Persepolis Rising

Chapter Thirty-Three: Bobbie

“Tenth what?” Alex said. His voice was reedy and distant. Not all of that was because of the tiny speaker it was coming out of. Alex understood what Holden was doing just as much as she did. One alarm was significant. One alarm out of a dozen meant less. Holden was giving them cover, and Alex was asking Bobbie to say that Holden hadn’t just decided to sacrifice himself to keep the mission on track.

Her mouth was dry.

“You heard him,” she replied, keeping her tone all business. “As soon as that tenth alarm goes off, blow the vent, take out the guards, and get us into the room.”

“Am I getting that back?” Amos asked, but not to them.

Naomi was staring at her, wide-eyed. She was on the radio, too. She knew what was happening. But she tightened her grip on her tools and pressed her lips together, then gave Bobbie a nod. Good to go. The Roci’s former XO would finish her mission. Then she’d worry about Holden afterward. They both would.

The sound of the alarms had started close to them, and grew more distant as new sirens joined the cacophony. Holden was moving away from them. Which was good, considering what was about to happen.

“Chief,” Alex said. “That was ten.”

Bobbie took one last look at her surroundings. She and Naomi floated alone in the narrow corridor. The door to the computer room was five meters away, and she had her improvised battering ram in one hand. As it always did in the calm seconds before a mission began, her mind ran through the checklist of things that were about to happen. Nothing popped up as a red flag, so she said, “Go, go, go.”

For three long breaths, nothing happened.

There was a distant thump, like a firecracker going off inside a locker. The first drone just blew itself up to take out the venting cover. This was followed by a shout of surprise. Bobbie could picture the two men in the room looking up in shock as the vent turned into shrapnel behind them, and five tiny drones flew into the room. Then two more bangs, close together like firing a double tap with a pistol. This time louder, and closer. Two more drones going off to take out the guards.

The alarm in the room started screeching as the man with his hand on the dead man’s switch went down. But now, instead of drawing every guard in the area, it was just one of over a dozen alarms going off, and new ones coming up every few seconds. Holden had been busy.

“I’m getting smoke in the vents,” Clarissa said. “I’m turning up the recyclers.”

The last explosion was the loudest yet, right on the other side of the door. The last three drones clustering around the latch and detonating. Alex said, “My guys are done. Me and my team are cleaning up the logs and shutting down.”

Bobbie planted her feet on the corridor wall and launched toward the door. The heavy length of ceramic-filled pipe she was using as a ram was gripped in both hands, and she slammed it into the door just above the latch. The door exploded open so violently that it bounced off the bulkhead and swung back hard enough to clip her knee as she flew by. It hurt, but not enough to think about.

She had a split second to clock the room: workstation and two dead men with blood soaking their suits floating next to it, server rack bolted to the deck in the center of the compartment, plain metal walls. She slammed into the server rack and bounced off into an empty corner of the room.

“Ouch. Fuck.”

“What’s that, Chief?” Alex asked.

“Nothing. Just went a hundred kph when twenty would have done,” Bobbie replied. “We’re good, Naomi. Do your thing.”

Naomi’s lean form slid through the opening with Belter grace, tapped one foot against the bulkhead, and came to a perfect stop next to the server rack. Watching her slide through the air like a fish in water made Bobbie feel overlarge and clumsy.

“I’ll be in the hall, watching for gawkers,” she said.

“Mmhmm,” Naomi replied, already ignoring her. She was pulling panels off the server rack, and a variety of gear floated in the space around her like a high-tech cloud.

Before she left, Bobbie pushed over to the two Laconian guards and checked their pulse. Up close, it was hardly necessary. Both men had massive head injuries, and bits of bone, blood, and drone parts floated around them. It was a shitty way for a soldier to die, ambushed like that, and Bobbie pushed down the feeling of guilt and regret. It was war. Right now, her brothers and sisters in the Martian fleet were fighting and dying in the Sol system in that same war. And a lot more blood was being spilled on their side than on the Laconian one so far.

Still, as a person who’d stood a watch in enemy territory, the sightless eyes of the two dead men made her scalp crawl the way she’d always imagined it would when a sniper had you in their sights for the kill shot.

“Your turn now,” she told the dead man. “My turn later.”

She pushed out into the corridor to keep watch. The shrill electronic screech of alarms echoed down the hall and all around her. So far, no one had come to check on the computer-room alarm. Why would they? Holden had made sure that the only important alarm was drowned out. She had to hand it to him, as an improvised element of the plan it was a pretty good idea. Probably something they should have included, just in case.

Next time, she thought, knowing there would never be a next time.

“Got it,” Naomi said from behind her. Bobbie nearly elbowed her in the face before her brain could override the startle response.

“Great,” she said instead. “Let’s get to the shelter before Katria gets itchy and blows us all to hell for the fun of it.”

“Jim won’t be there,” Naomi said.

