“Hard breach?” Naomi asked, though her tone said she already knew the answer.
“They’ll drop fire teams all over the station to take over access points, control centers, power, and environmental support,” Holden replied, more to the room at large than to Naomi. He turned to Daphne Kohl. “I think you should have everyone here start making calls. Get every union and planetary rep in secure locations, but tell their security details to stand down. No visible weapons. Tell them we’re not attempting to repel boarders. That’ll just get people killed, and maybe piss off that monster of a ship.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Are you taking command?”
“No, I’m not. But this is the right thing to do, and we need to do it now. So we should do it. Please.”
Her expression fell a degree. She’d hoped someone in authority had arrived. Someone who knew what to do. He recognized the hope and the disappointment both.
“We’re not going to fight back at all?” Kohl asked.
He gestured toward the screens. The dust that was Tori Byron and the rail-gun emplacements. Kohl looked away. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say no.
“Not yet,” Holden said. Naomi was already collecting side-arms from the other techs in the ops center and putting them in a duffel bag. Not yet.
The second ship looked to be about destroyer sized, to Holden’s eye. It did a slow flyover of Medina Station, taking out the torpedo racks and PDC emplacements with pinpoint-accurate rail-gun shots, then dropping a dozen Marine landing craft.
As it came, Kohl did as he suggested, passing the word throughout the ship not to resist. Live to fight another day. After the last call, she seemed to sway for a moment, then turned, spat on the deck, and pulled up something that looked like a security interface.
“What are you doing?”
“Purging the security system,” she said. “No census. No biometric records. No deck plans. No records. We can’t stop the fuckers, but we don’t need to make it easy for them.”
“Fou bien,” Naomi said, approving. Holden wondered whether the forces coming in would be able to track the decision back to her. He hoped they wouldn’t.
Each landing craft held a fire team of eight Marines, all wearing power armor of an unusual design—like Bobbie’s but with different articulation at the joints, and all in a vibrant blue that made them seem like something that had hauled itself up from the sea. The Marines were methodical and professional. Where the doors opened for them, they entered without causing damage. Where they found locked doors, they breached with ruthless efficiency, blowing the door seals and hauling the plates back in a single, well-trained motion. When they passed unarmed civilians, they moved on by with nothing more than a warning not to resist. The few times they ran into someone with a hero complex who tried to fight back, they killed whoever presented a threat, but no one else. That it wasn’t a straight-out massacre was the only comfort.
Watching it all happen from his position in the ops center, Holden found that he had to admire the level of training and discipline the Laconians displayed. They left no doubt that they were absolutely in charge, and they responded to any aggression with immediate lethal force. But they didn’t abuse the civilians. They didn’t push anyone around. They showed nothing that looked like bravado or bullying. Even the violence didn’t have any anger behind it. They were like animal handlers. Holden, Naomi, and the rest of the ops-center techs did what they could to keep the station populace from panicking or foolishly resisting, but it was almost irrelevant. Nothing kept the people calmer than the calm their invaders demonstrated.
When the door to the ops center opened and one of the fire teams entered, Holden told everyone in the room to raise their hands in surrender. A tall, dark-skinned woman in armor with insignia that looked like a modified Martian colonel rank walked toward him on magnetic boots.
“I am Colonel Tanaka,” she said, her voice booming with electronically augmented volume. “Medina Station is under our control. Please indicate that you understand and are complying.”
Holden nodded and gave her his best fake smile. “I understand and as long as you continue to not abuse the people here, we will not violently resist.”
It was a deliberate provocation. If Tanaka were there to flex her muscles and show how important and in charge she was, she’d point out that her people could abuse the populace to their heart’s content and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Instead she said, “Understood. Prepare a hard dock at the reactor level of the station for our ship.”
When the dockmaster indicated that it was ready, Tanaka touched a control on her wrist and said, “Captain Singh, a berth is being prepped for docking. The station is ours.”
“I am Captain Santiago Singh of the Laconian destroyer Gathering Storm,” the young man said. “I’m here to accept your surrender.”
His uniform was trim and spotless. The design looked Martian, except for the blue-gray color scheme where Holden was used to red and black. Kohl floated before him, confusion in her eyes.
“This is an act of war,” she said, her voice trembling. Holden felt an urge to step in, refocus the man onto him just to make her safer. It was a stupid impulse. “The union. The Earth-Mars Coalition. The Association of Worlds. They won’t stand for this.”
“I know,” the young man said. “This is going to be all right. But I have to accept your surrender now, please.”
She braced to attention, and it was over.
It had taken less than four hours from the first transit. Marines in Laconian power armor patrolled the corridors and command points of the station. Naval personnel in sharply designed uniforms hurried about hooking equipment into various communication and environmental systems with a well-practiced efficiency. The people of Medina mostly watched in a sort of dazed shock.
It had all happened so quickly. It was impossible to process.
He and Naomi were swept up along with the hundreds of representatives from the colonized worlds, several dozen reps from the Transport Union, the senior staff of Medina Station. He didn’t have any actual authority. He wasn’t even technically the captain of a ship or a member of the Transport Union anymore, but no one argued. They all gathered in the coalition-council room, an amphitheater with two thousand seats and a stage with a podium on it that consciously aped the layout of the General Assembly of the UN back on Earth.
Admiral Trejo was a stocky older man, with the relaxed air of a person who’d spent so long holding a military posture that he looks comfortable in it. He took his place at the podium flanked by a pair of Marines. Captain Singh and Colonel Tanaka stood respectfully behind him and off to one side.
“Greetings,” the admiral said, smiling out at them. “I am High Admiral Anton Trejo of the Laconian Empire, and personal representative of High Consul Winston Duarte, our leader. And now your leader as well.”
He paused as though waiting for applause. After a moment, he continued.
“As you know, we have accepted control of Medina Station. And yes, we intend to take control of all the thirteen hundred worlds it leads to. This isn’t an act of aggression, but necessity. We bear no ill will or animosity toward any of you. As you’ve seen, this will be as bloodless a transition as you allow it to be. I’m bringing you here to implore you to please, please, contact your home worlds. We will make communications available for anyone who will tell them to peacefully relinquish control to us. If they do this, there will be no need for violence of any kind.”
“I admit I kind of like these guys,” Holden whispered to Naomi. “I mean as conquistadors go.”
“There’ll be a ‘but,’” she said. “There’s always a ‘but.’”
“Cooperation is the coin of the empire,” Trejo continued. “The beginnings were already in motion here. Your Association of Worlds. The Transport Union. All of these things will continue. High Consul Duarte wants input and representation from all the systems humanity has colonized and will colonize. The Transport Union is a vital apparatus in supporting those efforts. Both organizations can and must continue their important work.
“The only thing that has changed is that High Consul Duarte will be expediting the process. The Laconian fleet will be the defenders of a new galactic civilization of which you will all be welcome citizens. The only price is cooperation with the new order, and a tax to be paid to the empire that will not be onerous, and will be entirely invested back into the creation of new infrastructure and aid to fledgling or struggling planetary economies. The golden age of man will begin under the high consul’s leadership.”
Trejo paused again, his smile slipping. He looked pained and saddened by what he was about to say.