High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,95
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