Amos and Katria were floating in the cramped space of their chosen radiation shelter. It was nothing more than a four-meter length of hallway with heavy pressure doors at both ends. Netting hung on both walls with rebreathers, first-aid kits, emergency vac suits. Bobbie had stowed a gear bag with the less-standard equipment.

As soon as she and Naomi climbed in through the one open door, Katria slapped her hand to the panel and it slammed shut.

“What the fuck?” Amos said, rounding on her.

“We need that closed when the bomb goes off,” Katria replied, pulling the detonator out of her pack. “You know, to live.”

“Nothing happens without my direct order,” Bobbie said to her and put a restraining hand on Amos’ chest. He reacted by mag-booting himself to the deck, so she kicked on her own boots and clamped them to the bulkhead to keep her leverage.

“Babs,” Amos said, “I’m going to go get Cap, and it’d be nice if you held off on the boom till I’m done.”

Bobbie waited for Naomi to voice her agreement, then Katria to argue against it, and for their tiny shelter to turn into shouting and chaos. But to her surprise, everyone just looked at her. It was an interesting fact of her brief captaincy that the only time anyone seemed to want her to make a decision was when it was one she didn’t want to make.

Amos was staring at her, his expression as blank as always. But he held his fists with the ease of long use, and Bobbie knew how fast the old man was in a fight. With his feet clamped to the deck for leverage, he’d be tough to restrain if he decided to start swinging.

“Our window is closing,” Bobbie said, raising her hands, making it about the logic of her words instead of a threat. “At some point someone checks that alarm and finds two dead guys. We don’t have time for a rescue.”

“She’s right. So let me blow this fucker and get on with it,” Katria added. Bobbie winced at the cold disregard in her words, but didn’t take her eyes off Amos.

Naomi still hadn’t weighed in, but Amos’ eyes kept cutting to her, waiting for the go sign. If Naomi said, Yes, go get him, Bobbie knew the only way they’d keep Amos in the room was to physically restrain him. Bobbie couldn’t see what Naomi was doing behind her back, but whatever it was, Amos wasn’t getting the signal he wanted, because he didn’t make a move.

“Those alarms were moving away from us, fast,” Bobbie said, still only looking at Amos. “Holden knew the schedule. Either he’s made his way to a shelter or he’s told whoever has him now to get to one.”

“You don’t know that,” Naomi finally said.

“No, I don’t. But I hope. And right now, that’s what I’ve got. Because we have to blow that bomb now, or this whole operation fails and we still don’t get Holden back.”

“Yeah, so let’s get on with it,” Katria said.

“Stop fucking helping me, lady,” Bobbie snarled at her without turning around.

Naomi spoke, and her voice was as calm as it was empty. “Bobbie’s right. This can’t all be for nothing.”

Amos flicked his eyes to Naomi, then locked on Bobbie. His face had the same meaningless half grin it always wore, but his shoulders were tense, and his fists were white-knuckled. A flush of blood darkened his neck. Bobbie had never seen him like this before, and she didn’t like it now.

Not that it changed anything.

“Katria, get ready to blow on my signal,” Bobbie said. “Let’s get into these emergency suits for evac immediately after. You’ve got one minute to dress.”

Bobbie heard the Velcro ripping sounds of vac suits being pulled off the walls and hastily donned. Amos wasn’t moving.

“Put your suit on, big man,” Bobbie said.

“You’re really gonna blow it,” Amos replied. He didn’t sound surprised. Or like he was issuing a challenge. He didn’t sound like anything. Bobbie involuntarily braced for violence.

“Yes,” she said.

Without changing his expression, Amos squared up on her, hands at his sides.

“I guess you really want that captain’s chair back, huh Babs?”

Before she knew she was going to do it, Bobbie had already grabbed his collar and yanked him up hard enough to pull his mag boots off the floor, then slammed him against the bulkhead.

“If we had more time,” she hissed at him through her teeth, “you and I would be dancing right now.”

Amos smiled at her. “I got time.”

“Katria. Blow it,” Bobbie said, and the world ended.

When Katria’s charge went off, it demolished the control panel and ripped a seventeen-centimeter hole in the oxygen storage tank. Bobbie didn’t know the exact size of the tank, but she had a vague memory that liquid oxygen compressed down to about eleven hundred kilograms per cubic meter, and now all of it was trying to become a gas again, all at once.

The initial blast of expanding gas was deafening. The shock wave ripped apart bulkheads and piping. All the liquid oxygen in those pipes joined the explosion as additional expanding gas. From inside the relative safety of their reinforced emergency compartment, it sounded like someone had set off a tactical nuke in the next room.

And then, as was inevitable, something oxidized fast enough to produce a flame, and the initial blast of air became fire.

The entire emergency shelter shuddered, then canted over onto its side. The reinforced and blast-hardened bulkheads didn’t break, but the mounts holding the compartment to the deck were sheared off by the force of the blast. It took seconds that lasted for hours.

