High Flyer (Verdant String)

by Michelle Diener

  “What is it?” Iver looked over at her.

  “Someone's watching them. Following them. Look.”

  Two people moved out from behind the low trees that squatted close to the river bank. Both of them were in dark clothing, with hooded jackets pulled up.

  One crossed the river, almost directly opposite where she and Iver were lying, while the other kept to the other side.

  “They're hedging their bets, taking both sides of the river, which means they don't know where Grimms and her friend are going,” Iver murmured. “They look like smugglers.”

  “Not as tattered as the others, but yes. Same general uniform.”

  “If they're part of the same group, that ambush was more coordinated than it appeared.” Iver leaned closer to her as they followed the progress of the smugglers as they trailed the two camp crew.

  “They're keeping well back. They don't intend to grab them.” Hana knew intellectually that the camp, which she'd seen from the inside, was in the field to their left, but when Grimms seemed to jump into the air and disappear, she couldn't help the gasp of surprise that escaped.

  The two following Grimms were obviously just as shocked.

  The person on the camp side of the river was clearly a woman, although with the hood up on her jacket, Hana couldn't make out her face. The woman crouched down in surprise, and the man, following on a parallel path on the other side of the river, froze.

  They glanced across at each other, and then turned in time to see Grimms' friend disappear the same way.

  The two smugglers stayed where they were for what felt like a long time, and then the woman crept along the path to the general area where the camp crew had jumped into invisibility.

  She touched the wall, her hand coming back in shock to find something she could feel but couldn't see. Hana saw her take a deep breath and then pat her way up the wall until she found the top, then slowly lift up and lean over.

  Half her body disappeared, and she drew back so fast she fell on her backside.

  She moved clumsily into a crouch and then ran, bent low, back the way she'd come.

  Her friend across the river gave up being quiet and shouted something at her, a warning, and when Hana looked over, she saw Grimms and a huge man were racing down the path.

  The man leaped to the riverbank as the woman began to cross, and lifted both hands as the two camp guards came into range.

  “He's got a SAL.” Hana realized her whole body was tense, just watching what was happening below.

  The dart must have hit Grimms, because she went down, and her partner leaped over her and then jumped down the bank, but the woman had made it to the other side by then.

  Her friend shot again, much closer this time, and the man fell back.

  Hana held her breath as he fell, but he landed mostly on the river bank, not in the water.

  There was another shout as three more people came racing down the track, and she relaxed.

  They'd at least make sure their friend didn't drown.

  The two smugglers ran up the hill and disappeared.

  Hana rested her chin on her folded hands and watched the guards from the camp haul the big man out of the river, and then cross to the other side for signs of the smugglers. After fifteen minutes, all three of them came back empty-handed.

  “Guess the smugglers know where the camp is, now.” Iver handed Hana a nut bar and she chewed thoughtfully as the camp crew dragged their friends back behind the shield.

  Everything looked the same as it had half an hour before, but it wasn't. Things had changed completely.

  The camp was discovered, and Bret had some decisions to make--

  A whoosh from the other side of the valley made her freeze, and she leaned closer to the edge, gaze sweeping the landscape for where it was coming from.

  “What--?”

  She held up a hand to quiet Iver's question and used her elbows to lever herself even further out.

  There.

  A vapor trail was just visible, and she pointed to it, then just caught the quick glint of silver metal as it shot up toward the sky.

  “A TellTale.” The implications rocked her. She turned her head, met Iver's gaze. “Who can be waiting in nearspace to receive it?”

  Iver looked upward, and Hana saw the TellTale give a final wink as it disappeared above the clouds.

  “There shouldn't be anyone up there but the VSC battleships. And from what the head administrator of Touka City said to us, there are VSC special forces on their way to look into my disappearance, which means smaller military runners coming in from wherever the fleet is stationed. Whoever is lurking up there is taking a huge risk.”

  “The Caruso wouldn't dare, would they? The VSC has to be on high alert after what happened on Veltos last month. I can't imagine they could get through the VSC security net. It's not like Faldine is undefended.”

  “No.” Iver tapped a fist into his open palm. “I agree, they have to know any sign of a Caruso ship in Faldine nearspace would have the VSC mobilizing.”

  “So, what?” Hana asked. “It's not the Caruso? Or it is them, but they're using a VSC ship?”

  “Maybe.” Iver's lips were in a tight line. “Whatever it is, whoever is up there, now they've been given the location of the camp, we can expect company.”

  Chapter 21

  “So, what now?” Hana slowly worked her way back from the edge of the rock, and then stretched out as if her muscles were stiff.

  They'd slept on hard ground, and she was still injured, but she hadn't spoken a single word of complaint.

  “I wish you weren't caught up in this.” The sudden spike of rage that erupted in him had him clenching his fists.

  She looked over at him, surprised, and then frowned. “You're not feeling guilty, are you? This is on Lancaster and everyone who's involved in the camp.”

  It was more fury than guilt, but there was a lot of that in the mix, too.

  When the VSC had more or less bribed him into taking the head-of-planet position, he'd been pleased with the challenge. He'd never thought his position would endanger someone he cared about.

