Revolution's Shore by Kate Elliott Page A

shafts of the Ransome House mines, built to accommodate machines and free miners who could easily choose to move on to more agreeable working conditions.
    They had to crawl single file on their hands and knees over sharp, uneven rock. Now and then, the shaft opened into a pocket where seven or eight might assemble, packed tightly together, for a break or to facilitate entrance into a new series of shafts, but in these pockets the sense of claustrophobic heaviness heightened, if anything. In Ransome House, there was not a shaft but you had height enough to stand, and width enough to walk three abreast; the Sar had always believed that a well-treated worker produced the best work—a philosophy he had drilled into his children. Lily could appreciate it now.
    In at least half of the pockets they had to maneuver past corpses, and once Yehoshua, at the fore, had to push a decaying corpse bodily ahead of him until there was room to shove it to one side. Two of Inonu’s ten disintegrated under this confinement, and were sent back to wait at the central elevator shaft. One man was sobbing softly to himself, but could not bring himself to backtrack that ground alone.
    After several stalls, and one very long wait where—the ceiling pressing into her back, her elbows scraping against the walls—she had to recite kata in her head to keep calm, Lily emerged at last into what seemed an enormous room. As rough-hewn as the others, it could contain the entire party: Inonu and her eight remaining soldiers, Yehoshua, Alsayid, Rainbow, the Ridani miner, and herself, Jenny, and Kyosti. Close, but nevertheless all of them.
    Crouched beside Yehoshua, Lily trained her light on the oversize com-screen the officer held and watched as the Ridani shifted the pointer until it showed their current location and the shaft they had chosen to lead them to the 30s.
    â€œHere it be,” he said, showing a shaft that trailed into a similar grid of shafts branching out from tunnel 39. “Close enough I reckon that ya easer should sure be put together here. Won’t be another such broad’ning before ya drill shall come tae use.”
    Yehoshua nodded, and spoke into his wrist-com to Inonu, who crouched across the pocket from him. She immediately signaled to those of her people who had packed the components in, and within a reasonable space of time the drill was assembled. It was about the length of Lily’s arm and as thick as her torso.
    â€œHold on,” said Yehoshua. “What happened to the power pack? We can’t use it like this.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Lily. “Come on. We’re running short of time.”
    â€œRight.” Even distorted by the mike, Yehoshua’s reply was sarcastic. “Inonu, follow us at the specified distance, and remain only until oh-four-fifteen. Then return to the surface and leave. Understood?”
    Inonu hesitated, but replied in the affirmative.
    â€œI’ll take it,” said Lily to the Ridani miner, but he shook his head.
    â€œSo much,” he explained, gesturing with the drill, “I can do for ya people trapped in ya thirties.”
    She shrugged and let him precede her into the shaft. They crawled in silence. She felt more and more keenly not the incalculable weight of kilometers of rock a hand’s breadth above her back, because she had known that on Unruli; here it was the tiny space through which they moved that unsettled her. Fantasies of collapse, of bodies pinned by stone—all she could hear of the others behind her was their smothered breathing and, once, a curse of pain. A conviction that she was about to crawl into a corpse in the last stages of disintegration seized her with such terrifying force that she stopped moving.
    A hand touched her ankle. A helmet brushed her hip. “‘For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me,’” Kyosti said. His voice seemed