Breaking Sky(87)

“I’m not that ugly, am I?” he asked.

Chase looked him over, boots to brow ridge. “You’re not. But you should try not seeming so horny all the time. You don’t send the right impression with your eyes on every girl in the room.”

He smirked. “It’s not that obvious.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Sérieusement?” He paled. “I mean, seriously?”

“And lose the call sign. It’s not doing what you think it’s doing. What’s your real name?”

“Adam.”

“Nice to meet you, Adam.” She took his hand. It was weird, and she didn’t care. “I’m Chase.”

“In my hometown, we would say, ‘Enchanté.’” The moment stilled as Romeo gave her a long, sorrowful look that prepared her for his next words. “I’m sorry about the crash, Chase. I miss Henri already. He was my first friend at the Star.” Romeo added something she didn’t understand. It sounded mournful yet nice.

“Pippin told me you are sweeter in French. He was right.”

Romeo looked at his boots. “Did he…what did he say when it happened? Did he suffer?”

“It wasn’t long,” she said. Her heart began to pound as she made herself remember. “His last words were…strange. I mean, he’d messed up his head, but I think it was more than that. I think he was telling me I shouldn’t fly.”

“What did he say?”

“Fools fly.” Those words struck at her like something clawed, but Romeo started to laugh, and she stared at him with her mouth falling open. “You think that’s funny?”

“Oui. I think he was having a little fun with you. Being too clever as always.”

“How so?”

“It sounds like Gandalf’s famous death line from The Lord of the Rings. He says—”

“Fly, you fools,” Chase finished. Pippin had made her watch that old movie a dozen times. She shook her head. “There’s no way that’s what he meant.”

Fools fly. No. Listen, Chase.

He had been trying so hard to, what? Make a joke?

Romeo put a hand on her shoulder. “It means, escape. Be free. Survive.”

She ran her hands through her hair. “That does sound a little more like Pippin.”

“Doesn’t it?” Romeo’s smile was kind, and it gave her the smallest lift. Small but necessary.

Tristan approached, and the solemn look on his face brought her back down. “Is it bad?”


“Yes,” he said. “They haven’t had any communication from Sylph. The radio, network—everything is jammed. No doubt she’s too scared to open her signal and sneak a message through. They’re pretty sure she’s still in the sky and that the drones haven’t crossed the d-line yet, but the satellite could be wrong. I’ll be able to switch on the shortwave when I’m close enough and get her report on what’s happening.”

“The Streakers shouldn’t be used as messenger pigeons,” Chase said. “There’s got to be more we can do.”

“What I can do is blast back here in time to give everyone enough warning to seal themselves in the bunkers.”

Romeo headed to the cockpit. “Come on, Arrow,” he called back.

Tristan pinched her ear before pulling his helmet on. “This might seem superstitious, but I don’t want to say good-bye.”

“Deal,” she said, forcing her chin up.

Chase watched Phoenix leave the hangar and sweep into the dark sky. She wrapped her arms around her chest and started back to the Green, but she could go no farther than a large tarp spread across the floor. It was covered in bits of wreckage.

Dragon.

The charred, smashed remains of her beloved bird. The emptiness that Tristan and her friends had helped hold back sprung forward, and she felt Pippin’s absence all over again.

? ? ?

Adrien was swearing in French, digging through a pile of Dragon’s smoke-stained parts. Her head was half inside a dismantled engine. “Socket wrench,” she called out to no one.

Chase handed the wrench over. “Here it is.”

“Merci.” Adrien glanced out at her.

“What are you doing with my baby?” Chase asked.

Adrien chuckled. “She was my baby first, Ms. Harcourt.”

Chase put some ideas together that she hadn’t bothered to before. “You built the Streakers in Canada and then shipped two of them here. And you worked with the Canadian Streaker team, but you never came here to see us. Why?”

“We weren’t supposed to be working together, were we?” She tightened a bolt, huffing. “But now we’re together for good and ill. What’s left of us anyway.”

The engineer seemed to be hinting at the larger picture. Pippin wasn’t the only one who had been lost. JAFA was gone, its cadets and servicemen scattered or dead, and all because people like Tourn thought we could beat Ri Xiong Di at its own game.

“We can’t win,” Chase said.

Adrien looked at her. Grease had smeared along her face, and the red alarm light tinted her white hair to a soft pink. “We cannot. Not as we currently stand.”

“How do we do it then?”

Adrien dipped back into her work. “You already know that answer. More Streakers means more strength. You have done your part on that front. Well, you did your best.”