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Nemesis Games [WIP]

“Towers of curved ceramic and steel made great piles, denser than mountains. Hair-thin wire hundreds of kilometers long stood on plastic spools taller than Filip.” (5)

“Filip shuffled down the rows of welding rigs and metal printers. Tubs of steel and ceramic dust fine than talcum. Spiral-core mounts. Layers of Kevlar and foam strike armor piled up like the biggest bed in the solar system.” (5)

“At the emergency ward, he found himself wheeled into an automated surgical bed not that different from the ones on the Rocinante.” (158)

“The passage was the usual design of inflated Mylar and titanium ribs.” (221-222)

“The curve was like the airlock on the Roci, and the design of the latch. Martian design. And more than that, Martian Navy.” (222)

"The bridge looked like the Rocinante's younger brother" (222)

“She pulled herself out of her crash couch and walked out to the common room. It was so much like the Roci’s galley that her brain kept trying to recognize it, failing, and trying again.” (262)

“Magnetic pallets locked to the decks and walls in neat rows. She wondered idly where it had all come from, and what promises had been given in exchange. She went to the nearest, plugged the array into the pallet, and popped it open. The crates unfolded.” (263)

“A toolbox in the machine shop had a bent hasp and, given a few minutes, could be forced open. The Allen wrenches inside would open the access panel on the lift wall between the crew quarters and the airlock, which was where the secondary diagnostic handset for the comm array was stored.” (304)

“While she worked, pressing the plastic into the seams, scraping out whatever had gathered there, doing it again, she tried to fit the new information into the larger scheme of things.” (306)

“When the deck was clean, she dropped the spatula into the recycler, stood, and stretched.” (307)

“In her bunk, her fingers laced behind her neck, she stared up at the blackness on the ceiling. The interface screen at her side was dead.” (311)

“The ship lurched hard, snapping the gimbals of the couches forty-five degrees to the deck.” (329)

“One bulkhead failed to open, reporting vacuum on the other side, and they had to backtrack.” (330)

“The comm array was unable to transmit either broadcast or tightbeam.” (330)

“She popped the straps loose and sat up, pulling her leg away from the needle.” (338)

“In the lift, she selected the machine shop and gripped the handholds as the mechanism dropped her down the body of the ship.” (338)

“The machine shop was empty, all the tools locked in place, but with enough tolerance that when the ship lurched, they all rattled: metal against metal like the ship itself was learning to talk.“ (338)

“She stumbled, her head crashing against the metal shelves.” (339)

“All the wrenches, epoxy welders, voltage meters, and cans of air and lubricant were strapped in place, She flipped through the close-packed layers to a line of Allen wrenches and plucked out the 10 mm.” (339)

“She gathered up a voltage tester, a wiring crimp, and a light-duty soldering iron and stuffed them in her pockets.” (339)

“She killed the lift between the crew quarters and the airlock, bracing herself so that the deceleration didn’t leave her trapped in the middle of empty air.” (340)

“The access panel was fifteen centimeters high and forty wide and opened on the major electrical routing through the center of the ship. If she cut though all the cables there with a welding torch, all the traffic would have rerouted instantly to other channels. Apart from a few warning indicators, nothing would happen.” (340)

“The screws were integral to the plate and didn’t come free, but she felt it when the metal threads lost their grip.” (340)

“Ten. The plate came free. She scooped up the handset, checking its charge. The batteries were nearly full. Connection read good.” (341)

“Channel eighteen was a comm array using the D4/L4 protocols that the Rocinante did for broadcast.” (341)

“Hand over hand, she pulled herself along the shaft and then into the corridors.” (342)

“The narrow corridors of the crew deck seemed too wide.” (344)

“The occasional ticking and popping of the expansion joins adjusting to shifts in temperature were like the knocking of ghosts.”(344)

“He undid the straps on his couch, floating forwards.” (346)

“He stopped at the med bay on the way to his quarters.” (346)

“Fred landed feetfirst on the wall, ankles hooked into the handholds like he’d been born in the Belt.”(348)

““All the bunks are the same,” Holden said. “Except mine. You can’t have mine.”" (349)

“The halls had the same anti-spalling covering that the bridge and the mess had, but marked with location codes and colored strips that would help navigate the ship. One line was deep red with HANGER BAY written in yellow Hindi, English, Bengali, Farsi, and Chinese.” (355)

“Across the corridor from Alex, Prime Minister Smith was huddled behind the lip of a doorway.” (356)

“Another burst of fire sang past, tearing long black strips from the walls and deck and filling the air with the smell of cordite.” (356)

“She drank the same version of chamomile tea that the Rocinante made, and it felt like having a secret ally.” (364)

“The mess was empty, the screens turned off and the crew set away.” (364)

“First drawer: gauze and bandages. Second drawer: one-use blood cards for maybe a hundred different field tests. Third drawer: emergency medical supplies like decompression kits, adrenaline shots, defibrillation tape.” (368)

“The medic had her sit up, the cushion of the medical table crackling under her shifting weight. The analgesic was a spray that went in Naomi’s mouth. It tasted like fake cherry and mold.” (369)

