Persepolis Rising полностью

They stared at each other a moment. That’s the best we’ve got? Intimidate them with classical allusions? floated at the back of her throat. Lafflin shrugged uncomfortably.

“All right,” Drummer said. Because what else was there to be said? It wasn’t as though her will was going to change any of the factors involved. The timetable was listed at the side of the display, days and hours as ticks of red and gold.

“The eggheads have a good model of the Tempest,” Lafflin went on, swapping out the map of the system for a schematic of the Tempest. The weird, organic shape of it made her feel like she was looking at a detail from an autopsy. Here is the vertebra where things went wrong. You can see the malformation. She smiled at the absurdity of the thought. Lafflin smiled back reflexively. “The only hard data we have is where the PDCs and torpedoes came out, but we also got a lot of good heat data from the last engagement.”

“The death of Independence,” Drummer said. The death of the first void city and everyone who hadn’t fled their home.

Lafflin looked down. “That, yes, ma’am. The data’s given us some idea about the internal structures too. Enough that we feel confident that we can target the right places on that bastard. Take it out before it reaches Earth.”

Because that was the point, Drummer thought. That was always the point. Protect Earth and Mars. Keep the inner planets safe and independent, even at the cost of more Belters’ lives. And she’d known that. From the moment Avasarala had stepped into her meeting, she’d known. Some part of her expected to feel some kind of outrage, some betrayal. Resentment that the wheel of history was still rolling over the backs of her people first.

She didn’t. There was a term she remembered from her years in the OPA. Saahas-maut. She didn’t know where the term came from, but it meant something like the pleasure you take in hardship. It was supposed to be a peculiarly Belter emotion, something that the inners didn’t name because they didn’t feel it. She looked at the Tempest now, the guesswork lines of her superstructure and drive, the target points along her hull. Drummer wasn’t angry at the inners for using the union to protect Earth. She wasn’t even angry at the Laconians for being another iteration of everything the inners had been before the union existed. War and loss, the prospect of the oppressor’s boot. There was a nostalgia to it. A bone-deep memory of what it had been to be young.

She couldn’t help wondering what that girl, riding rock hoppers and taking gigs at Ceres and Iapetus and Tycho, would have thought of the woman she’d become. The leader of her own oppressions. Not much, probably.

Lafflin cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Drummer said. “Didn’t sleep well. Vaughn? Could you get me some tea?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vaughn said. “Also, Pallas.”

“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t mean it.

She’d placed the strategic update with Lafflin on her schedule on purpose. The Tempest’s inexorable flight sunward was slated to reach its point nearest to Pallas Station within the hour. The evacuation was complete, or as near to complete as it would be. There was always some old rock hopper with a gun and an attitude who’d stay behind out of spite and rage. It wouldn’t help. One of humanity’s oldest homes in the Belt would be dead before she went to sleep again, or if it wasn’t, it would be because Admiral Trejo had seen fit to grant his mercy. She was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. At least she could go into the terrible, predictable tragedy with all the vulnerable points of the Tempest firmly in mind. She had some hope of retribution.

There was a certain peace in the impossibility of subterfuge. Sure, there were stealth ships and long-range torpedoes. The cloak and dagger of vanishing into the vastness between worlds. They worked for a ship here and there. For the small and swift and furtive. But on this scale—the scale of war on the battlefield of the abyss—everyone knew more or less where everyone else was. Their drive plumes and heat signatures announced them. The hard laws of orbital mechanics and time placed every base, every planet, every person predictably in front of their own personal firing squads. Situations like this one, they could see death coming, and it didn’t matter. Death still came.

“Did you …” Lafflin said. “We can continue this after. If you’d like.”

Drummer didn’t like. She didn’t want to see it happen. Didn’t want to hope that Pallas might survive. But she was the president of the union, and bearing witness was part of what she was supposed to do. She wondered where Avasarala was, and whether the old lady was going to watch too.

“Yes,” Drummer said. “That’ll be fine.”