Sterling Squadron (4 page)

GIANT BLACK WIDOWS? ETHAN’S SKIN CRAWLED
.

He pushed aside his instinctive revulsion.

He blasted the web with the wasp’s stinger laser.

Ruby-red flashes strobed, and the temperature inside his cockpit jumped until it felt like a sauna.

The dust in the air was too thick, though, and it dissipated the laser. The beam hit the spiders, but only at a fraction of the laser’s full strength—not enough to hurt them.

It also blew any advantage of surprise he might’ve just had.

Two spiders skittered back into the shadows. One crawled to the center of the web, approaching Paul’s mantis, which was still wriggling in the center. The black widow reached back and pulled silk strands from its spinnerets.

It was going to wrap Paul up in a cocoon.

If these Ch’zar arachnids were anything like real black widows, they’d have a supernasty venomous bite, too. One that could liquefy the insides of its prey.

So gross.

Ethan’s radar collision warning blared, jarring him back from those nightmare thoughts. A foggy haze filled his screens, flowing fast from the edges of that spiderweb.

Ethan pulled up—quick!

Web strands shot through the air and hit the wall of the nearest building. They wrapped around steel supports and, crackling with sparks, cut through them like red-hot razor blades through tissue paper.

Yikes!

Those things could mince him and his wasp. The webs hung in the air for a long time, too. Ethan could run into them by accident if he wasn’t careful. He bet they had the entire airspace “mined” with floating and anchored strands.

On the radio, Paul’s voice was full of static, so
Ethan only heard a few words:
“Blackwood … get … Seed Bank … That’s an order!”

He ignored Paul’s garbled orders. He knew what to do. He flew up twenty stories, landing on the wall of a skyscraper.

Ethan’s laser was useless, and he couldn’t get close enough to rip those spiders apart … but he didn’t have to get close. There was an advantage that flying insects had over mere ground crawlers.

He and his wasp latched on to the side of the building and sank barbed hooks deep into the steel and concrete. They flew up at an angle, pulling, tugging, and ripping off a two-ton chunk with an earsplitting
screeeech
.

And then he dropped it.

Ethan had learned about gravitational acceleration last night in his physics lesson.

Cutting webs, venomous bites, armored exoskeletons—none of that mattered when you had air superiority. Mass and gravity would splat the bugs flat.

Without waiting to see what had happened, Ethan flitted to another building, wrenched free another chunk, and dropped it on what he guessed was the other side of the web.

He circled around and came back in low to the ground.

Radar picked up thick airborne debris.

He did the best he could to avoid the stuff, but one stray strand of spiderweb cut his wasp’s back leg and severed a barb.

Ethan felt a blast of its pain.

The wasp flinched but otherwise ignored it.

The spiders’ main web was down. Pieces clung to the sides of buildings. One black widow crouched in the shadows and tensed, ready to jump.

Ethan wasn’t sure about the other two bugs. He hoped they’d been squashed into paste.

On the ground, tangled, covered in silk, was Paul’s praying mantis.

Ethan knew he should be careful, but he couldn’t let the enemy regroup.

He hit his jets, zoomed in, grabbed the three-ton mantis, and yanked it into the air.

The drag was so intense, Ethan felt as if his wasp were swimming through molasses.

Strands of cutting silk shot up after him.

Ethan rolled to avoid getting hit by a counterattack that would have severed his wings. He climbed to three hundred feet and then dove back to the ground, landing about a half mile away.

They should be safe, at least long enough for him to get Paul’s suit cleared of the entangling fibers.

He had the wasp fire several rapid, low-power laser pulses.

At close range, the silk fried and puffed into smoke.

Paul’s mantis shook off the rest and pushed Ethan’s wasp aside. The praying mantis’s wings popped out and buzzed in anger.

Without even bothering to check on Ethan—not even a “thank you”—Paul jumped into the air and sped off.

“You’re welcome,” Ethan muttered, and took off after him.

If Ethan didn’t know any better, he’d say Staff Sergeant Paul Hicks, always full of himself, pushing trainees around, the “best” pilot in the Resistance, had just peed his I.C.E. suit.

If they hadn’t almost died, Ethan would’ve laughed.

On the other hand, maybe Paul was seriously injured.

This wasn’t a game or a contest. Ethan had to set aside his personal feelings. He was supposed to be a pilot, fighting for something more than glory.

Ethan caught up to the praying mantis and flew alongside it for twenty minutes, keeping the short-range radio channels open.

Paul didn’t say a thing.

The cameras in the wasp’s cockpit went dark. In the middle of the central display flashed:

SECURITY PROTOCOL 003

That was the standing order for all I.C.E. suits on approach to the base to go into blackout mode, fly for a few minutes on random trajectories, and then land on autopilot.

That was so no Resister pilot knew the location of the Seed Bank base. The I.C.E. insect brain switched over to a semiconscious state so even they didn’t know the base’s exact entrance.

That way, if they got caught, they couldn’t reveal to the enemy what they didn’t know.

It was the one secret the Ch’zar could
never
learn. If the base’s location was discovered, the Ch’zar would throw everything they had at them and reduce the entire mountain base into chunks of gravel.

Everything they had …

Ethan had never seen black widow Ch’zar units. He hadn’t even heard of electrified webs or silk strands that cut through armor. What other surprises did the enemy have?

Just how many Ch’zar were there?

Lots, he guessed.

