Breaking Sky (20 page)

But it didn't.

The sound of feet beating the concrete found them, the hammer of full-out sprinting.

Pippin burst onto the scene with his hair messed up and his uniform askew. He slid to a stop, making his boots screech. The near-panic look on his face faded as he locked eyes with Chase. “I'm sorry I'm late,” he said to her, a bouquet of forgive-me-nows in his expression.

“What are you doing here, cadet?” Tourn snapped.

Pippin looked at the general with a casualness that only a boy with an astounding IQ and a vital position in the military could get away with.

“Team Nyx,” he said with a shrug.

“You railroaded him!” Chase couldn't keep from smiling as she and Pippin walked the Green. “He had no idea how to come back from that.”

“There are a few perks to being a hot commodity in the military.” Pippin broke into a smile too. An easiness existed between them that had been absent since before JAFA. She didn't know why it was there, but she wanted it too bad to question it.

“I almost lost it on him right before you got there.” She rubbed the lingering hangar cold out of her arms. “It was a close one. If I had blown my top at him, really told him what I think, I'd be on a plane back to Michigan right now.”

“I should have been there earlier. I didn't know he had summoned you until Romeo found me. You knew I'd come, didn't you?” She nodded, but it felt meager. Must have looked it too. “I don't care what we're arguing about. You don't ever have to deal with that blockhead on your own, Chase. Promise. Didn't I tell you that the night I found out who he is?”

“You did.” She took a deep breath. “We've just been so unbalanced lately.”

Pippin rubbed his temples. Hard. For a second Chase worried it was all going downhill again. “I'm going to say it fast, so stay with me. I've been Voldemort. You've been Darth Vader.”

“Why do I have to be Vader? Voldemort is so much more badass.”

“You can't be serious. Fine. How about I'm Saruman and you're Sauron?”

“You've always been too much Tolkien for me.” She paused. “How about Dr. Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde? One of them is morally insensitive”—she motioned to herself—“and the other is a'rage with primal urges.”

“I'm not
raging
, but nice one.” He stopped walking to face her. “Dark guises aside, I'd like it if we found some unevil things to say to one another, especially before tomorrow morning.”

“Agreed,” she said. Did this mean she had to go first? She didn't care; she had to confess before something else got in their way. “I wasn't trying to out you to Romeo. I just wanted to talk to him. He's kind of ridiculous, you know.”

“I know,” Pippin said. “Now I'll admit I wasn't trying to be a complete dick to you about Tourn. Scratch that. I was trying to be a dick because I was…
am
…really frustrated. Watching you and Tristan has been hard.”

“Watching us? Why?”

“The way he looks at you like you…” Pippin was rallying something snarky. She saw it forming on his lips, and then it was gone and the truth fell out. “It's everything I want from Romeo. You know, a serious interest.
The
spark.”

They kept walking, heading for their barracks.

“I'm trying not to feel bad for myself. It's extraordinarily hard.”

They reached their room, and she sat down hard on the bunk, kicking out of her boots. “Pippin, I think you're right. Things with Tristan are…different?”

“You don't sound so sure.”

“I'm not. You know this stuff isn't coded for me.”

“Then allow me to translate.” Pippin sat beside her on his bunk. They weren't the sort to put their arms around each other, but his proximity did something along those lines. “Go for it.”

“What?”

“Go. For. It. You have nothing to lose with Tristan.”

“I could hurt him, Pip. I have a feeling that Tristan's jilted heart will make Riot's look like rumble strips.”

He shook his head. “I don't know about you, but I'm sick of playing it safe. It's getting me nowhere.”

Chase smirked. “Does that make me sick of playing it reckless?”

He looked at her from the side. “Maybe it does.”

“So what now?” she asked. “What can we do before tomorrow?” The trials reared up in her thoughts, making her nerves run a few spastic jumping jacks.

“I suggest you find Tristan and make the best of the countdown to doomsday. I have a date with Romeo. I'm teaching him how to play pool. Well, he doesn't know it's a date, but that works for me.” He looked at Chase from the side. “I like being near him. It's pure energy. Even when all I want to do is strangle him for all his blind flirting.”

“That's love, isn't it?” she asked, remembering how desperate she had been to spar with Tristan. Pippin nodded.

