“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.