Persepolis Rising (The Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  “I—” Bobbie started, then, “Wait, what?”

  “Naomi and I are thinking of pulling the ripcord. We’ve been doing this shit for a lot of years. It’s time to find a quiet spot somewhere. See how we like that for a while.”

  It was more of a hit than anything Houston had managed. The ache started just below her ribs and spread up. She didn’t know what it meant yet.

  “Is everyone else on the crew …?” Bobbie said, then wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  “No. As Naomi recently pointed out to me, Alex will die in that pilot’s chair. Whoever buys the ship will have to be okay with that. I can’t speak for what Amos plans to do, you know, after.”

  After. He meant after Clarissa died.

  “I’ve been saving my money, mostly, but I’m not sure I can afford a gunship,” Bobbie said, keeping her tone light, trying to make a joke of it.

  “We’ll finance it. Split the joint account six ways, then set up a payment plan for the rest. Based on our past income, it should be an easy nut to cover. You pay any new crew out of your end. The Roci is your ship.”

  “Why me? Why not Alex?”

  “Because there isn’t anyone on this ship I’d rather take orders from, and I’m the world’s worst person at taking orders. You’ll make a fantastic captain, and you’ll protect the reputation of this ship. It’s weird, but that’s something I find myself caring about.”

  Bobbie swallowed something that had become stuck in her throat, and she straightened up her back. It was all she could do to not stand up at attention. Military tradition died hard, and a captain handing over command of their vessel bordered on sacred trust.

  “I would, you know,” she said. “I’d see us become a cloud of gas before I’d violate the honor and good name of this ship.”

  “I know. So is that a yes?”

  “I do wonder …” Bobbie said.

  Holden nodded and drank his coffee, waiting for her to finish.

  “I wonder what the universe looks like without James Holden trying to ride to the rescue.”

  “I imagine everyone will find things running a lot more smoothly,” Holden said with a grin.

  “I wonder,” Bobbie repeated.

  Chapter Eight: Singh

  Singh was dreaming of wandering, lost in the halls of a vast spaceship, when the comm on his desk buzzed him awake.

  “Yes?” he croaked even before he’d opened his eyes. There was nothing wrong with his taking a nap in his quarters. He wasn’t shirking any of his duties. And the shakedown of his ship, the Gathering Storm, had meant working for sixteen and sometimes eighteen hours a day for weeks now. He couldn’t continue as an effective leader and officer if he didn’t take every opportunity to grab a little shut-eye.

  And yet, something inside him didn’t want his crew to know. As if having the same biological requirements as other humans was admitting weakness.

  “Sir, we are nearing rendezvous with the Heart of the Tempest,” came the reply. Lieutenant Trina Pilau, his navigation officer. “You asked me to—”

  “Yes, yes, quite right. I’m on my way,” Santiago said as he rolled out of his couch and waved on the lights.

  His quarters were also his office, and the red folder containing his orders from the admiralty was still sitting on his desk. He’d been reviewing them for the fiftieth time or so when he’d fallen asleep. Leaving them out was a breach of operational security, and one he’d have reprimanded a junior officer for. As he returned them to his safe, he told the ship to make a note of the lapse in his private log. At least it would be part of the permanent record, and his superiors could decide later if it required further inquiry. He hoped they wouldn’t.

  He took a moment to wash his face in his private lavatory. The cold, biting water was one of the perks of his station. He put on a fresh uniform. A captain set the standard for his officers. Appearing on duty clean and pressed was the minimum level of professionalism he expected from them, and so he was responsible for it in himself. When he was presentable, he opened the door that separated his private space from the bridge of the ship.

  “Captain on the bridge!” the chief of the watch snapped. The officers who were not actively manning stations stood and saluted. Even the consoles, polished to a spotless shine, seemed to radiate respect, if not for him as a man then at least for his authority. The blue of the wall matched the flag, and the sigil of his command—three interlocking triangles—had been built into the surface. It made him feel a deep, almost atavistic pride seeing it. His ship. His command. His duty.

