Persepolis Rising полностью

Bobbie turned to the soldier. “You’ll do as you’re told, or I will shoot you in the head as an example to others,” she said, she thought more politely than the man deserved. “Get next to the hole. You’re going in on one. Three … two …”

The man dove through, Amos cutting through the nylon bands as he went. The hole didn’t close over him, but only because Amos kept carving the sides.

“Next up,” Bobbie said, pointing at the nearest soldier. “You. Three. Two. One.”

Again and again, Bobbie shoved one of her team through the molten hole of the hull. The abandoned magnetic locks clustered around it like wildflowers in a garden, the cut tethers shifting as the ship shifted. Like seaweed in an unsteady current.

Medina swam above them, and twice Bobbie caught glimpses of the Rocinante’s drive plume limning the station like a sunrise that never came.

“Gonna be tight, Babs. This is taking a lot more fuel than I budgeted.”

“Keep going,” she said.

He did. Eight. Nine. Ten. And then it was just the two of them.

“We’re good,” she said. “Give me the rig. I’ll get you in.”

“I appreciate that thought,” Amos said. “But just between you and me? You’re not that good a welder. Head in. I’ll make it.”

“No heroic gestures.”

“Oh, I’m not dying out here,” Amos said, and pointed toward the interior of the ship with his chin. “Worst-case scenario, I’m dying inside there.”

Bobbie shifted her magnetic locks to the edge of the burning hole, then launched through, tucking her legs in. Arms caught her and pulled her to the side. The suits’ worklights filled the space between the hulls with blue-white radiance.

It was eerie. It was familiar as a well-loved face, but wrong. Where spars of titanium, ceramic, and steel should have been, crystals grew. Lines of fracture shot through them and then disappeared like watching lightning discharge in a bottle. Where sheets of metal and carbon lace should have been, seamless blankets of something that she tried to think of as lobster shell and then fabric and then ice defined the spaces.

It was unmistakably a Martian destroyer. And it was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

“Coming through,” Amos said, and she turned to pull him safely to a handhold. The hole where they’d breached squeezed tight. It didn’t completely close, but the opening ended up five centimeters across. In the worklights, Amos smiled his empty, amiable smile.

“Well, that part’s done,” he said. “Hope the next hull’s a bit more familiar, if you know what I mean.”

Alex was keeping the chase consistent. It was the only reason they weren’t being bounced through the space between the hulls like rats in a dryer. The entry into the ship proper was always the most dangerous moment. Bobbie had known that from the start.

They moved quickly, bracing at the hand- and footholds, until they found a stretch of bulkhead. Amos checked the fuel on the welding rig and shook his head, but he didn’t speak. The smoke shook and fell away with every turn of the ship like water falling from a faucet. The hull didn’t heal itself, but that was the only good thing.

“That’s going to be small,” she said.

“It’s going to get done,” Amos said. “Any more, and we’ll be trying to bend it to get through.”

Amos cut, and air and light spilled in from the other side. The ship’s interior was still pressurized. That was odd, for battle conditions. If the crew of the Storm hadn’t realized they were being boarded, they were finding out now. Bobbie squeezed through first into the back of a bunk room. Two rows of gel-mattress bunks, not that different from the quarters on the Roci where the Marine fire teams were meant to sleep. These beds were empty and neat. She took a position by the doorway while the others pushed in. Amos came last, slapping a plastic patch over the hole that bellied out into the space between the hulls like a balloon before it hardened.

“I don’t want to shoot you bastards,” Alex shouted through the radio. It was a code phrase. The Storm was getting close. The Roci’s evasions were going to fail, and soon.

Bobbie popped the door open, ducked her head out and back, and a bullet tore a streak out of the frame where her skull had been.

“How many?” the man beside her asked.

“At least one.” She looked around the bunk room for something—anything—that would give them the edge. “This place is a death trap, and we’re out of time. You three, with me. You two go in firing left, you to the right with me. If you see a grenade or anything that might be one, duck back in. Everyone else, into the bunks, on your backs. Set up to shoot between your feet if the bad guys rush the door. You have four seconds. Go.”

She picked high when they went out. The woman crouched down beside her could have been anyone, but their lives depended on each other now. Down the corridor, Bobbie saw the intersection where the fire had come from before. A single head bobbed out and back. She aimed for it, but she couldn’t tell if she hit.