Breaking Sky (22 page)

The tree line was too close. Riot yelled over and over, but his warnings were obvious. And wrong. Everything he said felt
wrong
.

“Shut up!” she screamed over him. Her outburst fed into her muscles, her nerves; she was jerky. Flailing.

Crashing.

Again
.

Her wing caught the top of an emerald-green pine and spun out, clearing the woods with fire blazing as orange as a construction zone. Chase didn't have her visor on. Or her helmet. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes, shocked to find herself drenched, her hands shaking. “Get it together,” she muttered. The U.S. was on the cusp of war with the New Eastern Bloc, and where was she? Stuck in the goddamn centrifuge simulator.

She shielded her vision from the neon blaze and threw the door open.

Riot got in her face. “How many times are you going to drop too low? I warned you. I even gave you a countdown to the hard deck, which Sylph never needs by the way. HOW CAN I HELP YOU IF YOU WON'T LISTEN?”

Chase's head hung low but not in defeat. Or sadness. It was fury.

Poor Riot.

She reached back and slammed his face so hard that he crumbled to his knees, howling. Adrien tried to step in, but Chase flung the woman's kind arm away. “I can't fly in that stupid machine.” Chase motioned to the Star City Centrifuge. “I have to get in a jet.”

I
need
Dragon
…and Pippin
.

The words didn't come out, but they didn't stay deep either. They spotted her surface, tears coming on fast. Hands useless. Legs weak. She sat hard and covered her face, feeling the raw skin beneath her eyes and the weariness that now wrapped around her like a nightmare. It was exhausting to feel this much. If she could have unplugged every single emotion, she would have.

She was trying to do just that.

Riot got back on his feet, his nose bleeding. “I don't think you broke it.”

“What is happening here?” Dr. Ritz stormed in, immediately inspecting Riot's face. “Did you do this?”

“He tripped into my fist,” Chase said.

“Well, you've just set yourself back a week, Chase Harcourt.”

Chase stood fast. “A week?! This is going to be over in a matter of days!”

Ritz spoke to Riot, ignoring Chase. “To the infirmary and then get some rest. How long until you're back in the air?”

Riot checked his watch. “Five hours.”

“Go.” Ritz turned to speak with Adrien, and Chase watched Riot leave.

He stumbled into two chairs on his way out, and it had nothing to do with his nose. He was leveled with exhaustion too. They all were, especially Sylph and Tristan. Tourn had ordered a permanent Streaker watch along the d-line. One jet wouldn't do much against an invading fleet, but with the radio humming nonsense and the satellite on the fritz, the Streaker's responsibility was to get back to the Star with a warning—a warning to send everyone to the bunkers…

Pegasus
and
Phoenix
had been trading twelve-hour shifts over the last five days—since Pippin's death had turned the Second Cold War into an out and out conflict. And this time, there were no confidential statements. Everyone knew. About Ri Xiong Di, the drone, the crash.

About Pippin.

Chase glanced at Adrien's desk. The elderly engineer kept her handheld screen on mute, but Chase could still see the psychotic news coverage. The public's panic. Raids and hysteria, not to mention President Grainor's grim speeches and knuckle-white grip on the podium.

But this time, the screen showed a new terror.

Pippin's three brothers and mother had been squeezed onto a ratty couch. His mother kept her hand over her face.

“What is that?” Chase blurted, interrupting Ritz and Adrien's dispute. They followed Chase's glare, and Adrien touched the corner of the screen to turn on the sound.

The reporter leaned in like a predator. “Can you tell us about your son? What were his passions? His hobbies?”

“Nerd stuff,” Pippin's oldest brother said.

Andrew, the youngest, squirrelliest, and inarguably dirtiest of the boys, sent an elbow into his eldest brother's side. “Henry loved flying. He was the best RIO in the Air Force. And the smartest. He had the best pilot too: Nyx.”

Chase's heart bottomed out. She stopped breathing.

