High Flyer (Verdant String)

by Michelle Diener

  She heard Iver and Donaldson speaking behind her, Iver letting the captain know about the two factions fighting over the shield engine, the uncertainty they had over who was in charge at the camp at the moment, or how many people either side had.

  And then she heard something else.

  She turned slowly on her heel, looking toward the heart of the Spikes.

  “They're coming back.” She said it softly, almost to herself, and no one heard her. “They are coming back!”

  She ran the few steps to Iver, grabbed his arm, and pulled him away from the Sig. “The Dynastra is coming back.”

  Iver didn't hesitate to move with her, and to their credit, the Special Forces team seemed to realize what that meant, because even though they might not have been able to hear the Dynastra yet, they reacted as well, moving away.

  And when they could hear the approach of the runner's engine, they really started to move.

  The unmistakable sound of an SD3 launching had one of the Special Forces soldiers swearing, and she realized she still wasn't over them shooting her down because she didn't feel sorry for him in the least.

  The Sig ignited behind them, and then something scooped her up and threw her down the path, where she landed face down in the short pale green ground cover and felt the heat of the explosion ripple over her back.

  She turned her head, found Iver lying a little way behind her, groaning as he lifted up on his elbows.

  “Hana?” The panic in his voice was her incentive to push upright herself.

  “I'm fine.”

  She looked up, saw the Dynastra was circling the camp, shooting laz fire at the ruin.

  “Bret's still in charge there, then. At least of the ruin. They're trying to kill as many as they can so Craven's people can go in and take the few who are left.” She rolled slowly to her feet.

  “I don't think they'll risk blowing up the ruin, in case they damage the shield engine, but they don't seem to mind damaging it.” Iver pulled himself up, too, and staggered over to her.

  “Sugotti.” It was Donaldson. “What do I need to know?”

  “Your people all right?” Iver asked, his arm hardening around Hana's waist when she would have wriggled free.

  “A few minor injuries, but your pilot's warning saved them.” Donaldson's gaze rested for a moment on Iver's hand on her thigh and then seemed to shrug it off. “Who is shooting at who?”

  “We think some of the escapees from Garmen--former Cores Company shareholders--are the ones directing the Dynastra. They're trying to kill the other group, who are probably all holed up in the ruin, so they can go in and grab the shield engine.”

  “And the ones in the ruin? They aren't friendly, either, you say?”

  “No. They're former Faldine rebels, looking to use the shield for their own purposes as well.”

  “Quite the mess.” Donaldson didn't seem to mind, though. She said it with relish.

  While she'd been speaking to them, her people gathered around, waiting for instructions, and the soldier Hana had torn a strip off ended up next to her.

  “So, where'd you get the antique?”

  She looked over at him with dislike.

  “Hey, don't be like that. I'm sorry we shot you down, but you said you were flying an antique, and I've never seen anything like that before. It looks pretty new to me.”

  “Well, it's not.” Argh. She wanted to stay mad with them all, but her sense of outrage was seeping away. She gave him what she considered a cordial nod, and tried to catch up on what she'd missed of Iver and Donaldson's conversation.

  “Spread out, take down everyone you come in contact with around the camp, without injury if possible. None of them are friendlies.” Donaldson left it at that, and the thirty strong team melted off in various directions.

  “Are you able to contact the VSC for another Sig?” Hana asked Donaldson, who seemed to have decided to stick with her and Iver.

  “The Sig is set up to send a distress signal if it's destroyed,” Donaldson said.

  “Even in a high magfield, like here?”

  Donaldson paused, gave a slow nod. “I think so. It would have been propelled upward to two thou above the ground and then begun transmission. We were told it should work on Faldine in all but the worst areas, or the deadzones, obviously.”

  Hana nodded, relaxing a little. That sounded pretty failsafe.

  Up ahead, the Dynastra came back over the camp, strafing the ruin a second time.

  Without warning, Hana's body seized and she fell to her hands and knees, then flat on the ground.

  There was no sound, no sight, just paralysis for a moment, and then Iver was on his knees beside her, his body bent over hers.

  “They turned it back on,” she managed to gasp, forcing her head up to watch as Linnel's Dynastra disappeared completely from sight, swallowed up by the shield.

  There was no sound, the shield swallowed even that, but shockwaves shook the ground, as if there had been a massive impact.

  It set off a rumble up the mountain.

  Behind her, she heard small stones and larger rocks bouncing and rolling down into the river.

  Then suddenly, the terrible sensation of loss vanished, and she coughed as she lifted up on hands and knees, her head hanging down.

  The shield engine had been switched off again.

  “What happened?” Donaldson's shout had the tenor of someone who'd asked the same question a few times without response.

  “The shield.” Iver managed to get to his feet, and she belatedly remembered he would have been affected by the sudden shield activation as well. He was truly in the same club as her, now.

  “The shield's a deadzone when it's activated. They probably switched it on to bring the Dynastra down.”

  He held out his hand and Hana took it and let him haul her up, then put her hands on knees, until the nausea passed.

  Donaldson looked over at the camp. “I didn't see the Dynastra fall, but now it's lying crashed in the camp.”

