Revolution's Shore by Kate Elliott Page B

peculiarly clear in their confinement.
    Her breath shuddered out of her. Like an echo, ahead, three small lights blinked: blue, green, and orange. A moment later the miner blocked her view, but now she started forward again.
    â€œBach,” she whispered. “Thank you.” As she neared the end of the tunnel she could hear the robot singing:
Mond und Licht
    Ist vor Schmerzen untergangen
    Moon and light
    are quenched for sorrow
    The miner came to a confused halt, seeing this apparition, and Lily reached forward to grasp his shoulder. “That’s your power source,” she said. “Let me show you.” She could not whistle in the helmet, so she called out, and Bach, complaining the whole time in a low undersong about the rough surfaces of the tiny shaft which threatened to scratch his exterior polish, floated up to them and allowed her to holster him to the easer drill.
    â€œI’ll be glad to get out of here,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “The mines on Unruli weren’t anything like this. My father would never have allowed it. Imagine if this place collapsed.”
    Kyosti had squeezed in beside her, a very tight fit, and he chuckled. “‘And the height of the rock above the head of the workmen was a hundred cubits.’”
    â€œCubits?” Lily asked, but Bach began at the same time to sing as the Ridani miner thrust him forward to the end of the shaft.
    â€œWhat is he saying?” asked Kyosti.
    â€œSomething about—waters of Gihon.” Lily shrugged. “I can’t hear him.”
    Then the miner settled into place, about ten meters in front of them, and began to drill.
    Spitting sparks of light, a sudden rise in temperature, and pressure on her eardrums were the only signs that the drilling was in progress. If it made noise, it could not be heard above the muted sound of Bach’s song.
    â€œSomeplace named David,” said Lily. “Where’s your rifle?”
    Hawk patted a long shape tucked in between his knees, briefly touched the shock grenades on his belt, and let his hand come to rest on her waist, a gesture almost protective. At her back, she felt Jenny’s movements as she checked out her weapons and loosened the straps that held them against her body. Farther back, Yehoshua spoke to his cousin, but his words were lost in the muffling air. Behind them, the faint beam of Rainbow’s helmet light cast a luminescent glow on the same mineral vein cut along the shaft wall, and behind her—a wall of solid blackness.
    They waited.
    A slight shift in pressure in her inner ear.
    â€œHere we go,” said Lily, moving past Kyosti. “He’s got equilibrium.”
    The miner did not stop working, but the pattern of his drilling changed. Lily passed through a recent pocket, almost filled now with the rubble of the current drilling, and inched forward into the new shaft, crawling almost on her belly. The miner paused as Lily came up behind him.
    â€œI pierced through, min,” he explained. Around him, the walls gleamed as if they were hot, but she could feel nothing through her coveralls. “We be coming in at ya angle, so I mean to bear down ya circle here, so ya last dislodging shall make ya least stirring.”
    â€œGood.”
    Bach winked blue lights at her, but no longer sang as the miner went back to work. Sparks flew, cut off abruptly as a cracking noise shuddered the air. Flipping a switch on the drill, the Ridani eased away a meterwide circle of rock. Lily was amazed at how thin it was—a sure sign of the precision of Bach’s sounding and the skill of the miner.
    â€œThank you,” she said to him as she helped him unholster Bach from the drill, and then she looked back at her five companions, and crawled through into the 30s.
    It was like coming into another world. For a moment she hesitated, until she realized that they had come into a dig supervised to standards more befitting a House