“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Pippin executed five smooth reps before his neck strained and a red blotch lit up old acne scars. “So this Arrow and…what’s his RIO’s call sign?”
Chase kept two fingers of each hand on the bar until he finished. “The caveman? He threw his helmet before I could read it.”
“Would we call him a caveman?” Pippin was upside down, but he still looked weird. Angry maybe. She’d never seen Pippin riled about something outside of Middle Earth.
Chase turned her head sideways to get a better look at him. “That was a brow ridge to best all other brow ridges. You didn’t notice?”
“Not when he was standing on my face, no.”
Chief Black walked by with a freshman tucked in a headlock beneath his bulging, hairy arm. “Harcourt. Donnet. Don’t forget to work your back with your chest.” He demonstrated on the freshman, bending him into a hunchbacked creature. “See? That’s too much back, not enough chest work.” The chief made the freshman puff out his chest like…well, like Sylph. “Too much front, not enough back. Never neglect inverse muscles.”
Chase waited until the sergeant was a safe distance away. “What I can’t figure out is, why Canada?”
“Hey. Declaration of No Assistance,” he said lowly. “Drop it.”
She leaned in to whisper, “I still don’t know how that applies to this situation.”
“They’re obviously working with us on the Streaker project. And if the New Eastern Bloc finds out, they’ll label Canada an ‘active enemy.’ That’ll get ugly fast.” He made a noise like a dozen explosions going off at once.
“They’ll be destroyed.” Chase thought about Arrow with his wavy, black hair and his kickback attitude. “Their Air Force is ill-equipped.”
“That’s grossly naive, Chase, but it’s true they wouldn’t last long. No one would. That’s the point of the declaration. No joining forces against the New Eastern Bloc. Our landing in Canada was probably the first satellite-visible interaction between our two countries in twenty years. And you can bet your wings that Ri Xiong Di saw it.”
“That’s why everyone was upset?”
“That’s why.”
“Christ.” Chase pinched her leg hard enough to make her nerves shriek. “But if Ri Xiong Di saw, we’d be at war already. So they didn’t see.”
He shrugged. “That’s what no one knows.”
Riot entered the weight room with a grimy towel over his shoulder. “Sylph’s looking for you, and I mean that as a life or death warning.” He sauntered toward the free weights.
“I still haven’t run into Sylph since I took out Pegasus,” Chase explained to Pippin. “I have a strong feeling it’s not going to go well.”
Pippin didn’t say anything, and Chase was suddenly more than muscle tired. Facing down Sylph meant acknowledging how crazed Chase had been when she was on the hunt for Phoenix.
On the other side of the weight room, Riot grunted through bicep curls while watching himself in the mirrored wall.
“What a winner.” Pippin shook his head. “The whole academy to choose from and you’ve landed on that one.”
“I know, right?” Chase fixed her gloves. “Whatever. He’s decent. He’s around. He doesn’t mind my reputation.”
“That’s because he thinks he’ll get laid. Boy, is he in for a disappointment. Sylph will kill you if this tryst follows established patterns.”
“Sylph should realize that her RIO can make out with whoever he wants.”
“You’d be mad if someone broke my heart,” Pippin said.
“What hearts? There are no hearts involved. Just some lips and skin. I’ve pretty much told Riot that.” She shoved Pippin’s shoulder with her own. “Besides, you would have to show interest in a girl before hearts could be broken.”
Pippin positioned himself under the bench press. “Not till God makes women out of some other metal than earth.”
“English translation?”
“Indeed.”
Chase let Pippin be Pippin. She eyed Riot and thought about Streaker Team Pegasus. It didn’t feel right that they were out of the loop. “I kinda wish Sylph knew about Phoenix.”
“Kale said shut up, so we shut up.”
“Donnet!” Chief Black shouted. He stood beside an upside-down freshman who was hanging from the ceiling bar by his feet. “You’ve got a family call. Hustle to.”
