“Anything?”
She shook her head. “At some point, we're going to have to go out there. Do we wait for the shadow fold?”
He thought about it. “If we can go before, while its still light, we'll have a sense of the lay of the land beyond the trees, and we can make better decisions about where to hide tonight.”
She nodded, eyes back on the open ground in front of them. “And if they're there, they'll have a clear view.”
“Can you hear anything?”
She shook her head. “I'm pretty much neutralized. The magfield here is really strong.”
“Then we move forward carefully.” He took the lead. There were only three or four rows of trees left until the forest stopped and the pale green meadow began. He could hear water, so there was a river flowing through the valley.
He stepped out into the open, heard Hana's footsteps just behind him, and moved down the slope toward what looked like a small stream that was more tumbling white water than anything else.
They were over it, and making their way toward the gap in the mountains up ahead, when the glint of sun off metal had him reaching out a hand to grip Hana's shoulder and push her down.
“I saw.” She swiveled toward it, crouching on her haunches.
They sat for long minutes, but there was no sound of running feet, no sound at all but the water and the wind and the birds overhead.
They carefully rose back up.
“We have to check it out.” He didn't want to. He wanted to head for the pass. But he didn't want them to have whatever this was at their backs without finding out what it was.
“Yes.” Hana let him go ahead again, both of them looking carefully all around them as they approached the top of a rise.
He stopped at the crest, waiting for Hana before he made his way down.
It was as if some giant hand had scooped out a second, shallower valley within the valley. A long, wide hollow.
A Dynastra lay buried on its side in the soft ground, with leaves and other debris piled up against its side. Years worth.
It wasn't alone, though.
There was something else--perhaps another ship--although nothing of it was visible but what looked like a window, buried in the side of a gentle hill.
“My Dynastra.” Hana expelled the words on an exhale.
That had been his first thought. “You don't remember being here?”
She pointed to a an opening at the far side of the hollow, two rocks that formed a kind of gateway out. “I went that way. I don't remember much about it.”
She ran down the slope and came to a stop in front of the strange window.
“They are trying to tell me something, but the magfield is too strong.”
They. Her upgrade.
He moved past her, crouching beside the opening and looking in. There was a chill that seemed to rise up out of the darkness. Whatever this was, it was deeper than it looked.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
“Go in.” She did a slow turn, carefully looking over the whole area. “I think I must.”
He grabbed the top of the window frame with both hands and lowered himself inside, trying to gauge the depth. When he couldn't find the floor, he twisted, looking for a foothold against the wall, and when he found one, he moved to the side to let Hana in.
She swung in carefully, moving a little way below him as she found hand and footholds, and he pulled out the small light from their pack.
He pointed it down, and there below was a floor that seemed to be made of thin interlaced metal rods.
It wasn't that far down and he pushed off and dropped onto it, then turned and held his arms up to Hana.
She jumped after him, and he caught her around the waist and lowered her beside him.
“They aren't happy.” She leaned back against him and took a deep breath.
“Do they think there's danger?” He wished she'd said this sooner.
She shook her head. “They don't like to be back here. They were here for so long before.” She looked up at him. “Maybe thousands of years.”
She ran a hand down her arm, almost like she was soothing herself.
“That way,” she said, pointing.
He felt a chill lift the hairs on the back on his neck. “Hana?”
She looked over at him, blinked, and then shook herself.
“I'm okay.” She tried to smile. “I've got all kinds of strange going on inside me, that's all.”
He said nothing, let her show the way as their boots rang out on the metal floor. It vibrated under his feet, and made him worry he wouldn't be able to hear anyone creeping up on them.
The wide passageway ended in a set of stairs, twisting upward into the darkness.
“Notice that it's built for people of our general height?” Iver shone the light over the steps and the railing that ran beside it.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “We have to go up.”
“All right.” He held the light steady and then followed behind her, lighting her way.
At the top was another wide corridor, and the faint smell of an animal, as if one of the largish rodents that lived in the Spikes had made this its home for a while.
There was a door up ahead. Iver half expected it to open for them, but it remained shut.
There was no handle or button, but there was a screen set beside it.
Hana reached out and touched it, and after a momentary flicker, an outline of a hand appeared in gray.
Hana gasped. Looked over at him.
“I see it.”
She tentatively reached out again, put her hand inside the outline, and with a hiss and a groan, as if in need of lubricant, the door parted.
Hana stepped in, and then reversed out, bumping into him.
She pointed in silence, and in the diffuse light inside he saw two bodies slumped in chairs.
Two skeletons, he should say. There was nothing left of them.
A scrabble of sound came from overhead, and both their heads snapped up.
A crack ran along the ceiling, and Iver realized the air was warmer here and the light seeping in was coming from above.
“This isn't a two-person bridge.” Hana turned her focus from the ceiling to the area around them and Iver played the handlight over the walls and floor for her.