  “It did fall, right in front of us, it was just shielded.” Iver shrugged. “Now the shield is gone again.”

  “Damn.” Donaldson drew the word out in astonishment. “That's some shield.” She looked over at Hanna. “She okay?”

  “Hana has a bad reaction to the shield. There's something in the frequency that repels people,” Iver said. “She's sensitive to it.”

  Donaldson nodded, turned back almost as if she were checking to see if the Dynastra was still there.

  “Let's go find out what's actually left of the site.” Iver put out a hand for her and Hana took it.

  She wondered if the Dynastra had hit the ruin, and if it had, whether it had destroyed the shield engine when it did. It might be why the engine had been deactivated again. Either that, or someone on Bret's team was still alive in there, and had turned it off.

  Looking at the pillar of smoke and flame, she didn't hold out much hope.

  Chapter 32

  It was an inferno.

  Iver shielded his face with an arm as he approached the ruin.

  The huts closest to it had been crushed when the Dynastra had crashed, others further away were damaged by debris. All were burning, along with the Dynastra itself.

  The three larger buildings were not on fire, but Iver could see where debris had damaged them and also where stray laz fire from the strafing had ripped into the flimsy material they were built from.

  Linnel or Jake or whoever had been in charge of the Dynastra hadn't worried about who on their own side they might hurt in their quest to wrest the engine back from Bret.

  There was no sign of anyone.

  A few of Donaldson's people had returned when the runner crashed, to see if she needed them, and she signaled them silently to check on the buildings for signs of life.

  “Even if the shield engine isn't destroyed, it will take a while to find it and get it out of there,” Hana said.

  She was right. Even after the Dynastra burned out, they would
need to let it cool, and then somehow get it off the ruin to access whatever was left below.

  He would have to ask Admiral Valerian for help with that, or one of the big mining operations on Faldine.

  They might have the equipment.

  Donaldson approached them, and something in her demeanor told him the news was bad.

  “There is only one person still alive in the camp that my people can find, and she's unconscious.” Donaldson tapped at her ear, cursed, and pulled out a tiny comm unit. “The magfield is interfering with comms, but so far, my people have found and secured a number of people further up the valley who were engaged in a fight with each other, and four lookouts who were posted on the valley slopes.”

  “We better check to see if Jake is one of the bodies.” Hana sounded reluctant. “We don't know what happened at the camp after we left, but Craven and Jake bringing in a second Dynastra makes me think they'd have already taken back some of the camp. Just not the shield, obviously.”

  She was right. Most likely all of Bret's people had taken cover in the ruin, and were defending it.

  “I'll do it.” Iver turned to the buildings, but Hana shook her head.

  “I'll come with you.”

  “We don't both need to see that.” He wanted to protect her, to save her one nightmare, at least.

  She looked at him, and then gave a slow nod. “Thank you.”

  It felt like a victory, and he used it to steel himself for what lay beyond the damaged, torn-up doors of the communal buildings.

  He stepped into the closest one, and saw Lia being tended by a Special Forces medic.

  She looked even younger lying unconscious on the ground. It hurt to look at the blood on her chest.

  At least she was alive. That was more than Vras and Luki had going for them. Both men were dead, the strafing laz fire had cut them both down where they sat, tied up and resting against the wall.

  Lia must have been guarding them.

  And had been nearly killed by her own people.

  “That's all the bodies in here.” The soldier guarding the door said. “There are some in the canteen next door.”

  Iver strode across to it, looked inside, and blinked. Craven lay on the ground beside the conference table, and Tillis sat, slumped in a chair, his head hanging.

  Had this strafing been a mistake? Or had Jake used it as an opportunity to clean house?

  Either that, or if Linnel had been flying the Dynastra, as Donaldson claimed, then the psycho had simply not cared one way or the other who he killed.

  “Is this it?” he asked as Donaldson appeared in the doorway.

  She nodded.

  “Then Jake, the Cores Company rep, isn't here. He might have been in the Dynastra. If so, we'll find him when it's safe to search for bodies onboard.”

  He walked out the room, disgusted with the lot of them.

  Too many were dead, priceless artifacts were destroyed, and all for what?

  Some twisted sense of aggrievement on the part of the rebels, and nothing short of naked greed on the part of the Cores and the former smugglers.

  What a waste.

  Hana stood in the middle of the camp, arms around herself, still looking at the Dyanstra as it burned.

  As he walked toward her, he heard a faint sound in the distance at the same time she cocked her head to the side and turned in the direction he could hear it coming from.

  “A runner?” he called to her.

  She turned, eyes wide as she nodded.

  He tapped his ear to tell her he'd heard it, too, and she gave him a sunny smile as she jogged toward him.

  “Captain.” He turned his head to shout for Donaldson, and when she stepped out of the building, he pointed upward.

  “Someone's coming.”

  Hana had stopped running, and she walked the rest of the way toward him in a relaxed manner. “It's a Sig. So probably VSC.”

  As soon as she spoke, a Sig appeared from between two mountains, flew overhead and then doubled back.

  “They want to know if its safe to land,” Donaldson said, voice wry.

