High Flyer (Verdant String) Read online

  High Flyer

  Michelle Diener

  Copyright © 2020 by Michelle Diener

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  The Verdant String Series

  High Flyer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Also by Michelle Diener

  Excerpt: Sky Raiders

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  The Verdant String Series

  The eight planets of the Verdant String, the green, fecund sources of life spanning five solar systems, comprise the Verdant String Coalition.

  This is the setting for a new science fiction romance series from award-winning science fiction romance novelist Michelle Diener.

  While the people of the Verdant String know they have a common ancestor, a group of explorers who colonised the planets at the same time thousands of years ago, the mysteries of who they were, and where they came from, persist.

  Each book in the series can be read as a standalone.

  Books in the Verdant String series:

  Interference & Insurgency Box Set

  Breakaway

  Breakeven

  Trailblazer

  High Flyer

  High Flyer

  Flying the head-of-planet around isn't a job for the faint of heart. Especially not on Faldine, the planet in the Verdant String whose magnetic fields actively fight against technology, bringing down the ships of the unwary or the incompetent.

  Hana thrives on the challenge, though. Thrives on everything about her job. It keeps her from thinking too much about what happened to her during the war, and what she is becoming. A relationship with the head-of-planet himself, though, is more than she wants to deal with.

  Iver Sugotti feels like he fell into the role of head-of-planet by default. He knows he's good at the job, and he's enjoying the challenge of making tech work on a planet that eats tech for breakfast, but the one thing he really wants--Hana--seems out of his reach.

  His pilot has made it clear she's not interested, and he can only respect the boundaries she's set. But when someone wants him dead, he and Hana are plunged into an all-out race for their lives. Iver discovers those closest to him have betrayed him, but also, that his pilot is not as disinterested as she seems.

  As they try to outwit their enemies, they discover they are far better together than they are apart, and that Hana really is at her best when she's flying high.

  Chapter 1

  Hana had been flying for Iver Sugotti for nearly six months, so she knew the drill.

  As she approached the house, with the green hills and wooded valley blurring beneath her feet, Lancaster sent her a comm, telling her to come straight in.

  She swooped the Sig in over the part of the roof Sugotti had modified to take a landing pad, and instead of landing as she'd been told, she executed the little dance she'd come up with, moving the Sig left, then right, then in an elegant pirouette before settling down on the tiny red square.

  If anyone had been holding a gun to her head, or had already killed or removed her, and had taken the comm instead, they would have given themselves away. And knowing Lancaster, they would have been dead one second after landing.

  As it was, Lancaster raised his hand in greeting as he stepped out from the atrium on the roof where he and Iver waited. Iver followed him out, and they exchanged a few words before Iver bent low to avoid the turbulence of the blades.

  While he ran the few meters to her, she glanced up at Lancaster. His eyes were on his boss, his face unguarded, and what she saw there made her blink.

  Iver reached the door and pulled it open, hauling himself in next to her.

  She waited for him to slam the door closed and then lifted off, banking right, and then punching it up so they shot over the gardens and were on their way before he'd even finished clipping his belt.

  She said nothing until he looked settled. “Not working today?”

  He'd sat up front with her a few times in the six months she'd been his pilot, she assumed to get to know her better at first, and once after that when his screen had gone on the blink.

  She liked it better when he sat at the back, absorbed in his work, but she liked this job, so she was prepared to make small talk if he wanted her to.

  “No. Don't feel like it.”

  She looked sidelong at him, and wondered if it was snowing somewhere on the plains of the Argin Desert. He hardly ever didn't feel like working.

  “I thought Lancaster was coming with you on this trip to Touka.”

  “He was. Something came up I needed him to deal with.”

  She wondered what it was that had put such a look of fury on Lancaster's face as Iver had run toward her.

  “Nothing serious?”

  He shrugged. “No. Just needs doing.”

  She had no comeback for that, so she concentrated on the job, the challenge of flying on a planet that seemed to fight tech at every turn, tried to pull every ship out of the air. It was why the runners on Faldine had air blades. They had to go very old school here.

  She banked again as they blasted out the valley, a sharp left, going low, just to keep things nice and unpredictable.

  The military had drummed that into her, and Lancaster had asked her from the start of the job to keep flying as if she was still in combat. She was happy to oblige.

  All the thrill, and so far, none of the danger.

  In her last job, nearly a year with the mining giant HRP, she'd been under strict orders to always fly as level and smooth as possible. Some of the top HRP execs didn't fly so well.

