Breaking Sky(20)

Chase’s left arm wobbled beneath the weight, then her right lost integrity. The bar sunk on her chest and pinched the breath out of her lungs. She knew better. She’d been in physical training forty hours a week since she started at the Star. Flyboys had to be all-over strong to fight high-g. Every limb needed to be squeezed solid so that her blood made it to her brain despite the multiplied pressure and weight of gravity. G-LOC was a pilot’s worst nightmare. The “LOC” standing for “loss of consciousness.”

Lights out meant life out.

Black spots popped into her vision as she did her best to get the situation back under control. No luck. Pippin appeared, grabbed the bar, and lifted it onto its supports. Chase sucked in air. Her head spun, especially because Pippin reeked of the caustic soap they used in the kitchen’s industrial-sized dishwashers.

“Did you…you…”

“Aerate, Chase. You’re purple.” Pippin sat beside her on the bench.

She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. The weight room's sounds and smells trickled in. The clank and whirl of machines. Metal and salt in the air. When she lifted her head, the world felt lighter. Straighter.

“Working off those demerits?” she asked. “Kale told me you gave him cheek.”

“Just finished,” he said.

This was where she should say thanks. Thanks for standing up to Kale on her behalf. Instead, she looked up and gave him a guilty half-smile. He thumped her on the back like he knew what she was thinking. But did he? His teasing in the canyon—about her not knowing him—came back like a bad taste at the back of her throat.

“Next time, I insist you pull some of those Nyx strings and get me on hangar cleanup. Kitchen duty is frightful. The cook told me I had a cute butt.” Pippin looked truly horrified, but Chase couldn’t stop a snicker.

On the other side of the room, freshmen dropped a payload of weights on the floor, and Chief Black threatened their lives in a way that made everyone in the room stifle laughs.

“I’ve been thinking.” Chase paused for emphasis. “He watched our flight tapes. That’s how he knew us.” It took Pippin a few moments to catch that she had switched to discussing Phoenix. “Maybe the government hired them to run some sort of combat test during the trials. How long will it really be before Ri Xiong Di copies the Streaker engines and we’re fighting our equivalents up there. Right? We need to prove we can take down other manned jets.”

Pippin pushed her off the bench and fixed his weightlifting gloves. “Drones are one thing, but I don’t like the idea of missile locking on other pilots. No matter what side they’re on.”

“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.