Sterling Squadron (9 page)

“Sure, I’m in,” Paul said, like this was one big joke to him. “Assuming we could break out a bunch of those Sterling punks, assuming they turned out to be good enough to not
die
the first time they fly against the Ch’zar, and assuming we weren’t court-martialed and shot by Colonel Winter, you’re overlooking two small details.”

“Which are?”

“One: we don’t have I.C.E. suits. And two”—Paul gestured helplessly around him—“in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in jail.”

Ethan smiled.

“That’s why I’m here. I’m going to break you out.”

  10  

ETHAN RUMMAGED THROUGH HIS CART AND
pulled out a large syringe marked

A plumbing engineer had showed Ethan how it mixed two chemicals as it was injected. It made a superdissolving cocktail that chewed through any clog. He’d been warned not to use it on the base’s softer steel pipes because it would completely dissolve them.

Ethan marched to the cell door, turned his back to the camera (to block its view), and squirted a blob of the viscous chemicals into the keyhole.

Paul gaped at him, confused, intrigued, and then like he thought Ethan was
nuts
.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Ethan whispered. “Figure out a way to hide from the camera, stuff a few pillows under the blankets so it looks like you’re sleeping, and be ready to go!”

Paul nodded, finally understanding that Ethan was
really
going to break him out.

Or at least try.

Ethan felt butterflies again in his stomach, this time a flock of them about to take wing.

He waved up to the camera and called out, “I’m done.”

The guard came and opened the cell door.

He didn’t notice the wisp of smoke that drifted from the keyhole.

“I’ll need to check a few more toilets.” Ethan pointed down the hallway at two cells.

“Sure,” the guard said. “Those are empty and unlocked. Let me know when you’re done and I’ll escort you out.”

Ethan pushed his cart down the corridor and went through the motions of plunging and cleaning those two
other toilets to give the drain cleaner time to eat through the lock on Paul’s door.

Even though adrenaline pounded through his body and made him want to grab Paul and make a dash for it, he forced himself to be slow and careful.

As he walked back down the corridor, he spotted another camera.

He spritzed the lens with glass cleaner. That would fog the guard’s view for a minute before it evaporated.

Time enough for him to break a
hundred
regulations …

Ethan stopped at Paul’s cell door and tapped it once.

With a slight metal grinding, it opened.

Paul glanced around. He waited for an explanation as to how they were going to march past the guard.

Ethan opened the large trash can in his cart and gestured for Paul to get inside.

Paul flashed him a look. Admiration? The beginning of a great friendship?

Not a chance.

Ethan recognized
that
particular look. It said,
If you blow this, Blackwood, I’m going to pound your face flat—no matter how long the colonel throws me in the brig
.

He tossed soggy papers over Paul’s head.

“Gross,” Paul whispered.

Ethan tried not to smile as he locked the trash can’s lid over Paul.

With a grunt, he pushed the now-much-heavier cart toward the guard station. His pulse thundered in his ears.

The guard ignored him as he approached the door.

They were almost out. He couldn’t believe he was going to get away with this.

“Hang on!” the guard shouted.

Ethan froze.

Had he seen what he’d done on another camera? Or would he look though his cart? Even a casual search would blow everything.

The guard walked past Ethan, unlocked the steel security door, and held it open for him.

Ethan blinked, not quite understanding.

The guard gestured him through, and somehow Ethan pushed the cart forward.

“Have a great day, rookie,” the guard called after him.

Ethan got to the elevator and waited for what seemed like forever for the car to arrive. The doors finally opened, and he wheeled the cart inside. He almost fell over when the doors closed.

He unlocked the trash can, and Paul clambered out, shaking off wet strips of toilet paper that clung to his back and sandy hair.

“So what now, genius?” he demanded. “We’ve got maybe an hour before the guard serves me lunch—
if
they’re stupid enough to fall for that pillow-under-the-blanket trick.”

“Don’t worry,” Ethan said (although nothing but worry churned inside him). “I’ve got everything figured out. I’ve done this before.”

“You’ve
what
?”

Ethan wasn’t going to explain that he’d stolen an I.C.E. suit before to fly back to Santa Blanca and save his sister, Emma. It hurt too much to think about it. He’d gotten away with the theft, successfully battled the Ch’zar (demolishing his old elementary school in the process), but the aliens had
still
taken Emma.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened.

Beyond was a hangar filled with I.C.E. suits, some torn apart and under repair—limbs detached, abdomens splayed out.

It reminded Ethan of his biology class. On dissection day.

“The techs are on break,” Ethan whispered. “We have ten minutes before they’re back from coffee.”

Ethan had this perfectly timed, but so many things could go wrong. The technicians could come back early.
A random guard might wander through the repair hangar. Or there could be some hidden security camera.

He unzipped his coveralls. Underneath he wore his gold-and-black flight suit.

“Come on,” he whispered to Paul. “Don’t be such a chicken.”

Ethan slunk out of the elevator.

Paul followed him. He grabbed a green-and-black flight suit from a locker and changed. Ethan noticed more scars on Paul’s back and legs. He’d been through a lot of tough scrapes.

“Your I.C.E. is there.” Ethan gestured to the wicked-looking praying mantis silhouette. “Mine’s—”

“Hold on a second,” a voice boomed from the shadows.

