Breaking Sky(71)

Truth was, even if they’d been fighting for a year, she’d still want Pippin there above everyone else. She didn’t have to tell him why her father haunted her for Pippin to know that he did. He knew. That’s what was so strange about them. They knew the deepest things about each other without ever having the details. They just knew.

Chase met her father beneath Dragon. Tourn had his hand on her wing, and it just about made her growl. Her pulse, which had grown erratic in the buildup to seeing him, began to chill. He was the same as five years ago. The same as the view screen images in the conference room. Clipped gray hair and overly round forearms. A uniform pressed so sharply that it felt like a plastic mold he had been poured into.

For a long moment, she watched him examine the engine bay and fiddle with the landing gear. She recognized a pattern to his searching; he was performing preflight checks. It made her remember that he was a pilot. The pilot.

He turned around, and she clipped her hand to her forehead, strictly out of habit.

Tourn saluted back. “At ease.” He took too long to speak. Long enough for Chase to remember she wasn’t the only one who had no idea what to do with their biological relationship.

“General Tourn?” she finally said. “You requested my presence.”

“Surprised you, didn’t it?”

She didn’t answer. Was he trying to surprise her? If so, why?

“It’s been a long time,” he added. Boy, this was going nowhere fast. Tourn felt it too. He started talking. At her. “When I first saw the specs for these birds, I thought it was a joke. HOTAS control? Manual navigation from a backseat RIO? Ridiculous.”

Chase wasn’t amused. She knew the Streakers were an odd mix of old-school design and killer engines, but that was why she loved them. Tourn appeared to appreciate them despite these qualities. The term essential differences, one of Kale’s favorites, sprang to mind.

“Then I saw these birds in the air. Unbelievable.” He looked like he was waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. He touched the missiles beneath Dragon’s wings. “I flew with these type of sidewinders once. Aim left of center, no matter what the target reader says.”

“Excuse me?” Was he really giving her tactical advice?

“I’ve been watching your tapes, cadet. You’ve got a gutsy streak. It works for you, but you need to remember to listen to your wingmen. You surprise the enemy—that’s good. Surprise your wingmen, and you might cost them their lives. Understood?”

“Yes, General Tourn.” So this was just a standard maverick pep talk. Great.

“You’re ready,” he added with a grunt.

Ready? Chase choked on that word the second it came out of his mouth. A jet fired up somewhere nearby, and the whole hangar turned into a mess of sound for long minutes. When it had left through the great rolling doors, Chase and her father still faced each other. She didn’t see herself in his watery blue gaze or the harshness of his features. She didn’t feel any resemblance to his calculating heart.

They were the real strangers.

“So you think you know so much about me because you know my flying?” It was exactly the kind of petulant thing she didn’t want to say. It would lead down a negative road. Remind her that she wasn’t a person to him. She was a pilot. A cadet. A cog he’d put into the machine.

Chase was supposed to be at ease, but her whole body was so tense that if she had fallen over, she would have smashed like a pane of glass. She felt like that was going to happen at any minute. At the next word maybe.

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.





32


    QUICK FIX


   A Stopgap Measure


“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?”