Pippin disappeared so fast that Chase felt his wake like a pass of engine heat. She couldn’t blame him. Up in the near-Arctic and so dependent on the military, she often felt like there was no one else. After all, Chase didn’t have a family waiting on her calls. But Pippin did, and they loved him and missed him.
Chase lay back under the bench press and forced herself through a chest ache that had nothing to do with her muscles.
• • •
Kale often called Chase a glutton for punishment. She didn’t deny it.
After her arms were jellied with muscle fatigue, she set off in search of Sylph. It was time to take another pounding. One she deserved.
She found Sylph in the hangar. The cold seeped through the concrete walls, making Chase wish she were wearing the uniquely light insulation of her zoom bag. She held her chest over her T-shirt, bit the ball chain of her dog tags, and jogged around the old planes, drones, and helos. When she arrived at the Streakers, her arms fell to her sides. Her mouth hung open.
Chase hadn’t realized it was this bad.
The engineers had completely dismantled Pegasus’s right wing while Dragon sat on blocks, her landing gear stripped down to its nuts and bolts and struts. Chase left Sylph standing with her back to her beneath Pegasus and went to Dragon first. She put her hand on the jet’s nose. The metal skin was always a little warmer than the chilled air in the hangar, which made it feel alive.
“I’m sorry,” she told her bird. An airman cast her a dirty look, but she kept touching Dragon, pressing her face to the jet and whispering her regrets. There were so many.
Sylph grabbed Chase and spun her by the shoulders. Chase fell backward onto her butt. Her palms burned from hitting the concrete floor so hard.
“You reckless, stupid, stupid girl!” The blonde raised a fist destined for Chase’s face but then stopped. They both had tears stinging at the corner of their eyes. They both noticed it. “You don’t care about anything or anyone.”
Chase looked past Sylph to the beautiful, broken Streakers. “That’s not true.”
“Prove it next time.” Sylph’s fist reared back some more, and Chase was going to let her plant one on her nose, eyes, mouth—whatever the girl needed to hit to make them square again. But Sylph’s hand dropped instead. Chase stared at her loose fingers. “You don’t even understand what you did wrong.”
“I do,” Chase muttered. If anyone was acutely aware of her failings, her callousness, and her tunnel vision, it was Chase.
“You’re not worth the bruised knuckles.” Sylph stomped away.
Now Chase knew another truth: the only thing worse than getting punched in the face was not getting punched in the face when you deserved it.
11
TAG THE BOGEY
Sighting the Enemy
Pippin was still talking to his family when Chase entered the barracks hall. At the far end, a tiny closet of a room was set up for video calls. It didn’t have a door—most likely to dissuade dirty talking—but that also meant Chase couldn’t get by without Pippin’s family seeing her in the background.
“Nyx!” his littlest brother, Andrew, called out. “Nyx! Nyx!”
Chase leaned on the doorjamb and crossed her arms. “Hey there, Andy. Still bulking up to turn flyboy?”
“Yeah, look!” The ten-year-old showed off his biceps.
“Impressive.” Chase tried to look at Andrew’s eyes when she talked to him. Tri
ed not to stare at how filthy and skinny he was or how patched his clothes were. Andrew yelled at Pippin’s other two brothers off camera, and Pippin said something about one of their ticklish ears. Andrew dove off screen. A wrestling match ensued until one of them kicked the camera and the screen fuzzed before it went black.
Pippin stood up, the tiny folding chair creaking with relief. “I’m beginning to doubt if they know any other way to hang up.” His voice was stiff. “There’s water rationing in Trenton. Can you believe that?”
“Yes,” Chase said.
“I know.” He drummed his fingers on his chest. “A bit deluding living up here with all the food we can eat and regular showers, clean clothes.” Pippin looked guilty.
Chase picked at her sleeve. “Janice doesn’t need my living stipend, Pip. I wish you’d let me route it to the Donnet clan. I want to.”
