Operation Inferno (13 page)

“So …,” Ethan said. “Are we good?”

“Not by a long shot, Blackwood. I’m still expecting some Ch’zar trick.” She shrugged. “I guess, though, it
doesn’t look like you hit puberty or anything in the last month … so maybe.”

He tried to ignore the blushing that felt like it was burning off his face. “If I was Ch’zar,” he told her, “I wouldn’t need tricks. I’d just call in a thousand I.C.E.s from their factories.” He waved his hand around. “They’d be here right now, digging you guys out of the earth. Instead, it’s just me, Felix, and the rest of my squadron—Seed Bank survivors.”

Rebecca gave a slight nod, sort of accepting this.

Three bees entered from one end of the tunnel. Felix’s rhinoceros beetle and the Crusher praying mantis entered from the opposite side.

If they decided to mix it up, Ethan and Rebecca would be caught in the middle and squished.

“Ethan, are you okay?” Felix’s voice boomed from his I.C.E.’s external speakers.

Bobby waved the mantis’s long barbed forelimbs menacingly at Rebecca, who stuck her tongue out at the creature.

“We’re cool,” Ethan said, trying—and failing—to sound cool. He raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

Rebecca held up a hand, and her bees obediently halted.

Ethan envied the effortless way she commanded her people.

“So, Blackwood,” she said, “assuming you are you, how did you and the rest of your crew make it here?”

Ethan took a deep breath and told her. He told her about how they’d flown as far and fast as they could to escape the explosion of the Seed Bank mountain, how they had found a hidden supply depot, and how they had discovered an old military base (he left out the details of his parents’ letters, though).

“We spotted the massive Ch’zar military buildup here,” Ethan continued, “by tapping into the aliens’ satellite network. With the resources at our new base, we can see the entire planet.”

Rebecca’s eyebrows shot up at this. She chewed on her lower lip, thinking something over, then came to a decision. She met Ethan’s gaze.

“You have a medical facility in this new, fancy base of yours?” she asked.

“Sure, it’s huge. It has everything.”

A hospital that was rusty and full of antiquated equipment they didn’t know how to use, but Ethan left those details out.

“I guess I’m going out on a limb, Blackwood, but I don’t have a choice.”

Ethan shook his head, not understanding.

“We’re not alone,” she told him. “It wasn’t just my squadron that made it out of the Seed Bank.”

“There are other survivors?” Ethan asked, and stepped closer.

“There are more survivors,” she said. “Not alive … but not exactly dead either.”

   16   
PRECIOUS CARGO

S
TERLING
S
QUADRON AND
R
EBECCA
’
S TEAM
landed on the flight deck at Titan Base. There was a near riot as pilots dropped out of their insect cockpits and ran across to each other, embracing, shaking hands, and clapping each other on the back. It was like it was everyone’s birthday, New Year’s Eve, and the start of summer vacation all at once.

The Resisters on Ethan’s side thought they were the last free-willed humans left on the entire Earth. To see Rebecca and her crew there among them—it seemed too good to be true.

It was the first time in weeks that Ethan felt hope.

Rebecca’s crew looked like they’d awakened from a terrible never-ending nightmare.

But Rebecca remained grim-faced. She crossed her arms over her chest and shouted out: “There’ll be time for celebration later, group.” She turned to Ethan. “We have to get our cargo to your medical facility ASAP. We’ve been racing the clock since this started. Which way is it?”

“You still haven’t explained—” Ethan started.

Rebecca held up one hand. “I
will
explain. But later.”

Ethan wanted to point out to Rebecca that this was
his
base, his command. But that was childish. Obviously she was worried. And it was clear that there was a crisis brewing. Issues like who was in charge weren’t important right then.

Still, it bugged Ethan to have Rebecca calling the shots in front of his people.

She must have picked up on his feelings, because she paused, sighed, and said, “Please, Lieutenant. It’s urgent.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ethan said. “Felix, give them a hand. Emma? Madison? Show Rebecca’s people the way to the infirmary.”

Madison and Emma saluted and immediately
moved toward the flight deck exit, leading Rebecca’s people. Felix got Kristov and a half dozen other kids to help unload the luna moth carrier that Rebecca had ordered to rendezvous with their two squadrons en route back to Titan Base.

“If I might suggest, Lieutenant,” Rebecca said, “you and I should lend a hand, too. I’ll explain more as we walk.”

Ethan followed her to the luna moth carrier. The I.C.E. had seen some action. Half its silvery scales were scorched. The inside cargo space, big enough to drive a truck through, was stacked to the top with cylinders nine feet long, three feet across, and made of brushed aluminum. There was a small window on each cylinder. A tiny computer display had been epoxied next to each window, and the display winked with graphs and symbols Ethan didn’t recognize.

He peered though a window, but it was frosted over on the inside. He went to touch it, but instinctively jerked his hand away from the intense cold.

“Here.” Rebecca grabbed two hydraulically powered hand trucks. Each of the wheeled units could lift and roll a half ton of cargo. She rolled one dolly at Ethan. She then checked the displays of several cylinders,
found one she was looking for, and slid her hand truck under one end and dragged it out a bit.

Ethan wheeled his hand truck around and slipped the edge under the cylinder’s other end. Together they rolled the cylinder off the moth and onto the flight deck. The hand truck registered a weight of only two hundred pounds. Whatever was inside was a lot lighter than Ethan expected.

But
what
exactly was he expecting?

