Operation Inferno (2 page)

E
THAN
B
LACKWOOD SET THE REPORT HE
’
D BEEN
writing on his desk. Well, technically, it wasn’t
his
desk. He ran a hand over the worn plastic simulated woodgrain surface. He was just borrowing the thing.

Like the room. Like the entire base.

He sat alone in a huge office. The walls were covered with dead computer screens, bookshelves (minus the books), and blank spots that might’ve once been covered with pictures or maps. The room was three times the size of Colonel Winter’s office.

He glanced at the status report he’d just written.

Sterling Squadron was falling apart. Sure, this base had saved their lives. They’d all gotten a second chance. But to do what? Fight the entire Ch’zar alien race by themselves?

Impossible
odds were one thing. Ethan’s stomach churned. He’d faced impossible odds before—and won.

This time, though, there was
zero
chance of winning.

Not without the Seed Bank and all its resources and technology. And not without Colonel Winter or Dr. Irving.

Ethan buried his face in his hands. He’d been strong for the last few days. Now, he was exhausted.

Over the last few months, he’d come to think of the secret Resister base, the Seed Bank, as home.

Dr. Irving, and in some ways even Colonel Winter, had been like parents. He didn’t think they loved him or Emma like their real parents, but they
had
cared. He knew they would’ve rather died than betray him. But if the adult Resisters from the Seed Bank had been captured, then their minds would now be part of the alien collective. The Ch’zar would know his tactics, tricks, everything.

He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut to keep back the tears.

The colonel and the doctor always knew what they were doing when it came to fighting the aliens. No one was here now to help Ethan make the hardest decisions of his life.

Ethan pulled a photo from the stacks of technical manuals piled on the desk. It was the picture he and Emma had found at Titan Base. It was as if the picture had been waiting for them there for fifteen years.

The yellowed photograph was of Melinda and Franklin Blackwood, their parents. They wore white uniforms with silver infinity symbols on the lapels. The picture had been taken here. Ethan could see the computer displays and panels in the background.

But then they’d left. They had to have known about the Ch’zar, and yet they’d picked Santa Blanca to raise him and his sister. How could they have done that, knowing their children’s minds would be at risk when they became teenagers?

Being a teenager and hitting puberty was when the big changes in brain chemistry happened and the Ch’zar’s mind-control powers got you.

Ethan traced the edges of his parents’ faces in the photograph. There was so much more to his parents than he knew.

They’d abandoned him and Emma when the Ch’zar got suspicious about them, but Melinda and Franklin Blackwood had left their children a trail of clues to find this old base, too.

Ethan had come full circle.

If only he could talk to his parents. He had a million questions.

A knock on the door snapped him back to reality.

Ethan hastily slid the picture under his paperwork. “Come in,” he said.

The door opened, and Felix entered the office. He snapped off a quick salute. He carried a rolled-up blueprint.

Ethan’s best friend had bloodshot eyes. His massive shoulders sagged. It looked like he’d aged a year in the last week.

“Status?” Ethan asked.

Felix stared past Ethan.

Ethan bet Felix was thinking of his mother’s office back at the Seed Bank. How could his friend
not
think about his mother?

Ethan stood and walked around his desk. He wouldn’t let his friend down by being weak.

“Status, Sergeant?” he asked again.

Felix’s eyes refocused. “Right.”

Felix marched to a table covered with maps of the American Southwest and unrolled the blueprint. It showed corridors and rooms, huge fusion reactors, coolant pumps the size of houses—all hooked to a jagged line that said
NOT TO SCALE
, which then connected to a line of satellite dishes.

They’d found the plans for the base’s communication system the day before. Ethan had ordered that section explored. It had looked promising. They needed electronic eyes and ears out there to see what the Ch’zar were plotting.

The great thing about Titan Base was that it was
big
. There were a half dozen fighter jet bays with parts, ammunition, and fuel for their I.C.E.s. There were food warehouses full of freeze-dried meals that could feed an army for a hundred years (although after having tasted one, Ethan thought starving might have been better). There was a hospital. There were enough beds and bathrooms for a thousand people.

Had this place been built for the Fourth World War, before the Ch’zar invaded fifty years ago? It seemed
at least
that old, with rusting pipes and tunnels. Some sections were filled with mold and sealed off.

Sterling Squadron had only explored a fraction of the place in the last eight days.

Ethan had no clue how big it actually was. Who knew what else was there?

“I sent Lee and Oliver here.” Felix pointed to a room labeled
SATELLITE RELAY CONTROL
. “They turned on the system with a jerry-rigged power supply. But there’s no signal.”

“A signal from the satellite dishes?” Ethan tapped the schematics of a dozen satellite dishes. “They can’t still be out there, intact, after all these years, can they?”

Felix stood straighter. “That’s why we sent a sortie to look.”

Ethan waved his hand and nodded. “Yeah, I remember. Sorry.”

They’d discussed this the night before. If they could connect to those dishes, they might be able to tap into the satellite network in orbit. Ethan was so tired he was forgetting critical things … like dangerous missions into unknown airspace to find critical communication installations.

“Who’d you send?”

“Madison. And Angel.”

Ethan flashed him a hard look. Those two didn’t get along.

