Sterling Squadron (20 page)

“The Ch’zar search every square inch of the mountain range,” the colonel told them. “They’re uprooting trees, turning over boulders, and placing seismic sensors. They are coming for us. They will find the Seed Bank unless we stop them. It is only a matter of time. Ten days at most.”

This was a disaster.

But Ethan still didn’t understand why they weren’t all in the brig for going AWOL and disobeying her direct order about going to Sterling.

He just had to know.

He gathered all his courage and asked, “And this is why we’re not in trouble?”

“Trouble, Mr. Blackwood?” Colonel Winter’s eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. “Indeed, we are
all
in trouble.” She glanced about the hangar to see if anyone was within earshot. “Or perhaps you mean this last mission? When I called for volunteers to go on a high-risk rescue operation to recruit suitable pilot candidates to repel this force? You recovered six trainees—an entire squadron—willing to accept the truth and fight the Ch’zar. It was much more than I had hoped for. Congratulations.”

Ethan’s mouth dropped open.

Fortunately, Madison was a quicker thinker than Ethan. She kicked his foot. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “That’s
exactly
what Blackwood meant.”

“Very good,” Colonel Winter growled, and tilted her chin up so it felt like she looked down on them all. “Because if that were
not
the case, if this had
not
been a top-secret but
authorized
mission, we would be short our best four pilots precisely when we needed them the most.”

Ethan glanced at Madison, Felix, and Paul.

They all looked as stunned as he felt, but they all had the sense to keep their mouths shut.

“Sergeant, get that leg tended to,” Colonel Winter told Felix. She slapped her tablet. “Our projections of Ch’zar movement give us one week to get those Sterling kids ready.”

“Ready for what?” Ethan asked.

“You four will lead them through a comprehensive emergency course on piloting I.C.E. suits. And I hope it is not a crash course,” Colonel Winter said, “because our lives may depend on them.”

  25  

ETHAN STOOD ON THE CATWALK THAT
overlooked the Seed Bank farming cavern.

A hundred feet below were fields of wheat and corn, artificial rivers that meandered, and herds of zebra that grazed. Overhead, a constellation of artificial sun globes cast enough light for a midsummer day.

Ethan could almost believe he was outside (maybe it was built this way so people down here didn’t get completely claustrophobic). Only a whiff of recirculated air and the curve of the great walls gave away that you weren’t outside.

Ethan hesitated on the catwalk, standing outside a steel door. This was the same room they’d stuck him in when he’d first come to the Seed Bank.

There were hundreds of these tiny rooms up here, although officers, regular pilots, and just about everyone else lived in larger quarters on another level.

So who had these rooms been built for? Had there been thousands of Resisters in the past? Or had these been for people who never made it to the Seed Bank before the Ch’zar invasion?

He’d ask Dr. Irving, but not now.

Ethan was here for Emma.

He knocked.

There was silence, and then Emma called from inside. “Come in?”

Ethan opened the door.

His sister sat on a cot, her legs drawn up to her chest. There were tearstains on her freckled cheeks. Her long braid wrapped around her neck. She had on jeans and a pink T-shirt the Resisters must have given her.

She perked up at the sight of Ethan, jumped to her feet, and hugged him.

“Thank you!” she murmured. “Thank you
so
much.”

He awkwardly hugged her back.

He didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have to
thank
him for anything. He only wished he’d figured out earlier that the Ch’zar had taken her to Sterling. He should’ve guessed that.

She pushed him away, slugged him in the shoulder, and sat back on the cot.

“It’s been one long nightmare,” she said, squeezing the last tears from her eyes, and then stared off into space. “And it’s not over yet, is it?”

Ethan shook his head. “Not until the Ch’zar are destroyed.”

Emma snorted. “A month ago, all I could think about were finals and getting into Vassar Prep. I was worried about the Senior Elementary Prom, for crying out loud! I had the dress picked out, the corsage, even got the boy to—” She smacked her fist into her hand so hard, Ethan flinched from his sister’s uncharacteristic violence. “I was
so
deluded.”

“I know how you feel,” Ethan whispered.

He, too, had bought the lie of a life that had been his Santa Blanca neighborhood. It’d been so nice he almost wished he could go back there … if not for that whole “lose your mind when you became an adult” thing.

“I’ve got to forget that stuff now,” Emma said, her mouth tightening into a grim frown. “I
kind of
understand what’s going on, from what I’ve seen and heard from you,
and from what some of the people here have told me.” Her eyes focused to that laser-intense gaze she had when she studied trigonometry or Latin. “So let me see if I’ve got it straight: these Ch’zar aliens invaded the world and zapped everyone with mind control?”

“Mind control that only works on adults,” Ethan said. “They get absorbed into one hive mind.”

“And that’s why the Ch’zar built our neighborhood?” she asked. “So all the kids will grow up nice and easy? Then be mind-controlled?”

“Santa Blanca and hundreds of neighborhoods like it.”

