The false gentility of the threat made her wish he’d just said he’d burn their cities and take their children. It would have felt more honest.
People’s Home was on its braking burn to meet with the EMC’s second fleet, where Guard of Passage already waited. Independence was already with the first fleet and Jupiter. The newest void city—Assurance of Peace—was half built at the Pallas-Tycho shipyards and wouldn’t be ready for another year, assuming that they had another year.
The unspoken truth was that the union had commissioned the void cities as a permanent response to the colony worlds’ interest in building their own fleets. A void city couldn’t control a whole solar system, but it could command a ring gate. Or that’s what Drummer and the union board had assumed. Now, People’s Home was only a battleship. A massive one, with greenhouses and schools, children and common space, universities and research labs. But the prospect of violence meant that none of that mattered. People’s Home was a delivery system for rail guns, missiles, PDCs. And she would drive it down to protect Earth and Mars, and be protected by their ships. She’d hate everything about it, but she’d do it.
And goddammit, she’d have to smile while she did.
The under-burn configuration of People’s Home put the meeting rooms down near the massive array of Epstein drives. The EMC was represented by Admiral Hu of Mars and Undersecretary of Executive Affairs Vanegas. Chrisjen Avasarala sat in a wheelchair at the back of the hall, eating pistachios and pretending to be dotty so that people left her alone. The lights had been set to a warm cut of the spectrum that was alleged to match a summer afternoon on Earth, and the air smelled of cut cucumber and soil. A reassuring environment that would hopefully affect the tone of the event, even if it was all engineering. The reporters and dignitaries on the formed bamboo benches all wore formal suits and dresses, as if a press conference were the same as going to church.
Maybe it was. Drummer had read somewhere that newsfeeds were where secular societies went to find out what cultural narratives were important and what could be ignored. There were thousands of feeds streaming right now, all around the system, with every variation of the ways to make sense of the history they were living through. In most, Laconia was an invading force to be resisted, but there were people who said Laconia was a liberating influence, an end to the oppression of the EMC and the Transport Union. Or that they were the true spirit of Mars, betrayed by the old congressional republic and now returned in triumph. Or that they were unbeatable, and capitulation was the only choice. Put a dozen people in front of their cameras, and you’d wind up with thirteen opinions. None of them would matter as much as hers, because she was the president of the Transport Union, and that, despite all her intentions and efforts, meant she was a war leader now.
In the green room, Vanegas was getting his makeup freshened before they went out to the cameras. Hu put down her coffee as soon as Drummer stepped into the room and hurried over to her, a grim expression on her face.
“President Drummer,” Hu said, “I was hoping I could speak with you about the board’s strategic cooperation documents?”
A steward led Drummer to a chair. A technician swung in beside her with a palette of cosmetics in his hand. She didn’t have much use for makeup, but she didn’t want to look sickly in the feeds either.
“I haven’t seen the new draft yet,” Drummer said, trying not to move her face.
“Santos-Baca is insisting on the chain of command passing through a joint committee,” Hu said. “That’s not coordination. That’s making the EMC a branch of the Transport Union.”
If they kill us all, Drummer thought, this will be why. Not their technology, not their strategy, not the invisible cycle of history. It’ll be our inability to do anything without five committee meetings to talk about it.
“I haven’t read the draft, Admiral. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll have them get me a copy. I don’t want to get this muddy any more than you do.”
Hu nodded sharply and smiled as if Drummer had capitulated. The technician touched her cheeks with a rouge brush and considered her like she was a painting. She had to fight the impulse to stick her tongue out at him.
And then it was time. Vanegas walked out first, and then Hu. They took the podiums to either side. Drummer took the center. The podium’s screen threw up an image visible only to her, running through the lines of the speech. She lifted her chin.
It didn’t matter how she felt. It didn’t matter what she thought. All that counted right now was how she looked and sounded. Let those carry confidence, and she could find the real thing later.
“Thank you all for coming,” Drummer said. “As you know, a ship originating in Laconia system has now made an unauthorized transit into Sol system. The union’s stance is unequivocal on this matter. The Laconian incursion is illegal. It is a violation of the union’s authority and the sovereignty of the Earth-Mars Coalition. We stand as one body in the defense of the Sol system and all its citizens.”
Drummer paused. In the back of the group, Chrisjen Avasarala stood up from her wheelchair and dusted the pistachio bits off her sari. Her smile was visible even from here.
“And the union,” Drummer said, “will dedicate all its resources to the defense effort.”
Just like you told us to, you old bitch, she thought. She didn’t say it.
In her dream, Saba was dead.
She didn’t know how he’d died or where, and with the non-logic of sleep, she didn’t question that. It was simply the truth: Saba was dead and she wasn’t. She’d never see him again. She wouldn’t wake up beside him. The rest of her life was emptier and smaller and sadder because of it. In the dream, she knew all of that. But what she felt was relief.
Saba was dead, and so he was safe now. Nothing bad could happen to him anymore. She couldn’t fail him or abandon him or feel the weight of his disappointment. She woke into darkness, a moment’s confusion, and then a wave of overwhelming guilt. The darkness, at least, she could control. She moved the cabin lights up a quarter. Dim gold, faint enough to leave everything in monochrome.
She could feel the thrust gravity when she turned. The absence of even trace Coriolis telling her what she already knew. She wanted to send a message out. To tell Saba she was thinking of him, and not quietly longing for the failures that would lose him forever. But she’d cut that line of communication, and having a weird subconscious wasn’t a good reason to change that policy.
Instead she stretched in the near dark. Only half of her sleep cycle was done, but she wasn’t interested in diving back into the pillow. Instead, she showered and ordered up a bulb of tea and a tortilla with fruit jam. Comfort food. Then she checked the system map.
The Tempest was still out in the vastness between the orbits of Uranus and Saturn. A billion and a half kilometers between the ring gate and the first human habitats of any real size, even if Saturn and its moons were at their closest. Having come through the gate so much earlier than she’d hoped, the Tempest wasn’t burning hard for the inner solar system. At its present acceleration, it would take weeks to reach her. Drummer pulled on her uniform and went out into People’s Home. The tube station was near her quarters. The void city knew where she was and arranged a private car for her without her even having to ask for it. Her security detail shadowed her with the practice of years. Even at the height of a shift change, she moved through the city like it was a ghost town. Only the litter and smell of bodies and old curry in the tube lingered as a promise that she wasn’t as alone as she felt.