  Sugotti, on the other hand, perked up when she did the bob and weave. Sometimes, when she looked back to see how he was coping with her maneuvers, she could see him smile down at his screen when she did something particularly wild, even if he had to hang on and couldn't work as well while she did it.

  Yeah, she could handle some chit-chat for those smiles.

  “So, how are you doing, Hana? Got anything planned for the days you're waiting for me in Touka City?”

  “A few things.” She didn't remember chit-chat getting this personal. She wanted Iver at arms' length. Wanted him sitting behind her, working, and giving her a nod of thanks as he came and went, leaving the briefings, the comms, to Lancaster. She didn't want him right next to her, his shoulder rubbing hers as she took them up and over the range of low hills. “I was thinking of heading up the Spikes. One day up, one day down. I should be back, ready to take you where you need to go, before you need me next on your s
chedule.”

  She never knew where he was going until the day they left. Standard operating procedure. Another of Lancaster's precautions.

  “The Spikes are good. I’ve been through them a few times since the war, looking for sky lane routes. Are you going with a group?” He stretched out his long legs, which wasn't as easy to do up front, and she hoped he'd get uncomfortable enough to move to the back.

  “No. I don't know anyone in Touka. Not any more. Part of why I thought I'd hike it, actually.”

  That was a lie.

  She was happy her friend Lucca had moved, because if he'd known about her trip up the Spikes, he'd have tried to come along.

  She wanted no witnesses to what she planned to do in the mountains.

  Iver angled himself toward her, and his leg pressed against hers. “I thought you had a friend there.”

  She nodded, shifting her leg away. “I did, but Lucca got a job in Permeo a couple of months ago. He's loving it there.”

  “Going up on your own isn't such a great idea.”

  She didn't know what to say to that. That's none of your business just didn't seem right. She shrugged. “If the weather looks dicey, I won't take chances, I'll come right down.”

  Another lie.

  She would see her trip out, no matter what.

  He didn't respond, and she concentrated on the job. They were over the hills and skimming the plains, something the autopilot would have taken care of on Themis, her home planet, or any of the planets of the Verdant String, for that matter. Here on Faldine, though, pilots were more than just window dressing in case things went wrong.

  She hung onto the stick, leaning forward, her eyes on the horizon as the sun dipped lower in a blaze of oranges, purples and reds.

  She caught a glint off to the right, the last flare of sunlight on something metallic on the ground below, and just because she wanted something to do, something to distract her from the subtle rub of Sugotti's shoulder against hers, the heat where they touched, she took the Sig straight up, all in the name of being unpredictable. Just following Lancaster's orders, if Sugotti should ask her what the hell she was doing.

  The missile missed them by two meters.

  She saw it literally fly beneath her feet through the clear bubble nose of the Sig as the collision detector squawked in her ear.

  It would come back round, of course, so she followed it, banking sharp left and trailing in its wake, not giving it any room to maneuver.

  Sugotti had gone still beside her, and when she glanced at him to gauge his reaction, she saw he had a dart gun in hand. Looked like a military standard SAL.

  She had to twist and turn in the Sig to keep up with the missile, but it only had so much hard fuel and it would have to drop out the sky soon. She brought up the display, watching for a second Sweet-D, because if they were serious about taking out a Sig, they must know they'd need two.

  She switched to voice command, and hunched her shoulders to get rid of the kinks. “Bring up guns.”

  “Bringing up guns.” The smooth voice of Siggy, her onboard system comms, made the moment almost cool. She hadn't had cause to bring up the guns since the war ended, and never in a Sig.

  But . . . no.

  She'd rather skip the cool bit and not have a missile coming at her.

  “Fire at target.”

  “Firing at target.”

  She caught the quick flash of laser fire as the two guns on either side of the front nose let loose, and then she lifted them almost vertical to avoid the shrapnel as missile number one blew into tiny little bits.

  She heard Iver make an appreciative noise at the back of his throat, then go silent as the display in front of her began to beep.

  Missile number two. Right on time.

  “Well, damn.”

  Iver gave a snort, and put out a hand to brace himself as she spun them around and fired directly at the incoming.

  It was a dicey move, but she didn't have much choice. No time, nowhere to go, and she felt the cold, queasy hand of dread grab her gut as an exploding piece of missile number two clipped one of the blades above the Sig's sleek body.

