The gap between floors was maybe half a meter. Craning his neck, he could see the lines of the elevator doors set flush into the wall. Not so much as a fingerhold. He thought maybe there was something way at the top of the shaft – a spot of brightness that came and went in an eyeblink.
“Can we get to the next doors?” Clarissa asked from behind him. “What’s it look like?”
“It looks like we need a plan C,” Amos said, coming back into the prison hallway.
Konecheck chuckled, and Sullivan turned on the man, lifting the gun-like thing to the prisoner’s head. “You think that’s funny, asshole? You think it’s all so fucking amusing?”
Amos ignored the homicidal tension in the air and looked at the gun. It wasn’t like anything he’d put his hands on before. The grip was hard ceramic with a contact interface running along the seam. The barrel was short and square and as wide across as his thumb. Konecheck loomed up over Sullivan, his swollen face a mask of rage and defiance, which was fine as long as it stopped there. “You going to use that, little man?”
“What’s it shoot?” Amos asked. “Tell me it ain’t one of those riot gear things. They give you real bullets down here, don’t they?”
Sullivan turned to him, the gun still trained on Konecheck. Amos smiled and very slowly, gently put his hand on the guard’s arm and drew it down.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sullivan asked.
“Plan C,” Amos said. “That thing. Shoots real bullets, right? Not gel rounds or some wimpy shit like that?”
“They’re live rounds,” Morris said. “Why?”
“I was just thinking about how a gun makes a shitty metal punch.”
“Where are you going with it?” Clarissa asked.
“Thinking we’ve got three shitty metal punches,” Amos said. “Maybe we can punch some metal.”
The guns were biometrically linked to the guards in case someone like Peaches or Konecheck got hold of them, so Amos and Rona lowered themselves down into the muck instead of Amos going alone. The black sludge came up to Amos’ ankle, cold and slick. The lowest of the cabinet-like doors had its edge under the dark surface. Amos rapped on the metal with his knuckles, listening to the sound. The beam from the flashlight bounced, filling the shaft with twilight.
“Put a round here,” Amos said, putting a daub of muck on the steel. “And here. See if you can get us some fingerholds.”
“What if it ricochets?”
“That’ll suck.”
The first round left a hole in the steel covering maybe a centimeter wide. The second round, a little less. Amos tested the edges with his fingertips. They were sharp, but not knife-sharp. The black rain had soaked the shoulders of his shirt, and the back of it was clinging to his spine.
“Hey, Tiny,” he called. “You come down here a minute?”
After a short silence, Konecheck’s growl came down. “What’d you call me?”
“Tiny. Just come take a look at this. See if we’ve got something.”
Konecheck landed with a splash, spattering muck on Amos and Rona. That was fine. The prisoner made a big show of flexing his back muscles and stretching out his hands, then stuffed his first two fingers into the bullet holes, braced his other arm against the wall, and pulled. A normal person, it wouldn’t have done a damned thing, but the Pit wasn’t a place for normal people. The metal flexed, bent, peeled back to show a line of rungs. Curved metal with a little sandpaper texturing for grip. Konecheck grinned, the swelling of his injured face and the jutting beard making him look like something out of a sideshow. His fingertips were red and raw-looking, but as far as Amos could tell, there wasn’t any blood.
“All right,” Amos said. “It’s ugly as hell, but we got a plan. Let’s get out of here.”
The ladder was narrow and rough, and spending hours hanging off it didn’t make sense if they didn’t have to do it. Sullivan and Konecheck went up ahead, the guard with his gun to make the fingerholds and the monster to pry away the steel. Amos sat on the concrete floor of the hallway, his legs hanging out into the shaft. Morris and Rona stood behind him with Clarissa between them. Amos’ stomach growled. Ten meters up the ladder, the sharp attack of the gun came once, then again.
“I’m surprised it wasn’t harder to find a way out,” Clarissa said.