For the first time in her life, love made so much stupid sense.

She pressed her head to his chest and wrapped her arms around him. Pippin wasn't into hugs, but she held on until his arms fell loosely around her. “I realized something when I was about to take Tourn's head off,” she said. “He's the real stranger. I don't know why he does anything he does. But you—I can always see what's going on underneath, even if I have no clue what's happening on the surface.”

“Maybe we should work on the details,” he said. “All the…inconsequential stuff.”

“We've got a whole career together ahead of us. Suppose we should be open.” She took a deep breath. “For example, I know you don't want to be here, but I don't know why.”

“My family needs the money,” he said.

“That's not really an answer though, is it?”

He ruffed up his hair. “When I was nine, I told my mom about—well, me. She's such a loving person that I thought she would make me feel better about being different.”

“And she didn't?”

“She did not. And neither did my brothers when they found out. The teasing was…” Pippin's eyes were dark, his expression heavy, and she held him a little tighter. “It's not that I don't want to be here, Chase. I've never felt welcome anywhere. Not for who I really am.”

“So the gay genius RIO and the hated general's daughter. We're quite the pair.”

“Indeed.”

• • •

In the hangar, the Streakers stood together, wing to wing.
Pegasus
first, polished and beautiful.
Dragon
next, with brand-new wheels and more than a few dents and scratches. Tristan ran his hand over the metal skin, like Chase had done so many times with her bird.

“
Phoenix
reminds me of you,” she said, surprising him. “Cocky. Intense. A little sexy.”

Tristan turned around, his smile ready. “Sexy?”

She nodded, not bothering to hide a blush that seemed to start at her knees and spread ever upward. She stepped under
Dragon
, touching her jet's smooth skin. The pearly silver was her favorite kind of beautiful.

He stood close to her back. “If the Streakers don't pass, tomorrow might be the last time we fly together. I hate that thought.” Chase did too. Instantly. She rested against
Dragon
, and he took it as an invitation. He palmed the jet's side with both hands, Chase between his arms. Her body lit up as he leaned in.

Then he paused.

“I'm waiting for you to say that this isn't a good idea.” His eyes were their most fiery, and his hair was in need of some messing up. The kiss in the infirmary came back to her, wild and so much wanting. She took a breath and chose a small truth.

“You make me feel like I have six hands,” she said.

“I make you feel like a mutant?”

“No. I mean, you make me feel like every part of me is reaching for you.”

He made a sound like she'd just kissed him and punched him at the same time. “Chase, I—”

She put her hand over his mouth and led him up the ramp stairs to
Phoenix
's cockpit. “In,” she said.

He gave her a questioning smirk but sank into his pilot chair. His hands rested on the throttle and stick as though he might twist up into the sky at any moment. As she looked down at him, she felt scars on the inside, contrails that crisscrossed her mind without fading. She could tell Pippin that she wanted to love Tristan. She could even admit it to herself, but how could she get from the feeling to his lips?

She took the mach approach, climbing on top of him and straddling his lap.

He became very still. “What's going on, Chase?”

“I think…yeah. I'm just having a nervous breakdown.”

“Is that all?”

She traced his collarbones to the hollow at the bottom of his throat. “Distract me?”

“Gladly.” He touched a button on the side of his chair, and the seat reclined, bringing her farther onto his chest.

She surprised herself with a laugh. “Hey, I didn't know the chairs could do that.”

“I'm still growing. An inch and a half this semester alone.”

“Really?” She wasn't listening. She was too busy staring at his mouth.

“Why the breakdown, Chase? Did Tourn say something to you?”

She surprised herself with her answer. “No. Everything is okay. I mean, we have the trials, but I talked to Pippin, and I'm just…we're going to be okay. We'll pass the trials tomorrow, and then…” She messed with her hair. “Then we take Ri Xiong Di. No problem.”

“Yeah, no problem.” His doubt was playful. “So maybe I should kiss you—to pass that optimum interest in me or whatever you were worried about.”

“I don't think it's going to work this time.” Chase's chest rattled like a wild thing was beating against the cage of her ribs. “Besides, there are so many more important things right now. Not the least of which being the fact that we're going to be
hunted
in the sky tomorrow.”