  Iver looked around at the carnage. Two Dynastras, Donaldson's Sig, and his and Hana's runner from the ancient ship, all either burning or crashed.

  “Can't say I blame them.”

  Their arrival in Touka City was a whirlwind.

  Hana kept back, letting Iver handle Moiri Tanek, and then, half an hour after they touched down in the sweet, upgraded Sig, the admiral herself, come down from on high to help deal with the mess.

  Moiri had turned over her offices for everyone's use, and now Hana was falling asleep on one of the comfortable couches in the large meeting room.

  Her exhaustion wasn't surprising given her life recently, and when someone approached with an offer from Moiri of a hotel room, she glanced at Iver, saw he was deep in conversation with Admiral Valerian, and got to her feet to follow the staffer.

  The admin gave her the room number and an access code, and she asked him to pass the information on to Iver when he was done.

  The hotel was in the adjacent building, and she traveled the two floors down from Moiri’s offices feeling slightly detached from her body and took the transparent sky walk between the buildings without her usual interest in the city below.

  The room was a suite, and she wondered if it was where Iver usually stayed when she flew him to Touka.

  She supposed she would find out soon enough, because she'd be staying with him.

  The thought made her smile, and she managed to generate enough energy to have a glorious hot shower before she fell into bed.

  When she woke, her upgrade told her it was only two hours later, and that there was someone in the room with her.

  Someone not Iver.

  She tensed, working through her options, but she had no weapons, and she would rather face whoever it was than have them take her by surprise, so she rolled off the bed and surged to her feet in one movement.

  The man at the foot of her bed took a step back in shock.

  Banyon.

  She recognized him immediately.

  She said nothing though, staring at him while she catalogued the room for anything that she might use as a weapon.

  Banyon lifted his arm, and she saw he was holding a SAL.

  “I should come over there and punch you in the nose in retaliation for you hitting me in Simon's warehouse.” He watched her with cold eyes.

  “You mean that time you had me tranqed and restrained against my will?”

  He waved that away. “I need you to tell me what Sugotti knows.”

  She thought about it, weighed up telling him the truth, or not.

  But in the end, she was just too tired to care that much.

  She hoped that Iver was on his way right now, because all Banyon needed to do was pull the SAL's trigger and he'd have her down. And she couldn't think anything good would come of that.

  She felt something in her upgrade stir at the thought.

  “Hey! I asked you a question.” Banyon took a step toward her.

  “Calm down.” She rubbed at her face. “I've had hardly any rest, and now you've interrupted the first genuine sleep I've had in days. Which reminds me, how did you get in here? That staffer of Moiri's in your pocket or something?”

  “Or something.” He smirked. “What. Does. Sugotti. Know?”

  “That you're on the Touka City council. That you authorized that equipment that Fraen drove out to the camp. That you are involved with Simon and Vannie and Lancaster. That you're in this up to your neck.”

  “Shit. They may be able to trace that stuff back to me, but Sugotti hasn't seen my face, he was still out of it when you escaped the warehouse. If I get rid of you, I'll buy myself some time.”

  “Sorry, wrong.” Hana didn't have the energy to moderate her tone. “Iver and I saw you arguing with Fraen outside the municipal building. That's how we found the camp, we stowed away at the back of that lander right after you left.”

 
Banyon stared at her, eyes narrowed, as if trying to work out if she was lying.

  “'Eliminate me',” Hana used air quotes, “and you'll just add another charge to your list of crimes. If I were you, I'd run now, and run fast. They'll catch you eventually, but you'd have made the effort. Or give yourself up, save everyone the trouble. That might go in your favor.”

  “Sure.” Banyon lifted his SAL, pointed it right at her. “That's going to happen.”

  Now would be a good time, Iver, she thought as she waited for Banyon to shoot. But given how things had been going lately, maybe that was too much to ask.

  Chapter 33

  Iver lifted his head, suddenly wondering where Hana had gone.

  Something was niggling at him, and he stood, stretching out as Admiral Valerian turned to talk to one of her aides.

  Hana wasn't sitting on the couch anymore and he looked around the room for her.

  A sudden onslaught of images formed in his head. A door with a number, an image of a man--he knew that man--holding a SAL at someone.

  At Hana, his brain insisted. The man was pointing it at Hana.

  “Where's Hana?” He called it out, causing everyone to go quiet. “Hana. Where has she gone?” He looked around at the group, and a young staffer who'd brought him something to drink earlier, pointed out the door tentatively.

  He was suddenly in the man's face. “Where is she, exactly?”

  He heard a sound of anger from Moiri behind him, but he ignored her.

  “Now.” He barked the words and the man cringed back.

  “Hotel. Suite--”

  “428.” He had seen that number. In his head a moment ago. He ran for the door. “A little help, Valerian,” he shouted, but he didn't bother to check whether she responded, or even if she sent someone with him.

  He raced down the two floors, across the sky walk and along the passageway to what he realized was his usual suite when he came to Touka.

  The code appeared in his head before he even reached the door. He tapped it in and burst through into the room, taking two running steps and then tackling Geral Hui, Touka City liaison to the Faldine military.