“That night when the school burned down,” Emma continued, “you were
inside
one of those insects—just like we were flying back in that luna moth, right? How does it work?”

“I.C.E. armor,” Ethan explained. “I.C.E. stands for ‘Insectoid Combat Exoskeleton.’ The Resisters use the Ch’zar’s own technology against them. They’re part mechanical and part living insect.”

Emma’s face curled with revulsion.

“It’s not so gross,” he said. “And there’s a connection you make to the bug’s brain so you can completely control it.”

Ethan left out the part how the connection was
two-way
and it gave pilots a glimpse into the savage, killer insect mind.

Emma would find that out soon enough.

She shuddered out a sigh and changed the subject. “I miss Mom and Dad. Even the twins.”

Ethan sat next to her on the cot.

The last time he’d seen his parents was when Coach Norman had taken him away.

As if Emma had read his thoughts, she said, “The day you vanished, when Coach Norman took you, that’s when everything turned upside down. The school board moved up the time for my early admission. Mom and Dad acted so kind … and so sad. I thought they were just going to miss me since I’d be at Vassar Prep.”

Emma wiped her nose, paused midswipe, and turned to him, suddenly looking half panicked. “Mom and Dad left me a goodbye note in my purse. I found it at Sterling. I kept it hidden. I don’t know … it felt like this huge secret that I couldn’t even tell the other kids. I think it
proves
they’re not part of this hive mind thing you’re talking about.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. Their parents had left her a note, too?

He’d started to believe that his parents possibly being normal, not being part of the Ch’zar Collective, might’ve
been just his imagination. Unless he was on a mission, he always carried their note. He’d take it out every day and read it to prove to himself it was real, to prove there was hope he’d see his mom and dad again one day.

“Let me see it,” he said.

Emma dug a worn envelope from her jean’s pocket and set her note on the cot.

Ethan got out his. “They left me one, too.”

They traded.

Ethan read his sister’s:

They traded back their notes.

“They’re
almost
identical,” she whispered. “Weird … But it has to mean Mom and Dad
are
different from the other Ch’zar-controlled adults, doesn’t it?” Hope shone in her eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Ethan said, wanting to hope, too, but knowing how impossible it seemed. “It could be a Ch’zar trick.”

“But it
is
possible,” Emma countered, “for some part of the human population to be immune to their mind control?”

Ethan shrugged. “What are the odds of
two
people like that being our mom and dad? That’s an awfully big coincidence.”

Emma drew her knees back up to her chest and hugged them. “Maybe we’ll never know.”

They sat a moment in silence.

A sickening wave of homesickness washed through Ethan.

He took a deep breath and stood.

“I don’t want to talk about Mom and Dad anymore. It hurts too much, and there’s more important things to do.” He moved toward the door.

Emma bonked her head onto her knees. “I feel like I’m going to barf.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “I threw up every day when I first got here. But we’ve got to beat the Ch’zar. After, then we can figure out what happened to Mom and Dad. I came to show you how we’re going to fight them.”

She looked up and new determination sparkled in her eyes. “Fight? I can fight,” she said. “Those bugs owe me a set of parents, a life, and a senior elementary prom!”

Ethan smiled at her. He knew she was scared, but she was joking and putting on a brave face. “Come on, then,” he said, getting up and making for the door.

Emma pulled herself up and followed him down spirals of stairs, through the power generation core, and to the elevator that took them to the repair-and-refit hangar.

As they entered the cavernous room, she moved closer to Ethan.

Surrounding them were hundreds of I.C.E. suits.

Many were being fixed and reloaded with fresh power packs, ammunition, and food cells. Most, though, were in deep hibernation mode, because the Resisters had many more suits than pilots to fly them.

There were gigantic ten-ton Goliath beetles that could barely get airborne, delicate lacewing scouts, Hydra-class millipede assault units, wasps of red and black and gold and green, and even smaller versions of the silver ant lions Ethan had faced before in battle.

Madison sat by her dragonfly as a technician welded a puncture. She watched his every move, providing helpful (and possibly annoying) suggestions.

Ethan waved her over to them.

“We’re going to train you and the other Sterling kids to fly,” Ethan told Emma.

“Me?” Emma made a gag face. “
Inside
one of these things?”

He ignored her reaction. “There’ll only be time to train with one unit,” he said.

Ethan left out
why
there’d be so little time: that they’d all be going into battle in a few days.

Madison jogged up to them and flashed Emma one of her crooked smiles.

Ethan had a feeling those two could become good friends.

Emma, though, was too horrified with the zoo of insects around her to make small talk with Madison.

His sister’s face then brightened as her gaze landed on one particular I.C.E. suit. “How about that? It’s … uh, cute.”

Ethan had never heard anyone use that word to describe
any
I.C.E. armor.
Powerful
, yes.
Unstoppable
, for sure. But never
cute
.

Madison clapped her hands. “Oh, good choice!”

She and Emma trotted to a half-spherical shape in the shadows. Its shell was covered in dust but still gleamed candy-apple red nonetheless in the dim light.