Breaking Sky (18 page)

The back of the cargo plane opened, revealing flat land patched with varying greens. Farmlands in a Midwestern state Chase didn't recognize. She glanced back at Pippin, but he was looking at whatever wasn't her—and had been since yesterday.

Chase was weary from a midnight exercise fest. When she'd gone back to her room after talking to Kale, Pippin wasn't even there. And as soon as she'd tried to lie down, her thoughts about the trials left her sleepless. She went to the weight room and took a treadmill at its highest speed. Her heart rate shot up while her body lapsed into training mode. Muscle and motion. Strain and sweat.

She had pushed the track elevation to its steepest setting, feeling the burn in her calves. She had made herself think about Tourn's impending arrival instead of Pippin. It was a surprisingly easier subject. What would Tourn be like after five years? Would he try to talk to her? No. She knew that answer in her pulse. Tourn was all business. Cold and mechanical. A cog in the military machine. Careless.

She'd crashed. Literally. Tripped and shot backward off the treadmill, hitting the floor with a thud. The proof was a livid bruise on her knee this morning. She'd wanted to show Pippin, but he'd shown up late with Romeo, chatting in French.

But he couldn't escape her now. They were strapped into a metal pod Adrien had built during the night. It looked like a Streaker cockpit, except for the fact that there was no jet around it. Just two seats in a metal-skinned frame.

A rush-swirl of crazed air filled the C-130 Hercules. The plane probably hadn't seen atmosphere in a few decades, and yet she was about to parachute out its backside. The gusts tugged at her breath, and although Chase enjoyed the push of high winds during flight, she preferred a canopy. A glass shield.

Not this time.

Adrien fussed over the straps on Chase's harness. The engineer was red-eyed and huffing, more exhausted than Chase.

“This will work, right?” she yelled.

“You will survive,” Adrien yelled over the engines. “We have two backup parachutes. You'll be jettisoned from the frame in your chairs and connected to each other under one double parachute. Questions?”

Chase shook her head. She'd watched the other two Streaker teams drop out of that door first; she was fairly certain it would work a third time.

“I got one. Why aren't we using dummies for this?” Pippin yelled.

“To test you as much as the ejection mechanism. So you'll know what to expect and how to react if you have to punch out. Especially in the likely chance of a water crash.”

“
Likely
?” Pippin cried.

“We've skydived before, Pip,” Chase said, holding on to the
X
of the harness over her chest. “We'll be fine.” Her courage might not mean anything to Pippin right now, but she gave it to him anyway.

Adrien and a handful of airmen rolled the whole pod toward the doorway and stopped at the lip of the drop. She glanced back at Pippin and saw that he was also not enjoying the torturous sensation of being half out the door.

“Okay,” Chase yelled over the racket, looking into the wisp of clouds. The air combed at her skin and hair, and she fought to breathe. “Okay, do it!”

The pod clanked as it dropped from the Hercules. The height of the fall was overshadowed by the click of things happening in the metal frame. They fell and fell and fell until Chase began to hyperventilate. Pippin shouted the all clear, and she yanked the ejection lever. They shot out of the metal frame, their chairs connected in a churning plunge before their parachute snapped open, caught the wind, and jerked them to a slow drop.

“Pippin? You all right?”

His answer was a string of curses.

“I'd say it works.” She watched the metal frame pop its own parachute far below. She felt the seat beneath her and the parachute above, ballooning and wafting. The ground became clearer, more detailed. A tiny house stood at the corner of one lot and a dirt road ran down the center of another. Cows spotted the field.

She twisted around and found Pippin looking pale. “You all right?”

“Glorious.” His voice was punchy.

“We'll touch down and get picked up. No problem.” She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, remembering Kale's insistence that she talk to her RIO. Now.

She dragged the words out, kicking and screaming. “I don't know what to say to you, Pippin. You keep looking at me like there's something I can do to fix this, but I have no clue. I'm really bad at this,” she admitted.

“You are,” he said.

Something dawned. “But so are you.”

