Persepolis Rising полностью

“I know humans. I know that staying alive and keeping one’s family safe is not a trivial reward for valued service to the empire. It is the only choice you have left in your lives. Make the right one.”

Before they could shout any defiance at him, Singh turned and left. As they walked away, he said to Overstreet, “Put them in separate cells, far enough apart that they can’t hear each other. Then make sure there’s a guard outside every door. Just in case someone decides to take me up on my offer.”

“Copy that,” Overstreet replied. There was a hint of skepticism in his tone.

Singh stopped. Overstreet turned to face him, a puzzled look on his broad face.

“Something troubling you, Major?”

“I didn’t intend any disrespect, sir.”

“Our mandate from High Consul Duarte is to win over the population of this station, as a first step in winning over the population of the colony worlds. We do that by entangling our interests. By teaching them that what they think of as ‘informing’ is actually just good citizenship. This is just a first step in building what will hopefully be a network of cooperators to help us.”

“Understood,” Overstreet said. “Marines make terrible police, sir. We’re not trained for this sort of job. If we could build up a security force made up of local cooperators and Marine elements, it would help a lot.”

“Good. Make that part of your mandate going forward. You have full authority to offer amnesty to people you think might be useful.”

“I’ll pass it down the ranks,” Overstreet said. He began gently pushing Singh back up the corridor toward their little convoy of carts.

“The other thing,” Singh said. “I think it would be appropriate to make a complete audit of the security protocols. Call it a supplemental security review.”

“I can do that if you’d like, sir,” Overstreet said. “Can I ask what function the review would fill?”

He meant Am I being called on the carpet? This was also the fallout of letting Tanaka go. There would be a period where his people trusted him less. Suspected that he would blame them for failures in the system. Punish them for things that weren’t their fault.

“We need—” he began, then caught himself. “I need to look over the complete system of security we have. Things are going to change simply because we are here, with these people, and not in a classroom at the academy. I don’t know how yet, but I think it’s inevitable. I am trusting you to tell me not only what we do but why. And whether you think it should be altered.”

“Comprehensive, then,” Overstreet said, but he sounded more pleased by the implied trust than put out by the extra work. “I’ll see to it. Back to the office, sir?”

Singh almost said yes, but a thought stopped him.

“No,” Singh said. “No, take me to Carrie Fisk’s office. And notify her we’re coming.”

On the ride to the Association of Worlds’ offices, Singh thought back to his letter home. The idea that being able to hold the ring space meant they’d won the war was optimistic. Or simplistic, at least. Laconia could absolutely control access to the worlds through the gates, but every single world could decide this didn’t mean they were conquered. And even if they placed a Laconian governor on every world, and a Laconian naval ship in orbit and Marines patrolling the streets, every individual might decide they personally had not been conquered. Establishing the empire was an endless series of microscopic magnifications into greater and greater granularity, and every grain was a potential renegade. Medina was just a microcosm of the problem they’d be running into everywhere. Political opposition considered as fractal geometry.

He had been sent as a governor, and the more he saw, the more he came to understand what that assignment actually was. Not just a bureaucrat to oversee the smooth functioning of the station and the traffic it controlled. He was creating the template for making every other human world into a new Laconia. Seven Belters had decided that killing a single low-level officer was worth risking all their own lives. That wasn’t a rational position. An enemy that bad at basic math might do anything. The colony worlds might decide that throwing a few hundred people with rifles onto a transport ship and trying a suicide attack on Medina made sense. He only needed to hold the station for a few more weeks until the Typhoon arrived and rendered any such foolhardy attack plan irrelevant. Carrie Fisk could help to carry the message that would dissuade any such error before it could happen.