High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,91

the space, making sure she didn't touch the floor at any time and damage the bones.

The vines resisted her forward momentum for a beat and then gave, and the runner emerged with what must have looked like a fringe of green hair.

The fourth soldier stood just outside, beside his wounded teammate, and Hana saw his astonishment as she nudged the runner free of the deck and then lifted straight upward.

It struggled, battling the magfield and probably centuries of dust, although running the engines for a while may have burned a lot of it off.

“What fuel does it use?” Iver asked, settling in beside her in the pilot's chair.

“Whatever it uses, it's currently at three quarters power.” She finally got high enough that the magfield drag diminished, and then she circled over the site.

The massive ship looked like a hill from this angle, too. Nothing special.

She looked over at Iver. “Should we circle the camp? See what they're doing before we go to Touka?”

He gave a reluctant nod. “We better.”

She turned north west, keeping high, and came at the camp obliquely, circling it in a wide arc.

The downed Dynastra still lay tilted at a drunken angle in the river, and the second one was parked inside the camp itself. It lifted off as she turned for a second pass, and Iver leaned forward.

“That has to be a coincidence. They couldn't have noticed us yet.”

She didn't know if he was right, but the result was the same, the Dynastra was lifting off, coming up to their level, and if this small runner had weapons, she couldn't see where they were.

The Dynastra rose up in a tight spiral, keeping directly over the camp and then heading into the Spikes, in the direction they had just come.

“They're going to look for their soldiers.” Iver's hands were tense on the panel in front of him. “And . . . they've just spotted us.”

He was right. The Dynastra had begun a path deeper into the mountains, when it suddenly wheeled again, turning completely to face them.

And the Dynastra, as she knew all too well, did have weapons.

Then she laughed.

“What?” Iver turned to her.

“We're high enough that we're out of the magfield's pull. I forgot for a moment.” She felt a sudden sense of relief that her upgrade was an integrated part of herself again, so entwined that she'd taken it for granted.

The Dynastra shot at them, and she slid the tight, sleek runner out of the way, suddenly in the moment in a way that reminded her of the last months of the war.

They shot again, and she wasn't where they thought she would be a second time.

“You're doing this by eye,” Iver said, as if suddenly realizing it. “Why isn't this picking up the laz fire and warning you?”

“Probably because this is thousand-year-old tech, and whoever designed this didn't have laz fire on the list.”

Iver's bark of laughter at that made her smile.

She waited for the Dynastra to shoot again, but instead it gave another of its tight about-turns and raced into the Spikes.

Hana hovered in place, staring after it, when something slammed into them from behind.

Iver swore and turned in his seat to check the damage, but she didn't need him to tell her that the back section had been breached. Air howled into the runner, tearing at her hair and screaming in her ears.

“Who?” she shouted as she fought the runner downward.

“Looks like . . .” He swore again, a long, protracted, vicious stream of profanity, as he peered through the gaping hole in the back. “It's VSC Special Forces.”

“What?” She screamed it as she applied herself to keeping them alive, as the runner shuddered beneath her and bucked and twisted as the rip in the back caught the air.

She headed for the river, trying to remember the deepest section, and then managed to haul the nose up as they came down, so they coasted on the surface for a couple of beats before sinking down.

As the runner ground against the rocks on the riverbed, she sat, hands on the control panel, eyes closed, and blew out a long, slow breath. “Bastards.”

She could feel the magfield interfering with her upgrade now she was on the ground, but that was okay. She had had the skills she needed high above the ground, where it really counted.

She turned to look at Iver, who was shaking his head.

“Incredible.” He stood, looking back at the gaping wound in the back of the ship.

The runner trembled in place