Breaking Sky(22)

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.