“Yone?” said Shorty.
“Yes, it’s me.” The light reversed, and now the crew could see Yone pointing a nerve rifle with a slim flashlight attached to the side of the stubby, squared barrel. Beside him a stocky woman stood holding another nerve rifle.
“Sammy!” said Broben.
“Hello, lieutenant,” said Samay.
Grobe lunged for the gun in Shorty’s hands. Garrett yanked him backward so hard his teeth clacked. Shorty grinned down at the man in the faint light and trained the weapon on him. “I’ll bet,” he said, “you’ll be happy to tell me how to turn this thing down now.”
Grobe glared and folded his arms.
“There is a slider on the left side above the trigger,” said Yone. “All the way back is the lowest setting.”
Grobe gave him a look of pure loathing. “I was right about you,” he said.
“Oh, shut up,” said Shorty, and pressed the firing stud. Grobe went stiff and keeled over. No one moved to soften the impact when his head smacked the floor. The rifle whined its annoying recharge sound.
“You sure you pulled that thing all the way back?” Farley asked.
Shorty shrugged. “I mighta pushed it back up a couple notches,” he admitted.
Plavitz and Francis dragged the unconscious guards in from the doorway. “Jeez, the whole Dome’s out!” Francis announced. His eyepatch an eerie monster eye in the faint light.
“Yes,” said Berne. “The hard part was turning the power off and leaving essential services running.”
“Looks like you aced it,” Shorty told him.
“Thank you. This has been the single best day of my life.”
Plavitz and Francis removed the guards’ weapons and handed them off to Garrett and Everett. Garrett hefted the plastic rifle. “This thing’s a toy,” he said.
“Maybe from that end,” said Everett.
Plavitz and Francis couldn’t figure out how to get the smartsuit body armor off the stiff guards, so Yone and Samay took over and began removing sections.
“More troops will be here soon,” Yone said as he pulled off a section. “We must hurry.”
“Hurry where?” asked Farley.
“Out of the Dome, of course. You can’t stay here.” He pulled off a last section of armor and looked at it. “Neither can I, now,” he said, and handed the piece to Farley.
Farley rubbed the dark fabric with his fingers. It was so light you’d think a breeze would blow it off, yet it felt strangely liquid. He looked at Yone and nodded slowly. “I’d say you earned yourself a ride,” he said.
“Thank you,” the little man said simply.
“Thank me when we’re in the air,” said Farley. He hesitated.
Yone shook his head. “I don’t know where she is, I’m sorry. The commander’s men took her away.”
Farley imagined finding out where they’d locked Wennda away, shooting his way in, leading her safely out. Out of the Dome, across the dead expanse, into the Redoubt, into the sky and home. That’s a nice thought, Captain Midnight. Now put it away. You can take it out and cry over it later, if you live through this.
He turned to the crew. “All right, everybody move out,” he said. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”
They made their way in the foreign dark like blind monks, single file and one hand on the shoulder of the man ahead. Around him Farley heard only footfalls and tight whispers. The occasional beam of a flashlight swept by like a little lighthouse beacon. The dead flat quiet made him realize how much background noise there usually was throughout the Dome—air circulators, power hum, turbine whines, distant machinery. Berne’s basics-only blackout meant no air filtration, temperature regulation, communication, defenses.
Farley would have thought the place would become a stepped-on anthill with the power out, but then he realized everybody here must have drilled for this contingency. He saw small groups and individuals heading toward stations in orderly fashion, most of them carrying tiny but powerful flashlights. He ordered the men to stay tight, turn on their own flashlights, and walk fast but not to run.
They hurried along a narrow walkway adjacent to the main thoroughfare, following Samay’s lead toward the agricultural plots. The stocky woman had no problem keeping a fast pace, but Berne was lagging. Farley was on the verge of suggesting the technician might be better off holing up somewhere safe, when the smells around them changed and he realized they were already in the crop grid.
Suddenly their shadows stretched ahead on the narrow footpath, and Farley glanced back to see pale orange lights glowing from the corners of buildings in the administrative and housing clusters. Emergency lights on battery reserves. Bad news: No more darkness to hide in. Good news: The Dome wall wasn’t a minute away.
“Tell me there’s another way out of this bowl,” Broben said to Samay. Crouched beside her and Farley behind a low plastic bin, he frowned at the closed hatchway set flush into the Dome wall a hundred feet away. The rectangular access panel beside it was the only clear indication the door was even there.
Samay shook her head. “There’s access to the gap between the inner and outer shells, but the only exit to the surface is through the one lock.”
“That’s nuts. What if you had to evacuate?”
“The Dome was built as someplace to evacuate to, not evacuate from.”
“There’s two places I’d’ve sent troops the second the lights went out: Our barracks, and the other side of that door.”
“Troops or not,” said Farley, “that’s our way out of here.” He glanced around and was satisfied that he could not make out the rest of the crew lying low in the fields.
“The access panel won’t work with the power out,” said Samay.
Farley nodded. “Then we’ll do it the Army way.”
She looked puzzled. “The Army way?”
Broben smirked and punched his fist into his palm. “Subtle,” he said, pronouncing the b.
Four crewmen emerged from the small geometry of crops in a low crouch and trotted through the dim orange twilight to the Dome wall. They followed its gentle curve until they stood before the door. The black glass panel beside it was dark.
Garrett and Everett took flank with their nerve guns while Boney went to work on the panel.
“There’s gotta be a manual backup,” Shorty whispered beside him. “You don’t build something that traps everybody when the power goes on the fritz.”
“Good thing you didn’t pull sub duty,” Boney replied. He felt around the edges of the panel, then put both hands on the right side and slid a recessed lever out from the edge. He glanced at Garrett and Everett, then pulled the lever.
The access panel swung open. Behind it was a circular metal plate with a hole in the middle, and a Z-shaped crank bar held by plastic clamps. Boney pulled the bar free and fitted one end into the metal plate. He tried to crank the Z-bar but nothing moved. Shorty set his hands on the crank beside Boney’s and the two men worked the bar counter-clockwise. Grudgingly it began to turn. Metal squealed, and beside them the door began to inch open.
“Jesus,” Shorty breathed. “Send up a flare, while we’re at it.”
Beyond the half-open door all was pitch black. Boney moved aside and Shorty held a fist up. Garrett and Everett moved to flank him at the door. The stubby nerve guns really did look like toys in their big hands, Shorty thought as he counted one two three with his fingers. Then he gripped the nerve gun he had borrowed from Yone and ran into the half-open doorway. He dropped low and turned on the flashlight clipped to the side of the gun as Everett and Garrett came in behind him.