“Their wasp and dragonfly are the best ones for the mission,” Felix explained. “Those I.C.E.s have stealth.”

“It’s not the I.C.E.s I’m worried about. You sure those two won’t blast each other out of the air?”

“I’ve talked with Madison,” Felix told him. “She’s okay.”

Ethan crossed his arms over his chest. This scouting mission should have never slipped his mind. His pilots’ lives were at stake. All their lives were at stake every time they went out.

After the Ch’zar had reduced the Seed Bank mountain into gravel, Ethan had no doubt that if they ever found this place, they’d bomb old Titan Base until a million tons of rust buried the Resisters alive.

Secrecy was their first, best, and maybe their
only
dependable weapon.

Felix made a motion to set his big hand on Ethan’s shoulder, but then halted. “You okay, sir?”

“I’m fine. Just tired. Nothing … weird, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Weird
as in Ethan and Emma had heard the mental
song of the Ch’zar on their last mission. Emma had even dominated and controlled an unpiloted enemy I.C.E. and saved their lives. It wasn’t normal, though, and it had everyone in Sterling on pins and needles.

Felix looked Ethan over and gave him a quick nod. They’d saved each other a dozen times before. He trusted Ethan or, at least, trusted himself to know if Ethan had fallen under the influence of the Ch’zar.

The big guy swayed. He leaned against the table to steady himself.

Felix was pushing it. Ethan couldn’t remember the last time his friend had slept. He bet Felix was trying to avoid the nightmares.

When Ethan dreamed, he saw the Seed Bank blowing up, heard screams over the radio, and felt bugs crawling on his skin.

“Are
you
okay?” Ethan asked.

Felix blinked and set his large hand on the table. “Just need breakfast. More fifty-year-old rehydrated eggs. Yummy.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Madison’s due to report in five minutes. We should get up to the Command Center.”

Paul Hicks burst into Ethan’s office. He was out of breath. Sweat plastered his sandy-red hair over his eyes
and he brushed it away, revealing the three long scars that ran down the left side of his face.

Paul didn’t salute Ethan. He didn’t even look at him, as if Felix was the only person in the room.

There had been friction between Paul and Ethan since they’d met at the Seed Bank. Paul couldn’t let go that Ethan was just as good a pilot. And he definitely couldn’t deal with Ethan being a better leader.

Felix pursed his lips and nodded toward Ethan as if to tell Paul to give their commanding officer a little respect.

Paul shook his head, then caught his breath. “Madison …,” he panted, “found something.”

Ethan took a step closer to Paul, all thoughts of how much he hated him forgotten.

“Or actually …,” Paul continued, “some
thing
found her and Angel.”

   2   
CENTER OF COMMAND

E
THAN RAN UP SEVEN FLIGHTS OF STAIRS
. There was an elevator, but after a few decades of its being out of service, he didn’t trust it.

He sprinted through the vault doors to Titan Base’s Command Center.

A breeze cooled him off. The room was so big it had its own wind currents.

When he and Emma had first found the base and rebooted the fusion reactors, they’d used what they
thought
was the Command Center. It turned out that it had been the emergency auxiliary control room.

It was only after three days of exploring that they’d found
this
place, the real Command Center.

Like everything else in Titan Base it was, well … titanic.

The room was its own subterranean world. It was hard to say exactly how big it was. Ethan counted paces the first time he’d crossed it. One hundred sixty. Almost a city block. Four Northside Elementary gymnasiums could’ve fit in the place.

What made the space really hard to fathom was its height.

Ethan couldn’t see the ceiling. He had even used binoculars.

There were beams the size of redwoods up there with a thousand lights that could glow soft like a moon or dazzle with the brilliance of full daylight. Currently the lights were set to
MOON GLOW
.

When they’d found this place, it’d been full of cobwebs and a layer of dust a quarter inch thick. That stuff vanished over the next few days as they used the room and brought more power online.

Ethan got the creepy feeling that something was living up there in the shadows … cleaning the place when they weren’t looking.

The most impressive thing about the Command Center, though, was its displays.

Acres of curved walls projected maps and computer screens.

Ethan had walked up close and never cast a shadow on those walls. He couldn’t see a single pixel either—even when he got so close he smudged the glass surface with his nose.

His sister was there, hunched over computer controls, keyboards, trackballs, and gel pads. Emma’s hands flew over them. In response, maps zoomed across the walls and patchworked into a map of the entire world.

And in
this
room, the entire world seemed to fit just right.

Ethan jogged to her. She didn’t look up from the controls. She’d wrapped her long braid around her neck so it wasn’t in the way of her hands. She held up a finger to stop him while she tapped in the last command.

“Paul said Madison found something? Or something found her? Are she and Angel safe?”

“There,” she said, and turned to him. “All online. And yes, they’re fine. For the moment. I think.”

Ethan hardly recognized his sister. He hadn’t seen his old joking, shoulder-punching sibling since she got
here. She was all business. This was how he’d seen her when she had procrastinated studying for a final exam, then crammed in the last ten minutes, learning everything at once.

“When Madison and Angel reconnected the first communication array,” Emma told him, “the rest of the system woke up. Lines are repairing themselves. The old network is at eighty-five percent capacity and increasing. We’ve got nearly
global
coverage.”