It was massive, with place for at least twenty people.
“These two were the only ones in here when it crashed. Which means they sent everyone else away.”
“We didn't find any other bodies so far. Maybe they managed to get out?”
“Or they died on the journey.” Her voice caught a little. “And these two were all that were left.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time, then she looked up at him.
“If they hit the same shield I did--and given the fact that we both landed in more or less the same spot, I'd say they did--then no one would have had time to evacuate.” She looked out of the now-open door. “If they were alive and on the ship when it hit the shield, they're somewhere in here. Maybe on the flight deck. Scrambling for the runners.”
He thought of that and shivered. “I hope you're wrong.”
She shivered as well, and then ran both hands down her arms, hunching over as she did it.
“We're getting out of here.” He couldn't stand to see her like this a moment more. It was as though she was being tortured by memories that weren't hers.
She took a deep, steady breath. “I want to. I really want to. But my upgrade is telling me there are runners on this ship. Runners that we could maybe use to get to Touka City faster.”
“Runners in the place you think might be a mass grave?” He couldn't hold back the worry in his voice.
She took in another unsteady breath. “Yes.”
He suddenly pulled her into his arms. “Are you sure about this?” His lips brushed her ear.
“No.” She tightened her grip on him. “But I think it’s worth taking
the chance. If they are there, their place of rest is going to be disturbed, if not by us, then by the scientists of the VSC. And if there's a runner that will get us to Touka quickly . . .”
“A runner you can fly?” he asked.
“My upgrade says yes. I can fly it.”
“All right.” He knew her plan made sense, but everything in him screamed to get them out and away from here. “We'll look, and if there's nothing to find, we leave.”
She nodded against his chest. Pulled back.
Her hand, when it lifted to her face to push back her hair, was shaking.
“Let's go.”
Chapter 29
It was hard to coordinate her steps.
Hana tried to soothe her upgrade, taking deep breaths as she followed Iver.
He was trying to protect her by going first, trying to see whatever horrific sight he thought was ahead before her, and stop her before she got there.
It made her chest tight.
“I'm glad you're here with me. I can't believe I was planning to do this alone.”
The light in his hand bobbled, and he turned. Stared at her a beat.
“It's not too late to leave now.” He searched her face, the worry on his own clear.
“I know, but I can't. It'll be all right, Iver. There's nothing here that can hurt us, and we might find something to help.” As she said it, the truth of it settled over her, and for the first time, she felt like herself again.
Her upgrade calmed.
You are with me now, she thought forcefully, and felt a rush of gratitude.
Iver gave a slow nod, turned again, but he held his hand out behind him, and she grabbed it and felt a lightness at the contact.
A warmth in this cold, dark space.
“Some of what I've been feeling is an echo from my upgrade.” She spoke haltingly, because she was still working through it herself. “They were here a long time, and their purpose is to help people survive in all conditions. And they had no one to help.”
“You think whoever traveled in this ship had the upgrade as a way to improve their chances of survival, no matter where they ended up?”
“It's likely.” More than likely, but the knowing she felt deep inside was just a feeling, and she was hesitant about voicing it.
“But if they were the same group of people who founded the planets of the Verdant String, why haven't we seen the upgrade in ourselves?” Iver swung the light downward as they stepped out of the passage onto a walkway over a massive, cavernous space.
They were amazingly high above the ground, and Iver stopped and focused the light on a dead tree, far below.
“An atrium of some kind. A greenhouse.” Hana leaned against the railing and looked down on it. She felt tiny here. Insignificant.
And completely awed.
This had been a life-sustaining, traveling city.
The waste of it crashing in the Spikes, of all that potential destroyed, hurt.
Iver had gone very still, and she glanced at him, suddenly worried. “What is it?”
“This is the same as the ship Tally Riva was stuck on.” He turned to her. “I read the report. The Raxian military has the ship, and they've allowed scientists from all the Verdant String planets access to it.”
“I remember the incident, vaguely. It hasn't been in the news much since they found her alive, though.”
“That's on purpose.” Iver's lips twitched in a wry smile. “I think they're taking their time to be sure that when they come out with a conclusion, it's backed up by evidence.”
“And what conclusion is that?”
“That the ship was in the same fleet of ships that traveled to the Verdant String and settled the eight planets.” Iver slowly moved the light away from the tree and over dead planet beds and tanks laid out in a pleasing fashion, as if the way through them curved in a sinuous path. “It seems the fleet was bigger than we thought.”
“And now we know one of them went to Faldine.” It was unbelievable, and yet, made perfect sense. Faldine was a livable planet. Why wouldn't they have tried to settle here if there were more ships in the fleet?
Iver pushed back from the railing. “This whole incident is going to shake the VSC. The ruins, the shield engine, this ship. Faldine is going to become a hotbed of scientists and tourists.”
