Persepolis Rising полностью

The others were still talking, but her focus on the screen lowered the volume on them. She was aware of Amos’ low, gravel-strewn voice. Clarissa, higher and more musical. Alex with the ghost of a Mariner Valley drawl that was more habit than accent. Her family. Part of her family.

There was a zero result where there should have been a berth number. That was where the code was choking. It probably made sense to just chuck the routine entirely. Reaching beyond Saba’s secret network—even if it was only for passive information like reading docking records—was a little risky. But building a schedule on unconfirmed data could screw them up as well.

She hesitated, pulled the code, then put it back and reopened the logs. The bad entry was the twelfth ship in the logs. The Lightbreaker. She tapped her fingers against her thigh. Dig deeper and risk being noticed by security or ignore the error and move ahead as if everything was as expected. If she’d gotten a little more sleep, it would have been easier to make the decision.

“Bárány o juh, son toda son hanged,” she said to herself and opened a low-level request to the docking records. It only took seconds for confirmation to come through. The Lightbreaker wasn’t in its berth. It had shipped out two days ago. The flight plan listed the destination as Laconia with a service code that looked military. Well, that was one less for the evacuation plan. It would make things faster, but Saba would need to know. The crew, if they weren’t on the burn for the heart of the enemy, would need other bunks.

She looked at the service code. Touched it with a fingertip.

“Alex? Did the MCRN have a code eighteen twenty-SKS?”

“Sure,” he said from the hall. “Did a few of those myself, way back when. Priority prisoner transfer. Why?”

When she’d been about eleven, Naomi had been working in a warehouse on Iapetus. A steel support beam had popped its welds and sprung out, clipping the back of her head. It hadn’t been pain, not at first. Just a feeling of impact, and her senses receding a little. The agony had two, maybe three seconds to clear its throat and straighten its sleeves before it crashed over her. This felt very much the same.

Her hand trembled as she looked for a manifest. Something to say who’d been on the Lightbreaker. Who’d been important enough to the empire that they’d commandeered a ship just to take them away. There was nothing. Of course there wasn’t. Why would the Laconians announce that to anyone? She checked the dates, the times. It didn’t have to be Jim. It could have been someone else. But it wasn’t. She took a moment for herself and the pain. Five seconds. She could let herself hurt for five seconds. Then she had to get back to work. The rest would be for later.

She sent a message—text only—to Saba. The missing ship, the service coding, her suspicion that James Holden was already past the ring gate and into Laconian space. Did Saba have any contacts who could confirm that? After the message sent, she took a deep breath. Then another. She pulled the Lightbreaker out of her dataset and ran her code again. It didn’t hang this time.

She got up, surprised by how steady she felt, and took the two steps to the door.

“What’s the matter, boss?” Amos asked.

Naomi shook her head. When she spoke, she spoke to Clarissa.

“I had a talk with Saba. I’m going with you on the sensor-array leg of this.”

Clarissa’s brow was bent by whatever she saw in Naomi’s face. “Okay. Why?”

“Risk management,” Naomi said. “If the prison break fails, we don’t get as many people out. If the sensors come back up and they’re able to track which ships went through which gates, the whole mission fails. Better that we spend our resources where they matter the most.”

“But if Holden is …” Clarissa began, then went quiet. Naomi watched her understand. “The prisoner transfer.”

Alex’s face was grayish. And pale. “Fuck,” he said.

“And we need something to write down the evacuation plan on,” Naomi said. “Something small and portable, and not connected to the computer networks at all.”

Amos pushed himself up from the sink. “You got it, boss. Give me twenty minutes.”

“And something to write with,” Naomi said as the big man walked out into the public corridor.

Her hand terminal chimed, and she went back to her crash couch. The run was finished. Twenty ships, in the order that would get them through the gates and gone at the min-max point of risk and speed. Optimal was eighty-seven minutes, even with the Rocinante looping back to pick up Amos, Bobbie, Clarissa, and her. It was a solid plan.

She had a solid plan.

She pulled up her organizational notes and sat for a moment, looking at the words she’d put there.

SAVE JIM.

She drew a line through them.