The inner walls and the pressure doors at each end of the compartment got hot enough to start smoking. Bobbie shared a look with Amos, then let go of him and they both scrambled to get into the emergency vacuum suits.

When the exterior bulkhead blew out, there wasn’t another deafening explosion, but rather a sudden drop in the sound level. The roar was replaced by the hiss of rushing air, then a high whine, then nothing. The seals on their shelter stayed intact, so afterward all they could hear was their own panicked breathing.

“Okay, we’re getting massive alarms,” Clarissa said, her voice the only calm thing in the universe. “The station’s going into shutdown. I’m pulling out too. I’ll see you back at the place.”

“God damn,” Naomi said.

“Told you,” Katria said. “My shit always works.”

Bobbie finished pulling on her vac suit, and saw Amos was sealing up his own. They traded a look. “We need to get out of here,” she said to him, and he nodded his agreement. Whatever was going to happen between them, it was on hold for now. They’d come back to it, she was certain of that. And it would need to get settled.

If I just killed Holden, this probably ends with one of us dead.

Whatever she’d imagined when she heard the blasts from inside the shelter, the reality was worse.

They opened the door to an entire deck that had been dropped in a blender, then spun up in a centrifuge. Bulkhead panels, control stations, equipment, decking. It had all been torn, twisted, burned, and then thrown out against the outer walls at high speed. A long piece of pipe was embedded in a wall, still quivering like an arrow shot into a tree. Something that looked like a metal desk had been slammed into a support beam so hard that the metal had actually fused. And in one corner, a single boot had been pinned to the ceiling and then melted into a stalactite of rubber. She hoped there wasn’t a foot in it.

They floated silently through the wreckage looking for their exit. It wasn’t hard to find.

A hole gaped in the exterior bulkhead of the drum nearly five meters across. The nearly circular rim of it was all bent outward, like the metal wall had been breached by a giant’s battering ram. Which, Bobbie supposed, it had. Only instead of concrete and steel, it had been oxygen and fire. Outside, she saw the faint twinkle of light on the ejecta as it raced away from the station and toward the curtain of black at the edge of the ring space.

“Exactly where I said it would be,” Katria cackled. “Damn near half a meter from the exact spot I marked as the weak point. I should charge money for this.”

“Do you think anyone survived?” Naomi asked.

“We kept everyone we could out of the affected area,” Bobbie replied. “Only should have been Laconians down here …”

“And anyone who didn’t get our fucking memo,” Amos added.

“Jim would have warned anyone he ran into,” Naomi said. “He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.”

“Yeah, by then it wouldn’t matter much,” Amos agreed. “No time to track the bomb down before it did its business.”

“And fuck any Laconians who were here,” Katria said in a tone that sounded like she’d have spit if she weren’t wearing a helmet. “I hope they fucking saw it coming.”

“Kat,” Bobbie said, “please shut up now.”

“This is going to work,” Naomi said, pointing out the hole toward the docks. “They’re going to think that was our target.”

The Gathering Storm sat a few dozen meters away. The nose of the ship and its port-side flank showed significant hull damage. Debris from the blast had punched holes in the landing clamps and dragged long gouges down its side. A large cluster of objects that looked like a sensor or communication array had nearly been ripped off the side of the ship, floating now at the end of a tether of cables.

It was an eerie ship. The angles of it were like something cut from crystal, and the curves felt like something grown more than built. It was like looking at a venomous snake. She had a hard time pulling her eyes away.

“Too bad we didn’t kill it,” Katria said, ignoring Bobbie’s request.

“Yeah,” Bobbie agreed. “Too bad.”

Amos pulled a magnetic grapple gun out of the gear bag he was carrying and fired a line over to the elevator shaft exterior. They’d need to climb up to a point not far from the maintenance hatch on the outside of the drum she and Clarissa had used earlier. The hard part would be getting a grapple onto the drum, then hanging on while the station tried to hurl them away at a third of a g. After that, it was an easy climb up to their secret entrance back into the station. Up into Medina from the underworld, and mission accomplished.

Unless something else went wrong. The only thing worse than losing Holden would be losing him for no damned reason.

“Laconians are gonna find this hatch,” Amos said. “Shouldn’t plan to use it again after this. No way the crews that come to fix that hole are gonna miss it.”

“Yeah,” Bobbie agreed. “If we thought the sweeps before were bad, they’re about to get a hundred times tighter.”

“Yeah, fuck ’em,” Katria snorted.

“No,” Naomi said. “It’ll be worse than that. We stung their pride before. But today we hurt them. Hurt them bad. And they’re going to try to make it better by hurting us back. Not just us either. Anyone who they think might be like us.”

While Amos hooked his grapple line to the edge of the hole so that they could climb up to the elevator housing, Naomi remained staring at the damaged Laconian ship.

“We killed a lot of people today,” she said. “Some of them just don’t know it yet.”