“They won't bring us anywhere near the d-line,” he said. “We'll be all right.”

“That's a good lie.” She forced a laugh and leaned her face to his. “Say it again?”

“We'll be all right.”

She kissed him.

His lips tugged hers in a way that made her pull him closer. Closer. She couldn't tell if he was a better kisser than everyone else she'd tried or if she was just better with him.

Maybe both.

Chase hit the canopy release with her elbow, and the dome folded over them. She felt like she was thinking clearly, and at the same time, wasn't thinking at all. Her fingers sunk into his hair while his hands slipped from her face to her waist.

A dizzy, weightless sensation emerged as she felt that wide open everything that existed between them. And before she could decide what to do, she was already off that impossibly high ledge—and he went with her.

Chase kissed him hard and fast, and she felt like she was falling, falling, falling without ever coming near the ground.

Phoenix
's cockpit filled with a knocking sound. An urgent pound.

Chase lifted her head off Tristan's shoulder. She'd exhausted herself in kissing and late-night talking and then slept like the dead. Her body was twisted and knotted from the way she had curled up on him all night, and yet it might have been the best sleep she'd ever had.

The dome of the cockpit was incriminatingly fogged, although they'd done nothing more than kiss. She'd completely let go, and she was a little startled to find that when she stopped trying to escape feeling, she didn't need skin or the drug of touching. She just needed him.

But it was morning now, and they'd overslept.

“Tristan, get up.”

“Can't,” he said. “You're on top of me.” He lifted his head and looked at her. Chase was ready for that guilty distraction she felt after hooking up, but it didn't come. Instead, she kissed him all over again and found his mouth warm and wanting.

“Hey there,” he said when she pulled away. “Good morning to you.”

The knock came again, and Chase jumped. “Someone knows we're in here.”

“I can hear you, dumbasses.” Sylph's voice shot through the thick glass. “Open up.”

Chase struggled to fix her uniform while Tristan hit the release. The cockpit opened, and Sylph glared down from the top of the ramp stairs.

“Let me guess. It's not what it looks like.”

Tristan glanced at Chase in a way that made her heart dive.

“It pretty much is,” Chase said.

Sylph grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the cockpit. “Everyone is heading down here in twenty minutes. I've already seen the government board members.” The tall blonde shuddered. “You two need to get your butts in your zoom bags.”

Tristan and Chase split directions at a sprint before they said good-bye.

Chase was halfway to the Green when she ran into Pippin. He had her G-suit and helmet. She began to dress behind an old drone covered by a tarp while Pippin played lookout.

“I think your night went better than mine,” he said. “But tell me you didn't sleep in the cockpit. Just thinking about that makes me feel smooshed.”

Chase stuck her head out from behind the tarp. “It was so smooshed and so worth it.”

Pippin gave her a quirk of a smile. “You're in love, so I'll allow that one.”

“How gracious.” She finished zipping up, tucked her helmet under her arm, and stepped out. They started walking back toward the Streakers, where they were supposed to meet everyone. “Sylph said she already saw the board.”

“I did too. A whole series of deep frowners, and your father is their king.”

“What else is new?”

“I told Romeo I'm gay.”

“You did?” She found herself choosing her words as if they were steps on uneven ground. “And it went…okay?”

“He immediately began to select boys for me from the crowd in the rec room.” He gave her an exhausted but amused look. “So, yes. It went
okay
.”

“That really is an inexact word.”

“Multipurpose.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I feel like I've turned a corner, you know? Maybe I'll reinvent myself in the public eye. The Air Force is big enough for one super gay RIO, you think?”

“I highly suspect you're not the only one.”

“Maybe I'll start a club.”

Chase and Pippin locked eyes. It was too funny. Too surreal. They burst out laughing.

They turned the corner around a C-130 Hercules and found everyone waiting.

• • •

A fistful of moments later, the Streaker teams stood at attention before a host: the government board, Adrien, Lance Howard Tourn, Brigadier General Kale, and a dozen higher-ups from both the American and Royal Canadian air forces—and just for giggles apparently, Dr. Ritz.