  “Listen.” She reached out and grabbed his jacket, so she had his full attention. “I fought for four years so Faldine would have a fair chance, so the VSC didn't have another Garmen or Lassa on their hands. And if these assholes think they can plunge us back into that so they can . . . what? Go back to their secretive havens that allow them to steal and ambush traders at will? That's against everything I risked my life for. This is not on you. Put the blame where it belongs.”

  She took a deep, shaking breath in, and Iver realized her anger was almost at the same level as his.

  He closed his hands over hers where they still gripped his jacket and she looked down in surprise, and then her lips quirked up in a smile.

  “Guess it fires me up a little.”

  He leaned forward, brushing a kiss on her forehead, and was hit by a yearning to have her naked and in his lap again, rocking away the trouble and the discomfort and the danger, until it was just her and him, in a world of their own.

  “I don't want to, but I think I have to go over the river to where that TellTale was set off, see who's there and what they're up to.” As he said it, he realized how reluctant he was. He didn't want to leave her, even though finding out what he could from the scouts who'd found the camp was his duty as head-of-planet.

  She closed her eyes, opened them again. “I'd say I'll come with you, watch your back, but my foot isn't healed enough yet.”

  He gave a snort. “It's only been a day since you were injured, there's no way you should expect it to be healed already.”

  She stared at him, almost blank-faced for a second, then shrugged. “I heal fast.”

  “No one heals that fast.” But he had a sense she really believed she should be up and active again. He ran a hand down her arm. “Give yourself a break, Hana. You're not invincible.”

  “Not according to Linnel.” She shot him a
wry grin.

  He shrugged. “Linnel is delusional and under arrest in Touka City.” He looked back over the river, knew he needed to get moving in case whoever was out there decided to go to ground.

  “I'll be fine. I'll stay here, use the overhang as a place to sleep again tonight if you're not back yet.”

  He wanted to say of course he'd be back by then, but he couldn't be sure. “I'll see you soon. Stay safe.”

  She gripped his jacket again, drew him in, and he kissed her hard, marveling that he had her in his arms at all, after months of accepting that he never would.

  He pulled back reluctantly, grabbing his pack as he slid backward. He kept low until he found enough cover, and then he ran down the side of the hill to the river.

  He looked back when he reached the bank, up to the rock embedded in the hillside, and thought he saw movement--the wave of a hand. It was a good position. Hana was hidden but had a good view of everything.

  She would be fine. Absolutely fine.

  He forced himself to turn away and drop down onto the narrow strip of rocks below the bank.

  When he was across, with boots only a little wet, he found the path the two scouts had taken.

  They had chosen speed over covering their tracks, leaving crushed vegetation and broken branches to show the way they'd taken, as well as some boot prints in the mud.

  If he could follow it easily, so would the guards from the camp--and they would be coming back this way to search, no doubt about it.

  Once they had their people in the medbay, Bret would send more than a few of them out. Secrecy was everything to the camp, and it had just been breached. They'd want to find and silence whoever they could find. And if they'd seen the TellTale launch . . .

  He couldn't see how the camp leader would be happy with that.

  Iver increased his pace.

  When the camp guards came, he wanted to be well ahead of them.

  He followed the path around a stand of trees and slowed to a stop as he smelled the throat catching stink of a solid fuel cell from up ahead.

  There was no sound, no voices to be heard, but he carefully stepped off the path, and winced as dry leaves crackled beneath his boots.

  He went still, waiting for a reaction, but when none came, he looked around, and then up.

  The trees were close together, forming a small copse, with entangled roots and low branches.

  He jumped, grabbing hold of a branch and swinging himself into a tree.

  The trees were so close together he was able to move easily from one to the other until he could see around the curve in the path, to a small clearing on the other side.

  The TellTale had definitely been launched here.

  The thick green ground covering was scorched, and when he rubbed one of the leaves hanging near his face between his finger and thumb, he felt the slightly oily residue typical of a burn-up.

  Maybe they'd launched and run.

  Although he hadn't seen any evidence they'd run back toward the camp. He and Hana would have seen them. Maybe they'd gone to fetch their friends.

  If so, they'd chosen to send the TellTale first. Presumably giving the camp's location to whoever they were working for was paramount. He wondered again who could be up in Faldine nearspace, waiting for information from below.

  He was head-of-planet, and he knew the VSC battleships did a regular scan for unidentified vessels, as well as patrols.

  Whoever was up there, they were either using tech the VSC didn't know about, or it was avoiding scrutiny in some other way.

  “It still stinks.” A woman coughed suddenly, so close to where Iver sat hunched over on his branch, his grip slipped for a moment in shock.

  “Yeah. It's better than it was--bearable--but still not good. When some of those guards from the camp follow our trail here, they'll know something was launched, if they didn't see it lift off.” The man cleared his throat, hacked a cough himself.

  Iver tried to see where they'd come from, noticed a narrow gap in the undergrowth just to the left of his tree.

  “We couldn't help that, the TellTale had to be sent.” The woman moved out into the center of the clearing, looked toward the river. “Wish they'd warned us about the smell.” She lifted her arm and covered her nose and mouth. She took a few breaths, looking around. “We need to find a good place to hide before the camp guards get here.”

