Operation Inferno (3 page)

“Global coverage of what?”

Emma narrowed her dark eyes. “Everything, dummy.”

She glanced at Felix and Paul as they entered the cavernous room. They marveled at the huge images of the twirling world, then approached.

“I mean everything … sir,” Emma said in a deliberately respectful tone.

“The Titan Base system has hijacked the Ch’zar satellite network, too,” she said. “As far as I can tell—
without
the aliens knowing. So, now we can see everything they do.” She blinked a few times, turned in a circle, and took in the magnificent hundred-thousand-foot view of Earth around her. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Ethan frowned. It
was
cool. But he wasn’t sure a hack into the alien sensor system wasn’t being detected
by the Ch’zar. The technicians at the Seed Bank could only ever manage a few key satellites at a time.

“I’m monitoring system feedback here.” Emma tapped a control panel. “Not a single pulse. They don’t know we’re inside.”

He hated when she did that: practically read his mind.

Ethan noticed a glass-covered switch at her station. It was outlined in red-striped tape and said
BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
.

“That severs the network connection,” Emma told him. “Just in case the Ch’zar find out we’re in their system. It’s like the people who built this place were just as scared about them as we are.”

Ethan nodded.

But that didn’t quite make sense. This place was so old it had to have been built
before
the Ch’zar came to Earth.

Felix and Paul leaned on Emma’s computer station.

“Nice,” Felix said, admiring the communication controls. He stepped closer to Emma.

She smiled at him, and then her face smoothed back to business mode.

Paul edged between Emma and Ethan. He tapped
in a few commands. “I’ll bring up Madison’s feed,” he said to Felix. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Emma glared at Paul’s intrusion into her space.

He ignored her.

Ethan held back the urge to punch Paul in the face … only because he wanted to see what was going on with Madison and Angel out there.

“Got them.” Paul’s voice was thick with concentration.

Static fuzzed over the walls.

“Oops,” Paul said.

Emma sighed. “Boys …,” she muttered.

She shoved Paul out of the way and took over. She adjusted the images and magnified North America. With one hand, she spun a control and zoomed into the Southwestern region. A layer of satellites in low-Earth orbit flashed by and the viewpoint descended. Desert dunes and chalky mountains crystallized into focus.

When Ethan had seen the Seed Bank technicians hijack the Ch’zar’s satellites, he’d viewed bits and pieces of the world from up high. There were usually blackout zones. But Ethan may have severely underestimated the aliens’ strategic overview. They could see everything from up there.

The view continued to swoop downward until wisps of clouds resolved.

“This is six thousand feet,” Emma said.

Ethan felt like a weather balloon, hovering higher than his I.C.E. could’ve flown over a wide expanse of desert. He saw a hazy Gulf of California on the western horizon.

“There.” Felix pointed at three o’clock. A slight smear appeared in blue skies.

“That’s not Madison,” Ethan said. “She wouldn’t break stealth protocols.”

“Unless she’s in trouble,” Felix said.

Or it was Angel. But Ethan kept silent about that possibility.

“It’s not them,” Paul said. He fiddled with a dial. The part of the wall they were looking at expanded a hundred times.

The smear grew into a life-sized I.C.E.—fifteen feet from mandibles to stinger.

It was a giant bee, but not like any bee Ethan had seen before.

The combat bumblebee units used by the Resisters were matte black and golden yellow. Their undersides
were painted sky blue and white for camouflage. They usually gripped a half-ton bomb in their legs.

The Ch’zar bee units were plain gray titanium with heavy armor plates and usually had missile racks on their hind legs in place of pollen sacks.

But this thing was just plain … weird.

It had no obvious weapons: no plasma beam-emitter antennae, no missiles, no smoldering stinger lasers. And the colors? It looked as if the giant insect had tangled with a paint store and lost. Its exoskeleton was a collection of smudges—sky blue, gray, olive green, and black.

Ethan blinked. It almost hurt to look at the thing because the edges got lost.

He squinted. He thought it was one of the larger bumblebee species. But the usual armor plates and combat barbs had been stripped off.

So, how was this thing supposed to fight?

If it was a stealth unit, the Ch’zar sure picked a bulky species to do the job.

“We spotted this about ten minutes ago,” Emma said. “It’s no big deal. The Ch’zar have units scattered all over the place.”

“That’s no Ch’zar unit I’ve ever seen,” Paul told her.
“And check this out.” He tapped a few buttons. “I recorded its flight path.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Emma said.

Paul shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you everything I do. Besides, you’ve barely got your wings—what do you know anyway?”

Emma’s mouth dropped open.

Felix took a step toward Paul, one hand curling into a fist.

Ethan touched Felix’s arm and shook his head. Now wasn’t the time. Paul would get what was coming to him—but after Ethan’s pilots were safely back at base.

Two curved lines winked onto the map.

The first traced Madison’s and Angel’s flight path as they approached the hidden satellite dishes and then arced back to Titan Base. That was perfectly normal.

But the other line showed the trajectory of the strange bee. At first, it meandered in what Ethan suspected was a zigzag search pattern. Then it paused, turned, and started
toward
the Resister I.C.E.s.

“It’s following them,” Paul declared.

“That’s not possible,” Ethan whispered. “Madison and Angel are stealthed.”

“It has to be a coincidence,” Emma said, suddenly
sounding not so sure. “Besides, our girls are a hundred miles away from that thing. It’ll never catch—”

A dot appeared on-screen two hundred miles ahead of Madison’s and Angel’s I.C.E.s.

