Sterling Squadron (2 page)

His wasp’s stinger flashed a brilliant red beam. The heat inside the cockpit jumped to broiling. The wasp’s heavy laser was like a razor-sharp solar flare.

He aimed for the eyes of the mosquito, not the wings.
He’d made that mistake once before, and the blur of the wings’ diamond surfaces had dissipated the heat.

He hit, scorching the enemy insect’s optics.

The blind bug kept flying, though, veering right, and instinctively attacked the nearest thing—his wingmate.

That left one last opponent.

This mosquito was the smallest in the swarm. It had slender silver stripes like a zebra.

It hung back and watched Ethan. It was obviously the smart one.

There was always a smart one in these swarms, one bug that seemed to give orders and think first instead of just diving into battle. A squad leader? Did mosquitoes have a queen like bees? Ethan didn’t know how the Ch’zar worked. He just knew that these small guys were the hardest to fight.

His heart raced. His pulse thundered in his ears. Ethan took a deep breath. He couldn’t get overconfident. You
always
had to think in a dogfight.

The tiny mosquito darted away, making a break for it.

Ethan gritted his teeth. He’d had a perfect flight record this morning.

He tapped his fuel gauge. The jumping needle settled at a third of a tank. The base was a long way off, and his
wasp’s afterburners sucked down the fuel as if it were a triple-chocolate malt on a hot summer day.

But it was just one mosquito … one laser blast away from a perfect score.

Ethan couldn’t let it get away.

He fired his afterburners and rocketed after his prey.

The other bug was a crazy-good flier. It jinked and jerked, dove, and then arced up and over into a steep, fast climb.

Ethan chased it.

On his forward computer screen, spinning targeting rings locked onto the enemy.

Something was wrong, though.

There’d been only one mosquito. Now there were
two
targets on-screen.

The targeting rings on his display blinked, confused as well.

One of the objects slowed, dropped back, spun around … and blasted a cone of smoke out the back.

A missile!

Where had the tiny insect hidden that thing?

Ethan fumbled at the controls, hit manual override on the targeting system, and fired.

The missile was way too close, though.

It blew up in his face.

  2  

ETHAN BLINKED. HE SAW NOTHING BUT
stars and blurs; then a shock-wave sonic boom jarred him.

He knew what that thunder was.

It’d been drilled into him by flight instructors for the last two weeks: he was in a supersonic free fall and about to hit the ground at over Mach 1 with a world-class
SPLAT!

How many seconds had he been disoriented?

The sky and earth spun on the monitors. Ethan clutched at the controls to pull himself out of the wild descent.

He froze.

On one screen was that little creep of a mosquito that had shot him.

Ethan tried to lock his laser onto it, but it was too far away, still jittering back and forth, following him to make sure his wasp got flattened.

Smart.

Ethan checked his hydraulic pressure gauges, his laser charge, and his fuel indicator. None of it was good. If he tried to chase his opponent, the little guy would just flit away, and Ethan’s wasp would run out of fuel.

“There is no way
you
are getting the best of
me
,” Ethan whispered.

So Ethan kept falling … and let the silver-striped mosquito drift a bit closer.

Ethan snapped his wing controls, hovered to a bone-jarring stop, and, before his enemy flashed past him, grabbed at the mosquito with barbed forelimbs.

There was an earsplitting screech of insect chitin and sparking titanium as they made contact.

They tumbled and wrestled.

As they fell to earth, Ethan refused to release, even with only three thousand feet to go.

He had a superior grip and turned the smaller insect so he was under Ethan’s wasp—making sure he’d land right on top of the little creep.

Ethan was going to win this, no matter what it cost.

Then everything went black: computer screens, indicators, even the emergency lights.

“What now?” Ethan said.

His cockpit hatch hissed and opened. Ethan blinked as the bright lights of the simulation deck streamed inside.

This hadn’t been real.

Oh, it’d been real enough to get a
feel
of combat flight, and to get bruises, and the instructors could pressurize your flight suit to even cause blackouts … but you couldn’t die.

Ethan clambered out of his I.C.E. wasp.

The gigantic insect had wires attached to its camera and sensor systems. This was all one big dream to the bug. It was probably happy to have the chance to fly and fight, over and over.

Ethan, though, wasn’t happy.

He’d been
robbed
of his win.

He rubbed his shoulder, sore from the simulated acceleration that’d almost dislocated the joint. He squinted, his eyes still adjusting to the bright lights.

The simulation deck had a dozen I.C.E. suits in hydraulic rigs that could be turned and twisted. Adult technicians monitored the simulations on computers. Some pilots flew over mountains, some over deserts, some
over Arctic ice fields. They dove, rolled, and fired lasers, missiles, and guns at computer-generated opponents, or sometimes an instructor would get into a suit and go one-on-one against a trainee.

The stakes weren’t life or death, but they were high enough. You had to score so many points or risk flunking out of flight school.

The Resisters didn’t let just
anyone
fly.

They needed pilots, but when you’re in a banking turn going four hundred miles an hour with a wingman just feet away, one wrong move and you could wipe out the entire squadron.

Ethan spotted Madison and Felix standing nearby, watching him.

Felix wore his gray uniform, a jumpsuit with sergeant stripes and silver crossed insect wings on the left shoulder, the insignia of a Resister pilot.

Ethan wanted a set of those wings so bad he could taste it.