  “Is Colonel Tanaka here?” Singh asked.

  “The colonel is in her briefing room with her senior officers, sir.”

  A twitch of annoyance troubled him, as much with himself as with his chief of security. He’d meant to have a quiet conversation with her before meeting with Admiral Trejo. He’d heard unofficially that Tanaka and Trejo had known each other before, and he’d intended to get her assessment of the man. But it was too late for that now.

  “The con is yours,” said Davenport, his executive officer.

  “I have the con,” Captain Singh said, and sat in his chair.

  “The Tempest has cut thrust and is awaiting our arrival,” his flight control officer said, pulling up the range map on the main screen. “At current deceleration we’ll make final docking approach in twenty-three minutes.”

  “Understood,” Singh replied. “Comm, please send Admiral Trejo my compliments and request permission to dock with Heart of the Tempest.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “I’d love to get a good look at her,” said Davenport.

  “All right, let’s take a peek,” Singh agreed with a nod.

  The truth was, he was just as curious. Of course they’d all been briefed on the configuration of the Magnetar-class battle cruisers, of which Tempest was the first. The old Proteus class had been retired, and this new generation was only now being deployed. He’d seen dozens of concept sketches and photographs of the ships under construction, heard rumors of the new technologies that they would support. This would be his first chance to see one of Laconia’s most powerful battleships flying free and in her element. “Sensors, let’s take a close-up look, shall we?”

  “Aye, sir,” said the officer at sensor control, and the main screen shifted from the docking map to a telescopic view of the approaching ship.

  Someone let out a quiet gasp. Even Davenport, an officer with nearly a decade in the fleet, took an unconscious half step back.

  “Good God, she’s a big one,” he said.

  The Heart of the Tempest was one of only three Magnetar-class ships to come out of Laconia’s orbital construction platform. The Eye of the Typhoon was assigned to the home fleet and the protection of Laconia itself. The Voice of the Whirlwind was still being grown between the spars and limbs of the alien orbital arrays. And while the fleet now consisted of over a hundred ships, the Magnetars were the largest and most powerful by far. The Gathering Storm, his own ship, was one of the Pulsar-class fast destroyers, and he was fairly certain the Tempest could fit a dozen of them inside its hull.

  The Pulsar-class destroyers were tall and sleek in design. To Singh’s eye they were almost reminiscent of old Earth naval ships. But the Heart of the Tempest was massive and squat. Shaped like a lone vertebra from some long-dead giant the size of a planet. It was as pale as bone too, even where the curves fell into shadow.

  Like all ships built by Laconia’s orbiting construction platforms, it had the sense of something not quite human. The sensor arrays and point-defense cannons and rail guns and missile tubes were all there, but hidden under a self-healing plate system that made the surface of the ship seem more like skin than not. Grown, but not biological. There was something fractal about its geometry. Like crystals showing the constraints of their molecular architecture in the unfolding of shapes at higher levels.

  Singh wasn’t an expert in the protomolecule or the technologies that it spawned, but there was
something eerie in the idea that they’d built things partly designed by a species that had been gone for millennia. Collaboration with the dead left questions that could never be answered. Why did the construction array make the choices it made? Why place the drive here instead of there, why make the internal systems symmetric and the exterior of the ship slightly off? Was it a more efficient design? More aesthetically pleasing to its long-vanished masters? He had no way of being certain, and probably never would.

  “Tempest acknowledges,” the comm officer said.

  “Remote piloting for dock now,” his helm added, and the main screen shifted from telescopic shots of the battleship to a wire frame course ending at the Tempest.

  “Very well,” Singh said with a smile. The admiralty had entrusted him with one of Laconia’s state-of-the-art ships, and they’d filled it with serious and focused officers and crew. As a first command, he couldn’t have asked for better.

