The phone rang, and Kale answered using his sharpest tone. Chase trembled when she heard her father’s voice over the line, aligning commands like a ripple of thunder. She touched the back of her right arm as memory-pain lit up her scar like lightning.
“Yes, General. Every satellite. We’ll have warning if they launch an airstrike.” Kale’s scowl deepened with each new order. Chase knew full well what that felt like.
“Of course, but she’ll want to speak with—” A clapping order cut Kale off. Chase sat down, shaking. Her father would ship her back to Michigan where Janice was scratching out a living. Tourn wouldn’t care if she starved or had to fight off one of Janice’s drunken boyfriends in the dead of the night.
He’d left her to that life once before.
“I’ll give her the message.” Kale hung up and sat back in his desk chair. He scrubbed his face with both hands until Chase thought she might detonate from the silence.
Finally, Kale sat tall. “To cut to it, you’re not expelled. You retain your wings. General Tourn believes you are too vital to the Streaker project to lose in light of the upcoming trials. You are, however, on restricted duty for the rest of your life. Hear me?”
Relief slid around her like a lava flow, painfully measured. “What else did he say?” She held herself back from adding, Did he tell you I shouldn’t be here?
“He said he believes it’s time for action.” Kale blew out a long breath. “It doesn’t matter to him that we’re not ready to face Ri Xiong Di’s forces. He’s ready for the cold war to heat up. That’s actually what he said. The man’s a warmonger.” Kale’s expression released. “That was out of line. Forgive me.”
Chase nodded, ready to do anything for him. “He is, General. You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Of course you know what he’s like.” Kale’s tone had gone warm—he was trying to make her feel better. Build her up. Chase knew this wasn’t over. She might have only spent one summer with her father, but it was long enough to know the man was never finished until he’d punched her with his words.
“What was his message?”
Kale hesitated. “This is Tourn’s message, not mine.”
“Understood.”
“He said, ‘If she breaks orders again, I’ll come there personally and take her wings in front of the whole academy.’”
Chase imagined it down to the crisp smell of the Green. Her father would stand over her, striking her with insults before steel-straight lines of her uniformed peers. Then everyone would know she was the daughter of the general—the only five-star general designated in the Air Force since the 1980s—Lance Harold Tourn.
Always those three names together. Like the assassin he was.
Chase squeezed her knuckles until they hurt, and her secret fear found voice. “General Kale, if the other cadets knew he’s my father, they’d say he got me in here. That I didn’t earn my wings. Wouldn’t they? That’s why you told me not to tell anyone during my first week.”
“If they said that, Harcourt, I’d say you’ve proven them wrong. You tested to the head of your class and then the head of the academy. You learned how to fly a Streaker when a dozen of your peers washed out. You did that. Tourn can’t take that from you.”
Kale was detached enough from his teenage years to believe that gem. Good for him. Chase knew the truth. The rest of the academy was filled with cadets who had spent years—and their families’ savings—on the training and tests in order to be selected. With the exception of Pippin, whose IQ planted him in the military’s line of sight like a neon flag.
Her classmates would burn her in effigy on the Green. And she wouldn’t blame them.
Kale cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have to tell you to keep your discovery about Phoenix to yourself, but I will. Not a word to the other cadets, including Sylph.” Chase nodded, and Kale added, “Don’t forget. Restricted duty. You’re dismissed.”
She stood and held on to the back of the leather chair. “I have a question, General.”
“I imagine you have many, and I bet I can’t answer a single one of them,” Kale said. Chase began to leave, but his voice stopped her at the door. “Ask your question, cadet.”
“How did that pilot know me?” Thinking about Arrow made all her father feelings evaporate sharp and fast. “He knew my call sign. My name. He knows the way I fly like he’s studied me.”
Kale lifted an eyebrow, and she didn’t need an answer.
She’d crashed into the truth all on her own.
10
HOOK SLAP
Catching on in a Big Way
After her morning classes, Chase headed to the weight room. Restricted duty meant she could train and run through her schedule—but no free time. No rec room. No fun.
So it was a good thing Kale didn’t know how much she enjoyed the bench press. There was something about being pinned beneath the weight, fighting to control the plunge before sending the bar up with a grunt—a little like being locked under a dare.
Chief Master Sergeant Black waved her in and handed her a pair of weightlifting gloves before barking at a trio of freshmen who were manhandling the medicine balls. Chief Black ran trainings like boot camp, but Chase kind of liked him for it. His clipped way of speaking reminded her of her father, and not in ways that made her shrink like a smacked child.
Pippin was late. Chase loaded the bench press, and the first few reps were nothing. Images of Phoenix and its laid-back pilot zoomed through her thoughts. She was being too tough on Arrow, maybe, but she couldn’t help it. He’d come on so strong with the laughing and the showing off that he knew her name.
Chase’s left arm wobbled beneath the weight, then her right lost integrity. The bar sunk on her chest and pinched the breath out of her lungs. She knew better. She’d been in physical training forty hours a week since she started at the Star. Flyboys had to be all-over strong to fight high-g. Every limb needed to be squeezed solid so that her blood made it to her brain despite the multiplied pressure and weight of gravity. G-LOC was a pilot’s worst nightmare. The “LOC” standing for “loss of consciousness.”