They followed the line of other Resisters wheeling cylinders off the flight deck and into tunnel 414. The base’s infirmary was near the flight deck. That made sense because that’s where you’d expect injuries to come in.

Still,
close
on Titan Base meant a two-minute jog.

“This place is huge,” Rebecca said, staring over her shoulder, back at the canyon-like walls of the flight bay.

“You have
no
idea,” Ethan told her.

“Well, I guess before you tell me about this base,” she said, “I owe you an explanation about us.” She nodded at the cylinder. “And them.”

Them?
Ethan made a mental note. He bet it had something to do with her saying that there were more survivors … not alive … and not exactly dead either.

“After we bombed the lead Ch’zar command carrier at the Seed Bank,” she said, still walking, “we got new orders from Colonel Winter.”

With a chill, Ethan recalled how the colonel had ordered them to retreat, find a secret supply cache, and live to fight another day … while she then blew up the mountain containing the Seed Bank so the Ch’zar wouldn’t get them.

Leaving the other Resisters behind had been one of the hardest things Ethan had ever done.

He blinked back tears. “Yeah, I remember.”

“She ordered us
back
to base.”

Ethan almost tripped, he was so surprised. He caught himself on the hand truck. “But the Seed Bank—”

“Yeah, blew up,” Rebecca said. Her frown deepened so lines etched her forehead. “It was a superclose call that we didn’t get blasted to atoms along with the rest of the mountain. We landed in an auxiliary hangar I didn’t even know existed. Dr. Irving met us there and told us they had all sorts of contingency plans. He said,
‘It was only a matter of time before the Ch’zar found us, my dear.’
Can you believe that?”

“Wait … you saw Dr. Irving
alive
? Was that before the place went sky-high?”

Rebecca stopped and took a deep breath. “It’s complicated. Let me finish, and you’ll understand everything when we get to the hospital.”

Ethan nodded. It was going to kill him to
not
interrupt with a million questions, but he’d let Rebecca tell her story her own way.

They continued down the rusty corridor. Rebecca pulled the cylinder along a little faster now, as if to make up for the five seconds of lost time.

“So apparently the Seed Bank had miles of secret tunnels we kids never had a clue about,” she said. “It was the old ‘if-you-get-captured-by-the-Ch’zar-they’ll-suck-out-everything-you-know-so-we’re-not-telling-you-anything’ excuse they were always pulling on us.”

Ethan glanced ahead. “We’re up there,” he said, indicating the huge open double doors that led to the infirmary.

Rebecca picked up the pace now that they were close.

“They had supplies waiting for us,” she told Ethan, “and new I.C.E.s prepped and good to go, so the Ch’zar wouldn’t recognize my bumblebee bombers—which I’m still irked that I had to leave behind. My poor baby girls …”

They turned the corner and entered the west hospital wing. Madison and Emma were directing the kids to wheel the beds out of the way, so the cylinders could be lined up along the white tiled walls.

Rebecca tugged, spun their cargo about, and shoved it to the first spot in the infirmary.

“Those new, slimmer bee I.C.E.s, as you guys saw,” she said with a slight smirk, “had a few tricks Dr. Irving had been prototyping: radar scramblers and advanced active camouflage like the new flight suits.”

Rebecca pulled a crumpled page from her flight suit and smoothed it. On it were smeared, faded scribblings. “Okay, people!” she yelled. “I’ve got instructions from Dr. Irving. No one touch anything. This one is first.”

At the mention of Dr. Irving, Madison’s head snapped up. She started toward Rebecca.

Emma followed.

So did everyone else.

“Of course,” Rebecca said in a whisper to Ethan, “those new systems on the I.C.E. bees came at a cost in weight and space. Dr. Irving stripped out all the weapons.”

Ethan couldn’t believe this. Maybe it was the fact that Dr. Irving and Colonel Winter hadn’t picked him
for this secret mission and had given it instead to Rebecca. Or maybe it was just that she had gotten to see Dr. Irving last.

Reading from the page, Rebecca tapped the computer display on the tube she and Ethan had wheeled in.

Madison got to them first, spun around, and motioned for the other kids to stand back. “Hold up,” she said. “Give Sergeant Mills some breathing room to work.”

Madison turned back to Rebecca and whispered, “What’s this got to do with my grandfather? Did he write anything on that page for me?”

“Thirty seconds, Corporal,” Rebecca muttered though gritted teeth, apparently not having the tolerance for Madison’s questions that she’d had for Ethan’s. Concentration made Rebecca’s face a mask as she peered back and forth at the computer display and the page in her trembling hand, checking and rechecking what she was doing. “One way or the other,” she whispered, “you’re going to have all your answers.”

Something didn’t sound right with Rebecca. There was urgency in her normally ironclad, fearless tone.

Emma scooted closer to Ethan, her gaze intent on
a metal cylinder and the now furiously blinking display on the side. A puff of mist curled from the far end.

“I can feel something inside,” Emma said so softly only he could hear. She reached out, and her hand hovered over the cylinder’s surface.

Ethan didn’t have to hold out his hand. He felt something now, too. A presence. Something that hadn’t been in the cylinder a second ago. Something alive.

He took a step back, but Emma caught his hand and pulled him closer. A wry smile crept over her face.

The cylinder hissed. Ethan nearly jumped.

Everyone but he, Emma, and Rebecca took an involuntary step back.

A seam cracked the side of the cylinder. A lid hinged open.

Inside, it was filled with mist, which spilled out and across the floor, tendrils of vapor covering Ethan’s boots and chilling his toes.