The silence was like flying into a cloud. All white. No sign of the world for a solid minute.
“You told me you were an orphan,” Riot said finally.
“Wait. Tourn?” Sylph asked. “The murderer of the Philippines? He’s like a hundred years old.”
“He’s in his fifties,” Chase said, finding it bizarre that the first thing they’d be discussing was Tourn’s age. Weren’t they appalled? Angry with her?
Romeo swore in French, while Pippin looked disappointed. He left for his physical without another word. Chase made a quiet, strangled sound at his back. Pippin didn’t know what the rest of the note said. She had to tell him.
In the meantime, Sylph launched an interrogation. Chase answered truthfully, all the while feeling like she was being emptied with each confession. No, she didn’t know Tourn well. No, she didn’t like him. No, she didn’t know how he felt about having dropped the nuke.
Tristan’s hand slid across the white sheet and held on to hers. He had to stop doing that. She was starting to like it too much.
“Well,” Sylph concluded after her questions ran dry. “Sucks to be you.”
? ? ?
Kale’s note was a brick in her pocket. Chase could think of little else. Not only was her father there—at the Star—but he’d requested to meet her in the hangar. ASAP. She went through her physical absently, barely even jerking when the medic stabbed her in the arm to take blood.
When she stepped into the blaring fluorescent light in the hallway, Tristan was leaning against the wall with Romeo. Waiting for her. “Where’s Pippin?” she asked.
“He took off,” Romeo said. “He seemed pretty hostile.”
“But…” Her voice ran out of fuel. “Romeo, do you think you could find him and tell him I have to meet my dad in the hangar?”
“Do you want me to tell him to meet you?”
Yes.
“No.” She couldn’t keep the hurt out of her tone. “He’s probably too busy being pissed at the world. I just…want him to know.” Chase began the long walk, making excuses when Tristan tried to follow her. She had to do this alone—well, Pippin was the only one she wanted with her, and he was gone.
Truth was, even if they’d been fighting for a year, she’d still want Pippin there above everyone else. She didn’t have to tell him why her father haunted her for Pippin to know that he did. He knew. That’s what was so strange about them. They knew the deepest things about each other without ever having the details. They just knew.
Chase met her father beneath Dragon. Tourn had his hand on her wing, and it just about made her growl. Her pulse, which had grown erratic in the buildup to seeing him, began to chill. He was the same as five years ago. The same as the view screen images in the conference room. Clipped gray hair and overly round forearms. A uniform pressed so sharply that it felt like a plastic mold he had been poured into.
For a long moment, she watched him examine the engine bay and fiddle with the landing gear. She recognized a pattern to his searching; he was performing preflight checks. It made her remember that he was a pilot. The pilot.
He turned around, and she clipped her hand to her forehead, strictly out of habit.
Tourn saluted back. “At ease.” He took too long to speak. Long enough for Chase to remember she wasn’t the only one who had no idea what to do with their biological relationship.
“General Tourn?” she finally said. “You requested my presence.”
“Surprised you, didn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. Was he trying to surprise her? If so, why?
“It’s been a long time,” he added. Boy, this was going nowhere fast. Tourn felt it too. He started talking. At her. “When I first saw the specs for these birds, I thought it was a joke. HOTAS control? Manual navigation from a backseat RIO? Ridiculous.”
Chase wasn’t amused. She knew the Streakers were an odd mix of old-school design and killer engines, but that was why she loved them. Tourn appeared to appreciate them despite these qualities. The term essential differences, one of Kale’s favorites, sprang to mind.
“Then I saw these birds in the air. Unbelievable.” He looked like he was waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. He touched the missiles beneath Dragon’s wings. “I flew with these type of sidewinders once. Aim left of center, no matter what the target reader says.”
“Excuse me?” Was he really giving her tactical advice?
“I’ve been watching your tapes, cadet. You’ve got a gutsy streak. It works for you, but you need to remember to listen to your wingmen. You surprise the enemy—that’s good. Surprise your wingmen, and you might cost them their lives. Understood?”
“Yes, General Tourn.” So this was just a standard maverick pep talk. Great.
“You’re ready,” he added with a grunt.
Ready? Chase choked on that word the second it came out of his mouth. A jet fired up somewhere nearby, and the whole hangar turned into a mess of sound for long minutes. When it had left through the great rolling doors, Chase and her father still faced each other. She didn’t see herself in his watery blue gaze or the harshness of his features. She didn’t feel any resemblance to his calculating heart.
They were the real strangers.
“So you think you know so much about me because you know my flying?” It was exactly the kind of petulant thing she didn’t want to say. It would lead down a negative road. Remind her that she wasn’t a person to him. She was a pilot. A cadet. A cog he’d put into the machine.
Chase was supposed to be at ease, but her whole body was so tense that if she had fallen over, she would have smashed like a pane of glass. She felt like that was going to happen at any minute. At the next word maybe.
But it didn’t.