Breaking Sky

by Cori McCarthy

  The water seeped through her clothes, bringing a full body rush, and yet the image of Phoenix flew through her mind. Where did it come from? Why did it appear? Why didn’t Kale want her to know about it?

  “We saw another Streaker,” she said into his hair.

  Riot was too busy kissing her neck. “Never realized how much I liked you until I thought you were going to die. I think I love you.”

  “That’s crazy.” She skipped over his declaration as though it were a mud puddle. “Why did you think I was going to die?”

  Riot frowned. “Why is it crazy for me to love you?”

  “Because you don’t know me.”

  “I know you like this.” He pressed his hands on her hips and kissed her neck as though that was all the proof he needed.

  “What’s my favorite color, Riot?”

  “Huh?”

  “Exactly.” Chase grabbed his hair, hauling his face from its desperate mission toward her cleavage. “Tell me why you thought we were dying.”

  “They screamed over the emergency radio that you were crashing, but we didn’t have enough fuel to get back out to you. Sylph panicked.”

  “Wait. Sylph was worried about us?”

  “Jet Fighter Barbie has a heart after all.” He tried to kiss her again, but she held back.

  “So…you were called to save me? The tower broke radio silence? What did they say?”

  “Kale was yelling over and over, ‘Get to Dragon! Dragon is going down!’ They wanted us to get to you, although I’m not sure what we could have done except guard the crash site. Maybe call in your parachute if you had time to punch out.”

  Chase’s mind turned over slowly. “They called you by name? I mean, they called Pegasus? Did they say, ‘Pegasus, get to Dragon?’”

  Riot blew out a frustrated breath. “Who else would they be talking to?” He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head, which made her want to knock him away and fix her hair. Only she didn’t.

  The pieces were lining up.

  Dragon is going down!

  That’s why the third Streaker had appeared. Phoenix wasn’t an enemy. It had been tuned into the same emergency frequency.

  That pilot had answered the call to rescue them.

  6

  NO JOY

  Loss of Radio or Visual Contact

  Pippin was in their small room, looking bone-tired and sprawled across the lower bunk. He pulled off huge headphones when Chase came in, and classical music thumped through them. “What happened with Kale?”

  “He wouldn’t say anything, but by my powers of deduction, I figured out that whoever Phoenix is, he’s a friendly. The tower called out to him. They thought we were crashing.”

  “How could they make that mistake?” Pippin snarked.

  Weariness rolled over Chase. Flying was one thing, but handling people’s emotions—even Pippin’s—took more out of her than she liked to admit. This was delicate. Pippin was being distant and tight-lipped about something important. She knew she should proceed with caution, but when he tried to disappear beneath his headphones, she sat on him instead.

  “You’ve been weird since we saw the third Streaker.”

  “You’re all wet!” He pushed her off.

  “Incident in the showers.”

  Pippin lifted his eyebrow, throwing a secret sort of guilt at her. He was the only one who could do that, and she didn’t like him for it. “Riot? Or are we on to someone new these days?”

  “It was Riot, but thanks for that.” She unlaced her boots so she wouldn’t have to look at Pippin. The adrenaline drive that had kept her moving from Kale’s office to the rec room to the boys’ locker room was draining fast. Stillness crept in. “I caught Sylph trying to hollow out Tanner’s face in the ring. He’s talking trash about Riot and me.”

  “Tanner’s going to wash out if he doesn’t get under control,” Pippin said. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  Chase nodded. Could she have hurt Tanner so much that he’d drop out of the academy? She scrubbed her face. “Feels like watching him crash and burn.”

  “It is, in a way.” Pippin’s eyes were on her, hard and bleak. “You shouldn’t have played with him. He had real feelings for you.”

  “I wasn’t playing, but I do feel like I’m stuck on a Ferris wheel. Same problems over and over.” Guilt dumped on her like an avalanche. “Riot said he loves me. Ugh.”

  “And you told him he doesn’t know you?”