Felix and Madison stepped out. Both had their arms crossed over their chests. Madison looked like a tiny toy standing next to Felix’s weight-lifter body.

“I told you he’d be stupid enough to try something like this,” Madison muttered.

“I can’t believe I took that bet with you,” Felix whispered to her. He strode to Ethan and Paul, his hands up in a halt gesture. “This has got to end here, you two.”

“Didn’t Madison tell you about Dr. Irving’s Ch’zar population study?” Ethan said.

Felix frowned. “That could be theoretical for all we know.”

“Come on,” Paul said. “When has Old Fossil Irving ever done anything theoretical that didn’t turn out to be right?”

Madison marched forward, fingers rolling into fists, ready to slug Paul for calling her grandfather an old fossil.

Ethan stepped in front of Paul to shield him from her. “If it’s all theoretical,” he said, “why is every officer whispering about the ‘dire situation’ and ‘fallback contingencies’? There’s no fallback from the Seed Bank. You guys know what’ll happen to any adult who leaves.” Ethan turned to Felix. “You know what’ll happen to your mom.”

Felix recoiled.

That was a cheap shot to take.

Ethan took it, though, because it was true.

Colonel Winter, Dr. Irving—every adult Resister—were stuck here. If the Ch’zar discovered the secret base, the adults would either die fighting or get absorbed into the collective hive mind.

Felix’s frown deepened into a scowl. It looked wrong on the boy’s normally easygoing features. “So what are we going to do about it?” he asked Ethan.

“We?”
Madison blurted. “Is Blackwood’s insanity
catching
?”

She shoved Felix aside and blocked Ethan and Paul from their I.C.E. armor. “You got away with stealing a suit before because of a technicality. You were a civilian. You’re part of the Resistance now. Colonel Winter wouldn’t even bother with a court-martial. She might just order you guys blasted out of the air!”

“I’d like to see someone try,” Paul told her, and stuck out his chin.

Ethan elbowed him. He wasn’t helping.

“What do you want us to do?” Ethan asked Madison. “The adults are just trying to protect everyone here—I get that. But what if the
only
chance we have is to do something stupid and risky?”

Madison snorted. “You’re the expert on that,” she said, unconvinced.

“So what, then?” Ethan demanded. “We wait here? Let the Ch’zar breed and multiply and eventually zero in on the Seed Bank? We’ll fly carefully planned, cautious missions, and probably get picked off one by one. And it’ll end—not just for the Resistance, but for
every
human everywhere.”

Across the hangar, a few medical monitors hooked up to I.C.E. suits beeped, but otherwise it was silent.

Madison nodded. “Yeah, okay, so … what’s the plan?”

“Sterling Reform School,” Ethan said.

Felix’s eyes widened. “That’s a Class-A restricted zone, Ethan.”

“Good,” Ethan replied, “then you know the place. We break out as many kids as we can. There have to be dozens there with the right mind-set to pilot our I.C.E. suits.”

“Maybe hundreds,” Paul said. He glanced away, though, suddenly evasive.

Was there more to Sterling kids than just an independent streak?

“Imagine if we had three or four or even five extra squadrons to fight the Ch’zar,” Ethan said. “They could run interference while we bomb a few of the breeding nests. At the very least, we buy the Resisters time to think.”

Madison and Felix looked at one another. A silent conversation flashed between them.

Maybe it was years of flying and fighting together, but Ethan could almost hear them arguing the pros and cons of his reasoning.

And then they both agreed.

“For the next few minutes,” Felix said, straightening his uniform, “I’m officially still on duty. We can use that.” He pulled out a data pad and tapped it. “There. I transferred Madison, myself, and Ethan onto the ‘flu
quarantine list.’ That might give us an hour before anyone discovers we’ve gone AWOL.”

AWOL
stood for “absent without leave” in military jargon. It was a court-martialable offense according to the regulations.

As if Ethan hadn’t already committed a dozen court-martialable crimes today.

It was his friends, though, that he worried about.

Madison piped in, “Just in case, we took the precaution of getting all our I.C.E. suits prepped, and we got a luna moth assault carrier.” She nodded behind Ethan.

He turned.

Ethan hadn’t seen the moth until now because the dusky gray-and-green camouflaging blended so well with the shadows. Only the faint silver-blue bioluminescent “eye spots” on the wings and safety lights on the abdomen gave the huge assault carrier away. The luna moth was the size of school bus and could carry a hundred people in utter silence. He’d heard it had been engineered for a mass rescue of neighborhood kids by the previous base commander, but for some reason that mission had never happened.

It wasn’t fast, but it was superstealthy. The moth could be tethered mentally to one of their I.C.E. suits so
it’d follow them. Ethan was happy to have it. It would give them the option of rescuing a lot of Sterling kids.

“Wait,” Ethan said, his forehead furrowing with shock. “You had the suits ready?”

“Well,” Madison said, looking to the deck, embarrassed, “just in case your plan wasn’t
completely
nuts, we knew you’d need us.”

Ethan felt a surge of gratitude. Madison and Felix had thought he might be right. They trusted him enough to follow him … even if he was breaking regulations, even if it meant getting court-martialed, or maybe even shot.

He wouldn’t let them down.

He couldn’t. Ethan was gambling with all their lives.

  11