Persepolis Rising полностью

“This form,” Narwa said, and her terminal buzzed again, “is to get an escorted pass onto the ship to get your personal items off it. They’re usually processed within forty-eight hours, so you shouldn’t have to wait long.”

“Well, thank—” Bobbie started, but Narwa was already looking at the person behind her in line and yelling, “Next.”

“Any word from Holden and Naomi yet?” Alex asked.

“Not yet,” Amos said, tapping his hand terminal with a thumb. “System’s pretty loaded up right now, though. May be getting stuck in queue.”

“They have it in lockdown,” she said. “There’s not going to be free comms on Medina that aren’t getting scanned by their systems.”

“Sounds like that could add some time to delivery,” Amos said.

“Standard occupation protocols care a lot more about security than convenience,” Bobbie said. “Message tracking, air-gapped encryption, pattern-based censorship, human-review censorship, throttled traffic. You name it.”

It fit with everything else that was suddenly changed and beyond her control. She couldn’t have her ship. She couldn’t get her people back together. She had to ask permission and an escort to let her retrieve her own clothes. So of course their messages were getting stuck in Medina’s system. They’d found a bar on the inner face of the drum. The long ramp from the transfer point at the center of spin had been thick with carts and people on foot, some heading up toward the docks, and many—like them—coming back down. The grim expressions had been the same both ways.

“I was captain for about a week,” Bobbie said, the beer in her cup sloshing dangerously as she jabbed at the air with it. “I mean, depending on if you count from when Holden offered it to me. Or when we did the paperwork. The paperwork came later, so officially, I guess. Houston clocked as much time in control of the Rocinante as I did.”

“You’re drunk,” Alex said, gently pushing her beer hand back down to the table. He was sitting next to her at a long, faux-wood table. Amos and Clarissa sat across the table from them. Amos had a beer in his hand and half a dozen empties on the table and didn’t appear impaired in the slightest. Clarissa had a plate of cold, soggy french fries in front of her and was using them to push ketchup into spiral art.

“I’m a little drunk,” Bobbie agreed. “I was just starting to like the idea of being captain of my own ship and these Laconian assholes took it away.”

She punctuated the word Laconian by jabbing her glass toward one of their Marines walking past the bar. Beer splashed across the table and into Clarissa’s fries. She didn’t seem to notice or care. Bobbie plucked up her napkin and dabbed the worst of it away anyhow, with only a little pang of guilt.

“And that’s why you need to ease down on the brews, sailor,” Alex said, just taking the glass away from her now. “We need to skip past this grief stage and get on to the kickin’-ass and gettin’-our-ship-back stage.”

“You got a plan?” Amos asked. His tone said he found this dubious.

“Not yet, but that’s what we need to be doing,” Alex shot back.

“Cuz, a couple hundred Marines, one destroyer in the docks, and one whatever the fuck that flying violation of the laws of physics is,” Amos said, pausing to sip his beer and smack his lips. “That’s gonna be one hell of a plan. I gotta get in on that action.”

“Hey, asshole,” Alex said, half standing up from his chair. “At least I want to do something more than feel sorry for myself.”

“This here?” Amos said. He pointed at the Marine outside, the security drones that now hovered over every part of Medina’s drum, the people in Laconian Navy uniforms everywhere. “I’ve seen this before. This is us getting paved over. All we can do now is try to find some cracks to grow through.”

“Cracks?” Alex said, then sat back down with a thump. “How long I known you? Half the time I still got no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“No one is doing anything,” Bobbie said. “Not till I give the order. We get this pass to get our stuff off the Roci, maybe we can start making a strategy from there. I may not have a ship, but I can sure as hell still have my crew.”

“Be nice to sneak a gun or two off the ship,” Amos agreed.

“Be nicer to find a way to get Betsy off,” Alex said to her. “If that’s possible.”

“So until then, we wait,” Bobbie said, then started pressing on the table trying to order another beer. “I just wish I understood what this Duarte asshole wants.”

“They haven’t started killing people,” Amos said. “I mean, it’s still early days. Lots of room for shit to go pear-shaped.”

“But why now?” Bobbie waved her arms around at the bar, at Medina, at all of human space beyond them. “We were just starting to figure this shit out. Earth and Mars working together, the colonies talking out their problems. Even the Transport Union turned out to be a pretty good idea. Why come kick the table over? Couldn’t he have just pulled up a chair with the rest of us?”

“Because some men need to own everything.”