  The Sig lurched hard left, and she was grateful she'd taken them so high to begin with.

  It was a fight to the ground, but she had a few precious seconds to get them level, find somewhere flat to land.

  And her little edge, her secret that she never talked about.

  It had saved her more than once.

  It looked like it was saving her again.

  She watched the soft curve of a rise on the ground below disappear beneath them, and then dropped them down into the hollow beyond it. The plains didn't leave much place to hide, but this was better than nothing.

  It wasn't flat, but it was relatively rock free, and they thumped down and tipped left, the nose digging into the soft, dry soil and flinging turf in all directions until they came to a halt.

  The Sig groaned a little, as if in relief, in the absolute quiet that came after she disengaged. And then it was just the tick tick tick of the engine cooling down, and the quiet sound of water flowing in the stream she'd somehow noticed as she'd taken them down.

  She leaned back in her seat, and turned her head to Sugotti.

  His gaze was already on her, and for a moment, for the first time this trip, she looked straight into his eyes.

  She turned away, frightened by what she saw there. What she'd suspected she'd see there from almost the beginning, which is why she'd never looked in the first place.

  “Better get going,” she said, lifting her helmet off. “They seem to be serious about killing you, so I'm betting they're on their way to finish the job.”

  Chapter 2

  Someone was, most definitely, serious about killing him.

  Iver hauled himself out of the relatively unscathed Sig and gave it a grateful pat. The extra investment in the guns had really, really paid off. Lancaster had talked him into it, and for that alone, he should get a raise.

  But the star of the show, the real reason he was standing on the sweet soil of Faldine, was clambering out the other side, unzipping herself from her fireproof jump suit. It was standard procedure to wear it, and he'd always wondered what she had on underneath.

  Had spent rather too much time wondering, actually.

  He watched her wriggle out of it, and found out it was a close-fitting white top with tiny flowers on it and a pair of shorts.

  She reached into the Sig, behind her seat, and pulled out a backpack. The one she presumably had planned to take on her hike up the Spikes.

  “You going to call Lancaster or shall I? The magfield is weak enough here, we should get a signal.” She was already pulling out her comm unit.

  He held up his own in answer and walked away from the Sig toward the outcrop of rocks nearby, giving the audio command.

  Hana got into step with him, her head swiveling from side to side as she checked for any sign of pursuit.

  Lancaster was on another call, and as Iver waited for him to switch across, he watched as Hana ran up a large rock almost as if gravity didn't apply to her and shielded her eyes as she swept the landscape from the top of it.

  “Boss?” Lancaster's voice was as dry as ever.

  “Someone took a shot at us. Two, actually. We're down.”

  There was silence, as if Lancaster was taking time to process the information.

  “Two what?”

  “What were they?” Iver called up to Hana.

  “SD3s.” She dropped lightly to the ground on the other side of the rock and he walked around it to join her.

  They were now out of sight of the Sig.

  Hana stopped walking and cocked her head, listening, and he stopped as well.

  “You on the move?” Lancaster's voice was calm.

  He didn't know why he took the extra precaution--Lancaster had made sure his comm unit was secure--but he always listened to his gut. “Not yet,” he said. “We came down pretty hard.”

  Hana
gave an approving nod at the lie, and he was ridiculously pleased by it.

  He'd been trying to steer clear of his pilot since the first day he'd met her. She'd made it obvious she wasn't interested in anything personal with him, and he'd respected that, and respected Lancaster's hint that ex-military pilots of her caliber were almost impossible to find, but his restraint had burned away with that little look they'd exchanged when she'd brought them down.

  At last he heard what she'd obviously already picked up on a few seconds ago, the roar of a runner's engine. He froze, and Hana grabbed his jacket and pulled him down, tight up against the base of the rock, as a whump shook the ground.

  Another SD3.

  And this time, it didn't miss the Sig.

  They shared a look, and Hana opened her comm unit and pulled out the chip. She crouched down, moving smoothly and quickly, placed the chip on a flat rock, grabbed another rock and smashed it down hard. He handed his chip to her and she smashed that as well.

  “At least we got that call in to Lancaster.”

  “It'll take him a few hours to get another Sig and get out here.” She picked up the smashed chips and stuck them in her shorts pocket, then scuffed her boot over the rock she'd used to destroyed them, removing any sign of the carnage.

  “You're handy to have around on the run.” Iver started forward again, heading for the stream he'd seen moments before they'd hit the ground.