Breaking Sky

by Cori McCarthy

  In light of the accident and the global uproar, the government board had yet to rule on the Streakers. Or so Chase thought. “Did the project pass? I haven’t heard anything.”

  Adrien didn’t answer, and that was answer enough. Of course the government board would have scratched the Streaker project after her abject failure in the face of that red drone.

  Of course.

  Adrien wiped her hands on a rag. “You haven’t brought a knife with you, have you?”

  Chase was taken back. “What?”

  “I need a long knife to salvage some of the software.” Adrien pointed to a hunk of jet guts. “To see if it is intact.”

  Looking over the wreckage, Chase remembered the crash with a shock of heat. She fell to her knees, and Adrien took hold of Chase’s arm. “No tears,” the woman commanded. “Help me take her for pieces. It will do your heart good.”

  The two of them struggled for over an hour, trying to get Dragon’s metal skin unbent from the machine’s insides. Chase felt alive through the strain of the work. She enjoyed breaking parts of her jet away and swearing and sweating into her eyes.

  When they were done, both of them seated on the tarp amid a few thousand tiny parts, Chase asked a question that felt strangely important. “What will you do with all this?”

  “Put her back together. Fix some design flaws we learned from your crash. I only have a few weeks to quiet the government’s doubters so that you might have your Streaker fleet.”

  “You still think you can change their minds?”

  Adrien answer was a shrug. “They want Streakers without young pilots, but I cannot fix that. Only teenagers have the physical durability, impulse-fast reflexes, and mental agility to adjust to the demands of the engines. You learn with the speed of heat.” The engineer looked proud of herself for using a jock pilot term. She even winked. “We will find a way to prove to our governments we need the money. We will keep moving forward.” Adrien motioned to the parts around them. “We will rebuild.”

  Chase looked over Dragon’s remains. “When I left her on the shore of that lake, she didn’t look so mangled. She just looked…halved.”

  “They had to recover her fast to hold back Ri Xiong Di satellite interest. They knocked her into pieces to transport her.”

  Chase faced Adrien, feeling stronger for the first time since she woke in the infirmary. “You have to fix her. I need her.”

  “Dragon may yet be rebuilt. I have faith. She was my favorite, but…” Her voice tilted. “Will you fly her?”

  “I…want to. But I don’t know if I can fly without him. I’m going to try.” Chase turned such a simple idea over in her hands and remembered something. “Pippin always asked, ‘Where are we going, Nyx?’ And I’d say, ‘Anywhere.’ It made flying feel like escaping, but I think it’s not supposed to feel that way.”

  Adrien gave her a reassuring pat, but before they could exchange another word, the hangar door blasted open, and Pegasus roared in. Sylph pulled to a quick stop, and Chase rushed up the ramp stairs to help her out of the cockpit. Riot was unconscious in the back.

  “Look at him!” Sylph yelled, although her voice was hoarse and quiet. “Knocked out on the way back and I couldn’t wake him.”

  “Did he gray out?”

  “No! He’s asleep.” Sylph got out of her chair on soft legs and hit her RIO in the helmet. “Idiot.”

  Riot jerked awake and looked around the hangar. “Shit.”

  “No kidding.”

  The deck officer rushed over for Sylph’s report, and Chase helped Riot down the stairs.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Man, I shouldn’t have slept, but I feel so much better. It was nuts up there.”

  Chase shhhed him so she could listen to Sylph’s report to the deck officer.

  “They missile locked on me. Over and over again. Tell Kale I’m not going back up there without a dozen wingmen.”

  The deck officer ignored her. “Did any of the drones cross the d-line or attempt to hack your controls?”

  “They stayed in their zone, and I never opened a channel to them.”

  “But you said they missile locked on you,” Chase couldn’t help but interrupt. “They’re escalating.”

