Sterling Squadron (13 page)

ETHAN BRIEFLY CONSIDERED LOSING. THAT
would attract less attention.

But he
wanted
to win. Maybe it was too much time logged in his Infiltrator I.C.E. suit, too much time in contact with the wasp’s brain, but a part of him
couldn’t
give up. Even if it was a game. Even with so much more at stake if he got discovered.

So … he compromised.

For this game, Ethan didn’t use the horsemen lure trick. Instead he ran his cavalry behind his opponent and attacked from the rear. Meanwhile, Ethan’s foot soldiers,
protecting his cannons, mounted the high ground and pounded his enemy’s weakened defenses.

It wasn’t perfect. He lost half of his cavalry. Ethan did, though,
crush
his opponent.

The dark-skinned boy raised an eyebrow. “You’re really good,” he whispered with genuine appreciation. “I’m Oliver. What was your name again?”

“Uh … Ethan,” Ethan whispered.

The girl with the short hair stopped chewing her gum and mouthed his name as if considering if it was a good or bad thing.

The teacher moved over and leafed through an attendance list.

Ethan ducked his head.

Madison pushed her way over. “Nice ‘blending in,’ ” she said.

Why had he won so blatantly? To show these Sterling kids he was better?

Now the teacher was about to figure out Ethan didn’t belong here.

The classroom bell jangled. Ethan jumped.

The kids abandoned their games and marched into the hallway and then outside.

Ethan hurriedly went out with them before that
teacher realized he wasn’t supposed to be there. He exhaled a huge sigh of relief as he left the tactics class.

That had been superclose.

He caught up to Madison and the others to apologize, but then almost stumbled over his own feet as he spotted a
new
problem.

Two robotic suits marched on the edge of the grassy playground. They were like the athletic suits Ethan had piloted in soccer—twelve feet tall and six hundred pounds of stainless steel, hydraulically powered, skeletal frame.

These had adult pilots, though.

Instead of orange gecko-gripped feet and palms to handle soccer balls, these suits had shoulder-mounted cannons and carried lances that crackled with electricity.

These were meant for battle.

Evading adult teachers in a classroom was one thing. But guards in cybernetic suits? They’d be impossible to fight or outrun.

He’d have to be extra careful.

They filed into the next classroom. It was a chemistry lab.

It was actually more like the
opposite
of a chemistry class. In every chem class Ethan had ever taken, the teacher had stressed “safety first.” In this class, though, the
Sterling teacher taught his students the best way to burn and blow things up.

Ethan scooted to the back of the room as the teacher demonstrated how to mix chemicals that boiled and frothed and shattered a glass beaker.

Felix nodded to the corner and the Resisters drifted to the pencil sharpener and pretended to use it.

“This is nuts,” Madison whispered.

“Did you see in tactics class?” Felix asked, and stared at Ethan. “The teacher took notes on everyone winning that game.”

Ethan flushed. “It wasn’t my fault. I was just playing smart.”

That sounded foolish even to his own ears.

Madison’s and Paul’s write-up of his flight performance was still bothering him. Did he
have to
win every battle? Even if doing so made him lose the war? That might be the literal truth if he drew too much attention to himself here at Sterling.

“It wasn’t just you.” Felix looked around to see if anyone was listening.

The other kids were busy practicing the blowing-up-the-beaker experiment (most not even using protective eyewear).

“The teacher was assessing all the winners,” Felix continued, his large brow wrinkled with concern. “They’re sorting for talent. Or in this case, for aggression.”

“But why?” Madison turned her sharp eyes to Paul for answers.

Paul didn’t meet her gaze. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I got out of this place before they singled me out for ‘bad behavior.’ Look, forget about what they’re doing here and let’s do some ‘selecting’ of our own and get a few kids back to base.”

Ethan was dying to know exactly how Paul escaped this place the first time.

An even better question was
why
did Paul leave? He had an attitude problem, he was a bully, and he had a total disregard for authority. He was a perfect fit for Sterling.

Maybe there was more to Paul Hicks’s story than simply walking away. Ethan bet there was also more to Paul
coming back
than to rescue a few kids for the Resistance.

“What are you suggesting?” Ethan asked.

“We need to get to a computer,” Paul whispered. “Then we can access the student records. We can sort through the ones that … I don’t know … the ones that even the Ch’zar think are too much trouble.”

There was more. Ethan could feel it. Paul was holding back something big.

“That’s a good plan,” Felix said. “We’ll do it after classes, before they let everyone loose into Fiesta City tonight.”

“Wait,” Paul said. “It’s Tuesday, right? That’s a P.E. day.” His head snapped up. “We can’t wait. We’ve got to get out. Right
now
. Steal some bathroom passes or—”

The classroom bell trilled.

“That’s it!” the chem teacher shouted, and moved to get a fire extinguisher. “
Don’t
clean up. Leave your experiments. Move on to your next class.”

Against their will, they got herded into the hallway and then outside.

Five guards in athletic suits marched alongside them, escorting them to the grassy physical education field.

“Great,” Madison said. “So we play a little soccer or baseball.” She cracked her knuckles. “We’ll wipe the ground with these punks.”

Teachers handed out sticks.

Ethan took one. It was five feet long and lightly padded. Field hockey? He hefted it. They were too heavy for that.

