Sterling Squadron (3 page)

Felix stepped alongside Paul and Ethan. “You’ll need a third,” he said. “I’ll get ready.”

“Not this time, Felix,” Paul said. “That three-in-the-air rule, well, it really isn’t a rule, is it? It’s more of a ‘guideline.’ We don’t need it since we’re going to a safe place, straight there and back.”

“No one’s supposed to go out in pairs,” Madison piped up, grabbing Ethan’s elbow with bruise-inducing pressure. “It’s not safe.”

Paul waved away her concern. “You and your brother went out all the time.”

“That was once,” Madison whispered, and looked away. “And we had a good reason.”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “I guess you’re right. It’d be too scary for a trainee.”

Ethan’s face heated.

“Just let me go with you, Paul,” Felix said, his tone even, but his steely eyes serious.

“No,” Paul told him. “Don’t make me make it an order, Sergeant.”

Felix brooded but finally stepped back. He shot Ethan a worried glance.

That made Ethan nervous, but he couldn’t chicken out.

Not in front of everyone.

Not with a chance to get real airtime.

He had to prove he could cut it as a pilot, even though his instincts told him that Staff Sergeant Paul Hicks had some stupid prank up his sleeve … and that Ethan was going to regret this.

“Let’s fly,” he told Paul.

  3  

THIS WAS REAL. SURE, JUST A PATROL, BUT
anything could happen out here … and no one would be pushing a button on the simulation computer to end it if Ethan or Paul got hurt.

Adrenaline flashed through Ethan’s body like electricity. The cockpit of his I.C.E. wasp lit with indicators that ticked off pressure, weapon status, and a million other things that demanded his attention as he zoomed over sand dunes and red-rock desert at three hundred miles an hour.

Unlike on a simulated mission, the limbs of his I.C.E.
suit were now flooded with shock-absorbent gel. Ethan hated the stuff. It smelled like frying fat and made his skin tingle.

Ethan sensed the wasp’s mental state was on a hair trigger now, too.

It knew the difference between a simulation and this. It was ready to fly and fight and blast everything that got in its way.

Although it frightened Ethan to admit it, the part of him that wasn’t totally scared liked it, too.

They’d flown west for two hours, so this desert must be part of Texas or Mexico.

At least, what
used to be
Texas or Mexico before the Ch’zar arrived fifty years ago.

Paul had led the way here in his Crusher praying mantis. He throttled down to a mere two hundred miles an hour.

Ethan matched his speed. What was he up to now?

Paul’s voice crackled over the radio: “You ready for a challenge, Blackwood?”

There was no sarcasm in Paul’s words. That bothered Ethan.

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked, trying to sound like he was in control of the situation.

Paul laughed. “We’re in a satellite blackout zone. No
one’s going to see us. So I was thinking we could settle who is better with a race. Nothing fancy. Just point A to point B …”

A map popped onto Ethan’s central display. It showed a valley over the next ridge with solid blue squares, rectangles, and circles. The course was clear: a red line that zigged and zagged between these objects.

“So no one cheats,” Paul went on, “I’ll set our navigation systems to detect if either of us goes off path by a hundred feet. That’ll be a disqualification.”

Ethan squinted at Paul’s map, trying to figure out where he could go fast, where he’d have to slow on the tight turns.

A hundred feet wouldn’t be much room for error, not when you flew close to the speed of sound.

But if Paul could do it, so could Ethan.

Still, the flight rules were clear: no racing. It might be a trap. Paul would let him make the first move, catch him on camera, and make it seem like racing was Ethan’s idea.

Over the radio, Paul suddenly blurted,
“Ready … set … go!”

The Crusher’s jets flared as Paul hit his afterburners and streaked ahead.

Ethan clenched his teeth as his wasp bobbled in Paul’s jet wash.

Suspicious or not, Ethan wasn’t about to let him get away with a cheap trick like that.

He opened his afterburners, too, and chased Paul, already in second, and
last
, place.

Ethan arced over a rocky desert ridge.

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

Knucklebone Canyon was a city … or what was left of one.

Ethan gaped at hundred-story skyscrapers, giant scalloped domes, and needle spires of green and yellow glass—all of it shattered, buildings skewed, some toppled or jumbled across a web of elevated highways.

He’d grown up in the rolling suburbs of Santa Blanca, where the tallest building was three stories high. This place was unbelievable. It looked like something from one of the science-fiction comics he’d browsed at the corner drugstore.

From a distance, the whole thing looked like upraised hands, fingers straight, fingers clenched, and fingers busted. Knucklebones.

It was a huge three-dimensional maze of a racetrack.