“If we can get safely to Touka, and stop Jake and his friends taking the shield engine off-planet. Otherwise . . .” The responsibility resting on their shoulders suddenly struck her.
“Otherwise, if we're captured, we die, and these secrets die with us.” Iver sounded grim as he began to move again.
Hana followed, peering over the railings as Iver slowly swept the light from left to right.
“The ship Tally Riva was stuck on, were there any bodies?” she asked.
“Not that I know of. No runners, either. They must have had a technical failure and taken their chances to reach a place they could survive on, rather than waiting to die in space.”
The grim reality was that they had probably all died. She wondered if Tally Riva had encountered any metal beads while she was on the ship. And how she'd go about asking the Raxian without tipping her own hand, or coming across as strange.
They had come to the end of the walkway and stepped through into another corridor that went straight as well as branching left and right.
“Straight,” she said, and Iver looked over his shoulder at her and nodded.
It took more than ten minutes of walking, of ignoring corridors that branched off periodically. The size of the ship threatened to defeat her imagination. “Do you think this is all buried underground?” She tried to picture the strange dip and then rise of landscape where her Dynastra had come down, and suddenly gasped.
Iver stopped, swung around, eyes snapping to her face.
“The valley within the valley. The ship made it, gouging out the ground as it crashed, and the hill . . . the hill is the ship, with a layer of soil on top.”
He blinked. “You're right.”
She fluttered her hands. “We may not be able to get any runner on the flight deck out.”
He shrugged, turned, and carried on, and she gave her own shrug. She was the one insisting they had to try. So they would try. And if they couldn't get a runner out, they were no worse off than they had been before.
Chapter 30
The door to the flight deck was slightly ajar.
Iver came to a stop in front of it and angled his light for a look inside.
“What do you see?” Hana leaned against him, trying to look at what lay beyond. She felt a sudden roiling of nerves batter her, and she hitched in a quick breath.
Iver cupped her cheek with one of his big hands, and tilted her head up to his. “Bodies.”
They had guessed that. They had even expected it.
She forced herself to straighten. “Can we get in?”
Iver shone the light over the area beside the door, and put his hand against the screen.
The door gave a sudden screech, moved open a little more, and then stopped.
It was just wide enough for them to sidle through.
“I think there are bodies in the way.” Iver's warning was unnecessary. She had already guessed that.
He went first, grunting a little as he squeezed through, and then he turned for her, hand out, but she slipped through easily enough.
“So many.” She whispered it as his light moved over the bones lying scattered over the floor.
Runners loomed out of the gloom, sleek but dust-covered. It was dark inside, but not completely.
The bodies were completely decomposed here, just as the two on the bridge were, and she felt a trickle of moving air touch her face.
“There's some exposure to the outside from here. Light is coming from up front.”
Iver nodded. “There are leaves.” He pointed the light at the ground, and sure enough, dried leaves had drifted down over some of the bones.
They made a strange, eery scratc
hing sound as she walked over them.
Both she and Iver kept to the walls as they explored, taking everything in, until they found the flight ramp.
It was shrouded in thick, green vines which undulated a little in the breeze blowing in from outside, letting in shafts of light every time they moved.
Iver thrust his arm through, pushed the vegetation back, and light poured in. Hana saw trees and the steep side of the valley up ahead.
She looked over at Iver, but he was crouched down, one arm still holding back the vines, the other reaching to pick something up from the floor.
She made a sound that caught in her throat, and with shock, she realized her upgrade had squeezed the muscles to stop her from calling out a warning.
She tried to lift a hand, but she stood, immobilized, as he lifted two small, shiny metal balls in his palm.
“What do you think--?”
They both watched the balls disappear.
Suddenly free, Hana coughed, put a hand to her throat, and held Iver's gaze.
“Welcome to the club.” Her voice was hoarse.
He lifted his palm closer to his face. “You're saying . . .?”
“There were obviously two left.”
He lowered his arm, and flexed the fingers of his hand. “I don't feel any different.”
She pursed her lips. “You will. When we get out of the magfield.” She closed her eyes, and raged at her upgrade. Taking her choice away was unacceptable. Unacceptable.
The tentative response she got was a series of images that blossomed in her brain. A loneliness and a sense of abandonment that had to be rectified. A desperate act in desperate circumstances.
She opened her eyes on a sigh, found Iver looking at her with that steady, calm look of his.
“It's not a bad thing. I'm certainly better for it.” She shook her head. “I just wish I'd been able to warn you, so you'd have had the choice.”
“You told me about the beads. I should have realized what they were.” He flexed his hand again. “Nothing we can do about it now anyway.”
He had dropped the curtain of vines during their conversation, but he put his hand on it again, lifting it wide enough for Hana to step through.
High Flyer (Verdant String) Page 22