High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,58
not invincible.”
“Not according to Linnel.” She shot him a wry grin.
He shrugged. “Linnel is delusional and under arrest in Touka City.” He looked back over the river, knew he needed to get moving in case whoever was out there decided to go to ground.
“I'll be fine. I'll stay here, use the overhang as a place to sleep again tonight if you're not back yet.”
He wanted to say of course he'd be back by then, but he couldn't be sure. “I'll see you soon. Stay safe.”
She gripped his jacket again, drew him in, and he kissed her hard, marveling that he had her in his arms at all, after months of accepting that he never would.
He pulled back reluctantly, grabbing his pack as he slid backward. He kept low until he found enough cover, and then he ran down the side of the hill to the river.
He looked back when he reached the bank, up to the rock embedded in the hillside, and thought he saw movement--the wave of a hand. It was a good position. Hana was hidden but had a good view of everything.
She would be fine. Absolutely fine.
He forced himself to turn away and drop down onto the narrow strip of rocks below the bank.
When he was across, with boots only a little wet, he found the path the two scouts had taken.
They had chosen speed over covering their tracks, leaving crushed vegetation and broken branches to show the way they'd taken, as well as some boot prints in the mud.
If he could follow it easily, so would the guards from the camp--and they would be coming back this way to search, no doubt about it.
Once they had their people in the medbay, Bret would send more than a few of them out. Secrecy was everything to the camp, and it had just been breached. They'd want to find and silence whoever they could find. And if they'd seen the TellTale launch . . .
He couldn't see how the camp leader would be happy with that.
Iver increased his pace.
When the camp guards came, he wanted to be well ahead of them.
He followed the path around a stand of trees and slowed to a stop as he smelled the throat catching stink of a solid fuel cell from up ahead.
There was no sound, no voices to be heard, but he carefully stepped off the path, and winced as dry leaves crackled beneath his boots.
He went still, waiting for a reaction, but when none came, he looked around, and then up.
The trees were close together, forming a small copse, with entangled roots and low branches.
He jumped, grabbing hold of a branch and swinging himself into a tree.
The trees were so close together he was able to move easily from one to the other until he could see around the curve in the path, to a small clearing on the other side.
The TellTale had definitely been launched here.
The thick green ground covering was scorched, and when he rubbed one of the leaves hanging near his face between his finger and thumb, he felt the slightly oily residue typical of a burn-up.
Maybe they'd launched and run.
Although he hadn't seen any evidence they'd run back toward the camp. He and Hana would have seen them. Maybe they'd gone to fetch their friends.
If so, they'd chosen to send the TellTale first. Presumably giving the camp's location to whoever they were working for was paramount. He wondered again who could be up in Faldine nearspace, waiting for information from below.
He was head-of-planet, and he knew the VSC battleships did a regular scan for unidentified vessels, as well as patrols.
Whoever was up there, they were either using tech the VSC didn't know about, or it was avoiding scrutiny in some other way.
“It still stinks.” A woman coughed suddenly, so close to where Iver sat hunched over on his branch, his grip slipped for a moment in shock.
“Yeah. It's better than it was--bearable--but still not good. When some of those guards from the camp follow our trail here, they'll know something was launched, if they didn't see it lift off.” The man cleared his throat, hacked a cough himself.
Iver tried to see where they'd come from, noticed a narrow gap in the undergrowth just to the left of his tree.
“We couldn't help that, the TellTale had to be sent.” The woman moved out into the center of the clearing, looked toward the river. “Wish they'd warned us about the smell.” She lifted her arm and covered her