“Thing about prison,” Amos said. “It’s not like it’s supposed to keep you in all on its own, y’know? As long as it slows you down long enough for someone to shoot you, it pretty much did its job.”
“You’ve spent time inside?” Rona asked.
“Nope,” Amos said. “I just know people.”
Another two aftershocks came and went without knocking anyone off the ladder or collapsing the shaft. An hour later, the Klaxon stopped, the silence as sudden and unnerving as the sounding of the alarm had been. With it gone, there were noises in the distance. Voices raised in anger. Twice, gunshots that weren’t from the elevator shaft. Amos didn’t know how many people were in the Pit, prisoners and guards and whoever else. Maybe a hundred. Maybe more. The prisoners were in cells, he figured. Locked down. If there were other guards, they were making their own decisions, and no one suggested they go find any of them.
Two more gunshots from the shaft, a murmur of voices, and then a scream. Amos was on his feet almost before Sullivan’s body fell past. He landed in the muck at the bottom of the shaft. Rona cried out wordlessly, dropping down to him while Morris turned his flashlight up the ladder. Konecheck’s feet were two pale dots, his face a shadow above them.
“He slipped,” Konecheck called.
“The hell he did!” Rona shouted. Her gun was in her hand, and she was going for the ladder. Amos jumped down and got in her way, his hands spread wide. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t get crazy here. We need that guy.”
“Coming up on level four,” Konecheck said. “Starting to see light up top. Hear the wind. Almost there.”
Sullivan lay in the muck, his leg folded unnaturally under him, and limp as a rag. He still had the gun in his fist. A yellow indicator on the side said he was out of ammunition. Sullivan had lived just long enough to stop being useful, then Konecheck had murdered him.
Asshole couldn’t have waited until they were all the way up.
“He slipped,” Amos said. “Shit like that happens. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rona’s teeth were chattering with rage and fear. Amos smiled and nodded at her because it seemed like the kind of thing people did to reassure folks. He couldn’t tell if it was doing any good.
“Someone going to come help?” Konecheck called. “Or am I doing all this on my own?”
“Take Morris,” Clarissa said. “Two guns. One for the metal, one to guard him. It was a mistake. It won’t happen twice.”
“And leave you unguarded?” Morris said behind her. “Not a chance. No one goes without a guard.”
“I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Amos said, but the guards didn’t seem to hear him.
“Everyone up,” Rona said. “Everyone. And if anybody does something even a little bit threatening, I swear to God I’ll kill all of you.”
“I’m a civilian,” Amos said.
Rona pointed toward the rungs with her chin. “Get climbing.”
So they climbed up into the darkness, hand over hand. Ten meters up, maybe twelve. Morris first, then Clarissa, then Amos, with Rona coming up last, her flashlight stuck in her belt and her gun in her hand. Konecheck wrestled the next length of ladder open, clanging and cursing and roaring in the effort. The black muck kept dripping down from above, making everything slick. Amos wondered if maybe Sullivan really had slipped, and chuckled to himself quietly enough that no one heard him. Konecheck, at the upper end of the ladder, swung to one side, letting Morris pass next to him. Then two more shots and the two men switched places again. Amos wondered if the rungs had been designed to carry the weight of two men at once. But they didn’t bend, so that was one good thing. He spent a lot of time looking at Clarissa’s ankles,
since that was pretty much what there was to look at. They were thin from atrophy, the skin pale and dusty. He noticed when they started to tremble. If her busted hand bothered her, she didn’t say so.
“You all right, Peaches?”
“Fine,” she said. “Just getting tired is all.”
“Hang on, little tomato,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
Above her, the shaft grew shorter. There was no sign of the car or the guards who’d been in it. Just a pale gray square and a growing howl of wind. Once, when they only had four or five meters still to go, Rona below him made a sound like a sob, but only once. He didn’t ask her about it.
And then Konecheck was at the edge, hauling himself up with Morris scrambling after. The black rain was still falling, and it had gotten colder. Clarissa was shaking now, her whole body fluttering like she was too light, and the wind might pick her up and carry her away.
