Spin State - Chris Moriarty [131]
This time of night there would be dozens, maybe hundreds of independents below ground who had never logged in or left their tags at pit bottom. The shift foremen might know where the bootleggers were, more or less—but admitting it would mean admitting they’d taken bribes in cash or condensate to keep quiet. And, bribes or no bribes, most of the shift foremen were dead anyway.
Worst of all—and this was what Ramirez really meant—most of the constructs still working in the mines were independents. If the pit had blown on any other shift, there would have been a host of genetics among the rescue crews—experienced miners who could survive the poisoned air without rebreathers at least long enough to pull out a few survivors. Now those very miners were the ones trapped below ground waiting for rescue, and the men above ground needed rebreathers. Rebreathers that probably wouldn’t arrive in time.
Li looked over at the Helena medics, already spreading through the triage area, bending over stretchers, setting down crates of burn bags and bandages.
“There’s two hundred and seventy logged-in miners still unaccounted for,” Ramirez said, letting the number hang in the smoky air between them. “Maybe another hundred independents in the back tunnels.”
“All right,” Li said. “Just give me a minute.”
Half an hour later, she felt the bump of the cage hitting pit bottom, jerked the gate open, and stepped out into hell.
The rescue was an exercise in controlled chaos. Searchers surged in and out of the staging area, often returning to report not survivors but additional rescuers lost to smoke inhalation and rockfall injuries. Dogs sniffed through the stench of coal smoke and burnt electrical wiring, barking with excitement at the rare live find, whining anxiously when the bodies they discovered didn’t sit up and talk to them.
Li spent the rest of the night working side by side with Ramirez. To her amazement, he kept up with her. More than kept up with her. And, unwired as he was, it could only be nerves and raw determination that were holding him together.
As the night wore on she began to notice that the men at pit bottom always made sure Ramirez had a stretcher when he needed it or a fresh tank when he came back to turn in his empties. He was getting special treatment, and for good reason: he was finding people. Finding survivors and getting them out with a speed that could only mean he was taking chances the others weren’t willing to take.
So. He was a hero—down here, anyway. Li had long gotten over being surprised by anything people did when lives were on the line. She’d seen hard-bitten veterans fall apart under fire, and she’d seen more than a few soft-looking rich kids reveal themselves as born heroes—or born killers. Some people were just wired for crunch time. So far it looked like Ramirez was one of them.
Li herself was a survivor, not a hero. Any illusions she’d had on that score had been scorched out of her back on Gilead. But down here she didn’t need to be a hero. Down here she just needed to keep breathing. And keep breathing was exactly what she did, as night paled to smoky daylight at the top of the shaft three kilometers above them.
She and Ramirez outlasted three different rescue teams, ran into McCuen somewhere toward dawn and kept on searching with him. They followed pointing fingers and hoarse-throated directions. They listened for the dogs’ barking. They helped dig through rockfalls and shore up dangerously loose lagging. They hefted bodies, live and dead, and carried them until they found someone to hand them off to.
Meanwhile, Li’s internals monitored the contaminated air, beeped warnings at her—warnings she ignored—and sent out suicide armies of virucules to combat the contamination that was clogging her lungs and flooding