Breaking Sky(53)

Chase was a crazed mixture of fear and confidence. “You’re the offensive pilot, which would be great if we were armed. I’ve been trained for defense, remember?”

“We’ve got this,” Pippin said. “Chase can do it.” They were close enough now to see Sylph’s Streaker clearly, jerking toward the sun and back down.

The drone was cruelly beautiful, sleek with folded back wings and a narrow nose. Being unmanned, it didn’t need a cockpit, and the effect was a seamless maroon body—and large missiles. Up close, Chase finally understood why the drones were bloodred. Military machines were always camouflaged. Even the Streakers were silver-blue in order to blend into the sky. But not these drones. They were meant to be seen. To be feared.

Mission accomplished.

Phoenix broke right, swinging in to meet Sylph just as her frantic voice came over the radio. “Get this bogey off me!”

“Follow Phoenix,” Chase told Sylph. “He’s going to take you the long way home so they don’t track us.”

“What about you? That drone is fast, Nyx! Faster than we knew.”

“Go!”

Phoenix spun behind Pegasus, washing the drone off course with a burst of speed. Chase drove herself into the drone’s path, letting it grab her heat signal as the other Streakers escaped.

The twin cannon of their sonic booms resounded through her chest.

“We don’t have enough fuel to outrun it for long.” Pippin was so calm. Her rock.

“Okay then. We outfly it right now.”

Chase sent them past Mach 3…4. Sweat appeared all over her body, and she would have been shaking if gravity weren’t cementing her muscles. The pressure took each breath and drove it back down her throat.

And still, the drone was only a few hundred feet behind.

She had to stop it from coming any closer to the western seaboard with those massive missiles. And she could not let it return to Ri Xiong Di after having scanned the Streakers. Her only choice was to make it redline. Make it go so fast it broke itself apart.

“Nyx! I can’t…I’m graying out!” Pippin cried.

Chase heard him this time, but she couldn’t back down.

“I’m sorry.” She shot them faster. Tears bled from the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry!”

Mach 5 came with a stripping of color. She touched the speed, clung to it. Her whole world turned a white-gray blur. There was a chance—a good one—that this wouldn’t work. That the drone could go as fast as the Streakers. She throttled even farther forward.

Chase had no idea where they were. All she saw was ocean. She pulled low without letting up on the throttle. Alarms screeched through the cockpit, announcing the drone’s missile lock. Chase shot up just as a missile passed beneath Dragon’s belly.

“Pippin!” she yelled. “Check six!”

She prayed that he hadn’t passed out. The pause was too long, but her RIO’s voice returned unevenly. “It’s wobbling. It might. Somersault. Maybe.”

Maybe wasn’t good enough. Chase went faster. A large marker buoy—a metal tower—bobbed on the horizon, and she went straight for it, only pulling above it at the last second. It paid off. An explosion of orange fire behind her announced that the drone hadn’t cleared the buoy.

“Boola-boola,” Chase whispered.

Darkness enveloped her vision, shrinking in. She sucked oxygen, but it didn’t help. “Pippin?” She pulled on the stick to get them some more altitude. To buy some time for her to get her vision back, but it was too late. “Pip?”

Chase slammed at the controls as the crystal sky and the blue earth swirled, and she fell into a hollow.

Black.

Space.





CHARLIE





25


    DEADSTICK


   Downed


Chase woke on stone or ice. It felt like both. She recognized the dense cold air of the hangar with so much relief that she almost cried out.

“She’s all right,” Kale proclaimed. He put an arm around her shoulders and sat her up. “You’re all right,” he murmured just for her, and the strain in his voice made her hold on to him.

“Pippin?” she asked.

“He’s fine. You both went full G-LOC, but your RIO was lucky enough to engage the autopilot before he lost consciousness. He came out of it a few minutes ago. They’re walking him down to the infirmary.”

She vaguely remembered trying to punch the controls—to do what Pippin had managed—but it felt like her brain wasn’t plugged in to her body. She blinked at the hangar, and the scene blinked back like a black-and-white film. “I’m still seeing gray.”


“Oxygen starved. You may faint again if you stand.” Kale threw commands to the ground crew staring down at her, finishing with, “And someone get a stretcher!”

“No stretcher.” She tried to stand, and Kale pressed her to his chest. He smelled like coffee, and he felt different this close. Safe—and yet a firm reminder of what had almost happened. Chase squeezed her eyes and saw the drone’s missile breeze by. She twitched with the remains of her much-depleted adrenaline. Where was her jet?

“Dragon?”

“She’s going to need some fixing. Skidded out on the landing—autopilot was never designed to set down. I’ll get Adrien on it.” He swore. “It could have been so much worse, but we’ll worry about that later. You’re a hero for the moment, Harcourt.” Kale’s words fell on her like a blanket, and she ached to close her eyes and tuck into it. “Get a stretcher,” he called again. “I can’t carry her, not with my back.”