  That he and his ship were the tip of the imperial spear was just icing on the cake.

  “Admiral Trejo sends his compliments,” the comm officer said. “He asks that you join him for dinner in his private mess.”

  Singh turned to his XO. “Stay on the Storm and keep the crew alert. We have no idea what reception we’re getting on the other side of the gate, and may need to deploy at a moment’s notice.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Rig for docking. I’ll be in the bow-crew airlock. Mister Davenport, you have the con.”

  The Tempest’s operations officer, Admiral Trejo’s third in command, was waiting for him on the other side of the airlock. Technically they were the same naval rank, but as a ship’s captain, tradition dictated that Singh be treated as the superior officer. She saluted and granted him permission to board.

  “The admiral would have greeted you personally,” she said as she led him out of the airlock and they floated down a short corridor to a lift. The walls in the Tempest looked like sheets of frosted glass, and glowed with a gentle blue light. Very different from the bulkheads of the Gathering Storm. “But this close to the gate he doesn’t like to leave the bridge.”

  “Fisher, right? I think you were a year behind me at the academy.”

  “I was,” she replied with a nod. “Engineering track. Everyone said logistics was the faster path to command, but I just love working with exotic tech.”

  She stopped and tapped on the wall panel to call a lift. While they waited, the bulkheads began to pulse from blue to yellow.

  “Grab a handhold,” Fisher said, pointing to one close by. “Drive is about to come online.”

  A moment later they both drifted to the deck, and Singh felt his weight grow until it was about half a g.

  “Not in a hurry,” Singh said, and the elevator made a gentle beep and the doors opened.

  “The admiral’s a cautious man.”

  “Speaks well of him,” he said as they began to rise.

  Admiral Trejo was a short, stocky man, with bright-green eyes and thinning black hair. He came from the Mariner Valley region of Mars, but the traces of his accent were almost imperceptible. He was also the most decorated officer in Laconia’s military, with a career that stretched back to pirate hunting for the Martian Navy even before the gates opened. They studied his tactics in the academy, and Singh thought the term military genius was justifiably applied to his career.

  He’d expected the private mess of an admiral and fleet commander to be larger, more luxurious than the one he claimed on the Gathering Storm. It turned out to be a table that pulled down from one bulkhead in Admiral Trejo’s slightly larger office/living quarters. The aesthetics were different only because the ship itself was.

  “Sonny!” Trejo said, waiting to return his salute and then grabbing his hand and shaking it vigorously. “Finally all the pieces are in place. It’s an exciting time. Would you like to sit, or do you want the tour?”

  “Admiral,” Singh replied. “If there’s a tour to be had, I’d be honored to see a little more of the ship.”

  “She’s a sight, isn’t she? Call me Anton, please. No need for formality in private, and we’ll be working very closely together in the coming months. I want you to feel like you have complete freedom to speak your mind. An officer who won’t share his opinion and insight is of no use to me.”

  It was an echo of the high consul allowing him to use his military title, the permission of a little familiarity in private to build a sense of approachability and rapport. Now that he’d seen it twice, he understood it would be expected of him as well.

  “Thank you, sir. Anton. I appreciate that.”

  “Come on along, then. It’s too large to take in all at once, but we can hit the highlights.” Admiral Trejo led the way down a short corridor to a lift that stood wider than the one on the Gathering Storm, with rounder edges that left Singh thinking of the mouth of some deep-sea fish. “I’ve been re-familiarizing myself with your career to date.”

  “I’m afraid that, like most of the officers trained after the transition to Laconia, I have very little in the way of operational experience.”

  The admiral waved this away. The lift door opened, and they stepped in. The anti-spalling padding on the walls was gently scalloped, like the presentiment of scales.

  “Top of your class in logistics. That’s exactly what this posting will need. Me? I’m an old combat commander. Spreadsheets give me hives.”