Pippin didn't answer. Chase was so used to the roar of a Streaker engine drowning out the world that the wind sounded like a seashell held to her ear. She heard its whisper and pull, the resonance of silence. “Do you have a thing for Tristan? Is that what this is all about?”

Pippin laughed in a sad way. “Of course you'd think I'm after your boy.”

“Hey, he's not
my
boy. I'm…I'm just trying to get through the trials.”

“You're suffering a personality change,” he said. “Wanting to talk. Planning with Sylph.”

“What about
your
personality?” She kept twisting to get a better look at him. “You're acting like being gay is a bombshell that should blow the top off my skull. News flash, Pip. I know. I've known for years.”

Now he looked like he'd been hit by an explosive. His eyebrows were high, and his mouth was in a small
O
. “How do you know?”

“Intuition. Or something. And I never said anything because I could tell you didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I thought you'd talk when you were ready.” She waited, but he was still too quiet. “I don't think anyone else knows. Keep it to yourself for as long as you want.”

“
Of
course
everyone knows, Chase. People tend to pay attention to that sort of thing. And everyone can tell I have a crush on him. It makes me nauseated.”

“Well, I can't tell. Who are you talking about?”

“You can't tell because you live in the Nyx Show.” His tone was more hurt than mean, but she still stung from it.

“
Hey
. I'm trying here.”

“Don't get upset. Remember, I'm not allowed to ask about your dad. Or your childhood. Or your mom. Or why you act like you have to prove you're the most unique, untouchable pilot at the Star every single hop.” The breeze picked up and blew them off course a little.

“You respect my privacy and I respect yours.” It had seemed so natural up until this moment. “That's what best friends do.”

“That's what walled-off people do. I swear
that's
the only real thing you and I have in common,” he said.

“So what are you afraid of? Be gay. This isn't some turn-of-the-century homophobic military. Kale wouldn't even care.” She tried to face him, but her harness was too tight—she was breathing too hard.

“I'm not afraid. Or ashamed,” Pippin said. “I'm just not ready, and I was
fine
, dealing with it in my own way, until he showed up with his flirting and touching me all the time.”

Now that couldn't be Tristan. He hadn't flirted with Pippin. She was certain of that—which left only one other new person at the Star. “You have a crush on
Romeo
? But he's so…”

“Straight?”

“I was going to say boob-happy, but yeah.” She tried to add it all up. “Well. Shit. Pippin, that's the real problem.”

“Indeed.”

“Why didn't you just say so?”

“Because I'm embarrassed. I'm
smarter
than this.” They were quiet long enough for Chase to listen to the wind again. When Pippin spoke again, he sounded soft and yet sure of himself. “He's from Quebec City. He speaks French without an English accent even though it's not his first language. Do you know how rare that is?” He continued in a rush. “He's a thoughtless flirt, but he's a decent guy underneath, I swear. We've been spending a lot of time together. I know you think he's an idiot.”

They were slowing down, the parachute breaking their fall.

“He's a lot sweeter in French.” Pippin blew out a breath that was so much more than a sigh. “And while we're airing things out, Tristan Router is in love with you. Bravo Zulu. You're going to need a bigger basket for all those stolen hearts.”

Chase held her hand over the edge. The ground never seemed so distant as when she reached for it. “How can you tell…that?”

“You guys are like magnets whenever you come into the same room. You fly like you're making out, which is really awkward for Romeo and me. Thanks for that. And when I thought you were brain-dead on the hangar floor after the drone incident, Tristan held on to me. Like he was as scared as I was, which was pretty damn scared.”

All of a sudden, love wasn't so pointless. It was sharp when she pictured Tristan and Pippin…when she imagined frightening them.
Sharp
. It made her want to withdraw to her protected, unemotional place, but now she had no clue how to get there.

She was stranded in caring. Christ.

A few seconds later, they landed hard in a muddy patch of field. Chase unstrapped, offering Pippin a hand up. “You're my best friend,” she said. “With everything that's about to happen, I need you on my team.”

He looked at her hand. “I'm always on your team. Whether I like it or not.”

“Let me help you.”