The Sterling kids warmed up, twirling the sticks so fast they whistled through the air.

More kids poured onto the field, spreading out so they were evenly spaced across the entire playground.

“Keep close,” Paul whispered to them, deadly serious.

“What’s going on?” Ethan asked, suddenly feeling something was very wrong.

He got his answer as a P.E. coach shouted, “Okay, kids, ready, set”—he blew a whistle—“FIGHT!”

  16  

EVERY KID ON THE FIELD SCREAMED AND
attacked one another.

They jabbed sticks into faces, groins, and stomachs.

It was like the battles Ethan had just seen in Tactics 101. Only instead of miniature soldiers on a table with gridlines and rules, there were a hundred crazed students swinging sticks—totally insane!

Half the kids went down within seconds. Dozens of students lay crumpled, groaning and crying.

Ethan felt the air move by his head. He ducked. A stick narrowly missed cracking his skull.

He turned. It was a boy almost as big as Felix, the
leader of the gang who had wanted to beat the Resisters up last night in Fiesta City.

Ethan had fought lots of times in an I.C.E. battle suit, in matches during Resister boot camp, but never with his bare fists or with a stick.

Everything that had been drilled and beaten into him in boot camp came flooding back: breathe, get a good stance, and … well, forget that last part about trying to fight one person at a time.

He sidestepped as three kids crashed between Ethan and the gang leader. The three fell in a heap and wrestled on the grass.

Ethan, meanwhile, used that distraction.

He swung high at his opponent.

The other boy blocked, flipped his stick around, and smashed it at Ethan’s ribs.

Ethan blocked—barely.

The impact shuddered up his stick and numbed his arm. If it
had
connected, padding or not, it would have broken Ethan’s bones.

Were they crazy? Did the Sterling teachers want these kids to seriously hurt each other? That made no sense, even for the Ch’zar.

He’d figure out why later. First he had to
survive
this class.

He couldn’t be scared. He had to fight.

Ethan borrowed a tactic he’d learned battling in an I.C.E. suit. When ranged weapons didn’t work, you had to get in close to rip your enemy apart.

He moved toward the bigger boy, got so near neither could swing, and Ethan socked him in the nose.

“Ow!” The boy dropped to one knee, let go of his stick, and held his face. “You hit me with your
hand
! You’re supposed to use your stick, idiot! There are rules!”

Ethan wasn’t interested in following the rules of
this
game, especially if that meant getting clobbered.

But he hesitated and couldn’t bring himself to hit the boy again.

This wasn’t a fight-to-the-death real battle with the Ch’zar.

The bigger kid who’d tried to break his ribs a second ago was still human, maybe even someone Ethan could save and recruit into the Resistance.

The boy started to get to his feet. He grabbed his stick, laughing.

Madison ran to Ethan and kicked the boy over. She stabbed him once, hard, in the back of the knee.

The boy screamed and went down.

“You
want
to be hit?” she growled at Ethan. “Get your head in the game, Blackwood!”

Ethan blinked. He looked around.

Felix was ten paces from them and surrounded. He beat back five other kids. One got behind him and jabbed Felix in the kidney. He grunted and fell like a huge redwood, trying to clutch at the pain in his back.

Ethan and Madison were on those kids in an instant—punching, kicking, and clubbing them off their friend.

Paul appeared to protect their backs.

The field fell quiet.

There were just twenty kids left standing. They panted, nursed bruised hands, and tensed to spring. They were the meanest, toughest, and the best fighters at Sterling … and they all searched one another for any sign of weakness.

One of them pointed at Ethan and his friends. “Hey! No teaming up!”

“Why don’t you come over and try to stop us?” Ethan shouted back.

Madison groaned and rolled her eyes.

Ethan instantly regretted saying that, because the remaining kids did just that. They circled them and stepped closer and closer.

Felix got up, grimacing with pain. He gripped his padded hockey stick so hard the wood crackled.

Ethan had never seen Felix mad before, but now he
sensed cold anger radiating from him in waves. Like his mother.

“Let’s finish this,” Felix said.

The other kids stopped in their tracks, calculating the odds of taking on the four of them (now with the addition of the much larger Felix to their group).

They charged.

Felix swept aside the first two in a single blow. Madison jabbed and poked the soft spots in her opponents. Paul calmly whirled his stick around like an expert martial artist.

There were so many students rushing them at once that Ethan managed to connect with only one boy—and got his hands clobbered from the return blow for his trouble.

He almost dropped his stick it hurt so much.

He was wide open as the kid facing him reared back to smack him.

Out of nowhere, a girl jumped at this opponent, swung, and connected with the side of the kid’s head.

The boy about to clobber Ethan dropped to the ground, knocked out cold.

The girl winked at Ethan, then spun, her bowl-cut hair
whoosh
ing around her, and hit the other kids, screaming like she was nuts (or totally having fun).

It was the girl in the gang from last night. The same one who’d apparently taken an interest in Ethan in tactics class.

A whistle blew and three teachers marched onto the grassy field, jotting notes on their clipboards.

All the kids stopped fighting.

Ethan sucked wind.

He’d forgotten to breathe.

He got his bearings. His friends were okay … well, at least standing.