heard it far too many times before.
‘He just uses the force, don’t you, Luke?’
Luke sighed. Heavily. ‘Here we go again . . .’
Johnny picked up his now empty mug, placed it against his mouth, and spoke into it, his voice deep and resonating.
‘I find your lack of faith disturbing . . .’
It was a perfect Darth Vader impression.
Kat giggled. Nat almost smiled. Ethan muffled a laugh.
Johnny continued, holding his knife in his hand like a light sabre. ‘You underestimate the power of the dark side.’
Luke did his best to ignore Johnny and continued to eat his chips.
But Johnny wasn’t giving up. He was on his feet now and breathing heavily into his mug. He waved his knife around. ‘When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master!’
Everyone laughed, including Luke. Even Natalya joined in.
‘Not bad,’ said Ethan. ‘Pretty convincing impression. You should act.’
‘His whole life’s an act,’ said Kat.
Her expression hardened suddenly, and Ethan turned to see that Jake had come in.
‘Thanks for waiting for me, guys. Not.’ He slammed the café door behind him and came over.
Kat was first to speak. ‘What the hell happened, Jake? What went wrong?’
‘Nothing happened, babe,’ said Jake, sliding his arm around her waist. ‘I had it all under control.’
He leaned in for a kiss, but Ethan saw Kat pull away.
‘Bullshit, Jake, and you know it,’ she said.
‘Would I lie to you? Would I? Everything was fine. Don’t you trust me?’
Kat pushed him away, looking annoyed and confused.
Natalya stepped in. ‘Your canopy was dead, Jake,’ she said, her voice sharp. ‘You should have cut away, but you did not. Instead, you kept fighting it. Kat was right – this is bullshit. You are always full of it.’
‘Shut it, Nat,’ snapped Jake. ‘I lost altitude awareness, that’s all, thought I could sort out my main canopy. The AAD saved me, didn’t it? That’s what it’s for, right? What’s the problem?’
Ethan saw the look on Natalya’s face; it could’ve burned through lead. He was beginning to think she wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to piss off.
‘You are dangerous, Jake,’ she said, tight-lipped. ‘I’m not sure I want to jump with you again. Kill yourself – I do not care. Kill one of us? That is different.’
‘She’s got a point,’ said Johnny. ‘You should’ve cut away at two thousand, pulled the reserve yourself. An AAD’s only in case of emergency. It’s too bloody risky to depend on it like that. You could have been killed. AADs aren’t foolproof.’
Jake gave an awkward laugh and tried to look relaxed. ‘I had it all under control. It was just an error of judgement, that’s all.’
‘It is errors of judgement that get us killed,’ hissed Natalya. ‘And you make too many of them, Jake.’
‘Look,’ said Jake, ‘like I said, I got too focused on sorting out my canopy, forgot to check my altimeter, that’s all. I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You were about five seconds from impact,’ said Luke, his voice calm. ‘If your AAD had failed, or if your reserve had got tangled with your main canopy, we’d be scraping you off the ground now instead of sitting here arguing. What were you thinking?’
‘How do you know what happened anyway?’ asked Jake, scowling now. ‘You were all still in the air.’ Then he saw Ethan. He pushed away from Kat and came over, got in Ethan’s face. ‘You tell them all this, Rookie?’
‘I saw you falling,’ said Ethan. ‘I was with Sam.’
‘So you finked on me? You ran and told the big scary boss man?’
‘Hang it,’ said Johnny, getting up and coming across. ‘Sam was with Ethan. Ethan didn’t have to tell him anything. Sam saw it all. Ethan just told us your canopy grabbed air at under a thousand; we guessed the rest.’
‘But nothing happened, did it?’ said Jake, now turning to Johnny. ‘And all this dick’s done is stir things up – hey, Rookie?’
Ethan was about to respond when a voice shot across the café.
‘Jake!’
Everyone fell silent.
Sam was standing in the archway leading from the café to the bar area.
‘Hey, Sam!’ Jake grinned. ‘Everything’s cool, man. Had it all under control. And the rush – you haven’t skydived till you’ve flown that close to wiping out! It was just awesome!’
Sam came over. He towered over the gang, his shadow falling across Jake.
‘My office. Now.’
Jake opened his mouth to reply.
‘Now, Jake,’ said Sam. ‘Now.’
And seeing the look on Sam’s face – even though he wasn’t the one being called into his office – Ethan