Chase gave Crackers a wink when she caught the woman looking her way. Ritz's expression bugged out, and Chase had trouble holding down a snicker. Man, she'd love to let the psychiatrist know about the latest turn in her love life. A memory of the previous night poured all over her until she felt liquid hot inside, and she was unable to stop herself from glancing at Tristan. The boy got better looking every time she saw him.

Chase pulled back to reality against her will, forcing herself to assess the people who were deciding the fate of the Streakers. The government board was made up of four women and three men—all wearing tight, appraising expressions. Lance Howard Tourn seemed to hover over them like a smoke cloud as they conferred with the leader of the group, a man with coffee-colored skin named Mr. Archmen.

“He's so important, he's plural,” Pippin whispered after the introductions. Chase hid her smile in the tightness of her mouth.

Tourn didn't seem to see Chase or anyone else as he began to lecture, keeping his eyes on the Streakers as though they were his real audience. His growl of a voice wasn't as deep in person as it had been over the conference room video line, but his choice of words was familiarly cold. He spoke of the importance of rebuilding the Air Force and of each and every piece of airpower. He said that the U.S. was a nation founded on these sorts of days. The sorts of days that changed everything.

Tourn concluded by bringing up the afternoon when the U.S. lost five hundred and seventy-nine fighter jets in the skies over Taiwan. She wondered if he'd get choked up while remembering all his friends who had died. He didn't. But he added that this day's success would make up for that tragedy.

“So no pressure, guys,” Tristan whispered down the line of cadets. Chase slipped on a smirk while Romeo whispered something in French. Sylph hissed a hush sound that made Kale look over all of them with a parental eye.

Mr. Archmen stepped forward next. He examined the line of cadets long enough for Chase to notice that he took an extra few seconds on her, searching her face for the Tourn family resemblance, no doubt. He turned away disappointed, and Chase was happy for the first time in her life that she was practically a carbon copy of Janice.

Archmen presented interactive tablets to the representatives, Kale, and Tourn, including a syllabus of the trials split into three subjects: speed, maneuverability, and combat. Chase tried to focus on the rundown, but Archmen was purposefully vague. What kind of combat? Did they expect her to dogfight with Tristan or Sylph? Fire simulated weapons at each other?

No.

Their weapons
weren't
fake. Kale had told them only two days ago they would be flying hot. Whatever playfulness she'd gleaned from being with Tristan and joking with Pippin was beginning to leave her. Why wouldn't they tell the teams what the trials entailed?

Chase listened through the rising pound of her anxiety, her eyes dragging back to the spot where her father watched her. His clipped hair was thinning and his eyes were a fading color, but the scar along her arm still burned.

“All right. Let's get to it,” Kale said, interrupting the last of Archmen's words. The Streaker teams saluted, and Kale took Chase's elbow and whispered, “Aim high. Fly, fight, win.”

She nodded, a tight feeling in her throat that was some amalgamation of pride and fear. The representatives followed Kale to the tower to watch the takeoffs and monitor the onboard cameras. The Streaker teams looked at one another, and Romeo's wristwatch alarm sounded.

Sylph grabbed him, ripped off the watch, and stomped it into a pile of parts on the floor. When she looked up, a few blond hairs had broken loose from her braid. “I feel better.”

They shook hands and wished one another good luck. Chase saved Tristan's hand for last, but he didn't take it. He pinched her ear instead.

She couldn't stop herself from giving him a hug. “Fly fast,” she whispered into his neck.

“I'll try to beat you. Always works.” He sounded confident, but his arms tightened around her. The fact that this might be their last flight as wingmen made it impossible to let go.

The teams separated to perform preflight checks.

Sylph hung back. “Be careful, Nyx.”

“You be careful,” Chase replied. “I can fly these challenges with my eyes closed.”

“I was talking about that boy.” Sylph arched an eyebrow. “I'd keep both eyes open with him. Wouldn't want to end up a mere mortal after all your faithful years of myth building, Goddess of Chaos.”

“That's Daughter of Chaos, Sylph.”

Sylph glanced behind Chase. “Isn't that the truth.”

It wasn't until Sylph had stepped around to the other side of
Pegasus
that Chase heard the throat-clearing grunt. Tourn was standing right behind her.

“When the time comes, don't flinch,” he said. It was a weird moment, and she thought he might say more. Something important. Nope. “Get to it, pilot.”