  Sylph thrust her helmet at Chase, and Chase saw how bad off Sylph was. The blonde looked like she’d been drained of life force. She wavered, and a staff sergeant caught her by the arm. Chase recognized Liam—but other than holding her up, he and Sylph acted like they didn’t know each other. “They kept locking on me because they wanted to tire me out. They wanted to make me run evasive tactics until I didn’t have any speed left.”

  “They want a Streaker,” Chase said. “They were going to wear you down and then collect you.”

  Sylph nodded once, and then Liam half-walked, half-carried her out of the hangar.

  Chase turned toward the deck officer. “Arrow is not going to last half as long as Sylph. He’s exhausted.” He had been up all night. “I have to relieve him.”

  The man turned and left. No word. Nothing. Chase wasn’t surprised. After all, she was on the Down List. And he clearly didn’t know he shouldn’t turn his back on Nyx.

  Chase hooked her arm in Riot’s and dragged him back up the stairs. She popped on Sylph’s helmet. “Hope you had a nice catnap because we’re going back out.”

  “What are you doing?” Riot asked.

  “Skipping the hard work.” She pushed him back in the cockpit and slid into the pilot’s chair. The deck officer had come back yelling at her to get down, but she ignored him.

  “How in the world do you expect to get Kale’s permission?” Riot asked.

  “Easy. I’ll go higher.” She flipped on the shortwave. Tourn might not want her as a daughter—that she’d learn to accept somehow—but he wanted her as a cadet. A pilot. “Tower, this is Nyx in Pegasus requesting to speak with General Tourn.”

  A long pause. Too long. Followed by a grunt.

  “Cadet, what are you doing in that bird?”

  “Trying to fly, General, but I need gas.”

  “What makes you think you can get off the ground?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know, but I have to try.”

  Another silence, but then she heard an order in the background for Pegasus to be refueled.

  Tourn came back commanding. “Things are getting hot along the d-line. I want you to give it everything you got, but if the sky starts to break apart, you use that Streaker speed to get the hell out. Get back here. That’s an order. Understood?”

  “Understood, General Tourn.” She was holding on to the throttle and stick as if they were her lifelines. “You’re…you’re really going to let me try?”

  “No one so determined fails.” It was one of his mottos, which she might have dismissed if it didn’t feel like he was trying to tell her he had faith in her.

  There were other words she wanted to say, but she chose the simplest ones. “Thank you.”

  When he spoke again, his voice was closer, as though he’d leaned into the mic. “Cadet, there are few people who can say what I’m about to say and know exactly what it means, but I am one of those people.”

  She waited.

  “I’m sorry about your RIO.”

  40

  DOWNTOWN

  Enemy Territory

  Chase shot Pegasus onto the runway. Her heart hammered at her chest and her doubts slid in. Could she do it?

  She had to.

  But how? Her mind slipped to Pippin’s swelling, bleeding head, and their speed died out.

  Riot began to ask questions. “You okay? What’s happening?”

  “I need a second,” she snapped. “I’m getting my focus together.”

  The silence came with snow settling on the cockpit glass. She couldn’t do it. Oh God, she couldn’t…

 
; “What do you think you’re doing, Harcourt?” Kale’s voice came over the shortwave. Despite the panic in his tone, his voice brought calm.

  “I’m more stubborn than you are,” Chase responded. “And I’m going to fly.”

  “This is almost over,” he said, defeated. Resigned. “Harcourt, Donnet’s death affected us all, but right now we don’t need you to be suicidal.”

  “This isn’t about Pippin. At least, it’s not about his death. I have to get up there. For the other Streaker teams. For the Star.” She was trying to convince herself as well as Kale. “I might not be able to do anything other than relieve Phoenix, but that in itself is important.”

  Kale sighed like he might relent, but an alarm went off in the tower, bleeding through the radio. Chase heard chaos erupt. “Everyone to the bunkers. That’s an order!” Kale yelled at someone in the tower.

  “Brigadier General? What’s happening?” Chase’s panic crested. “Kale?!”

  “The drones have crossed the line. Phoenix is under attack!”