Where had it all come from? Madison and Felix had told him the Ch’zar had invaded Earth over fifty years ago, but this didn’t look like their organic technology.

Ethan then remembered. He’d seen pictures of great
cities before in school: Rome, Sydney, and New York. He’d never imagined they could look like this. So broken.

Dr. Irving, the chief scientist of the Resistance, had told Ethan there’d been a great world war fought on Earth just before the Ch’zar came.

This had to be what was left.

Fifty years ago, people had been able to build anything they could dream.

Apparently, they could
break
whatever they’d built, too. It was all so sad.

A streak of ghostly green and silver arced across the cityscape and left a vapor trail.

That was Paul.

Ethan snapped out of it.

Sightseeing could wait. There was a race to win!

He poured on the speed and didn’t worry about fuel. If he didn’t catch up now, he never would.

Ethan’s face pulled back from the acceleration, his vision blurred; then he dove to go even faster, spinning to dodge bridges and broken statues.

He closed the gap between him and Paul.

Alarms blared from his flight computer. He’d almost strayed outside the flight path.

That was stupid.

Making mistakes like that would win the race for Paul.

Ethan focused and tapped the throttle up to three-quarters full.

He pushed his mind ahead, guessing the angles and power burns he’d need to maneuver. He skidded into an insane hairpin turn around a building—corkscrewing around a mass-transit tube—and skipped over a concrete ramp.

Paul was just ahead, doing something that made
no
sense.

His mantis hovered in midair, next to a group of buildings half collapsed on top of each other. It was like he
wanted
Ethan to catch up.

Ethan didn’t ask why.

This was his chance.

He jammed his throttle to full speed. His jets thundered to life. His wasp tucked its wings close to its body, locked them in place, and rocketed forward.

Paul’s jets flared full power and he blasted into a tunnel.

It was a passage made from three buildings that had toppled together, leaning precariously, all cracked crystal and steel struts and shattered marble.

As the mantis I.C.E. moved through this tunnel ahead of Ethan, the shock wave from its jets made everything tremble like there was an earthquake.

Ethan followed him in.

Like an idiot.

“Blackwood, no!” Paul yelled over the radio. “Go around! It’s a tr—” A crackle of static cut off his transmission.

The buildings shook and groaned and twisted. Glass rained down onto Ethan’s wasp, twisted steel girders clanged in front of him, and then the entire passage shuddered as the structures collapsed.

A wall the size of a house fell in front of him.

Ethan’s wasp reacted faster than he did, firing its stinger laser and blasting part of the wall, punching
through
and out into the open.

Trembling with terror, Ethan zoomed out of the last bit of the tunnel.

He caught a glimpse in his rear camera as the three buildings fell upon each other, plumes of dust and concrete chunks spiraling into the air.

A split second slower and he would have been squashed.

A red-hot haze colored Ethan’s eyes.

He was so mad at Paul he would have blasted him—that is, if Paul had been anywhere to be seen.

But that wouldn’t be the best way to get revenge on Staff Sergeant Paul Hicks. No, the best way would be to beat him. Win by so much, and Paul would be humiliated.

Ethan scanned every camera. Nothing.

Where was he?

Had he gotten so far ahead so fast?

There wasn’t a single blip on the motion sensors or radar.

That couldn’t be right.

Ethan had a sinking feeling that something was
really
wrong (other than Paul being a sneak and a cheat and a rotten person).

He knew he was going to regret this, but Ethan slowed and stopped.

This is what every instructor, even Paul, had drilled into Ethan from the first day of flight training: You didn’t leave a downed wingman behind. Rescuing pilots was critical—not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because if the Ch’zar captured them, absorbed their minds into the alien Collective, then they’d know that much more about the Resistance.

In all likelihood, this was just another trick, and Ethan knew he’d be kicking himself for doing this, but just in case Paul was in trouble, it was a lot more important to check on him than to win a stupid race or get a few extra flight points. Ethan banked back toward where the tunnel had been.

Smoke and dust were thick in the air. Motion sensors were useless because of the debris fluttering down.

Ethan did see
something
, though.

Strung between two buildings, just above where he’d shot out of the collapsing tunnel, was a spiderweb.

It gleamed in the murky half-light, which seemed wrong because it was in the shadows.

It wasn’t reflected sunlight, though. It was electrical sparks on steel strands.

Ethan then realized how big this web really was. It spanned a full acre of space between those two buildings.

Three black widows, each the size of a minivan, clung to the edge of the web—arcs of electricity flashing from their front needle-like legs—crackling and arcing toward the web’s center …

 … where Paul’s praying mantis helplessly struggled.

He was caught.

  4