Breaking Sky(81)

“It’s only been five days since the crash,” the psychiatrist said carefully.

“Yeah. It’s been five days!” Chase said right back. “Five days of ‘any minute now’ hostilities. They need me.” Chase held back from adding that she needed the air. The speed. Flying was the only thing that could keep her from slipping backward. “You’ve seen the news. People are freaking out. They’re afraid Ri Xiong Di is going to drop a thousand bombs on us at any moment. We have to do something.” She shook her head. “I have to do something!”

“What is it you can do?” Adrien asked kindly.

Chase glanced away. “I’ll figure it out when I get up there. That’s what I always do.”

Ritz exchanged a look with Adrien. “You have not yet proven you will work well with another RIO. It would be dangerous to send you up there.”

“Let me try with Romeo. Or better yet, let me go alone. If I get in Pegasus for ten minutes, I know I can get in the air. This stupid machine is messing up my concentration.”

“Out of the question,” Ritz said. “You’ve had too much trauma.”

Adrien reached out a soft hand to Chase’s elbow. “The Streakers weren’t meant to be flown alone. You would only be able to take off and land. Even then, it’s precarious to fly without a RIO to guide you.”

Chase’s chest turned to lead. Adrien was trying to help, but Chase heard it like a dare. Either way, she spun and left, making for the hangar so fast that the hallway blurred.

? ? ?

Chase found the Star eerily deserted. Cadets were shut up in their barracks, and classes had been canceled. She shot through the Green, glancing into the rec room. It was empty and shockingly smelled of old laundry.

A bold, red alert light pulsed overhead. Despite the pall it threw on the scene, the alarm hue was relieving. If red drones were inbound, if the whole Star were about to be blown to smithereens, the lights would go out completely. The dark of the Arctic could only protect them if they didn’t cast a single beam—and if the missile defense software worked.

Chase’s mouth went dry as she remembered JAFA’s blaze, realizing for the tenth time that day how little of a chance they all stood against Ri Xiong Di. Tourn had been an idiot to wish for war. What could possibly stop the New Eastern Bloc from absorbing them into their empire? The only reason the Second Cold War had started in the first place was because of Tourn’s bold nuclear strike on the Philippines. Ri Xiong Di did not think America would escalate so swiftly, and we’d scared them back a bit. But now? What could warn off the red drones before this turned into a last-man-standing kind of war?

Chase swallowed her doubt and misgivings and headed into the hangar. First things first, she had to get into the sky and clear her head…and her heart. But MPs stopped her inside the door.

“Cadets don’t have permission to be in the hangar,” they said together.

“I’m going to see Kale,” she lied. They exchanged looks. “He’s in the tower,” she invented. “He sent for me.”

“Let me see your pass,” the smaller MP said.

“I might have forgotten it.” She grabbed around in her pockets just to kill time, and that’s when she caught sight of Sylph’s boyfriend a few yards off. “Staff Sergeant Masters!” she called out. He stopped and eyed her cautiously, his arms stacked with paperwork. “Tell them Kale sent for me.”

She could see the calculation in his expression. Masters knew Chase wanted this and that she knew about his big secret. “Kale wants her,” he finally said. He turned briskly and took off through the cold concrete building.

“See?” Chase said. The MPs let her through, although one of them followed her until she ducked out of sight behind one of the older jets. She slid under the tarp and leaned against the cool metal of an F-14 Tomcat.

What was she doing? Was she really going to jump in Pegasus without permission?

“It was easier to break the rules when you were here, Pip,” she admitted aloud. “Not so much fun without you pointing out all the ways in which things could go wrong.”

Her hands spread over the Tomcat as her thoughts spun out of control. In truth, everything was wrong without Pippin. Wrong in the simulators. Wrong when Tristan tried to talk to her. Wrong when Kale looked at her like she was a shattered figurine. Wrong when she’d asked to meet with her father after the crash.

Wrong when Tourn had refused.

Chase’s fingers snagged on a hole in the jet. Several of them. She pushed back the tarp and looked over a spray of bullet holes across the metal. They were rusted and leaning in. Crumbling with age—a mark of the nationwide fear of war that spectacularly outdated her own. She had to do something.

Tears prickled, but she shoved them down, running for Pegasus instead. She waited until she could move unseen, climbed up the wing, and sunk into the cockpit. It smelled of Sylph, and the pilot’s chair was too far back. “Bird legs.” Chase used the lever she’d found while in Tristan’s cockpit to adjust the angle. “The girl has bird legs.” She rubbed her cheeks, trying to get past the sudden rush of remembering how she and Tristan had somehow fit in one seat.

That felt like years ago, but it was only six days. Six.

She’d kept her distance from Tristan since the accident, and he’d given her that much, not that he had much time because he was in the air half of the day. Her face burned on those thoughts as she imagined him exhausted and flying the d-line. She should be the one up there toiling away. Not him.