“My dad wouldn’t take it. He doesn’t even like taking my money, but at least he does.” Pippin messed up his hair. It was trying to be curly and settling for fluffy. He really was boyishly cute. “Besides, they’re not starving. They’re just not very clean.” He took the hallway at a pace that proved he needed to be alone for a little while.
Chase slouched in the folding chair. The Second Cold War snuck up on them in weird ways. At the Star, they talked about battles and bombings. They lived right up against the border of invasion from Siberia, and yet they were protected from what Ri Xiong Di’s trade embargoes did to the U.S. America wasn’t just banned from taking military action with other countries. The U.S. was being “punished for a century of self-centered extravagance”—or so the infamous declaration read. No real trade was permitted, which meant the country had been forced to become self-sustaining. However, it wasn’t doing so hot. Not in matters like education and medicine.
And water, it seemed.
Kale kept explaining that one concrete military advantage could upset the standoff and make the New Eastern Bloc back down. That was the hope of the Streakers. The only things standing in the way were the government trials—and Chase’s famed recklessness.
She dialed her mother’s number. The screen lit up with the pale purple wall in Janice’s living room, ringing and ringing. The color matched Janice’s always-polished nails, and Chase remembered being tiny and trying to hold her mother’s hand to cross the street. Trying and failing.
The machine asked if she wanted to leave a message.
“Sure.” After the beep, Chase sat taller. “What’s up, Janice? You’re probably out. Want to hear a laugh? I got Tourn’s attention the other day by being an idiot.” It wasn’t funny, not even in the jovial way she was trying to say it. Chase had screwed up big-time. Enough to jeopardize the cold war ceasefire, but what felt so much worse was she didn’t know how to stop herself from doing the same thing again. Maybe she should lose her wings…
Her focus blurred. Why was she reaching out to Janice anyway?
Because Janice knew that Tourn was her father, and that made her one of three people who knew the truth. That’s why.
Kale and Pippin were the other two. Dr. Ritz knew as well, but Chase easily discounted the woman—she’d simply read it in Chase’s file. Pippin had gotten the secret out of her one night during freshman year after she’d beat the snot out of two of her classmates. She had caught them discussing “Tourn the Mass Murderer” and had turned feral until Pippin pulled her off. He’d proven his best friend–hood that moment by taking a solemn oath to act like he didn’t know for the rest of eternity.
Chase swallowed, her throat sticky. That memory never made sense. Her father had killed people. Admittedly. Why in the world would she defend him? And the academy was her home now. Pippin was her family. She should just forget about Michigan and Janice. And Tourn.
Easier said than done. Her parents were a gray cloud she couldn’t shirk.
Chase deleted the message like all the others, feeling as unanswered as her mother’s line.
• • •
The hangar filled with screams. Shouts. Cries.
Chase dropped her tools. She’d been helping the engineers rebuild Dragon’s landing gear, but all that was forgotten as the red alarm light blared.
Something had happened.
Chase rushed into action, gasping. It was only now with everyone yelling that she realized she’d been holding her breath since Pippin explained what her landing in Canada could mean: Ri Xiong Di retaliation.
She waited before the hangar doors with the rest of the airmen while her father’s words shook her thoughts. The Second Cold War was heating up. Tourn would be so pleased. She pictured him lording over some base. Kale had mentioned Texas once, but Chase only wanted to know where it was so she didn’t fly over it.
The hangar doors peeled open, blasting Arctic wind and spitting ice flecks. Chase buried her face in her sleeve and pushed toward the action. An older fighter jet, an Eagle, taxied in. Hoses dumped white foam on its smoking engines.
Below the cockpit, a jagged hole bled greasy liquid and a streak of red that could be nothing other than blood.
“Get that canopy open!” someone yelled. “Get Erricks out! Get him out!”
Ramp stairs were pushed up to the cockpit, and ground crew pressed in. They hammered at the canopy joint with crowbars, but it was wedged shut from the damage to the body. An engineer called for a welding torch, and Chase ran back to retrieve the one they had been using on Dragon. She handed it to the airman, and he cast a cold look at her. “Get out of here, cadet! You’re in the way.”