  “How do you…”

  “That’s what you always tell them. Say, I got an idea. Why don’t you let him know you?”

  “I don’t trust him.” She waited for Pippin’s snappy answer, but it didn’t come. “Maybe I just have to. To escape the pressure of the trials and whatnot. Kale understands.”

  “I assure you Kale does not understand your romantic conquests.” Pippin turned a page in his notebook. “And your ‘have to’ moments are getting worse.” Maybe he meant Tanner or Riot, but it felt like he was saying more.

  “Pip, today…you didn’t think we were going to die, did you?” Riot had sounded stupid when he said it, but now Chase saw her stunt from Pippin’s perspective. The ground so close. The fall seemingly irreversible…

  He plopped the headphones over his ears instead of answering. The marching base of “Ode to Joy” leaked through, and she flashed to his frantic humming as they careened toward the earth. She’d frightened him. That’s why he was being so weird.

  “Sorry,” she forced, but it didn’t help. Maybe the word was broken.

  “I am sorry,” she tried again. Pippin jotted in his notebook like he couldn’t hear her. She tried to peek. “You know there are already words to ‘Ode to Joy.’ German words.”

  “They’re lyrics, not words. And I hold to the observation that this song is not about joy.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  “Apology accepted, Chase.” He folded the notebook across his chest. “You’re not interested in my music. You’re pretending because you feel bad.” He waved his hand like a wizard. “I release you of your guilt.”

  His gesture might have worked if he didn’t immediately cross the room to sit at his desk. She settled back on his pillow, glancing over his family pictures stuck between the bars of the bunk above. Dozens of snapshots of his three younger brothers, his padded-hipped mother. Even one of his father, a man who he defined as “straight as a flagpole.”

  Chase’s thoughts flew by her own pre-academy memories. Loneliness shifted in like a cloud. It’d been years since she’d seen Janice, but Chase still smelled smoky hair and heard the tap of glossy nails when she thought about her mother. The woman was a waitress, an addict, an all-around failure of a human. The day Kale showed up at their door with an invitation to the Star was the best moment of Chase’s life. Well, second best. The first time she hit the sky in Dragon was never going to be surpassed.

  When Chase arrived at the Star, she realized how strange Kale’s in-person summons had been. The brigadier general hadn’t shown up on everyone’s doorstep.

  Just hers.

  When she asked him about it, he said he knew her father, and she avoided the rest of the subject as though it were radioactive. But not before Kale added, “It’s good you have your mother’s last name. It’ll be best if the other cadets never find out who your father is.” Chase believed Kale. The truth of her parentage was a secret so well guarded that even Pippin had been warned off of ever broaching the subject.

  She found herself tracing the stitched letters of her last name above her chest pocket. HARCOURT. The name still felt strange. Slightly alien. She’d only had it for a couple of years.

  Chase sat up, desperate for other thoughts. Phoenix appeared like a brilliant flare shot into a dark sky. Flying with him—why did she keep calling him him?—felt like a tease. A flirt. She
remembered how they’d popped Mach 3 in tandem, their jets tearing high unlike any flight she’d shared with Sylph as her wingman.

  “Who is he?” Chase muttered. She imagined that red helmet, stripping it off in her thoughts with a flourish. She swapped skin tones and features onto an unknowable face, each one bearing a smirk. He was cocky. She got that much from how he skirted close when he flew. How he jet washed her like it was nothing more than a playful bite to the shoulder.

  “Pip, why a secret third Streaker? Why can’t I know about him?”

  “Drop it, Chase. Remember what I said about Crowley? They’ll take your wings if you keep this up. Even if you’re Kale’s favorite.” He twirled his headphone cord. “There isn’t anything worse than a pilot without wings, but I’m pretty sure you would cease to be a person altogether.”

  Chase ignored him. “That pilot has to be young, right?”

  Pippin rubbed his eyes. “No. He just has to be in top shape. It’s possible he’s in his twenties, like some Olympic athletes. The Streakers need strong bodies. Massive endurance.” He paused. “Wait, why are we calling the pilot him?”