The viewscreen automatically zoomed on those dots, and warning icons popped alongside the magnified section.

Six more strangely painted bees came into focus.

The computer automatically plotted the bees’ projected course … which intercepted the Resister scouts.

Ethan blinked, then sprinted for the Command Center exit.

He didn’t have to tell Emma, Paul, or Felix. They were already ahead of him, dashing for the I.C.E. launch bay.

They all recognized an ambush when they saw one.

   3   
AMBUSH

T
HE
I.C.E.
FLIGHT DECK WAS A CANYON WITH
walls that stretched to massive sliding doors twenty stories overhead. The topside of those doors was the camouflaged surface of a dry lakebed.

Sometimes Ethan couldn’t help but think of Titan Base as a ginormous set of natural wonders, like Carlsbad Caverns, rather than something man-made.

Hydraulic lines ten feet in diameter powered the lake doors. Support struts held the entire thing aloft, making it look like part of Arches National Park, which Ethan had seen pictures of in school.

Red lights on the flight deck whirled and flashed. Emma must have set the scramble signal before they’d sprinted up here.

The Resisters’ nine I.C.E.s were lined up on the landing deck. They looked like toys compared to everything else … and the people swarming over them, like ants.

Bobby Buckman and the other Santa Blanca kids were there. Felix had them on repair and maintenance training, which is where every normal Resister pilot started (not like the crash course Ethan had gotten).

Kristov was there, too, supervising. He was an inch shorter than Felix but had twenty pounds of muscle on him. Big guy. Ethan was glad Kristov was on their side.

Kristov approached Ethan, Felix, Paul, and Emma. He straightened his large frame and saluted. “I.C.E.s ready for launch, Lieutenant,” he told Ethan.

Bobby, Leo, Sara, and the other Santa Blanca refugees trotted up, too. Bobby wiped greasy hands on his coveralls, swept his dark curly hair from his face, and stepped forward. “Is this anything we can help with, Ethan—I mean, sir?” Bobby said.

Bobby and the others had clocked a few hours’
simulation in I.C.E. cockpits with the bugs in
dream
mode. They were all itching to get out there and prove themselves.

Ethan knew how they felt. They wanted some payback for losing their parents. But he had way more potential pilots now than they had I.C.E.s. He could only afford to send out experienced pilots, especially on a combat sortie.

“Not this time,” Ethan told him. “Madison and Angel might be in trouble.”

Bobby nodded. “I get it. Good luck, and burn a few Ch’zar for us.” He and the others stepped out of the way. They all saluted.

Ethan flushed. He could get used to giving orders and not having them questioned. The people he’d saved from Santa Blanca and Sterling (apart from Angel, who was crazy) simply acknowledged him as their leader.

He’d earned that recognition, and he’d have to
keep on
earning it, but it sure was nice.

Ethan snapped off a salute to the flight crew and ran to his wasp.

The truck-sized biomechanical insect shuffled to face him. Its antennae waggled, sensing its pilot. The
abdomen cockpit hatch hissed open, inviting Ethan inside.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that the I.C.E.s weren’t just mechanical. They were part organic and alive, with primitive yet overwhelmingly strong feelings.

His wasp had recognized him.

Ethan checked the bug’s recent repairs. They had chitin rebonding supplies from the secret Resister cache they’d raided before finding Titan Base.

The major cracks in his wasp’s gold-and-black-striped exoskeleton were gone. Ethan ran a finger over the faint seam in the armor.

On contact he sunk into the wasp’s mind. It was happy to see him. No … it was anticipating flying and fighting. It was hungry for violence.

Was that a bug thing? Or something all Ch’zar minds shared?

He withdrew his hand and went back to the inspection.

The repair job wasn’t perfect. The coloration didn’t quite match, and there were spots where the sensor hairs had been burned off. But the wasp wasn’t going to rattle apart if they hit Mach speeds.

Good enough.

Ethan clambered into the cockpit.

The hatch shut as soon as he cleared the threshold.

Clusters of computer screens and displays flickered to life. Ethan had a full 360-degree view. Interior breathing vents opened and puffed cold air. Gloppy acceleration gel flooded the nooks and crannies as he slipped his legs and arms into control armatures.

Indicator lights were all green, except one stubborn afterburner regulator that flickered amber, then green again.

“I’m ready,” Ethan said on the short-range radio channel. “Status, everyone?”

“Good here,” Felix reported from his hulking blue rhinoceros beetle.

“Same,” Emma said, as her ladybug’s shell split apart and its wings ruffled out.

Paul flicked his green status light on Ethan’s panel, apparently not able to talk to Ethan even over the radio.

“Got a low-pressure reading on the starboard wing gimbal,” Kristov said with a grunt. “It’s okay. I can fly.”

“We can’t afford to fall back in the middle of a fight if your locust’s wing seizes,” Ethan told him. “You’re grounded, pending repairs, Kristov. I’m sorry.”

A huge sigh blasted over the radio. “Yes, sir.”

“Open the doors,” Ethan ordered.

The deck crew scrambled to the hydraulic controls. A rumble shook the entire bay. Overhead sunlight spilled into the flight deck as the lakebed doors parted.

Ethan’s wasp, Paul’s praying mantis, Emma’s ladybug, and Felix’s beetle took off—soaring up and out into a bright gold desert sky.

Ethan plotted a course on his flight computer. He traced the shortest path to those unknown units zeroing in on Angel and Madison.