The reporter slid even closer, proving he wasn't a predator after all. He was a damn scavenger, and he was about to pick the family clean. “Mrs. Donnet, how do you feel about Henry's pilot? Are you angry that your son died while she lived? Do you blame her?”

Pippin's mom stared down.

Adrien made a move to shut off the screen.

“Leave it on,” Ritz and Chase said in sync.

Chase needed to know. She certainly blamed herself. She should never have dropped so low with that drone on her tail. She should have let that missile take out their wing and ejected…

After a few long moments, Pippin's mother said, “They were attacked by Ri Xiong Di. We're lucky one of them survived.”

The reporter didn't seem to hear her, launching into questions the family couldn't possibly know, including: “What can you tell me about the jet your son was flying in? Sources have led us to believe they're a new type of jet that has yet to be disclosed to the public.”

Adrien put the screen on mute just as the image showed Chase's and Pippin's junior year cadet pictures side by side. Chase wavered and sat down. All the blood had left her brain.

“Hope they made a fortune from that interview,” she murmured. “Enough to buy a real house.” But that's not what she really hoped. She hoped it hadn't happened at all. No interview, because Pippin hadn't died, because there had been no accident. Her mind kept doing this sort of…rewind. She went backward, pulled the move differently, didn't head too low, bested the drone. Won the trials.

Then she celebrated with Pippin back in the chow hall. They ate cake. Well, he scooped up the icing and she ate the fluffy stuff beneath it. Like always.

Chase's mouth tasted bitter all of a sudden, and she came back to reality with more fury than she'd had after crashing in the simulator for the fortieth time. She locked eyes on the floor and made herself breathe, just like Kale had told her in the days following her accident. His words were loud through her thoughts, and she held on to them.

Focus, Harcourt. Breathe.

It might have worked if her eyes didn't catch on Ritz's low-heeled shoes and beside them, where a few drops of Riot's blood had smeared into a brilliant half rainbow on the tile.

Chase remembered Pippin's blood blooming and fading as it spread into the lake.

She gagged, and spit flew out in a long string. Ritz jumped back while Adrien came closer, holding on to Chase's shoulders.

Chase wiped her mouth and pushed herself toward clarity. Toward the pain. “Riot's going to get killed,” she said to Ritz. “They all are. Sylph, Arrow, and Romeo. They're too tired! We need another pilot in the rotation, which means you need to give me my wings back!” Chase was in Ritz's face. She wasn't exactly sure when she'd charged forward, but she was there now, vomit breath and all. “Please.”

The woman's narrowed expression, wire-rimmed glasses, and huge hair bun were different up close. Chase suddenly realized that Ritz wasn't forty-something but possibly early thirties.

“It's only been five days since the crash,” the psychiatrist said carefully.

“Yeah. It's been five days!” Chase said right back. “Five days of ‘any minute now' hostilities. They need me.” Chase held back from adding that she needed the air. The speed. Flying was the only thing that could keep her from slipping backward. “You've seen the news. People are freaking out. They're afraid Ri Xiong Di is going to drop a thousand bombs on us at any moment. We have to do something.” She shook her head. “
I
have to do something!”

“What is it you can do?” Adrien asked kindly.

Chase glanced away. “I'll figure it out when I get up there. That's what I always do.”

Ritz exchanged a look with Adrien. “You have not yet proven you will work well with another RIO. It would be dangerous to send you up there.”

“Let me try with Romeo. Or better yet, let me go alone. If I get in
Pegasus
for ten minutes, I know I can get in the air. This stupid machine is messing up my concentration.”

“Out of the question,” Ritz said. “You've had too much trauma.”

Adrien reached out a soft hand to Chase's elbow. “The Streakers weren't meant to be flown alone. You would only be able to take off and land. Even then, it's precarious to fly without a RIO to guide you.”

Chase's chest turned to lead. Adrien was trying to help, but Chase heard it like a dare. Either way, she spun and left, making for the hangar so fast that the hallway blurred.

• • •

Chase found the Star eerily deserted. Cadets were shut up in their barracks, and classes had been canceled. She shot through the Green, glancing into the rec room. It was empty and shockingly smelled of old laundry.

