Persepolis Rising полностью

The images that had come through from Medina were surreal. The ship that had sailed through from Laconia didn’t resemble anything that had gone out through the gate decades ago. The blast that had scattered the Tori Byron was more like high-energy stellar phenomena than a weapon humanity had conceived. And the destruction of the rail-gun emplacements had been accompanied by a blast of gamma radiation from the gates themselves that Cameron Tur had described as the energetic equivalent of a solar flare. It had destroyed the Sharon Chavez, a freighter that had been waiting for clearance from Medina’s traffic control. Her crew died in the blink of an eye, and not even from a direct attack. It wasn’t something Drummer could get her mind to accept. It was too big. Too strange. Too sudden.

“The attacker has disabled the relay network,” Vaughn said, answering something Santos-Baca had asked. “There are no new signals coming in or out of the ring space. Medina is effectively cut off.”

Drummer squeezed her fists until they ached. She couldn’t let her mind wander like that. It didn’t matter that she felt traumatized. The union was under attack, and it was all on her. She had to keep focus. “We do have some record from the freighter that was parked outside the gate. The interference is too severe to get anything with high definition, but enough that we can say with some confidence that Medina Station was boarded. We have to assume it’s been taken.”

“Can we get data through the gates?” Drummer asked. “Radio loud enough to carry through the interference on both sides? Or tightbeams? Something to get messages to the other systems?”

“It’s possible,” Lafflin said in a tone of voice that meant he didn’t actually think it was possible. “But it would certainly be monitored. And our encryption schema aren’t breakable by any known tech, but we’re not looking at known tech.” His hand terminal chimed. He glanced at the message and lifted his eyebrow. “Excuse me for a moment. Someone’s made a mistake.”

Drummer waved her permission, and the inner left them to themselves. When the doors had closed behind him, she turned to Santos-Baca and McCahill. “Well, seeing as it’s just us, what are the options?”

“If we can find a way to communicate with the other systems, we can coordinate a counterattack,” Santos-Baca said. “I’ve been putting together a spreadsheet of the resources we have in each system.”

“Let me see,” Drummer said. Santos-Baca flipped the data to Drummer’s display. More than thirteen hundred gates, each opening onto a new solar system. Almost all of them with colonies that varied from barely functioning villages to scientific complexes that were on the ragged edge of self-sustainability. The union’s void cities were the largest ships, but she could only pour attacking forces through so quickly without losing them to the gate’s glitches. She’d be sending them through one at a time to be mowed down. She pressed her fingers to her lips, pinching the flesh against her teeth until it ached a little. There was a way. There had to be a way.

She had to put first things first. And that meant reestablishing communications with all the union forces in all the systems. Some kind of stealth relay system had to be put in place. Maybe some kind of feint that would draw the enemy’s attention long enough to let her sneak new repeaters on either side of if not all the gates, then a strategic few—

“Ma’am,” Lafflin said from behind her, “please, you can’t—”

An unfamiliar voice answered. “Give it a fucking rest, Benedito. I can do whatever the fuck I want. Who’s going to tell me not to? You?”

The old woman moved slowly, using a cane even in the light gravity of People’s Home. Her hair was blindingly white, thinning, and pulled back in a bun at the base of her skull. Her skin was slack and papery, but there was an intelligence in her eyes that the years hadn’t dimmed. She looked up at Drummer, and smiled with the warmth of a grandmother. “Camina. It’s good to see you. I got the first shuttle I could. How’s your brother doing?”

Drummer pushed through a flurry of reactions—surprise that the woman was here, a flicker of starstruck awe, disorientation at being called by her first name in public, distrust that Chrisjen Avasarala—the retired grand dame of inner-planet politics—knew about her brother at all, and finally the solid certainty that every feeling she’d just experienced had been anticipated. More than anticipated. Designed. It was all a manipulation, but done so well and with such grace that knowing that didn’t make it ineffective.

“He’s fine,” Drummer said. “The regrowth went well.”

“Good, good,” Avasarala said, lowering herself into a chair. “Astounding what they can do with neural replacement these days. When I was growing up, they cocked it up more than they got it right. I had most of my peripheral nervous system redone a couple years ago. Works better than the old stuff, except my leg gets restless at night.”