  The lift descended with a hushing sound like a million tiny bearings spinning at once, or the hiss of a sunbird. The small hairs on the back of Singh’s neck rose a little. There was something uncanny about the Tempest. Like he’d entered into a vast animal and was waiting to see its teeth.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “My orders were quite specific on—”

  The admiral waved him off again. “Forget your orders for a moment. Plenty of time to get to that later. For now, I want to get to know you a little better. You have a family?”

  Another point. Duarte had touched on his home life as well. Another piece of the secret teachings of Laconian command. He’d read that a command structure took its tone from those at the top. He’d never seen it so clearly in practice before. He wondered whether he’d been meant to. If this was a conscious lesson passed from Duarte to Trejo to him. He had the sense that it was.

  “Yes, sir. My spouse is a nanotech scientist with the lab in Laconia City. She specializes in genetics. We have one child. Elsa.”

  “Elsa. Unusual name. Very pretty.”

  “My grandmother’s. Nat— Natalia, my spouse, insisted.”

  The lift stopped. The doors opened on a wide and flowing deck. There were no stairs, but a gentle undulation in the deck raised some workstations above others. It seemed almost random until he saw the captain’s station that could command direct line of sight to all the flight-deck crew at once. The design was elegant and utterly unfamiliar at the same time.

  The XO caught sight of them and stood at attention, surrendering command, but Trejo waved him back. The admiral was present, but not to take command.

  “Connection to the past is important,” Trejo said as they walked across the gently sloping deck. “Continuity. We honor those who came before, and hope that those we bring into the world do the same for us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anton, please.”

  “Anton,” Singh agreed, but knew calling the admiral by his first name would never feel natural or correct. “We almost never call her Elsa.”

  “So what, if not Elsa?” the admiral asked.

  “Monster. We call her Monster.”

  The admiral chuckled. “Named for another grandparent?”

  “No,” Singh said, then stopped. He worried that he might be oversharing, but the admiral was staring at him, waiting for the rest of the answer. “We were not really ready when Nat got pregnant. She was just finishing her postdoc, and I was doing two- and three-month patrol tours as the XO on the Cleo.”

  “No one is ever ready,” the admiral said. “But
you don’t know that until after it’s happened.”

  “Yes. So when Elsa was born, I’d just rotated back to an administrative position, and Nat had moved to a more permanent research job, and we were both learning the ropes while a very insistent one-month-old made her demands.”

  Trejo led the way down a curving ramp at the side of the room. Hatches irised open as they approached them and closed again once they’d passed. The light came from thumb-sized recesses in the wall, perfectly regular in their spacing, but rounded and soft. Organic life subjected to military engineering.

  “So,” Singh continued as they walked, “we were exhausted. And one morning, at about three when Elsa started crying, Nat rolled over to me and said, ‘That monster is going to kill me.’ And that was it. She was Monster from then on.”

  “But you say it with a smile now, yes?”

  “Yes,” Singh agreed, thinking of his daughter’s face. “Yes, we do. And that’s why I’m here.”

  “Why you’re here, hm? You don’t seem like the type of man who’d choose to go without his family.”

  “It will hurt to leave them behind for this deployment. It will be months, at least, before they can join me on Medina Station. Possibly years. But if I can give my daughter the version of humanity that the high consul has planned, it will all be worth it. A galactic society of peace and prosperity and cooperation is the best legacy I can imagine for her.”

  “A true believer,” the admiral said, and Singh felt a flush of shame that perhaps he appeared naïve to the man. But when Trejo continued, there was nothing mocking in his tone. “This will only work because of the true believers.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. And then, “Anton.”

  The admiral led the way into a broad corridor, larger than anything he’d ever seen designed in a ship. The Tempest didn’t have the closeness of other ships, the design constrained by the need to cut back every kilogram, to waste no space at all. It was a ship that claimed power by the shape of its walls. Singh felt a little awe at it. As he supposed he was meant to.