A bold, red alert light pulsed overhead. Despite the pall it threw on the scene, the alarm hue was relieving. If red drones were inbound, if the whole Star were about to be blown to smithereens, the lights would go out completely. The dark of the Arctic could only protect them if they didn't cast a single beam—and
if
the missile defense software worked.

Chase's mouth went dry as she remembered JAFA's blaze, realizing for the tenth time that day how little of a chance they all stood against Ri Xiong Di. Tourn had been an idiot to wish for war. What could possibly stop the New Eastern Bloc from absorbing them into their empire? The only reason the Second Cold War had started in the first place was because of Tourn's bold nuclear strike on the Philippines. Ri Xiong Di did not think America would escalate so swiftly, and we'd scared them back a bit. But now? What could warn off the red drones before this turned into a last-man-standing kind of war?

Chase swallowed her doubt and misgivings and headed into the hangar. First things first, she had to get into the sky and clear her head…and her heart. But MPs stopped her inside the door.

“Cadets don't have permission to be in the hangar,” they said together.

“I'm going to see Kale,” she lied. They exchanged looks. “He's in the tower,” she invented. “He sent for me.”

“Let me see your pass,” the smaller MP said.

“I might have forgotten it.” She grabbed around in her pockets just to kill time, and that's when she caught sight of Sylph's boyfriend a few yards off. “Staff Sergeant Masters!” she called out. He stopped and eyed her cautiously, his arms stacked with paperwork. “Tell them Kale sent for me.”

She could see the calculation in his expression. Masters knew Chase wanted this and that she knew about his big secret. “Kale wants her,” he finally said. He turned briskly and took off through the cold concrete building.

“See?” Chase said. The MPs let her through, although one of them followed her until she ducked out of sight behind one of the older jets. She slid under the tarp and leaned against the cool metal of an F-14 Tomcat.

What was she doing? Was she really going to jump in
Pegasus
without permission?

“It was easier to break the rules when you were here, Pip,” she admitted aloud. “Not so much fun without you pointing out all the ways in which things could go wrong.”

Her hands spread over the Tomcat as her thoughts spun out of control. In truth, everything was
wrong
without Pippin. Wrong in the simulators. Wrong when Tristan tried to talk to her. Wrong when Kale looked at her like she was a shattered figurine. Wrong when she'd asked to meet with her father after the crash.

Wrong when Tourn had refused.

Chase's fingers snagged on a hole in the jet. Several of them. She pushed back the tarp and looked over a spray of bullet holes across the metal. They were rusted and leaning in. Crumbling with age—a mark of the nationwide fear of war that spectacularly outdated her own. She had to do
something
.

Tears prickled, but she shoved them down, running for
Pegasus
instead. She waited until she could move unseen, climbed up the wing, and sunk into the cockpit. It smelled of Sylph, and the pilot's chair was too far back. “Bird legs.” Chase used the lever she'd found while in Tristan's cockpit to adjust the angle. “The girl has bird legs.” She rubbed her cheeks, trying to get past the sudden rush of remembering how she and Tristan had somehow fit in one seat.

That felt like years ago, but it was only six days.
Six
.

She'd kept her distance from Tristan since the accident, and he'd given her that much, not that he had much time because he was in the air half of the day. Her face burned on those thoughts as she imagined him exhausted and flying the d-line. She should be the one up there toiling away. Not him.

She had been the one to screw up in the face of that drone.

Chase flipped the switch to close the canopy, and a ground crew member saw. “Hey!” the woman yelled. “Get out of there!”

Chaos erupted around her as people yelled. She ignored them.

“I can do this.”

Getting skyward would fix everything. Just a hop up and back again. Nothing dangerous. It would prove to Kale and Ritz that she should be in action—and silence her scream of fear that she'd never get skyward again.

As she powered up the jet, the whirl and swirl of crashing against the lake came back. In the endless sessions Chase had been subjected to over the last few days, Crackers had said this would happen. She set her teeth and steered out of the hangar and onto the snowy runway.