Chase stumbled back, a little too blown by the situation to register the insult. They finally wrenched the canopy open and strapped the pilot to a stretcher. He was making terrible animal sounds and grabbing at his leg, which had gotten splintered into the wreckage. It didn’t look like a leg anymore. More like meat smashed up with a zoom bag.
They ran him toward the infirmary.
Chase choked on the smoke still pouring from the Eagle. A cadet tugged on the back of Chase’s uniform, pulling her away from the scene of destruction. She went with him, too overwhelmed to register anything outside of what she had just witnessed.
“What happened?” she asked blindly. A familiar voice answered, but not the kind of familiar that eased her nerves.
“That’s red drone damage,” Tanner said. “The Eagle was running surveillance over the North Pole. Trying to spy from the backyard. Can’t believe they thought that’d work.”
A greenish bruise still highlighted his eye, reminding Chase of the pummeling he took from Sylph two weeks ago. “We should get out of here before they suspend our flight privileges.” His voice was matter of fact, in a tone that always felt like a personality trait.
They walked together, which felt as strange as it should. Chase bridged the gap from the smoke of the real war to the internal fight she felt when she looked at Tanner. Last semester, he had tutored her in history when she couldn’t get her head around which country Ri Xiong Di bought first. And when his cute Asian-American features stirred up some cultural curiosity, she’d started doing the same things with him that she now did with Riot.
“Will it mean war?” Chase asked. “Put us over the edge?”
“No. The bastards knew what they were doing. They didn’t kill the pilot, did they? They let him limp back here to show us a taste of what they’re capable of. It’s probably just retaliation. They’re flexing their muscles at us.”
Retaliation for Chase’s landing in Canada?
Her breath went tight. This had to be her fault. Had Ri Xiong Di attacked the Canadian base too? Did Ri Xiong Di find a way to knock Phoenix out of the sky? All of a sudden, the long-haired image of Arrow didn’t make her want to roll her eyes.
Was he okay? He had to be.
They had to fly together again.
She came out of her thoughts slowly. “What?”
Tanner was eyeing her as
though he had asked something important. “I said, why Riot?”
“Are you serious? After what we just saw…that stuff doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” Tanner’s expression pegged her, and he leaned a little closer, reminding her of his pressing, small kisses. “I might not be on a Streaker team, but I’m better than Riot. Riot blabs to the whole academy every time you hook up. I actually like you.”
“But you don’t know…” Chase’s voice trailed off as she remembered Pippin’s ribbing—that this had become more of a standard answer than a real response. “Why?” she asked instead. “Why do you think you like me?”
He stood a little taller. “It’s a gut reaction. I look forward to seeing you.”
“But that’s just you. It has nothing to do with me, you know? And seriously, Tanner, I’ve been terrible to you.” She stopped herself from adding, on purpose. Tanner was smart and sweet, a pilot with extracurricular talents. He was ten times the boy Riot was, and as soon as Chase realized that, she’d cut him off. He didn’t deserve to get tangled up with the Nyx.
“Find someone else.” Her words ended up sounding so much harsher than she intended, but it was too late. Tanner left.
Chase stood in the glass tunnel that connected the hangar to the Green. Outside, a snowstorm pressed on the navy sky. She wondered if Phoenix was up there somewhere. If Canada had been attacked too. Dragon would be fixed soon, she hoped. And then she’d look for Arrow—catch him in the sky where no satellite could hang onto their signal for long. She had to make sure he’d made it through.
Arrow didn’t deserve the hazardous wake of her bad decisions either.
12
ZERO DARK THIRTY
After Midnight, Before Sunrise
The night had gone past that zone of sleeplessness and into vulgar awake. Chase flipped in bed so often that Pippin put his headphones on to drown out the creaks of the bunk frame. The tramping bass of some classical tune trickled up through the silence.
She closed her eyes, only to remember the hangar and Captain Erricks’s mangled leg. Guilt seized her and threw a bag over her head.
Breaking Sky Page 7
