Free Revolution's Shore by Kate Elliott Page A

it.”
    Lily waited a moment, controlling her voice, and then spoke. “Hawk. Tell them.”
    â€œI have six shock grenades. Four thrown to the four corners when the ladder hatch explodes and two into the laser emplacements—which are manual, I believe—that will give you a good five seconds with most of the personnel in the dome stunned. Of course, you’ll have to watch your back.”
    â€œBut that will leave you stunned and a sitting target.”
    â€œMaybe.” Kyosti’s voice was colorless.
    Lily began to climb. Bach rose ahead of her. “We haven’t got time for this. Move it.”
    Alsayid passed them at the main dome-level door, and he and Bach went on up. Alsayid returned quickly, however.
    â€œThere’s a lock on this side,” he murmured to Lily. “The ’bot says he can blow it.”
    Above, she heard a faint whine, like a drill. “Hoy. Damned show-off. All right, hand me up the manual key. We’re going out.”
    It took a moment for the small rectangular keypad to pass from hand to hand, but Lily disengaged the lock on her first try. She took a breath, let it out, and swung the door aside.
    It opened out into the corridor. She stepped out, easy, as if she were meant to be there, and found herself in a narrow, empty corridor. Motioned the others out quickly.
    Jenny immediately knelt by the door, and after a hesitation, Rainbow stopped beside her, rubbing her arms with one hand. Lily waited for Kyosti to disappear alone around the bend in the corridor, and then she walked forward with Yehoshua and Alsayid at her heels.
    Around the bend the corridor came to an end: one door opened into a long, narrow maintenance room, a second gave onto a large, brightly lit corridor that arced around the curve of the elevator shaft. Down it, she heard voices, a few raised, and then one, angry, that she recognized.
    â€œYou idiot, we have a complete security breach in level nine—”
    Lily signed Yehoshua and Alsayid forward. As they rounded the corner, they saw Kyosti berating two guards, who were wearing the same standard issue coveralls they were. The two guards, cowed by Kyosti’s apparent authority, quickly turned to escort him toward the broad hall through which equipment was loaded into the elevator and which held, on one side, the long ramp that led to the central dome above.
    Kyosti had pulled down his breathing mask so that, evidently, the guards could see clearly the scorn with which he kept up a constant flow of furious invective about security breaches and incompetent level supervisors. Lily could not quite hear the details. As they came out into the hall she made a small sign with her hand and split off from the other two, filtering into the restless gathering of armed guards.
    â€œâ€”must have been a malfunction. Damn rebels would have attacked by now.”
    â€œâ€”keep us off guard—”
    â€œâ€”I heard prisoners on level seven sabotaged the—”
    She moved along the wall until she stood on a level with the ramp, seeing Kyosti walking up it alone, seemingly oblivious to the muzzles of the big laser guns trained on his approach. Caught Yehoshua’s eye, to her left, and began to press nonchalantly forward toward the beginning of the ramp.
    A second’s high, piercing whine warned her: an instant later a muffled explosion sounded from above, and she broke forward at a run as the rest of the guards were registering the sound. She reached the ramp just as a series of low pops betrayed the concussions of the shock grenades Kyosti had thrown. Behind, footsteps rang on the ramp, but she did not have time to turn to see whose they were, only heard the beginning of heavy shooting.
    The fifteen meters up that ramp seemed, with the two muzzles of the laser guns trained straight on her, like a kilometer. A burst of light shot out at her. She hit the floor rolling, heard a scream of pain behind, came up running as,