Persepolis Rising полностью

In her office, she closed the door, then locked it. The little fern in the corner held its fronds high in the null g. A few things she hadn’t stowed—a drinking bulb, a printout on plastic flimsy, a clump of potting soil—floated in the air. She’d spent too long in spin gravity. She’d come to assume it would always be there, a few years’ habit enough to erase generations of experience and Belter identity.

She was aware that her brain wasn’t functioning normally. She felt more like she was piloting her body than living it. She knew it was shock and trauma, but knowing it changed nothing.

She strapped herself into her chair, took control of her personal interface, and opened her pending messages. Three were listed as unread. One was from the commander of one of the refugee ships, one from a captain of one of the EMC ships, and the last was listed as Admiral Anton Trejo of the Laconian Imperial Navy. Somewhere in a different universe, the Klaxons stopped their wailing. She wished now that she’d brought Vaughn at least. And maybe a whiskey.

She started the message playback.

Trejo sat at his station, his uniform immaculate and pressed. His thinning black hair was in place and his eyes a bright green. He didn’t even have the good taste to look disheveled. His smile radiated warmth and sympathy. She half expected him to start talking to her about his relationship to God or a business opportunity she should keep quiet about for fear of starting a rush.

“President Drummer, I hope.” He drawled like someone from the Mariner Valley. “If not, then please accept my condolences for her passing. I am Admiral Trejo of the Laconian battleship Heart of the Tempest, but you knew that. I’m reaching out to you now because I don’t want to be misunderstood. Despite all the hostilities the Transport Union and the Earth-Mars Coalition have greeted me with, we’re not enemies. Not you and me. Not the union and the empire. Not Sol system and Laconia. The high consul knew that there would be resistance to this change. We all did, and we respect that you had to do the things you’ve done.

“When people like you and I enter into a new phase of history, there’s … I don’t know what you’d call it. Birth pangs? There’s a time when you have to expect violence, even though you don’t celebrate it. When the high consul first explained to me the parameters of this mission, I wasn’t pleased. One ship, no backup, against an entire system? But he brought me around. And this moment, this message, is part of why I felt that his approach was the only moral way forward.

“I have tried to reach Secretary-General Li, but he isn’t returning my messages yet. You’re here, and you are at least equal in dignity to anyone on the inner planets. You can end this. I understand that you had to fight. You had to try to destroy me. I don’t blame you for this. But I am permitted at this point to accept your surrender. Do this, and the inner planets will follow you. You will be treated fairly by the new administration. I promise you that.

“If you are not yet willing to accept defeat, then I would ask you, out of what I hope is mutual respect, to tell me one thing. What is the number of dead that you need in order to show history that your choice to end this was wisdom? That carrying on the fight would not have been bravery but foolishness. A hundred more. A thousand more. A million. A billion. Only say how many more corpses will make this possible for you, and I will provide them.” He spread his hands. “Tell me the number. I await your reply.”

The message ended. Drummer floated against her restraints and thought about whether to play the message again, if only to give herself a few more moments before she went back to the command center. She could feel her pulse in her throat and in her wrists—a throbbing exhaustion. Released herself, pushed toward the door, down the short hall.

They were all silent when she arrived. She looked at her crash couch, there before the display. The moth-eaten wave of green. The tiny, indomitable dot of orange.

“Vaughn, I’ll need you to send a message to the Heart of the Tempest.”

“Ma’am,” Vaughn said, nodding crisply. I could order him to his death. I could tell them all to fight to the last breath.

“The message is this: ‘The number is zero.’ Send that, and then order all union ships to stand down.”

She looked for some reaction in Vaughn’s face. Rage or relief or disappointment. It was like expecting emotions from a stone.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

“No,” she said.

There is nothing else. No way forward. Her fight was over. If there was any hope to stand against this empire, it was someplace else now.

If.

He didn’t see the catastrophe coming. Even when the scope of it became clear, he struggled to understand it. Blindsided.