There had to be for them to have set up that trap in Knucklebone Canyon. They had turned off their satellite coverage, avoided patrolling the area for months, and then
sent three units to spin a web and sit there waiting for some Resister pilots to come flying by?

That was a long-range strategic use of resources that you wouldn’t try unless you had dozens—or hundreds—of I.C.E. units to spare.

And the Resistance? There were twenty-seven pilots on the active flight roster, six down with the flu, and a handful of new trainees.

Ethan’s cameras snapped back on.

Lines of blue landing lights flashed and directed his wasp through a tunnel that led to Landing Deck Three.

He touched down to a prepped docking station. Technicians rushed over and attached monitors. Bioengineers popped the rivets on the wasp’s damaged hind leg and started to fit a replacement limb.

The abdomen armor covering Ethan’s cockpit hissed open.

Ethan engaged the safeties on the wasp’s laser, put the wasp into hibernation mode, and clambered out. His gold-and-black formfitting flight suit dripped with cushioning gel … mixed with green insect blood.

He patted the wasp and felt the connection with its mind fade as it fell asleep.

Its brain pulsed with satisfaction. It had flown, fought, and crushed enemies.

The wasp was primal. It lived to kill and eat.

Ethan pulled his mind away.

He patted the battered armor again. “Good work,” he whispered.

He wasn’t sure if it understood, or even cared, what he thought. It was important to Ethan, though, to make the gesture of appreciation.

Felix jogged up to Ethan. He stared at the damage on the wasp, frowned, and asked, “What happened?”

“Ch’zar ambush,” Ethan said.

A wave of raw, sickening emotion slammed into Ethan as what had just happened dawned on him. After weeks of simulated exercises, he’d forgotten how terrifying the enemy could really be, how easily he could
die
out there.

Felix set a huge hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Do you need a medic? Are you okay?”

Ethan shrugged his hand off. “I’m good,” he lied. He felt like throwing up. “You better check on Hicks, though.”

Shouts echoed from across the landing bay as Paul climbed down from his mantis, pushed back a crowd of medics and technicians, and marched straight for Felix and Ethan.

Madison stepped in his way, but Paul sidestepped her without a word.

There was no expression on Paul’s face. It could’ve been carved from stone. However, the scars that ran from the corner of his eye to his mouth twitched.

Ethan knew what this was about.

Paul had to finally admit he’d been wrong about Ethan. He had to make it good between them. After all, Ethan had just saved his life out there. That wouldn’t be an easy thing for a star pilot like Paul to admit.

Ethan would make it easy for him and meet him halfway. Whatever his personal feelings for Paul, every Resister pilot had to stick together.

“Hey,” Ethan said, stepping forward and holding out his hand for Paul to shake.

Paul halted, glared at Ethan’s hand, and then
punched
Ethan square in the face.

Ethan toppled back. He fell on his butt, his eyes streaming tears from the impact.

“Get up, Blackwood,” Paul growled, and stood over him. His face twisted into a snarl of pure rage. “I’m nowhere near done with you.”

Felix grabbed Paul’s arm. Madison latched on to Paul’s other side, tugging him back.

Paul tried to throw them off, but Felix was stronger. Madison was a martial arts expert, and together they held him back.

Ethan shook his head to clear it and shakily got to his feet.

He didn’t understand.

Technicians and pilots and trainees crowded around them, and then suddenly all snapped to attention.

Colonel Winter, the adult leader of the Resistance, was on deck.

She was as old as Ethan’s mom. But where his mom always had a smile for him and radiated warmth, the colonel was cold and hard, and Ethan had never seen her smile. She stood before them, hands on her hips. Her dark hair was streaked white down the center. She wore a blue dress uniform and had a pistol strapped to her hip. She set one hand on that pistol and pinned Ethan and then Paul with a liquid-helium-cold stare.

“Oh, you
are
done, Staff Sergeant Hicks,” she said. “Very done. You will report to my office immediately.”

Two adult guards moved to either side of Paul. The rage drained from his face.

Despite just getting punched, Ethan was about to protest that Paul was scared half out of his mind, that he hadn’t realized what he was doing.

Because even if Paul
had
meant to hit him, Resister pilots stuck together.

Colonel Winter held up a hand as Ethan opened his
mouth. She turned to Felix. “Sergeant,” she said in a flat tone, “since you were the deck NCO when this occurred, this was your responsibility. Report to my office as well.”

Felix saluted, eyes forward, and wisely kept his mouth shut.

The colonel then turned to Ethan. “And you, Mr. Blackwood. My office. Double-time. I suspect, as usual, you are the cause of this trouble.”

Ethan remembered the colonel had once threatened to march him in front of a firing squad and shoot him.

He marched off the deck to the elevators and wondered if fighting Ch’zar black widows was going to be the easy part of this day.

  5  

ETHAN FELT LIKE HE WAS GETTING CRUSHED
in the crowded elevator. It wasn’t just that he, Felix, Paul, Colonel Winter, and two military police crowded the space. Colonel Winter’s office was fifty floors deep in the Seed Bank base—so far down, Ethan swore he could feel the weight of the earth pressing on him.

Or maybe it was just starting to hit him how many rules he’d broken and how much trouble he could be in.

The elevator jerked to a stop.

They marched down a concrete corridor. Water dripped from finger-length stalactites on the ceiling. The
military police opened Colonel Winter’s office door, and she and the boys entered.