuation order to Pallas-Tycho,” she said. “Even if we can’t save the station, we can make it harder for the Tempest to kill the population there. And seeing whether they feel the civilian targets are worth hunting down may also give us greater insight into the character and aims of the enemy. I advise the EMC forces to refrain from any premature engagement with the enemy at this time.

“It is my opinion that attempting to save Pallas Station would have been an error,” she said. “It would be better to prepare the forces we have at our disposal for a full, coordinated, and unrestrained engagement under circumstances more nearly in our control and to our advantage. And with the modified torpedoes and munitions available to all ships. Whatever gives us the best chance in that battle is worth the sacrifice.”

She paused. She was thinking this all through as she said it. The implications of the choice she’d made and the future of the war.

“We only have one shot at this,” she said. “There isn’t room for half measures. We’re going for the kill.”