He took her hand to get up, but his words were beaten down. “Help me do what? Fall out of love with a straight boy? How does one do that exactly?”

“According to you, moving on from people
is
my forte.”

They picked their way through the mud before Pippin spoke. “True. But, Chase, you don't even care about them in the first place.” His words burned while his shoulder bumped hers in a forced friendly way.

She wanted to point out that he was
wrong
. She cared. She cared about everything so much that she often felt exposed. Falling. Grasping at the sky. That's why she needed the speed. It made the very air something she could hold on to.

“I'm sorry,” he added, and she couldn't tell if he meant for everything or this latest insult.

“Sure.” She swallowed it regardless. “I'm sorry too.”

“Except I'm not sorry,” Chase told Tristan as they walked through the Green.

After a burst of a helo ride, followed by a trip home in the Hercules, Chase found herself back at the Star, no longer fighting with Pippin, and yet feeling more irked by him than ever. She'd pulled Tristan aside and hauled him into a confession of their situation that pretty much covered every word—except for Pippin's thoughts on Tristan's feelings for her.

“Should I be sorry? I mean, I'm kind of
mad
.” She popped her knuckles. She'd been hoping that telling Tristan would make her cool down, but it was having the opposite effect. “I
am
mad. Ever since he's felt persecuted, he's been…cruel. And now I don't want to point that out because we're finally talking to each other.”

“Well, first of all,” Tristan said. “Romeo is about as hetero as they come.”

“Pippin knows that. He's just got a crush. A
big
crush. And he's caught up in the futility of his feelings.” She eyed Tristan, wondering if he felt the same way. She kept her hands in her pockets and ignored him when he pinched her ear. If Pippin was right and Tristan was in love with her, she wasn't going to mess with him. Hurt him.

They would be friends. Just friends.

Chase roughed up her hair only to smooth it back down. “Want to see something?”

He smiled, and even that was flirty. Tristan was standing too close, but in that moment, Chase realized that any distance with him felt close.

Chase led Tristan to the chapel, a place she never went. She dragged the thick oak doors open and watched his face go bold with wonder. The chapel could do that to a person. Strike them with secret greatness and remind them of the Grander Everything. She pointed at the steel and stained glass.

“It's a replica of the Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. It's supposed to make us feel connected to our life after this. The
real
academy. Where we become airmen.”

Tristan walked down the center aisle. The door clamped shut behind them, and they were alone. “It's weird,” he admitted, “but beautiful.”

The skin of the walls reminded Chase of a jet, while the patchwork of colored panes lit up like a scene from a sci-fi movie. She sat in a pew and rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her palms. “Lots of cadets love this place.”

“But not you,” he said from a few feet away.

“Not me,” she agreed. “I saw the real thing once. My father got me up at zero dark thirty, tossed me into a fighter without explanation, and flew us out to Colorado. It was my first time in a jet.”

She closed her eyes and remembered the sort of awe-fear of speeding toward a sliver of sunrise. They had brushed by white-peaked mountains and set down on a patch of grass before a building shaped like a dozen upended fighter jets. Silver steel spires had caught the gold of the sun.

“That sounds like a good memory.” Tristan sat backward in the pew in front of her.

“There are a few,” she admitted. “If my time with Tourn had been all bad, I would have called it a nightmare. But there were a few sunrises. Maybe what I should really hate him for is giving me hope.” She looked up and felt the breeze of relief that she now associated with talking to him. “You know, I've never told anyone that.”

“Not even your RIO?”

She let silence be her answer and then wondered how many times she'd shut down when Pippin reached out. She always held back, pushed him away, but then he did too.

Chase laughed hollowly. “I think Pippin and I have been so wound up in being inseparable that we never bothered to get to know one another. It's weird.” She got up and paced the aisle. It made so much sense. Pippin didn't really know why she pulled away—he didn't know the nasty details about Tourn. About Janice. And Chase didn't know about Pippin's family. About why he was at the Star, if he so clearly didn't want to be in the military.

Could it really only be about money for his family?

