Persepolis Rising полностью

“Damn it,” he said to his empty office, then leaned back, running one hand across his scalp. There was so much more to put into the report. The preparations he’d made—was making—for the stationing of the Typhoon and the additional personnel that it was bringing to Medina. The victories he’d had in rooting out the bombers and repairing the damage they had done. His schedule for coordinating and controlling the traffic between the worlds. The empire would succeed or fail on the back of its logistical planning, and his implementation of the high consul’s vision was actually quite detailed. Only just now, something itched in his soul, and he couldn’t concentrate.

He wondered whether Duarte ever suffered the same base animal distractions. It seemed he would have, but Singh couldn’t imagine it. He closed the draft report, opened his personal journal wide enough to edit, and then closed it too. The walls themselves seemed to push the air at him. It was like an optical illusion of something falling that never quite fell.

“Damn it,” he said again, less forcefully this time.

The reports coming in from Sol were distracting too. Trejo’s private reports tracked through the Gathering Storm, but they were meant for Duarte. Singh wished he could read them himself. There were so many questions—whether the Tempest had taken any lasting damage in its first foray against the enemy. Whether anything had changed with the anomaly that had appeared after Pallas. When Trejo anticipated the next battle would come. And if he believed it would be the last one.

There were the public feeds, of course. The positions of the combined navies were, for the most part, a known thing. The larger cruisers were impossible to hide, and the massive union ships they called void cities. But there might be stealth ships lying in wait or fields of torpedoes launched into a quiet orbit, counting on the vastness of space to conceal them until they burned to life. Just looking at the declassified tactical map made Singh’s flesh crawl. The vast cloud of the enemy shifting through the gravity-bent space of inner planets, like a swarm of insects with a single, hated enemy. And the Tempest alone in its simple course. Trejo wouldn’t evade and he wouldn’t retreat. He had his orders, and he would follow them.

Singh reminded himself of how powerful the Tempest was. How resilient. The high consul wouldn’t have committed the ship to a path that led to embarrassment for the empire and death for Trejo. And yet, what if he’d miscalculated? Or what if Earth or Mars or the union had been behind the wave of lost time? Or …

This speculation was pointless. Worse, it was self-indulgent. Even if he knew everything else he needed to put into his official report, it was going to have to wait. He had to get out of his offices, if only for a while. He had to collect himself.

Overstreet answered the connection request almost at once. “Governor?”

“I will need a security detail to my office at once.”

Overstreet’s silence was less than a heartbeat. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“No. I want to inspect the docks. When will there be sufficient security for that?”

If Overstreet was surprised or annoyed, there was no sign of it in his voice. “I’ll have a detail to you in five minutes, sir.”

“Thank you,” Singh said, then dropped the connection.

The Lightbreaker was a cargo ship that had been in the union’s fleet. A small vessel, but fast and with an efficient drive. All of the ships and their crews were guests of the empire until the Typhoon arrived. But not the Lightbreaker. Of all the ships on the station manifest, that was the one best suited to act as a prisoner transport. It was slated to push off in half an hour’s time with James Holden in its brig and a crew Singh had chosen from the Gathering Storm. And Singh found he very much wanted to be there when the first ship left Medina Station for Laconia. The first transit to happen while he was in charge of the ring space. His watch.

He straightened his uniform and checked himself in the mirror before stepping smartly into the outer offices. He heard the change when he walked into the room. The men and women under his command making certain that he saw them busy. Eight Marines in armor were waiting outside, along with a driver, who wasn’t in power armor but did carry an assault rifle beside her in the cart.

“The docks, sir?” the driver asked.

“Berth K-eighteen,” Singh said, then sat back as the cart started off.