Breaking Sky(90)

“Kale. Please.” Chase didn’t know why she needed his approval so badly, but she asked for it nonetheless. “You have to trust me.”

“Do not sacrifice yourself, Harcourt.”

“Yeah, please don’t,” Riot agreed in a humor-hollow voice.

Kale sighed, a deep, tremulous breath that reached through her bones. “Be careful, my girl.”

His words thrilled her and focused her mind on the runway. She breathed.

Chase felt as though she’d run the gauntlet, and yet she still wasn’t in the air. They zipped across the apron at lightning speed, and all the while, she wondered at how her actions had felt so unattached before. Now, everything she did touched something else. All connected.

And if she failed again, she could kill Riot. Or herself. Or unwittingly give Ri Xiong Di a Streaker. She wouldn’t mess up. Not again.

Chase’s thoughts clung to Tristan being under attack. She had to get to him. There was no time to be afraid. To remember the crash. She closed her eyes long and tight before easing the stick into a lift.

And took to the dark sky.

As soon as she left the runway, the blue lights flicked off and the Star was lost in blackness.

She pushed forward, and the air welcomed her with almost-morning hues, spreading open at the same time it folded her in. Dragon may have been killed in action, but Chase could feel the memory of her bird between her palms. She applied the same sensation to the way she missed Pippin and found with a soft shock that it fit.

He was still there. Alive in her mind.

Chase held on to that feeling, wanting a few more minutes with the memory of her RIO’s brilliance and its inherent quirk. His head half-swallowed by headphones. His boots always untied. She saw his face silhouetted through the small window in the Star City Centrifuge right before she lost her sight. He was always there, and she could take that with her.

Pegasus raced from the dawn. The eastern sky flamed with colors, orange-red hands reaching through the deep navy. Chase turned the network link off, and they popped Mach 3. Riot whooped into the strain. “Keep yourself tight!” she warned. “I’m not slowing down if you gray out.” Her own body was so hard that she felt leaden.

Somewhere close to the Bering Strait, she passed a mass of old fighter jets heading west. Pegasus soared past them, out over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

“This is it,” Riot said after a few minutes. “This is the demarcation line.”

“Any bogies?”

“No. Looks like they’re all on Phoenix.”

Chase shot them over the invisible divide without a second thought. She heard Sylph’s RIO swearing at his controls—at whatever he was picking up. “Talk to me, Riot.”

“Phoenix is near China. Over land. There are hundreds of drones, Nyx. And I just got something from the Star.” He paused like he was still working out the code. “The missile defense system has been hacked. Overridden. If those drones get through, nothing will stop them.”

Chase’s heart banged. Two Streakers against all those drones. The rest of the old fighter jets didn’t stand a chance. She prayed they wouldn’t join the fight—they’d only get killed.

She kicked up the speed.

“Why are we engaging?” Riot yelled. “What exactly are we going to do against hundreds of drones?”

“We’ve got missiles, don’t we?”

“We’ve got two missiles, Nyx. Two against probably five hundred drones.”

“Then we’ll make them count.”

? ? ?

Chase embraced the pinch of high-g. Her vision was still colored, and she wasn’t backing down until she blacked out. Tristan needed her, and although the pressure pinned her back, her desperation to get to him drove her forward.

When they were deep in Ri Xiong Di airspace, she let off the throttle to catch her breath. Not a drone in sight. “Where’s Phoenix, Riot?”

“Due west. He’s close. We should see him soon.”

Chase wanted to open the radio and call his name over and over. She wanted to be back in her bunk, tangled with him, letting every single one of his touches sink in. But instead, they were speeding over land, and not just any land—China.

“Look at that,” Riot called. “Downtown Beijing. It’s huge!”

Chase glanced at the ground, catching the expanse of a tightly built-up city huddled at the merge of northern and western mountain ranges. Beijing was a mess of metal and high buildings, but the mountains were green and tall.

“There he is!” Riot called out. “Mother of God, look at that.”

The horizon was filled with a hive of blood-colored drones surrounding a pinprick of blue-silver. The drones darted like one huge net of red wasps, caging Phoenix’s every twist and turn.

Tristan wasn’t flying very fast, and his wings dipped unevenly.

“Arrow,” she said over the shortwave.

The pause was too long.

“Dieu merci! Nyx?” Romeo asked. “Is that you?”

“State your condition,” she said.

“Arrow isn’t talking anymore. He’s going to pass out any minute,” Romeo said shakily. “Me too. We’re flying on vapes, Nyx.”

Tristan wasn’t talking, but he could hear her.

“Arrow, break right. I’ll smash through and get their attention. If we’re lucky, they’ll confuse our birds and follow me.” He didn’t respond, and her heart slammed into the silence. “Come on, Arrow. On three. One, two, three.”