  A blaring alarm sounded throughout the Star. Chase could hear it coming through the open hangar door. The lights were already going off.

  Chase yelled above the racket on the radio. “Kale, what do I do?”

  “Phoenix is beyond help. It looks like they’re trying to bring him down over China. To collect the Streaker. Arrow doesn’t have the fuel or energy to outfly them for long.”

  Her heart slammed around as she imagined Tristan taken as hostage. Tortured. Killed. “I’ll get to him.”

  “You can’t, Harcourt. You can’t, and I don’t want you taking his death on yourself.”

  “His death?” This time it was Riot.

  “You can’t help this time. I wish you could.”

  “What do you mean his death?” she yelled.

  “If they succeed in getting Phoenix down, we’re going to bomb the area. Ri Xiong Di cannot have a Streaker. You know that.”

  Chase fired up the jet’s engines.

  “Stand down, Dragon. That’s an order.”

  “This is Pegasus.” Chase leaned into the throttle. Sent them down the runway.

  “Those drones are over the d-line, Harcourt. They could send firepower this way any minute. Turn around and get to the bunkers. That’s an order!”

  “I can get to Arrow, General. I can use the shortwave and talk him back to life.”

  He paused for far too long.

  “Kale. Please.” Chase didn’t know why she needed his approval so badly, but she asked for it nonetheless. “You have to trust me.”

  “Do not sacrifice yourself, Harcourt.”

  “Yeah, please don’t,” Riot agreed in a humor-hollow voice.

  Kale sighed, a deep, tremulous breath that reached through her bones. “Be careful, my girl.”

  His words thrilled her and focused her mind on the runway. She breathed.

  Chase felt as though she’d run the gauntlet, and yet she still wasn’t in the air. They zipped across the apron at lightning speed, and all the while, she wondered at how her actions had felt so unattached before. Now, everything she did touched something else. All connected.

  And if she failed again, she could kill Riot. Or herself. Or unwittingly give Ri Xiong Di a Streaker. She wouldn’t mess up. Not again.

  Chase’s thoughts clung to Tristan being under attack. She had to get to him. There was no time to be afraid. To remember the crash. She closed her eyes long and tight before easing the stick into a lift.

  And took to the dark sky.

  As soon as she left the runway, the blue lights flicked off and the Star was lost in blackness.

  She pushed forward, and the air welcomed her with almost-morning hues, spreading open at the same time it folded her in. Dragon may have been killed in action, but Chase could feel the memory of her bird between her palms. She applied the same sensation to the way she missed Pippin and found with a soft shock that it fit.

  He was still there. Alive in her mind.

  Chase held on to that feeling, wanting a few more minutes with the memory of her RIO’s brilliance and its inherent quirk. His head half-swallowed by headphones. His boots always untied. She saw his face silhouetted through the small window in the Star City Centrifuge right before she lost her sight. He was always there, and she could take that with her.

  Pegasus raced from the dawn. The eastern sky flamed with colors, orange-red hands reaching through the deep navy. Chase turned the network link off, and they popped Mach 3. Riot whooped into the strain. “Keep yourself tight!” she warned. “I’m not slowing down if you gray out.” Her own body was so hard that she felt leaden.

  Somewhere close to the Bering Strait, she passed a mass of old fighter jets heading west. Pegasus soared past them, out over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

  “This is it,” Riot said after a few minutes. “This is the demarcation line.”

  “Any bogies?”

  “No. Looks like they’re all on Phoenix.”

  Chase shot them over the invisible divide without a second thought. She heard Sylph’s RIO swearing at his controls—at whatever he was picking up. “Talk to me, Riot.”

  “Phoenix is near China. Over land. There are hundreds of drones, Nyx. And I just got something from the Star.” He paused like he was still working out the code. “The missile defense system has been hacked. Overridden. If those drones get through, nothing will stop them.”