“You can do it, Peaches.”
“I know,” she said. “I know I can.”
She boosted herself up, and then it was Amos’ turn. The elevator shaft ended in a clean break, like the hand of God had come and swept everything away. The intake building was gone apart from shattered concrete and splintered wood strewn across the bare field. The fence was gone. The trees on the horizon had been shaved down to stubble. For as far as he could see, there was just earth and scrub. The sky was dark and low, huge clouds scalloped from one side of the world to the other like inverted waves. The wind barreling down out of the east stank of something he couldn’t quite identify. It was what he imagined the aftermath of a battle looked like. Only worse.
“Come on,” Rona said, pushing at his leg. Then, without warning, Konecheck roared and Morris shrieked. A gun went off as Amos made it up onto the ledge and got his feet under him. Konecheck was holding Morris up off the ground. The guard’s head hung slack and boneless in a way that clarified the situation. Clarissa had collapsed at the gray-haired prisoner’s feet.
For a fraction of a second, Konecheck’s gaze locked with his. Amos saw a base, animal pleasure in the man. The joy of a schoolboy burning ants with his magnifying glass. Faster than anything human, Konecheck dropped the dead guard and surged forward, his feet digging into the slick mud as he ran. Amos stepped into the attack, which wasn’t what the guy had expected, and got a solid punch in under his rib cage. But then Konecheck’s elbow came out of nowhere and hit Amos’ ear hard enough that the world started spinning. Amos stumbled, and the other guy’s grip was on his belt and arm. Amos felt himself lifted up over Konecheck’s head. He looked down the shaft and saw Rona looking up at him wide-eyed and openmouthed. The black was a long way down. Amos wondered if he’d see Lydia again when he got to the bottom. Probably not, but it was pretty as a last thought.
The gunshot made Konecheck stumble and Amos twisted into the slackness of his grip, falling backward and landing hard. Clarissa was lying over Morris’ body, her two hands around the dead man’s fist, taking aim again. Blood poured down Konecheck’s chest, but before he could launch himself at the girl, Rona’s hand came up over the edge of the shaft and grabbed his ankle. Konecheck kicked back, his muscles flickering too fast to see, and Rona yelped. But by then Amos was on his feet again, knees bent deep to keep his center of gravity low. The world was still spinning. He couldn’t trust his inner ear to tell him which way was up. But he’d spent a lot of years in free fall. Ignoring vertigo just meant it was a day that ended in y.
He landed a straight kick in Konecheck’s crotch that probably castrated him, and the man stepped back, eyes wide. He had maybe a tenth of a second to look surprised as he fell back down into the Pit. Then that part was done.
Amos sat down, rubbing his injured ear as Rona crawled up into the bleak half-light. She was crying and turning slowly, taking in the devastation all around them with disbelief and horror. The woman’s hands flapped at her sides like she was pretending to be a penguin. Her distress would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sincere. Losing everything should at least be dignified.
“Where’d it go?” she shouted over the rushing of the wind, like anyone could answer. And then, “Oh my God. Esme.”
Clarissa had rolled onto her back, her arms spread to the filthy rain, her head resting on the dead man like he was a pillow. Her eyes were closed, but he could see her rib cage moving. Amos squinted up at Rona. “Esme? That one of your people?”
She nodded without looking at him.
“Yeah,” Amos said. “Look, if you need to go look for her, that’s all right with me.”
“The prisoner… I have to…”
“It’s all right. I’ll keep Peaches out of trouble. You know. Until you get back.”
The absurdity of it seemed lost on the woman. She stumbled forward, heading for a low hill on the horizon. She wasn’t coming back. No one was coming back. There wasn’t anything to come back to.
Clarissa’s eyes were open now. As he watched, her mouth widened into a smile and she reached up, running damp hands through her hair. When she laughed, it sounded like pleasure.
“Wind,” she said. “Oh my God, I never thought I’d feel wind again. I never thought I’d be outside. It’s so beautiful.”
