Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

All around them, the prison was in shambles. Cracks ran along the walls like the floor had been shoved out a couple centimeters and pushed back in place. There was a sound of water running through pipes from somewhere. The emergency lights were on, but here and there a few had failed, leaving pools of darkness. Even if the elevators were running, he wouldn’t have wanted to take them. One of the things living on a ship for years had done was give him a sense for how the whole vessel was running based on a few local indicators. And if the Pit had been above orbit, he’d have been sleeping in an environment suit, just so as not to be unpleasantly surprised by waking up airless.

“Stop fucking whistling,” Konecheck said.

“Was I whistling?” Amos asked.

“You were,” Clarissa said, still cradling her swollen hand.

“Huh,” Amos said, and started whistling again, consciously this time.

“I said stop it,” Konecheck growled.

“Yeah,” Amos agreed with a friendly nod. “You did say that.”

“Prisoners will maintain silence,” Rona snapped behind them. “And the civilian will kindly shut the fuck up too.”

Amos considered Konecheck out of the corner of his eyes. Still too early to be sure, but maybe sixty-forty that one of them was going to have to kill the other. Not now, but before it was over. He could hope for the forty.

A shudder passed through the floor like a badly tuned thruster firing. Concrete dust sifted down from the lights like amber snow. Morris said something obscene.

“Aftershock,” Rona said. “Just an aftershock.”

“Might be,” Clarissa said. “Might be the shock wave from Africa. I don’t remember how fast that kind of force travels through the mantle.”

“Not fucking North Africa,” Konecheck said. “No way we’d feel that.”

“When the Galveston plant went up, the shock wave was still measurable on its third time around the planet,” Clarissa said.

“Oh, the bitch is a history professor now?”

“The prisoners will maintain silence!” Rona shouted. She was sounding a lot more agitated. Around a corner, a light glowed green, the icon of a thick-legged stick man walking up steps. He wondered how many other people were on this level, still in lockdown, waiting on rescue. How many were already trudging up the stairs on their way out. The guards were playing it pretty close to the vest, but he’d have bet good money that there were a whole lot of people making their own decisions right now.

Morris stopped at the door to the stairway. The readout set into the wall beside it showed a red image of a closed lock until he swiped his hand terminal across it and keyed something into the display that opened. The lock switched to green, and the door slid open. Of course a prison would put the locks on the emergency power circuit, Amos thought. He wondered what else was locked.

A landslide of mud, water, rocks, concrete, and rebar spilled into the corridor. Morris yelped and jumped back, then fell to the ground, grabbing one shin. His pants were ripped, and Amos caught a glimpse of a dark wetness between the man’s fingers. Blood.

“Morris!” Rona said. “Report!”

“I’m gonna need stitches.”

“I’m moving ahead to look,” Amos said, leaving So don’t shoot me as a given. Beyond the door, the stairway was gone. Rubble and dirt were so thick, he couldn’t even tell if the stairs still existed under them. He couldn’t tell where the water was coming from, but it smelled clean. Which meant it was probably the drinking water. Another tremble shook a few stones and a head-sized ball of concrete loose.

Sullivan was muttering a stream of obscenities under his breath that sounded less like anger and more like the first signs of panic. Amos shook his head.

“No one’s getting out that way,” he said. “Not without a few months and a digging mech. We’re gonna have to find another way up.”

“There isn’t a goddamn other way up,” Rona said. “That’s the evacuation route. That right there.”

“Peaches?”

Clarissa’s voice was calm but still a little slurred. “Hard call, Amos. It’s a prison for high-risk criminals. They don’t put a lot of easy egress routes in it.”

“Fair enough,” Amos said. “But say you had to think of something clever?”

“The guards have overrides. If we can get access to the elevator shaft and the car’s not blocking it, we might be able to climb up.”

“Ten stories at one g on a broken hand?” He didn’t mention the possible concussion that was probably screwing with her sense of balance.

“Didn’t say it’d be fun.”