There was almost no lag before he answered. He was close, then. One of the escape ships. “I don’t understand. The number of missiles they’ve fired … that they’re firing. These can’t be normal devices.”
On the display, the last three suicide attackers blinked out. If the Tempest moved to avoid the debris fields, it wasn’t enough to register at this scale. It looked as though the enemy wasn’t even bothering to evade anymore.
“The first battle, we wanted to learn from them,” Tur said, talking fast and not looking directly at the camera. “I mean, we wanted to win. Of course we wanted to win, but we didn’t expect to. The data—how we lost—was as important as stopping them.”
“Tur?”
“Maybe they were learning from us too. Maybe they recalibrated something about the regrowth of the ship. Or the missiles.”
“They survived a direct nuclear strike,” Drummer said. “Are you telling me that’s something they can just do?”
“Apparently?” Tur said. He licked his lips anxiously. “We knew from the moment they stripped the rail guns off the ring station that they are capable of focusing and directing incredible sources of power. Things we’ve only ever seen on celestial levels. Collapsing stars.”
“Collapsing stars? We’re fighting a supernova in the shape of a ship? Why the hell didn’t you see this coming?” She was shouting. Her throat hurt with it.
Tur blinked and his jaw shifted forward. He would have looked like a man spoiling for a fight if it hadn’t been for the tears on his cheeks. She didn’t think those tears had anything to do with her raising her voice. “Ma’am, that ship stripped Pallas Station down to something less than atoms. It shut down consciousness throughout the system in a way that I don’t have the structural language to explain, and it seems pretty fucking unimpressed by the idea of locality. It’s affecting the nature of vacuum through the whole solar system. If you didn’t know we were punching above our weight here, I’m not sure what I could have said to clarify that.”
“There is a way to beat them,” Drummer said, “and we are running out of time. Find me how to win this, and do it now.”
She cut the connection before he had the chance to reply. Silence filled the control room. No one was looking straight at her, but she felt their attention like a weight. All the time she’d spent resisting the pressure to make the Transport Union into a police force—into a military—and here she was anyway.
“Mister Vaughn?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Find me whoever is in command of the EMC wing of the fleet. I need them now.” Whoever’s still alive, she thought, but didn’t say.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The weapons tech’s voice shook. “Should we—”
“Keep firing,” Drummer said.
Drummer felt a heat in her chest. A rage and a certainty. This was the moment that tested everything she’d meant to be. This was what it was to be a leader in a time of crisis. She felt the power of it, the raw will to succeed. To devastate and end the people who would destroy her and the systems she embodied. She rose to her feet, her hands behind her, and she knew that everyone in the control room who looked at her would see nothing beyond her superhuman resolve. Not even Vaughn.
And she knew it for the hollow mask that it was. How fragile.
“Guard of Passage is reporting a missile strike that got past their PDCs,” Vaughn said. “They’re requesting permission to withdraw.”
“We can’t run away,” Drummer said. “If we break now—”
People’s Home shuddered. A sound like the wail of a demon rattled up from the deck, bellied out from the bulkheads, rained from the ceiling. She waited for the wide, low hiss of escaping atmosphere. The fading of screams as the air became too thin to carry them. Instead, Klaxons blared.
She held her voice as steady as she could. “Report?”
“We’re hit,” the sensors tech said. “Something hit us.”
“Do we know what?” Drummer said.
“Rail gun,” Vaughn said. “Appears to have impacted section twelve, just spinward of the medical facilities.”
“How bad’s the damage?”
“I’ll let you know as I have reliable information,” he said. “Still trying to identify the chain of command with the EMC.”
Which meant they were in disorder. She wondered whether the band of suicide ships had been led by some admiral bent on making their last stand count for something. People’s Home bucked again, then twice more.
“Engineering’s been hit,” Vaughn said. “The reactor’s … I can’t tell. Something’s wrong with the reactor.”
If the magnetic bottle failed, it would be like a low-yield nuke going off. Even if it didn’t crack the city open like an egg, the systems that kept them all alive would be melted and fused. And the prospect of aid ships reaching them in the chaos of the battle were low enough to pass for never.
“Drop core,” Drummer said.
Vaughn didn’t reply, but the thrust gravity stopped. Drummer grabbed the edge of her crash couch and dragged herself back into it, strapping down with the ease of a lifetime’s habit. The automated emergency report showed long swaths of the city under lockdown, pressure doors isolating levels and halls. Keeping the air in the city as best they could. If she hadn’t sent away as many nonessential personnel as the ships would hold, it would have been worse. As it was, it still meant deaths. People who’d trusted the union elections to put someone in charge who would protect them. How many of them were dead now who’d been alive an hour ago? And how many more seconds before the next round came? It was like someone else’s thought dropped into her own brain.
A sickly calm washed over her. This was what it felt like to see death. To know that the worst was coming, and there was nothing she could do to turn it aside.
“Keep firing,” she said. If we’re going down, let’s go down swinging.
The weapons tech coughed out something between laughter and despair. “We are dry on rail-gun rounds. We are at six conventional plasma torpedoes, and five percent on PDC.”
Fire anyway, Drummer thought. Throw everything at them. Except that if the Tempest threw a missile at them, there would be no defense. Drummer closed her eyes. The temptation was still there. If it meant that she died—that all the men and women under her command died with her—at least it would be over. She wouldn’t wake up in a wave of dread. She wouldn’t watch the structures she’d sworn to protect be peeled away by a threat she hadn’t considered worth thinking about until the Tempest had flown through Laconia gate.
Come on. There has to be a way. Think of it. Find it.
“Should I maintain fire?” the weapons tech asked.
Drummer didn’t open her eyes. The moment stretched. “No,” she said. “Shift to defensive fire only. We can’t shoot down rail-gun rounds, but we can hold their missiles off.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the weapons tech said. She could hear the relief in his voice. She wondered if he would have thrown away the last scrap of protection on her order. And she wondered whether she’d have done it, in his position. Maybe.
“I have a connection to Colonel Massey,” Vaughn said.
“Who?”
“Commander Fernand Massey. Of the Arcadia Rose, ma’am. He’s in command of the EMC ships.”
“I’ve never heard his name before,” Drummer said.
“No, ma’am,” Vaughn said. All the admirals were dead. All the people she might have known. As ruined as People’s Home was, the fleet was in tatters. Her tactical display listed the ships disabled or dead. There were so many. A quarter of the combined fleet incapacitated or destroyed. They’d thrown everything at the Tempest. A wall of tungsten and explosives. And the enemy was still under thrust. Still firing.
It had all been a show. She’d known that. The Tempest’s intentionally predictable approach to Earth and Mars. Letting the EMC and union prepare themselves. She’d thought it was just a way to erode their morale, but it was more than that. She saw it now. They’d known that they would win, so they’d invited the enemy to make the strongest showing it could. That way, when victory came, it would be unequivocal.
“Ma’am,” Vaughn said.
“Yes, fuck it. Fine. I’ll talk to him.”
“No, ma’am. There’s a new message for you. A tightbeam from the Tempest. It’s listed as ‘command to command.’”
Something twisted in her gut. Part despair and part relief. If they were sending messages, maybe they weren’t sending nukes. At least not until she’d had the chance to hear what they had to say.
She undid her restraints and launched herself to a wall handhold. Her crash couch hissed and spun on its gimbals. “Route to my office, please,” she said, as if it were a normal message on a normal day and not the dividing line between living under a conquering boot and dying before the end of shift.