High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,94

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