Titan Base (19 page)

He clambered into his wasp’s cockpit.

This was the problem that Ethan had been wrestling with since Colonel Winter had made him Lieutenant Blackwood and put him charge. All too often, there was more than one right choice. He could only pick one. He had people counting on him to save their lives, and he couldn’t save them all.

Authority. Responsibility. Accountability.

He hadn’t wanted any of it … but those things were his now.

He closed the hatch.

“Mount up,” Ethan said via the short-range radio. “Let’s move out.”

With a rumble of thunder, the squadron lifted into the air.

Ethan looked down. He didn’t see Bobby or the others. They’d already disappeared into the shadows.

“Good luck, guys,” he whispered, and with a sigh added, “I’m so sorry.”

   
21
   
JAMMED

EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT
.

It wasn’t just leaving Bobby and the other Santa Blanca kids behind, although that was part of it. Ethan could never go back to being the Ethan Blackwood who just played soccer and did his homework. That old life seemed like someone else’s.

But it was more than that.

Being in his wasp’s cockpit
felt
different.

The configuration was the same. Surrounding him were arrays of hexagonal displays showing the aft, fore, port, and starboard views of the night sky and the terrain below. There were radar images of the squadron around
him, thermal readouts, radio logs, and a dozen other I.C.E. systems. There were winking, blinking indicators, icons, and the steady breathing of air vents.

The
different
part was that Ethan now understood the icons. Oh, he knew what most were from his training. He’d been told and had to memorize the weird dot-and-dash symbols for the ejection controls, autopilot, and laser-coolant warning systems, and a million other things … but the real difference now was that he could
read
them.

Some of the systems his trainers had never shown him were “pollen extractors,” “venom reserves,” and something that best translated as “molecular density overdrive.”

It all sounded neat, but Ethan wondered if Resister technicians had never told him about these things because it was an aspect of the Ch’zar I.C.E. system
they
didn’t know.

Another difference was a feeling that he belonged here. Like he’d been born to be part of this wasp. For a moment that twisted into a smothering sensation—Ethan felt for a second like he was drowning—and it was all he could do to not scream and claw his way out of the suddenly claustrophobic cockpit.

The wasp’s mind clicked into place, though, completely under
his
control.

The feeling passed.

It was like they were flying together, not just pilot and I.C.E. but a single creature. Ethan felt wind rushing over his skin at four hundred miles an hour.

This had to be a side effect of all the weird stuff he and Emma had been experiencing in their brains—hearing the Ch’zar Collective song, even hearing the static in his mind back at New Taos (probably the mind of the city’s controlling computer network). It was like his brain was learning to link to things, not just to his I.C.E. suit.

Would it eventually pull him in? Make him such a deep part of the suit that he lost Ethan Blackwood? Like all those kids they’d put in the enemy I.C.E. suits at Sterling Reform School?

He shuddered and felt the connection to his wasp ease off.

Ethan exhaled and tried not to freak out. The new, stronger mental connection seemed voluntary … for now.

He had to stop thinking about himself. He had his squadron to worry about—and they might not all be alive much longer if the Ch’zar were really preparing a major strike against the Resistance.

He tapped the wide-focus control under his left hand.

Images of the I.C.E.s in Sterling Squadron flashed on the screens around him in their relative flight formation.
Each insect’s data poured onto the screens in a jumble of animated bars, indicators, and wriggling Ch’zar icons.

Dead ahead on the smallest screen was Madison’s dragonfly. Its sleek form was outlined by his computers; otherwise she would’ve been invisible against the stars. All the dragonfly’s running lights were off and her jet exhausts baffled to obscure her infrared heat signature. She had pulled ahead of the group—zipping along in a serpentine flight path at just under the speed of sound.

Ethan caught a flicker of emerald green as she arced up to thirty thousand feet to get a better look at the airspace.

On his wasp’s immediate starboard side was Emma’s ladybug. He counted five black dots on the insect’s armor. In the moonlight, the ladybug was the color of blood, reminding Ethan that while her I.C.E. was “cute,” it was an assault-scout hybrid and a match for any unit in the squadron.

He could’ve sworn Emma was looking back at him, and for some strange reason, he got the idea she wanted to punch him in the shoulder like she always did. Maybe if they both weren’t flying several tons of bug at half the speed of sound, he’d have been comforted by that “ordinary” gesture.

To his immediate port side was Paul’s ghostly green praying mantis. Its forelimbs were extended as if it were about to pounce on some imaginary prey.

Ethan saw that Paul’s hydraulics were slightly over-pressurized, causing the limb extension. He thought about warning Paul, but he might be running it that way for an extra burst of strength in combat. Risky, but Ethan decided not to meddle with his pilots’ preferences.

On Paul’s port side was Angel’s black wasp, looking like the shadow to his I.C.E. Indicators showed it still ran on autopilot, but Ethan thought he saw the unit sway back and forth, almost playfully.

Felix was aft in the formation, the “anchor” position. His gigantic midnight-blue rhinoceros beetle was a dark moon in the sky. Readouts indicated the unit was fully loaded with bombs, and his particle-beam capacitors were at full charge. There was enough firepower in the bug to take on an entire army.