“The cabinet doors were open, spilling test cards and preloaded hypodermics across the floor.” (369)

“She fell to the side, her belly to the deck, decompression kits the size of her thumb pressing into her face as Miral writhed around to kneel on her back.” (369)

“She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t, so she just watched as Karal opened the door then closed it behind him. The lock slid closed.” (371)

“Wet with her saliva and no bigger than her thumb, it was the sort of thing any mech driver kept with her. A tiny ampoule of injectable oxygenated artificial blood and a panic button what would make an emergency medical request for an airlock to cycle.” (371)

“Fred held up the coffee cup. The name TACHI hadn’t quite worn off the side, red and black letters half-erased by use.” (381)

“The crash couch was bolted to the deck with thick steel and reinforced ceramic canted so that any direction the force came from was compression on one leg or another.” (407)

“The drawers were thinner metal, the same gauge, more or less, as the lockers. She pulled them out as far as they would open, examining the construction of the latches, the seams where the metal had been folded, searching for clues or inspiration.” (407)

“The tiny black thumb of the decompression kit, she kept tucked at her waist, ready to go if she could just find a way.” (407)

“The mirror was polished alloy built into the wall. No help there. If she could take apart the vacuum fan in the toilet...” (408)

“A simple EVA suit hung there, suspended in the null g by thin bands of elastic.” (423)

“The indicator went from green to red under her thumb.” (424)

“The airlock door closed behind him, the magnetic seals clacking.” (424)

“The lock was small enough he could put flat palms on both doors.” (424)

“Naomi thumbed the emergency override. Three options appeared: OPEN SHIP DOOR, OPEN OUTER DOOR, RETURN TO CYCLE.” (424)

“Without magnetic boots, she’d have to reach it with bare handholds, but she was close.” (426)

“She plucked the black thumb out of her belt, twisted it to expose the needle, and slammed it into her leg.” (426)

“The airlock indicator on the Chetzemoka’s skin blinked, the emergency response received, the cycle starting.” (426)

“There were handholds on the surface – some where deigned, but others were the protrusions of antennae and cameras.” (427)

“Maneuvering thrusters lit along the warship’s side, an ejection mass of superheated water glowing as it jetted out.” (427)

“And then, Mfume was gone, bolting up the ladder toward the cockpit faster than the lift would have taken him.” (431 - 432)

“Holden tapped in an order for another coffee.” (432)

“Finding Sun-yi and Gor wired into gaming googles shooting the crap out of each other in simulated battles – because as weapons techs with no one to shoot at they were getting antsy – stopped being weird and edged into sort of endearing.” (432)

“The hatch to the cockpit was closed, but Holden could still hear the wailing of the raï that Mfume liked to listen to during his shift in the pilot’s seat.” (433)

“Holden sat on the couch beside Fred’s and leaned in.” (433)

“The first disappointment was that the controls were in lockdown. She tried a few passwords – FreeNavy and Marcoisgreat and Filip – but even if she got it right, there was no reason to expect that they’d left the biometrics profiles turned off.” (448)

“The three EVA suits that remained didn’t have batteries or air bottles. The emergency rations were gone. She expected the toolboxes to be gone from the machine shop, but they’d taken out the racks that held them too, the drawers from the cabinets, the LEDs from the wall lights. The couches were all slit open, gel and padding pooled on the deck beside them. The drug delivery system and reservoirs were gone. The only water was in the drives; ejection mass to be spit out the back of the ship. The only food was the residue in the recyclers that hadn’t been processed back into anything edible. The stink of welding rigs and burning still hang in the air, so the air recycler was probably running unfiltered.” (449)

“The deck shook under her, the vibration of thrust setting up resonances that no system even tried to damp down.” (449)

“There should be a way through the machine shop. All machine shops were supposed to be connected at the back.” (449)

“The EVA suits weren’t powered and didn’t have bottles, but they had seals and reinforcement. She could take the cloth apart, and salvage some lengths of wire. Maybe something solid enough to cut with. And could she use the helmet clamps as a kind of vise grip or clamp?” (450)

“In a real ship, it would all have been protected by conduit. On this piece of crap, the wiring had all been fixed directly to the hall with a layer of yellowed silicone epoxy.” (452)

“Across the space, maybe four meters away, an indicator light went amber, and she was falling sideways. With the extra illumination, she could see the round, tree-thick body of the maneuvering thruster. She put out her arms, catching herself against a steel strut.” (452)

“Three sorties ago -- number forty-four -- she’d thought there might be a diagnostic handset. Not that should could speak into it, but she might have been able to tap out a message. But despite the fact that handsets like that were standard and required, there wasn’t one” (454)

“She scrambled down, moving from strut to strut, watching her hands and feet with every movement so she wouldn’t midjudge.” (455)

“The air in her suit didn’t feel stale or close; the carbon dioxide scrubbers worked well enough on passive that she wouldn’t feel the panic of asphyxiation. She’d just gently pass out and die.” (455)

#nemesis games #the expanse #roci by book

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