“I don't know how to talk to him. Not about important things,” she admitted. “I tried questioning him a few days back, and he made it out to be the Spanish Inquisition.”

Tristan was watching her storm back and forth with a crooked eyebrow. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

“That's not a question.” She tried to hide the flash of a smile. “That's missile lock.”

“Then pretend I have you in my sights,” he said. “Important topics have to be worked up to. For example, tell me something small, but something you wouldn't tell anyone, least of all me.”

“How will that work?”

“It'll help you relax. Or distract you at least. Think of it as a dare if you want.”

“I love dares.”

“I know. That's the one thing everyone seems to know about you.”

Chase sat on the pew before him. “I'll try, but no promises.” She closed her eyes and imagined her life as a sky and her body as a solitary jet speeding through the blue. It had never felt like anything could touch her. Or keep up. And after the heartbreak of failing so hard at pleasing Tourn, she'd embraced evasiveness as her true nature, but it wasn't. Not really. She selected a leaf—a small one—out of her sky.

“Your hair,” she said.

“My hair?”

“Ilikeit.SometimesIwanttotouchit.” Chase snuck a look and found his smile.

“It reminds my mom of her brother,” Tristan explained. “He died before I was born. I'm named after him.”

“And here I was thinking you were named for that ancient love triangle.” She paused. “Pippin told me about Tristan and Iseult. Inescapable, cursed love. Stolen hearts. Depressing stuff. Pippin seemed to think it was unrelentingly romantic. He's that way about most fictional relationships.”

“I've never read it.” Tristan's expression was cool, sure of itself, and unyielding. She already liked it ten times better than his polite look. “I don't believe that fate can be malicious. Bad things happen, sure, but they're not deliberately aimed at certain people. That's just the great love story lie.”

He made her laugh, and Chase felt surprisingly light. Happy almost. “Tell me something from your sky.” She wondered if he'd ask what she meant. He didn't.

“In the name of even trade, I will say: your hair.”

“What about it?”

“How does it stand up like that? You must put a pound of stuff in it to make it so gravity defying.”

“Nope. Nothing. It's all in the cowlicks. I couldn't get it to lay flat even if I wanted it to. Touch it if you don't believe me.” She leaned way over the back of the pew, making the wood creak.

He poked her hair, which quickly turned into a lingering moment by her temple, before tracing her cheek and jaw. When he got too close to her mouth, she snapped her teeth playfully. “Very friendly,” he said. “You better sit back or you're going to fall.”

Too
late
, she thought wildly
.

Chase swung her body over the pew and sat beside him. Their proximity was a creature. She felt it, wanted to touch it, but at the same time, it frightened her. What if she hurt Tristan like Tanner? She'd never forgive herself.

She grabbed another leaf from her sky. Held it out fast so she wouldn't be able to change her mind. “Pippin lectured me about stealing hearts today.” She had to look down to keep talking. She wanted to tell him that Pippin thought she'd stolen Tristan's heart, but instead she muttered, “He says I keep them in a basket.”

“You don't look like the Red Riding Hood type to me,” Tristan said. “And ignore Pippin. That's just the other love story myth. Hearts don't get stolen. They're given away.”

He took her hand and played with her fingers, opening and closing them. Chase marveled at how such a simple move could make her feel like she was already stranded in the myth.

When he looked at her this close, she could read the pressure of the trials in the tightness of his skin. In the hard set of his eyes. “Feels like the whole weight of the Second Cold War is on our shoulders. My commander wrote me a note about ‘righting the world order.'”

She leaned back, sliding her hand out of Tristan's. “The shrink told me that if the Streaker project fails, the cold war will drag on. People will suffer. She said it like it's my fault if it fails.”

“It's not our fault,” he said. She looked up to hold back some sudden tears, tracing the lines of stained glass as they outlined endless triangles.

“I'm terrified,” she admitted.

“Me too.” Tristan pulled her to her feet.

She rubbed at her eyes. Forced a laugh. “Oh, I see what you did. You got me talking about hair so we could hash out the pressure of the trials. Nicely done. You deserve a medal in this kind of thing.”