Kristov held their formation’s point one hundred feet ahead of Ethan. The red locust was a blur of wings and spiked legs and looked ready to tear the next bug it came across limb from limb.

Every indicator on the locust’s status was in the green. It was impressive, considering that only four weeks before,
Kristov had been just another bully at the Sterling Reform School and never been in the air.

Oliver’s cockroach was fifty feet under the main formation, the “ventral” position. His I.C.E.’s exoskeleton glistened, reflecting the stars.

Lee’s housefly drifted over and around, not settling in any particular position in the formation. His I.C.E. was small and fast and almost impossible to get a weapon’s lock on.

The squadron’s equipment was combat ready, but what about the pilots?

Shortly after they’d taken off, Ethan had briefed them about the Ch’zar knowing the location of the Seed Bank. He told them they might be in for the battle of their lives. To their credit, they didn’t say a word. They just formed up around him and flew like professionals.

Ethan opened up the short-range channel. “Squadron report.”

“All systems ready,” Felix said with steely confidence in his voice.

“Good to go,” Emma chimed in.

“Yo,” Paul added with a practiced boredom that Ethan had come to understand was his way of dealing with stress.

“Ready here,” Kristov replied.

“I’m all set,” Oliver said, and nervously cleared his throat.

“Me too,” Lee added, although it sounded like he might throw up at any moment.

Angel’s radio link was open, but she was silent. Her autopilot indicator was still lit.

Madison hadn’t checked in.

“Corporal?” Ethan asked. “Situation report.”

Madison’s voice came over the radio, but it was choppy and awash with static. Ethan strained to hear but couldn’t make out a single word.

She was ten miles ahead and now at thirty-five thousand feet. Maybe there was interference at the higher altitude. They were at the limit of the short-range radio, but he should have heard
something
coherent.

Ethan had a bad feeling about it.

He considered opening a longer-range radio channel. They needed to stay hidden, though, so Ethan signaled the squadron to accelerate and climb another thousand feet to close the gap.

Madison’s voice broke through the static: “—ionic charge up here jamming our signals. Like a thunderstorm, but there are no clouds, so it’s got to be artificial.”

Ethan’s bad feeling turned into a ball of ice in his stomach.

Tonight wasn’t the night to believe in coincidences and weird out-of-the-blue weather effects.

“Close up, Madison,” he said.

The dragonfly cooled its jets and drifted back into formation.

“I’m not picking up a signal from base,” Madison said. “It’s not the normal blackout procedure either. It’s the same thing that happened near New Taos. The frequencies are being blanketed with broadcast static.”

That had to be the Ch’zar.

“Everyone slow to one-sixty and go to winged flight,” Ethan ordered.

The roar of jets around him cut out and the I.C.E.s went to wing power.

Ethan wanted time to think and check his maps.

He connected to the satellite feed and overlaid it on his cockpit displays. They were approaching the Cumberland River Valley in the Appalachian Mountains. Five minutes until Security Protocol 003 kicked in and their visuals blacked out. The satellite view flashed over elevation lines, rivers, and distant neighborhoods.

If the Ch’zar had some big invasion planned, Ethan would’ve spotted something in the air by now.

But nothing showed up on the map.

Usually there was
something
—a robotic cargo carrier, a single army ant on patrol, even distant fireflies flitting on overwatch around a Ch’zar factory.

Everything was completely quiet tonight.

He calculated a flight path between the zones covered by the Ch’zar “eyes” in low orbit.

Maybe he and Emma had overreacted when they’d seen that image of Resister I.C.E.s exiting the Seed Bank in the ant lion’s memory. Couldn’t the enemy just have written it off as a rogue Resister flying out of some cave? What evidence that the Ch’zar had discovered the Resisters’ base of operation was one picture?

The hairs on the back of Ethan’s neck prickled, though.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what was ahead.

Not a whisper … not a trace of the Ch’zar Collective song. Whatever “mental” airwaves were out there, they were silent tonight.

Ethan exhaled.

Okay, he was getting paranoid.

“Go ground flight,” Ethan commanded. Protocol demanded that they come in to the Seed Bank low and fast if they could before the cockpit blackout occurred. That minimized any chance of being spotted by the enemy.

Sterling Squadron tightened formation and dove.

If Ethan could get to Colonel Winter with this new warning and the information they’d found in New Taos, the senior officers would come up with a plan to stop the Ch’zar or find a new base.

Then Ethan could go back and rescue Bobby and the others in Santa Blanca.

Everything might turn out okay.

The squadron approached the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ethan saw pine treetops below and a river glistening in the moonlight. They crested the ridge of a mountain and zoomed back down the other slope. And Ethan’s heart stopped beating at what he saw.

A mountain valley spread out before him a dozen miles wide, and on the far side was another set of mountains, blue granite, covered in snow … and Ch’zar.

On the ground, a solid mass of black army ants marched, a quarter-mile square of interlinked insects, tearing up the forests and meadows and overturning every rock in their path as they spread across the valley.

Half-mile-long centipedes slinked among the destroyed terrain, leaving trampled trails in their wake.

Ant lion artillery squatted on the surrounding hills. Normally camouflaged, they lit up Ethan’s infrared imagers as they blasted shells into the air. Artillery arced up and impacted the mountainside, blasting free house-sized chunks of rock.