At thirteen, Felix was a year older than Ethan, but he could have passed for sixteen with his broad wrestler shoulders and standing a full head taller than other boys their age. He’d shaved “racing stripes” into the side of his shorn hair. He flew a Gladiator-class rhinoceros beetle
I.C.E. suit and was the best heavy-combat flier in the Resistance.

Ethan counted him as one of his few, maybe his only, friends here.

Standing next to Felix was Madison. A girl. Ethan didn’t know what she was: friend, enemy, or … something else.

Every time he looked at her, he felt confused.

When he’d first met her, she’d been a blonde. Today her hair was brown and stuck up with so many cowlicks it looked like antennae. Her face came to a point at her sharp chin, which would have made her pixie-cute, if not for the angry glare she usually had when she saw Ethan.

She wore a mottled-green flight suit that matched her reconnaissance dragonfly I.C.E. armor. The suit could go supersonic, scout ahead, and slip behind enemy lines and never be detected.

She was a great pilot.

She glared at him, her mouth open in astonishment. “What
were
you doing?” she demanded.

“I was about to win,” Ethan said.

“That stunt was the most reckless maneuver I’ve ever seen!” Madison scribbled notes on her clipboard.

That wasn’t good. Madison’s job was to assess the
flight candidates. Although there were a half-dozen adult officers reporting on his progress every day, the Resisters’ leader, Colonel Winter, insisted on peer review.
People on the front lines
, she’d said,
should have a say in who’s flying with them
. And for some weird reason, Madison’s opinion mattered the most to Ethan.

He had a sinking feeling that Madison wouldn’t do him any favors just because they’d fought together in Santa Blanca. In fact, he got the distinct feeling she might go out of her way to make things
harder
on him.

The real trouble, though, climbed out of the I.C.E. suit next to Ethan’s. All the trainees called that particular suit the Crusher. It was a three-ton praying mantis. Its exoskeleton was ghostly green with poised-to-strike, air-piston limbs. It was fast and deadly. It just had a light laser, but its specialty was hand-to-hand, midair combat. In a close fight, it would’ve ripped Ethan’s wasp to pieces.

The eyes on the mantis always seemed to stare at Ethan, no matter where he was, looking like it wanted to rip him apart, too.

Just like its pilot.

Paul Hicks was the same age as Ethan, but somehow he always managed to make Ethan feel like a kid.

Maybe it was the three scars that ran diagonally from above his left eye to his mouth. Or maybe it was the fact
that he was a staff sergeant (and outranked even Felix) and could give orders to anyone on the simulation deck.

He marched straight toward Ethan, halted a half inch from his nose, and growled, “Can you explain what the heck you were doing, Blackwood?”

It was obvious (now) that Paul had been controlling that last mosquito in the simulation. Instructors could run any enemy unit in the simulation. It was just as obvious that Paul had ended the simulation early to keep Ethan from beating him.

What a sore loser.

The deck clock chimed, marking the end of the exercise.

The other I.C.E. suits opened, and one by one, trainees stumbled out and blinked to clear the dreamlike fog of their individual simulations.

“I was about to beat you,” Ethan replied, remarkably not sounding scared.

And why should he be scared? He would have crushed Paul—well, virtually in the simulation anyway.

“You were about to get yourself killed in the process,” Paul said.

“I could’ve pulled up in time.”

Paul took a step back, brushed sandy-blond hair out of his face, and looked Ethan over.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I’m taking a few points off for
un
original thinking. You think that same grab-and-shield trick would work twice in a
real
battle?”

“Yeah, I do,” Ethan replied. “Once the Ch’zar make up their collective minds, they stick to it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Besides, it was original enough thinking to fool
you
.”

Paul’s pale face flushed.

Ethan wished he’d kept his mouth shut. That was rude and wouldn’t help him get a passing assessment.

“Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” Ethan murmured.

This felt exactly like when Ethan had started on his school’s soccer team. He’d been a year younger than everyone else. He’d felt like he had to play faster and better, push harder, to prove he belonged on the team.

The stakes were a million times higher now, though.

Ethan
had
to be a Resister pilot. He had to be out there fighting the Ch’zar. They’d taken everything from him: his happy life in Santa Blanca, his friends, his parents, and his sister, Emma.

The simulation deck was now crowded with pilots and trainees, but Ethan felt very much alone.

“You know what?” Paul looked around. “Forget those points. We should take this outside, trainee. A real flight—just a simple patrol to get you some airtime.”

A smile crept over Paul’s face. It wasn’t entirely friendly.

Ethan was stunned by the offer. He wanted to go. He needed real airtime hours to graduate the program. It was a great opportunity, because instructors rarely took trainees like him outside. There were forms to fill out, plans to file, and Ch’zar patrols that always pinged the satellite web and messed up everyone’s scheduled flights.

On the other hand, he didn’t trust Paul. This had to be a trick.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Paul said. “We’ll head over to Knucklebone Canyon. No one’s seen a bug there for years. It’s in a satellite blackout zone. As safe as it gets.”

Before Ethan could answer, Paul went to the adult deck officer and spoke to her. He tapped and signed a half-dozen data pads and then came back to Ethan. “Suit up in that wasp of yours, trainee. Our flight plan should only take a minute to get clearance from Command and Control, and then we’re good to go. This should be fun.”