He shook his head. “Nope. I failed. I was trying to get you to talk about something small so I could work up the courage to kiss you again.”

His eyes were as clear as the colored panes, his hands on her hips. Tristan's hold was like his flying, tilted in, unabashed. Chase touched his wrists and slid her hands to his shoulders. Not for the first time, Chase felt something fly open between them like a door. It revealed a wide abysslike sky that she could fall into and never be seen from again.

He was so close that his breath tugged.

Chase pulled back from the edge. “Let's not ruin this.”

“Ruin?”

“You saw what I did to Riot.”

“Riot did that to Riot.”

“What about Tanner?” She watched Tristan catch on, realize she was pushing him away. He gave her a few inches. “I have this track record. I like someone until I don't. Until I'm sick of them. I'd say you and I are at optimum liking range on my part. Everything else is downhill.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Can't fight the pattern.” She walked toward the door, shelving her feelings for Tristan with her past hookups. He stuck out like a novel among magazines—but she couldn't take it back. “Having a crush on you is the best thing to look forward to right now.” Yes, that made sense. “I'd like to keep it.”

“A crush? That's what you think this is?” He crossed the space between them and put a hand on the door. “This might sound crazy, but hear me out. Have you ever been in love?”

She wanted to know what Tristan looked like when he talked about love, but she couldn't risk checking. Instead she studied the spread of his fingers across the oak. He had nice boy hands. Chase wanted them testing all her curves—but even as she felt herself crest toward him, she brought herself back down. She was going to play it safe this time.

“Love is…” She searched for her own answer to this never-ending problem. “Love doesn't really work. Not for me.”

“I understand why you're holding back. A week ago, I was ready to glue my hands in my pockets just so I wouldn't be tempted to touch you.”

“And now you think it's a good idea?”

“Feels like the only idea.” He put his forehead against hers. “I was wasting a serious amount of energy keeping my distance. You don't feel that way?”

She did—or had. It was confusing. Somehow things had gone too far.

“I'm sorry.” She leaned in without meaning to, her face so close to his that she jerked when she pulled back. “This is too complicated.”

He opened the door for her. “You're going to have a hard time convincing me to give up, Chase. Especially when you look at me like you just did.”

They left together. Chase kept waiting for them to part ways, but Tristan followed her to the rec room. He really wasn't going to give up, and he'd even snared her into another minor conversation—this one about how much weight she could bench—when everything changed.

All of the screens in the rec room were blaring red. A few dozen cadets were standing there, silent. Gaping.

Horrified.

The brilliant red of the New Eastern Bloc's flag took up the whole screen, the parade of stars standing almost three-dimensional against the vivid color. A voice blared. The language felt fast and angry. A threat. Chase thought it might be Chinese, but then it switched, turning to Russian before it lapsed into Hindi.

Ri Xiong Di was making a move.

• • •

The brigadier general rounded up the Streaker teams in his office. “Get comfortable,” he said, but there weren't enough seats. They lined up along the wall while Sylph dominated Chase's leather chair.

The television showed the red flag while the threat looped at them. Chase's heart banged while she waited for someone to speak. Translate. Make sense of the endless words. She looked to Pippin; he could understand at least one of those languages—but he was paler than he had been when they were falling through the clouds.

She scratched at her shoulder nervously, needing to hold on to something. Tristan's hand was there within a beat and locked fingers with hers. It grounded her even as she lost herself to imagined flashes of atomic bombs. Mushroom clouds spotting the western seaboard. She stepped back against Tristan's chest, and his free arm wrapped around her waist.

Kale muted the television. “Ri Xiong Di is showing off,” he said. “They've hacked every station, every secure link. Even the Internet is locked red. They've been playing this nonstop for half an hour.”

“What does it mean?” Sylph asked. “It's clearly a warning.”

“A threat,” Pippin said, his voice cracking.

“It's a reiteration of everything we've been warned of in the past. Not to band together with other countries. Not to make a show of military advancements. General Tourn was more than likely correct that they're now aware that the Streakers are impervious to their advanced hacking abilities and that we were finally able to bring down one of their drones.