  “We're only to attack if there's one of them, Craven said. We stay put if there are more.” Her companion coughed again.

  “Sure.” There was a slightly derisive laugh in the woman's voice. “We play it safe, got it.”

  The man sighed, then the fumes must have got to him again, because he coughed for a minute. “There aren't enough of us to risk being hurt or captured, Lia.” There was a more aggressive edge to his voice now.

  Iver recognized the name. He hadn't gotten a good look at the woman who'd been part of the group that had chased Hana into the steel trap, but he'd heard her name mentioned. There couldn't be two women with the same name in the area.

  So these two were part of the smugglers' group.

  Iver had gotten a good look at all three men who'd been part of the ambush team back in the valley, and the man with Lia now wasn't one of them.

  So there were others in the group. How many would be interesting to find out.

  “I said sure.” Lia snapped out the response.

  “You say a lot of things, and then just go your own way.”

  “I found the camp, didn't I?” Lia's tone was sharp.

  “You did. But you also let them see you. So now we have to bring the plans forward.” There was a nastiness in his voice.

  “You ever get tired of being Craven's little sycophant, Roj? Because that's all you do. You toe the line.”

  Roj turned to her, aggression in his stance. “Why did you join up if you don't want to toe the line? No one forced you to come out here.”

  “Fuck you.” Lia sneered, hands on hips. “I fought in the war as soon as I was old enough to join, and I lost big. I'm not losing out again because someone's scared of acting.”

  “It's called being strategic.” Roj's hands were fisted at his sides, then he went still, his gaze snapping to the path.

  He signaled to Lia, pointing back the way they'd entered the clearing and then ran silently to the bushes opposite to where Iver was hiding.

  Lia hesitated, then followed Roj's directions, slipping back the way they'd come.

  Iver hadn't heard whatever had alerted Roj, and the silence dragged out. The camp guards had either smelled the burn of the TellTale, or they'd heard Roj and Lia talking. Either way, they'd gone silent.

  As time stretched out, with nothing happening, Iver decided the other option was that Roj had been overcautious, that there hadn't been anyone there in the first place.

  He heard the rustle of foliage to his left, where he knew Lia had gone to ground.

  She was getting twitchy. Or tired of waiting.

  There was a sudden shout, coming from Roj's hiding place, and two men burst out into the clearing, fighting.

  It was ugly.

  There were vicious blows and hard knocks, the men grunting and grappling as they rolled around on the blackened ground.

  Iver recalled Roj had had a SAL earlier, when he'd shot Grimms and her fellow guard, but there was no sign of it now.

  Both men started coughing as they picked up the grit and residue of the TellTale, so their labored breath became part of the ugliness of the fight.

  Iver recognized the man from the night before. He'd accompanied the medic to check on Hana in the medbay--Luki.

  His face was smudged with black residue, which made the pale blue of his eyes even more intense in his face.

  He looked lost in the violence of the fight. There was no strategy, it had devolved to a desperate struggle for survival, and Roj was outclassed, not because he didn't have the skills, but because he wasn't trying to kill his opponent.

  And Luki looked li
ke he was prepared to do murder.

  Iver couldn't just sit in his tree and watch. He looped his pack over his shoulders, moved close to the edge of the branch, and looked below to check the ground where he would land.

  As he committed to the leap, two more people burst into the clearing, coming around the trees from the direction of the river.

  It distracted Iver and he landed hard, falling to his knees on the twisted, uneven roots.

  One of the newcomers was the woman who'd been with Grimms earlier, searching the river for Hana, the other was a man Iver didn't recognize.

  The man must have seen him jump, because his attention was fixed on Iver.

  The woman had a SAL, and she was trying to get a clear shot at Roj as he rolled around with Luki. She was shouting at Luki to move, but he seemed not to hear her.

  The man turned briefly as she screamed Luki's name but then swung straight back to focus on Iver.

  The shouting seemed to be the final straw for Lia. Iver saw her burst out of her hiding place with a shout of her own.

  She had nothing but a thick stick in her hand, raised above her head and she took a swing at the man who had started in Iver's direction.

  He wasn't looking her way, his focus was fully on Iver, and the stick connected against the side of his head with a crack.

  He went down without a sound, and Lia turned in a single, smooth move and brought the stick down again, this time on Luki's back.

  He roared in pain and fury, striking back at her with one arm and kicking out with his closest foot.

  The move lifted him off Roj, who used the brief reprieve to pull something out of the side pocket in his military pants. As Luki turned back to him, Roj stabbed upward.

  Luki bellowed in pain again, and Roj heaved him off.

  As soon as he was free of Luki, the woman used her clear shot, and Roj looked down with a frown at the SAL dart sticking out just below his collarbone.

  “Shit.” He coughed as he looked over at the woman, seeing her for the first time, and then fell back down, and lay still.

  The woman was breathing hard, and she sneezed as the after-burn irritated her nasal passages. She turned the SAL on Lia, but Lia was already moving, stick raised up, and the camp guard missed as she was forced to leap back and shoot at the same time.