  “I keep asking myself the same question. Five bucks says he’s a guy.”

  Pippin groaned. “Chase, you don’t have the hots for the Phoenix pilot. Say you don’t. He could be a robotic lizard beneath that helmet.”

  “So you admit he exists!”

  They laughed together, but it phased into silence a little too fast.

  “You have to admit it was pretty hot how fast we flew, wing under wing…”

  Pippin pointed his pencil at a folded note on her bunk. “You got another summons from Ritz.”

  “Damn Crackers.” Chase balled it up without reading it.

  Pippin took out his digital atlas and the screen lit up. “You can’t keep ignoring the psychiatrist. You’re way overdue for an eval. Do me a huge favor. Don’t bring up the phantom Streaker.”

  “Ritz’ll have to catch me first.”

  “You delight in evading that woman far too much.”

  “Pleasure in the small things.” Chase tossed the ball of paper across Pippin’s desk. It bounced through a hologram of mountains, and he swept it into the trashcan. His headphones were over his ears again.

  “Back into the secret cave of Pippinland.”

  “Dwarf doors are invisible when closed.” He was really gone now. When the Tolkien dialogue came out, her genius RIO had retreated to inaccessible depths. Chase peeled off the top of her damp flight suit and let it hang from her hips. Ordinarily, she changed in their small bathroom out of courtesy, but she wasn’t feeling polite. She unhooked her bra and slingshot it at him. He caught it and tossed it over his head. No blush. No break in concentration.

  “No joy,” she said and sat on the edge of the bunk.

  “I love you, Chase, really I do, but I have a geography test tomorrow.”

  “You know more than Professor Davis. Besides”—she scraped up a pile of clothes beneath the bed and her father’s words from somewhere much darker—“love is pointless.”

  Pippin threw something at her over his head, so he didn’t see when she dropped all her clothes to catch it.

  Chase squeezed the little plastic pterodactyl and remembered her first moments at the Star. She had shivered in the hangar, surrounded by the other incoming freshmen who were waiting while the military police checked their possessions for contraband. The new cadets—fresh out of eighth grade—reviewed one another awkwardly, ready to judge, sort, and label. But the lanky boy beside Chase eyed the inspection as though one of the bags was about to explode.

  “Did you pack your bomb by mistake?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I’m more concerned about the pterodactyl.” The kid was a natural deadpanner.

  “A dinosaur?”

  “Pterosaur. Dinosaurs did not have wings.” He cursed. “My mom packed it to be cute. Any chance people will forget?”

  “Not before graduation.”

  An MP with curly-haired forearms extricated the plastic toy and held it up like it might contain drugs. “Whose is this?”

  The lanky kid’s blush went maroon at the hairline.

  “Mine,” Chase said. She took it from the MP. “Got a problem with pterosaurs?”

  “Watch your attitude, cadet,” the MP snapped. The group laughed at Chase. She took the fun out of their teasing by playing it up, perching the toy on her shoulder like a pet. She was sure this behavior would make her fellow cadets steer clear; she worked best on her own anyway.

  Not even an hour later, the pterodactyl incident saved her from the disastrous fate of an assigned roommate. A girl with a mighty blond braid took one look at Chase and demanded to trade rooms.

  A few minutes later, the lanky boy dropped his bag on the lower bunk. “Did you see those prototype jets in the hangar? I bet those engines could pop Mach 4 with a strong pilot. Maybe more.”

  “I want to fly them.”

  “Me too. Did you test into pilot range?”

  “I did. You?”

  “I’m leaning toward navigation, but I got a pass for any position I want.” He tapped his head, and it was a wonder the move didn’t come across as bragging. Maybe it was because it seemed a little forlorn. “The military wants my critical thinking skills. Bar none.”

  “That’s pretty cool.”

  He shrugged. “My call sign will be Pippin.”

  “That’s…different. Why did you pick it?” she asked.

  “Pippin was shanghaied into the Fellowship.”

  “I seriously don’t understand half of that.”