Chase felt herself against a wall again, but this one wasn't of her own making. This was the barrier her father had constructed to keep her out. To make sure their relationship would always be on his terms. Chase had no idea what came over her, but it came on strong. “Kale told me you know how to help everyone under your command. You get everyone what he or she needs. That's your superpower.”

“I'm a man. Not a superhero.”

She fought for more words, but they weren't as certain as the first ones. “Even so, you couldn't figure out what I needed. And it was so obvious.”

“I got you into the Star, didn't I?” His tone leaked annoyance. “Isn't that what you wanted? Didn't you tell me that fifty times?”

“
Want
and
need
are different. And you shouldn't have faked my aptitude tests. If anyone found out, I'd—”

“Faked?” He grunted. “You took those tests the summer you were with me. Don't you remember?” Chase was stunned. She did remember working constantly. Studying and reciting information. Running drills and learning how to use the flight simulator.

Tourn hadn't fabricated her application?

Chase was struck rigid. The whole time she'd been here, she'd thought she'd stolen someone's spot. “But you…faked…”

“I did no such thing.”

The truth stung more than the lie she'd always believed. Without it, she had to accept that she deserved to be at the Star. That she was as smart as her peers. As driven and dedicated. No way. She was tantamount to a screwup, wasn't she?

Her breath became uselessly fast. God, Tourn was so good at taking out her knees.

Chase touched the back of her arm. The long scar was raised even through the layers of her flight suit. She tasted the mud of the landmine obstacle course. “You…you left me beneath that wire for hours.”

“I wanted you to get yourself out.” He looked away first, and it surprised her.

“Christ,” they said at the same time.

“Understand, cadet, that I am no father figure. It's not part of my mechanism. But I accept that, and I've made sure you were looked after at the academy.”

“Looked after?” Chase switched on, revving so fast that her chest felt tight. “Kale. You told him to treat me special, didn't you?”

“I told him you were my offspring. That's all I had to say.”

Chase was stunned, her shock bordering on panic. “Am I Kale's
assignment
?”

“Don't be such a woman,” he commanded. “He acts outside of my orders repeatedly, especially when it comes to you. I even heard he personally invited you to the Star.”

Chase fell into the memory. Kale in her apartment, with those shoulders that could hold up anything. Fourteen-year-old Chase had thought Kale was there to tell her that her father was dead, but then he sat down with Janice and showed them the acceptance letter. Kale had said that Chase's tests showed she had real promise to be a pilot, and when Janice laughed, he'd shot the woman a look that should have killed her.

“So you gave me Kale.”

“I gave you a life here. Don't blow it.” Tourn stalked off, and Chase was so disoriented that she couldn't make it through her preflight routine.

“It's cool. I took care of checks,” Pippin said, coming around the right wing. “Hey. You don't look so great.”

“I'll be fine,” she lied. She climbed the roll-away stairs, ducked into the cockpit, and fastened her harness.

“What did he say to you?”

“I…I don't know.”

“But you survived, Chase,” her RIO said through the link in their helmets. “Now we have to fly. Harness up those feelings and whatnot.”

Chase couldn't stop herself from watching Tourn walk through the hangar to rejoin the government board. The other higher-ups didn't talk to him. Didn't look at him. It had been that way at his own base, everyone giving her father a wide berth. “They hate him.”

“What?”

“They look at him and they see dead Filipinos. They see all those media images of the radiation poisoning.” She felt sick. “It doesn't matter that he was ordered to do it.”

“So?”

Things began to line up. Tourn lived as an outcast, seldom leaving his base. Never answering the criticisms on the bombing of the Philippines, which the media dug up whenever ratings were low. It was a wonder he even had that one-night stand eighteen years ago. And when he had finally met the product of that encounter, he'd been so obviously unhappy with her.

“Did he reject me because I'm too much like him?”

Pippin was quiet. She felt a change in his breathing through the amplified sound in their helmets. “Chase. Listen to me. You're both pilots. That's where the similarity ends.”

“I always thought I couldn't cut it, but maybe he didn't want a clone.” Chase had shown up at his base, ready to enlist. A ridiculous twelve-year-old who bragged she could do fifty push-ups. The way he'd looked at her…so startled. Taken aback even.