Amos glanced around the ruins and shrugged. “That’s got a lot to do with context, I guess.”
He was hungry and thirsty. Wet. They didn’t have shelter or clothes, and the only gun they had, they’d need to haul around a dead man to shoot. Until his body got cold, anyway.
“Well, fuck,” he said. “Where do we go from here, right?”
Clarissa extended a thin arm, pointing her pale finger to the sky. There, struggling behind the clouds and stratospheric debris, a perfect, pale disk. “Luna,” she said. “Staying on the planet’s going to mean dying when the food runs out. And the water.”
“I was thinking that too.”
“There are yachts. I know where the family kept them. But it’s a spaceport for rich people. Tons of security. We might need help breaking in.”
“I know some people,” Amos said. “I mean, y’know. If they’re still alive.”
“That’s a plan, then,” she said, but didn’t move. Her slur was going away, which meant she probably wasn’t bleeding into her brain. So that was one problem he didn’t have. Amos shifted, lying back on the dead man’s rib cage, the crown of his head touching hers. A little rest seemed like a fine thing, but they’d have to get moving soon. It was a long walk back to Baltimore. He wondered if they could find a car. Or, failing that, a couple of bicycles. His ear was starting to lose its angry throb. He’d probably be able to walk soon.
In the black sky, the pale circle dimmed behind a thicker roil of cloud and ash, then vanished for a moment before struggling back.
“It’s funny,” Clarissa said. “Most of human history, going to the moon was impossible. A dream beyond anyone’s imagination. And then, for a while, it was an adventure. And then it was trivial. Yesterday, it was trivial. And now, it’s almost impossible again.”
“Yeah,” Amos said, “well…”
He felt her shift, tuning her head as if to see him better. “What?”
He gestured up toward the sky. “Pretty sure that’s the sun. I get what you’re saying though.”
Chapter Twenty-seven: Alex
His head hurt. His back hurt. He couldn’t feel his legs. It was all distressing until his mind came back enough for him to realize it meant he hadn’t died. The medical bay chimed, something cool pumped into his arm, and his consciousness faded away again.
When he woke this time, he felt almost human. The medical bay was huge. Easily five times what they had on the Rocinante, but smaller than the full, multiunit hospital of the Behemoth. The anti-spalling coating on the walls was the soft brown of bread crusts. He tried to sit up, then reconsidered.
“Ah, Mister Kamal. Are you feeling better?”
The doctor was a thin-faced, pale-skinned woman with eyes the color of ice. Her uniform was MCRN. He nodded to her more out of soci
al habit than because he was feeling better.
“Am I going to be okay?” Alex said.
“Depends,” she said. “Keep eating like you’re twenty, and it’ll haunt you.”
Alex laughed and a spike of pain cut through his belly. The doctor grimaced and put a hand on his shoulder.
“You did get a little surgery while you were out. That burn you were on made your ulcer way worse.”
“I have an ulcer?”
“You used to. Now you have a reconstructed stem graft, but it’s still settling into place. Give it a few days, and it’ll be much better.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, resting his head back on the pillow. “I’ve been under a little stress lately. Is Bobbie okay?”
“She’s fine. They’ve been debriefing her. I imagine they’ll want to chat with you too, now that you’re back around.”
“What about my ship?”
“We pulled her into the hangar. She’s being refueled. You can get her back when we’re clear.”
That brought him back. “Clear?”
“Those gentlemen who were taking potshots at you? Our escort’s back making sure they don’t get too happy about following us. Once the relief ships actually get here, I expect you’ll be on your way.”
“You got some coming, then?”
“Oh my, yes,” the doctor said, with a sigh. “Half a dozen of our finest. Probably more than we need, but we’re not in a place where anyone wants to take risks.”
“I’m right there with ’em on that,” Alex said, closing his eyes. The silence felt weird. He opened them again. The doctor stood where she had been before, her smile as it had been, her hands clasped lightly in front of her. There were tears in her eyes.