High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,53
the invisible engine fade behind her.
For a while there, lying in the medbay, she'd been terrified her upgrade had been permanently damaged.
She'd suddenly realized she did not want that.
After nearly two years, and plenty of anguish, she'd accepted her new self. She didn't want to lose it.
Right now, she wasn't anywhere near her peak--the magnetic fields here were too strong--but she never was anyway unless she was in Bero or flying high. She could live with the weak response she felt now. It was way better than the dead feeling she'd had before.
“You awake?” Iver nuzzled the top of her head.
“Just about.”
She lifted her hand and covered his own where it splayed just under her breasts. Squeezed.
“Thank you for getting me out of there.”
“You know I wouldn't leave you.” He drew her back against him and she tightened her grip on his hand.
“How did you get in?”
“Hitched a ride in the back of the lander right from the start.”
Hana drew in a quick breath. “Were you the one who took the supplies?”
“No. That was Barre. I was lucky to get in before you arrived.”
“The leader at the camp is angry about the theft. I think Barre is going to regret doing that.”
“Now that you're gone, they may decide I'm to blame.” Iver brushed a finger down her cheek and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Did anyone see you at the camp?” She turned in his arms and looked up at him.
“They saw the back of me, carrying a box toward the accommodation huts. I don't know if they worked out later that I wasn't one of their crew, but they didn't at the time.”
“Don't you think they'll assume I escaped on my own?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I kicked the door in from the outside. And you weren't in a good state last night.”
He was right about that.
Iver had half-carried her after they got beyond the river. She'd run out of energy and couldn't go on.
“How close are we to the camp?” She rolled back onto her side, looking out at the view from the overhang.
They were on a hillside, and she could hear the river below, but from her position on the ground, she couldn't see it. She couldn't see the camp, either.
The valley below curved to the left, open and wide between the mountains, and she could see why Iver's surveyors had chosen it as the best route for the sky lane.
“We're close to the camp. Too close, but in the dark, with you still injured, we didn't have any choice about getting further away. If the camp wasn't shielded, we'd see it if we sat up.”
She narrowed her eyes, lifted up on an elbow, and looked out, but there was nowhere the camp could be that she could see. There was a rocky field to one side, and then the river, glittering gold where the sunlight managed to touch it, frothing white around the large rocks that were embedded in it.
“Where?”
He had risen up behind her, and he pointed over her shoulder, but when she followed his finger, all she saw was the rock-strewn field.
“What did you hear at the camp about the shield?”
“The shield?” She tried to think, but she hadn't been at her most focused while she'd been there. “They might have said something about it while Vras was dealing with my foot, but I wasn't paying much attention.”
“There's a shield around the camp. That wall that I lifted you over, that's the shield boundary. When you're on the outside of it, you can't see the ruins, can't see the camp, can't see anything except some visual trickery that makes the area look like a stony field right up against the mountain.”
Hana turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Some kind of advanced tech?”
He nodded. “Or very old tech, something we haven't encountered before. There's a ramp they extend over the wall to let the lander in at the entrance. Once you're on the inside, you're invisible to the outside world.”
“And when you're on the inside of the wall, looking out? What do you see?”
“Everything as normal. Full visibility.”
She stared down the mountain at where the camp should be. “That's what they were trying to hide from the sky lane construction crews.”
Iver nodded. More sunlight had begun to angle through the Spikes, sweeping the valley floor, and when she lay back down and turned to him, the planes and lines of his face above her were etched in a golden glow.
“Anyone who discovers