Sterling Squadron
Authors: Eric Nylund
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Eric Nylund
Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Jason Chan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nylund, Eric S.
Sterling squadron / Eric Nylund. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The resisters ; 2)
Summary: When twelve-year-old Ethan, still a trainee, learns that the alien Ch’zar invaders are rapidly increasing in number, he initiates a radical plan to increase the ranks of Resister pilots and soon finds himself leading battle forces.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89927-0
[1. Science fiction. 2. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 3. Leadership—Fiction.
4. Brainwashing—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.N9948Ste 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011013609
Random House Children’s Books supports
the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To my wingmates
.
You know who you are
.
I’m proud to fly with you all
.
CONTENTS
Status Report on Pilot Trainee:Blackwood, Ethan Gregor
Submitted to Colonel Winter, B., by Corporal Irving, M.
Physical Assessment: Blackwood struggled through physical training with a final rating of 72/100. He’d been an athlete in his “neighborhood,” but a life of play and relaxation has not made him an ideal combat-ready specimen. Up to our standards. But barely.
Skill Assessment: Impressive in an I.C.E. suit. Current rating of 93/100. Great instincts in a dogfight. Staff says he’s a “natural,” but what does that mean? There’s nothing
“natural” about stepping into a fifteen-foot insectoid suit of armor—part alien, part machine, part biological unit.
Additional Peer Instructors’ Comments (Staff Sergeant Hicks, P.): Blackwood is a show-off. He’s got a chip on each shoulder. He wants to prove he’s better than anyone born in the Resistance. He’ll take risks to do that, too. He’s going to get himself or his wingmates killed. His pigheaded recklessness makes him unsafe in the air.
Recommendation: FAIL
1 IT’S THE SMALL ONES YOU HAVE TO WATCH OUT FORETHAN BLACKWOOD ROLLED AT THE LAST
moment, avoiding a volley of blinding green lasers that crisscrossed where he’d been hovering a split second earlier.
The acceleration of that last-second barrel roll crushed him to the edge of a blackout, squishing Ethan in a cockpit that was claustrophobically crammed with a dozen hexagonal computer screens, a hundred dials and indicators and flashing lights, and tiny “breathing” air vents that were part mechanical and part living tissue. The bug he flew was fascinating
and
completely gross.
He piloted an Insectoid Combat Exoskeleton (or I.C.E. for short). It was basically a fifteen-foot-long, three-ton, gold-and-black-striped wasp.
It carried one symbiotic pilot inside. In this case, him.
The wasp had been designed for sneaking behind enemy lines (“infiltration”) and running combat, which Ethan and it were very good at together.
Like now.
He fought silver-speckled Ch’zar mosquitoes. A small swarm of them circled him just under the speed of sound, forty thousand feet over the Appalachian Mountains.
The alien Ch’zar used these “little” mosquitoes (only a half ton each!) as scouts and for light skirmishes. Each mosquito’s nose (or
proboscis
, if you wanted to call it by the right scientific name) carried a laser that individually didn’t pack much punch … but they
never
showed up alone.
Surrounding him, turning and tracking his every move, were five of them—too many for any sane pilot to tangle with.
Ethan should have run for it, but he had to prove to everyone what he could do.
Besides, part of Ethan
liked
the fighting.
Maybe it was his semitelepathic connection to the
I.C.E. suit’s insect brain. He didn’t think so, though. It was easy to keep the two separated. The wasp’s mind was full of red aggression, the pulsing thrill of the hunt, an insatiable desire to kill … and eat.
Ick.
For Ethan, this was just fun.
Deadly
fun, he got that … but still fun.
Ethan tapped the jet controls. Two large turbine engines popped from the sides of the wasp’s armor and roared with fire.
He pushed the throttle.
A blast of power launched him at the closest enemy mosquito.
It jerked away and dove.
Ethan was on the creature, crashing through a blurry buzz of its wings and latching on to it with his wasp’s barbed forelegs. He tightened the grip, crushing and cracking chitin, popping the rivets of the mosquito’s armor with a satisfying
crunch
.
Ethan got the distinct impression his wasp
really
liked that part.
This was, of course, a trap.
Ethan knew how these little guys fought. They’d engage a sacrificial loner while the rest lined up for a
collective laser barrage. Sometimes they had one micromissile or a Gatling gun, but that was rare. The heavier weapons slowed the little guys down too much.
He was ready for them.
He adjusted his grip on the dead bug so its heavy abdomen armor faced out, holding it like a knight might hold his shield.
Laser beams hit the insect. It sizzled and sparked.
Ethan flew straight toward the other mosquitoes, which had regrouped.
They kept firing.
The dead bug’s ceramic-chitin plates heated to red, orange, and in some places, boiling white-hot.
Ethan kicked on his afterburners and rocketed at them.
He tossed the half-melted insect at the nearest enemy mosquito, hitting it square in the thorax, molten parts sticking to its armor. It sent both mosquitoes tumbling out of control.
That left three.
Ethan fired. At this range, he couldn’t miss.