  Chase’s heart banged. Two Streakers against all those drones. The rest of the old fighter jets didn’t stand a chance. She prayed they wouldn’t join the fight—they’d only get killed.

  She kicked up the speed.

  “Why are we engaging?” Riot yelled. “What exactly are we going to do against hundreds of drones?”

  “We’ve got missiles, don’t we?”

  “We’ve got two missiles, Nyx. Two against probably five hundred drones.”

  “Then we’ll make them count.”

  • • •

  Chase embraced the pinch of high-g. Her vision was still colored, and she wasn’t backing down until she blacked out. Tristan needed her, and although the pressure pinned her back, her desperation to get to him drove her forward.

  When they were deep in Ri Xiong Di airspace, she let off the throttle to catch her breath. Not a drone in sight. “Where’s Phoenix, Riot?”

  “Due west. He’s close. We should see him soon.”

  Chase wanted to open the radio and call his name over and over. She wanted to be back in her bunk, tangled with him, letting every single one of his touches sink in. But instead, they were speeding over land, and not just any land—China.

  “Look at that,” Riot called. “Downtown Beijing. It’s huge!”

  Chase glanced at the ground, catching the expanse of a tightly built-up city huddled at the merge of northern and western mountain ranges. Beijing was a mess of metal and high buildings, but the mountains were green and tall.

  “There he is!” Riot called out. “Mother of God, look at that.”

  The horizon was filled with a hive of blood-colored drones surrounding a pinprick of blue-silver. The drones darted like one huge net of red wasps, caging Phoenix’s every twist and turn.

  Tristan wasn’t flying very fast, and his wings dipped unevenly.

  “Arrow,” she said over the shortwave.

  The pause was too long.

  “Dieu merci! Nyx?” Romeo asked. “Is that you?”

  “State your condition,” she said.

  “Arrow isn’t talking anymore. He’s going to pass out any minute,” Romeo said shakily. “Me too. We’re flying on vapes, Nyx.”

  Tristan wasn’t talking, but he could hear her.

  “Arrow, break right. I’ll smash through and get their attention. If we’re lucky, they’ll confuse our birds and follow me.” He didn’t resp
ond, and her heart slammed into the silence. “Come on, Arrow. On three. One, two, three.”

  Phoenix made no move.

  “He’s not going to let you guys take our place, Nyx,” Romeo said.

  “Yeah, well, in about a minute, I’m going to be too close to those drones, and they’ll split and come after me too, so he better decide fast.”

  Phoenix didn’t respond, and Chase started to worry he was too tired to escape.

  “Arrow won’t let you take the heat,” Riot said, the jealous jab in his tone acceptable for once.

  “He will or I’ll never make out with him again. You hear that, Arrow?” She heard the surprised husk of Tristan’s laugh. So he was listening. “I have a plan. You have to trust me.”

  The returning silence was too much.

  “Tristan. Give me something.”

  She waited.

  “Okay.”

  The word was so small that it was mostly breath. In that moment, Chase couldn’t help but remember Pippin’s diatribe on okay being so inexact. And then her thoughts slipped to his odd and poetic last words on the melody of “Ode to Joy.”

  Up…and down.

  “Right,” she said. “On three. Arrow, you head up, and I’ll go down. These drones have issues with breaking thin atmosphere. You’ll be able to get away.”

  “How do you know that?” Riot asked.

  “Because I’ve seen it.”

  “Ready?” She counted.

  Tristan broke early, jerking and heading high, but Chase was ready. She dove through the cloud of drones, making several of them crumple and spin into a plummeting dive. Riot yelled, but Chase kept her eye on the sky. The drones were after her now, and she slowed just enough for them to cage her in like they had caught Tristan. “Is he clear, Riot?”

  “He’s headed back toward the d-line. I don’t think they’re following him, idiot machines.” He groaned loudly. “But that’s only because they’re all over us.”

  It was quite a sight to see. The sky had turned red through the cockpit as the drones flew perilously close. They kept low and tight, trying to wear her down, force her to the earth.