Read Online Revolution's Shore by Kate Elliott - Free Book Online Page B

Academy’s workout room, watching her as she did a particularly complicated kata. “Yes,” he said in this memory, “yes. In this move you strike directly to the temple. Done so, with proper alignment, you kill your opponent with that single blow.” His face remained impassive, as if killing was an abstract ideal that never touched reality, as if the opponent was always an idealized shadow of one’s self, echoing your own movements across space. She wondered, standing there in the light of the three filtered helmet beams, how many people Heredes had killed in the course of his very long life.
    The tube lighting along the walls flickered on, off, on: low wattage power, almost grey, and the hushed, strained whirring of the auxiliary venting system kicked in.
    Lily forced herself to relax her grip on her rifle, finger by finger. “Come on,” she said, more to herself than to her companions.
    They met the other three by the metal door that led on to the meter-square maintenance shaft that paralleled, opened out from, the central elevator shaft. The door was ajar.
    â€œI didn’t believe it.” Yehoshua said as they came up. “The ’bot really did it.”
    â€œWho do you think cut the power?” Lily demanded.
    â€œMaybe Main Block finally tapped through and cut it.”
    â€œMaybe that’s what the guards will think. We can hope. Did you clear all three corridors? Good.” In the distance they could hear prisoners shouting to each other across the cell tunnel. “Rainbow. Release one prisoner, and then follow us up. Lock this shaft behind you.”
    Rainbow paused to look up at the ceiling. “It be ya sore long way to ya surface dome, min.”
    â€œI know.” Lily stepped through the door and set one hand on a ladder rung. “That’s why they won’t be expecting us.”

6 Jacob’s Ladder
    T HEY CLIMBED.
    Lily’s hands began to hurt first, from being curled around the metal rungs, then the arch of her foot, from pushing off all the time. Eventually her back began to ache as well, right around the shoulders and between the shoulder blades.
    Rainbow started to lose ground fairly soon. Yehoshua and Alsayid kept up until they passed the door marked level 6 and then their lights, too, began to recede into the vast depths of blackness that surrounded them: the empty, seemingly bottomless central shaft.
    Lily had to stop just above level 5. She laced her elbows around a rung and let her hands hang open, breathing hard. Below, Jenny stopped as well, but Kyosti continued up until he was half-overlapping Lily. Letting go with one hand, he massaged each of her palms in turn.
    â€œHoy,” she gasped. “You’d think it was three kilometers between levels instead of one-third.”
    â€œIt’ll get worse,” replied Kyosti cheerfully.
    It did. She reached a point where she could block the pain lancing through her muscles, but the halts became more frequent, and the relief they afforded less. Once she heard a curse, far below, and she trained her light down to see Alsayid dangling and pulling himself back onto the ladder with Yehoshua’s help. Rainbow’s light was lost in the deep black beneath. The air stirred around them.
    â€œDamn it,” cursed Jenny from below. “Would you turn that light back into the wall? I’m terrified of heights.”
    Kyosti laughed.
    Lily started up again. They had long since passed level 2 when abruptly a red light snapped on some meters above Lily’s head. She flipped off her light immediately, and the others vanished as well.
    â€œThey’ve restored power,” she said softly, downward. “It’s been”—she checked the gleaming numbers on her wrist-com—“over four hours. We’ll wait for the others to catch up.”
    â€œHow much time do we have left?” asked Jenny. Her voice, even at a whisper, caused strange reverberations in