  Chase had to admit that three years later, she still didn’t understand Pippin as well as she wanted.

  • • •

  Despite her exhaustion, Chase spent the night after her encounter with Phoenix trudging in and out of sleep. Blasted by explosions, the black sky of her dreams lit up with gunfire.

  In the morning, she struggled free from her reoccurring nightmare. It felt like belly crawling beneath barbed wire, which was in fact what she’d done all those years ago. The back of her right arm stung, and she kneaded the scar tissue with her fingers. Chase had long since given up hope that it would someday cease to feel like a wound.

  She hopped down from her bunk and stretched. On her way to class, she took the hallway corner too fast and smacked into Dr. Ritz, the academy’s pocket-sized psychiatrist.

  The woman grabbed Chase by both arms to steady herself. “Chase Harcourt. Just the person I was hoping to run into. Although, not literally. You could have knocked me down.”

  “I’ll try harder next time.”

  Dr. Ritz narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean you’ll try harder to knock me down next time or harder not to, Chase Harcourt?”

  Chase maneuvered around the psychiatrist. The woman’s braided bun on top of her head was nearly as large as her head itself. “Why do you always use my whole name? It isn’t natural. You don’t see me yelling out, ‘Hey, Eugenia Ritz Crackers’ every five seconds.”

  “I’ve asked you repeatedly not to call me ‘Crackers.’”

  “Force of habit.” Chase popped her knuckles while Ritz adjusted her glasses.

  A good, old-fashioned standoff.

  Freshman year, Chase had been duped into thinking that Ritz cared. She’d opened up about Janice and her solitary childhood—until the psychiatrist started to report that Chase was “emotionally unstable.” There were talks about putting Nyx on the Down List, and Chase vowed not to give the woman another ounce of truth. Which pretty much meant she’d been dodging Crackers ever since.

  “Well, Chase…” Ritz looked pained in having to use half her name. “You’re ignoring my summons, so I’ll have to tell you right here. I’ve been asked to speak to you by Brigadier General Kale. He believes you are seeing imaginary jets in the sky.”

 
Chase, who had been trying to sneak away, stopped. It was a full-bodied brake that she felt in her chest like her harness had been pulled too tight. “Kale did not say that.”

  He wouldn’t. She had flown side by side with Phoenix. Kale could command her not to talk about what she saw, but he could not expect her to pretend it didn’t exist.

  To say that she had imagined it…

  Chase was frozen from her eyes to her knees, and she was sure the shock showed on her face. She trusted Kale. He trusted her. Would he really sell her out like that? Was Chase about to get kicked off the Streaker project? The blood rushed to her face in a way that brought way too much breathing and a sudden headache.

  Before Ritz could pipe back in, the bell rang and the hallway swarmed with cadets. “If the pressures of this arrangement are getting to you, Chase Harcourt,” Ritz yelled over the crowd, “there are options that—”

  “Option this.” Chase turned her back. She blended into the uniformed crowd, a sudden firestorm in her veins. There was a jet up there. A friendly that was as fast as Dragon. Maybe faster. “And when I catch it,” she muttered to herself, “I’ll drop it off in Crackers’s office.”

  7

  MAYDAY

  Dear God, Help Me

  Chase sat in Dragon’s cockpit. She shoved her leather gloves between each finger and spun with thoughts. It should have gotten better. It all should have been cleared up by now, but it wasn’t. She’d skipped her classes and gone after Kale, and what had he done?

  Walked off into a cadet-restricted section of the base, calling out “Things happen the way they need to happen.”

  Well, Chase couldn’t let things happen in a way that would drag her down. Pippin had brought up Crowley’s story as a warning to keep her mouth shut. Crowley had “imagined” spotting red drones over Florida, so they took his wings. He washed out. But Chase had made out with that boy a few times—enough encounters to know he wasn’t creative enough to fabricate such a sighting. He’d seen something, and the Air Force had sold him out. That would not happen to her. She wouldn’t say a word—she would show them. Somehow.