High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,87

working through it herself. “They were here a long time, and their purpose is to help people survive in all conditions. And they had no one to help.”

“You think whoever traveled in this ship had the upgrade as a way to improve their chances of survival, no matter where they ended up?”

“It's likely.” More than likely, but the knowing she felt deep inside was just a feeling, and she was hesitant about voicing it.

“But if they were the same group of people who founded the planets of the Verdant String, why haven't we seen the upgrade in ourselves?” Iver swung the light downward as they stepped out of the passage onto a walkway over a massive, cavernous space.

They were amazingly high above the ground, and Iver stopped and focused the light on a dead tree, far below.

“An atrium of some kind. A greenhouse.” Hana leaned against the railing and looked down on it. She felt tiny here. Insignificant.

And completely awed.

This had been a life-sustaining, traveling city.

The waste of it crashing in the Spikes, of all that potential destroyed, hurt.

Iver had gone very still, and she glanced at him, suddenly worried. “What is it?”

“This is the same as the ship Tally Riva was stuck on.” He turned to her. “I read the report. The Raxian military has the ship, and they've allowed scientists from all the Verdant String planets access to it.”

“I remember the incident, vaguely. It hasn't been in the news much since they found her alive, though.”

“That's on purpose.” Iver's lips twitched in a wry smile. “I think they're taking their time to be sure that when they come out with a conclusion, it's backed up by evidence.”

“And what conclusion is that?”

“That the ship was in the same fleet of ships that traveled to the Verdant String and settled the eight planets.” Iver slowly moved the light away from the tree and over dead planet beds and tanks laid out in a pleasing fashion, as if the way through them curved in a sinuous path. “It seems the fleet was bigger than we thought.”

“And now we know one of them went to Faldine.” It was unbelievable, and yet, made perfect sense. Faldine was a livable planet. Why wouldn't they have tried to settle here if there were more ships in the fleet?

Iver pushed back from the railing. “This whole incident is going to shake the VSC. The ruins, the shield engine, this ship. Faldine is going to become a hotbed of scientists and tourists.”

“If we can get safely to Touka, and stop Jake and his friends taking the shield engine off-planet. Otherwise . . .” The responsibility resting on their shoulders suddenly struck her.

“Otherwise, if we're captured, we die, and these secrets die with us.” Iver sounded grim as he began to move again.

Hana followed, peering over the railings as Iver slowly swept the light from left to right.

“The ship Tally Riva was stuck on, were there any bodies?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. No runners, either. They must have had a technical failure and taken their chances to reach a place they could survive on, rather than waiting to die in space.”

The grim reality was that they had probably all died. She wondered if Tally Riva had encountered any metal beads while she was on the ship. And how she'd go about asking the Raxian without tipping her own hand, or coming across as strange.

They had come to the end of the walkway and stepped through into another corridor that went straight as well as branching left and right.

“Straight,” she said, and Iver looked over his shoulder at her and nodded.

It took more than ten minutes of walking, of ignoring corridors that branched off periodically. The size of the ship threatened to defeat her imagination. “Do you think this is all buried underground?” She tried to picture the strange dip and then rise of landscape where her Dynastra had come down, and suddenly gasped.

Iver stopped, swung around, eyes snapping to her face.

“The valley within the valley. The ship made it, gouging out the ground as it crashed, and the hill . . . the hill is the ship, with a layer of soil on top.”

He blinked. “You're right.”

She fluttered her hands. “We may not be able to get any runner on the flight deck out.”

He shrugged, turned, and carried on, and she gave her own shrug. She was the one insisting they had to try. So they would try. And if they couldn't get a runner out,