Persepolis Rising полностью

In answer, she put up the live feed. A second’s delay. Maybe two. Hardly anything at all. They were so close, they could have spoken in real time. It made her feel uncomfortable to be so near the Tempest. But there it was, its weirdly organic shape bright in the enhanced colors. Jets of reaction mass gouted from one side, pushing the ship to a slightly different course.

“Correcting for new vector,” the weapons station said. “And firing. EMC forces are also launching torpedoes.”

“Do the same,” Drummer said. She checked the time. Three minutes had passed. She took control of the visual display, zooming in on the skin of the enemy ship. It didn’t look like it had plating so much as a single, textured surface. She threw on the tactical overlay, and a dozen points appeared that weren’t visible in reality. The high-value targets, the vulnerable places on the Tempest that didn’t grow back, or at least not quickly. A dozen carefully placed dots that Emily Santos-Baca and Independence had died to find.

“Come on,” she said, willing the missiles to strike.

“The enemy is firing PDCs,” the sensor tech said.

“Show me,” Drummer said, and the Tempest almost vanished in a cloud of tracers. The data field was too rich to comprehend—missiles, streams of PDC fire, the straight-line paths of the rail-gun rounds.

“EMC Battleship Frederick Lewis is reporting damage,” Vaughn said.

“Are you working comms now?” Drummer asked. “Who’s going to get me my coffee?”

“They’re dropping core,” Vaughn said, ignoring her.

A little cheer went up, and it took Drummer half a second to see why. One of the hardpoints on the Tempest was blinking—the system reporting a missile strike that had connected with the target. The cloud of PDC fire grew a degree thinner. Any ship Drummer knew, any station she’d ever heard of, would have been reduced to slivers of metal and flakes of lace by now. The only thing she could think of that would withstand that barrage was a planet. Even then, cities would have been pounded to dust by what had been launched in the last fifteen minutes. Sixteen now. It was so fast. There should have been hours between launch and response. But this wasn’t that kind of battle. There was no finesse to it. Just brutal, constant violence.

The tightness in her throat was the memory of Pallas. The harder they pushed the Tempest, the more Drummer feared the magnetic beam. If the Laconians used it on People’s Home, she wouldn’t live long enough to notice she was being ripped apart. And if the glitch happened again … well, the observatories on Earth and Mars might get more data about how long it took the enemy to recharge the damned thing.

But they hadn’t used it yet. Maybe the time slip had been the fucking thing breaking. The universe owed her a little slice of luck like that.

Another two hits on the Tempest. It shifted, plumes of steam appearing from its thrusters as it evaded incoming fire. Five more of the EMC ships took crippling damage or turned to bright dust, too far away to see. The Tempest veered and danced. Dark streaks marked its sides where the missiles and rail-gun rounds hit, and while most of the marks faded, not all of them did.

“We have expended two-thirds of our rail-gun ammunition,” the weapons tech announced. “Shall I maintain fire?”

“Yes,” Drummer said. “Then start putting chairs in the launcher. We hit that thing until we’re down to pillows and beer.”

“Understood, ma’am,” the weapons tech said. She could hear the smile in his voice. She felt it too—the giddy sense that even if they were winning ugly, they were at least winning.

On the display, the Tempest shifted and dodged like a fish in a tank. The organic curves of its design made it hard not to think of it as an animal. An apex predator surprised to find itself outmatched by its prey. And there was something …

“On the aft. By that third contact point. Is that a gas plume?”

The sensors tech shifted through half a dozen slices of the spectrum in less than a second. “That is correct, ma’am. The Tempest appears to be venting atmosphere.”

“EMC Governor Knight is launching high-yield nuclear torpedoes,” Vaughn said.

Drummer sat back in her crash couch. Anticipation was a tightness in her throat and her hands. The Tempest’s PDCs weren’t all disabled. There was still the chance it might kill the nukes before they got close enough to detonate. Seconds stretched into minutes. Her neck ached from straining toward the display.

The light of the explosion whited out the sensor array. A ragged cheer came from all around the control room.

“One down,” she said to herself. “And fuck you all along with it.”

It wasn’t over. Laconia would send another ship after this one. A fleet, next time. The union and the EMC would have to get much more clever. But they knew more now—about how the enemy ships functioned, how they maneuvered in battle, and most important of all, how they could be killed.