Titan Base (20 page)

In the air, four command carriers—like the one that had tried to find the Resister base before—floated like gigantic storm clouds. Each zeppelin combat platform was
surrounded by dozens of squadrons: locusts, bumblebees, and mosquitoes.

To Ethan’s dread, he saw that the nose of each carrier bristled with spikes and angled panels. Those were defenses, so he couldn’t repeat the trick of blasting through the aircraft and blowing it up from the inside out.

Static crackled over the radio, and only then did Ethan pick up combat chatter from Jack Figgin’s Black and Blue Hawks, Becka’s Bombers, and every other Resister fighter squadron as they engaged with the enemy.

The Ch’zar had somehow jammed their radio signals—even jammed their Collective song from Ethan’s mind. They were learning new tricks faster and faster.

It dawned on Ethan that this would be the last battle for the Seed Bank.

It would be the last battle for the Resisters.

   
22
   
COUNTERATTACK

ADRENALINE SURGED THROUGH ETHAN AND HIS
wasp. His jets roared to life, and the stinger laser flared with heat.

His first instinct was to rocket forward and fight … but they were on the wrong end of this battle.

That was a good
and
a bad thing.

It was good because the Ch’zar were formed up to attack the mountain. Ethan could catch them off guard and hit their backside.

It was bad because he’d only get in one good attack and then be enveloped without the support of the other
Resister squadrons in the air, who were on the far side of the combat.

And there were a
lot
of enemy units between them.

Ethan counted five, maybe six, squadrons of enemy I.C.E.s, and
more
poured out of the launch bays of the combat carriers. As he watched, a full dozen squadrons formed up in the air—green locusts, red-and-black wasps, clouds of mosquitoes, even a superfast swarm of orange dragonflies. For every Resister squadron near the mountain—Becka’s Bombers, Jack Figgin’s crew, and the Flying Pirates—
three
enemy squadrons broke and attacked them.

Meanwhile, army ants spread out and made a ring around the mountain base. They tore at the rock, sparks showering up as their superstrong mandibles pulverized the stone.

Ant lions continued to shell the mountainside. Sheets of rock avalanched down, revealing steel plates underneath.

This wasn’t just any mountain. It was the Seed Bank under there!

Ethan was seeing the Resister base for the very first time. Of course, if it
was
the base, why hadn’t being so close triggered Security Protocol 003? Their viewscreens should’ve been blacked out by now.

Colonel Winter had to have turned off the security protocols so the Resister pilots could fight.

The four Ch’zar command carriers tilted up and rapidly rose above the battle, lining up in a row pointed at the mountain. They were going to try something.

Ethan had to try something, too.

Before one of Ethan’s crazy plans could form in his head, though, a squadron of titanium honeybees peeled off and sped toward them. Each enemy bee was heavily armored, and instead of pollen baskets on their hind legs, they sported missile racks.

Two dozen of the tiny missiles whooshed at Ethan and his people. The bees hit their afterburners and followed them in toward Sterling Squadron.

“Counterattack formation delta!” Ethan cried over the radio. “Go!”

Sterling Squadron scattered to shake off the incoming micromissiles. Those missiles would never have a chance to lock on, and when Sterling’s I.C.E.s circled back to engage the bees, the Ch’zar would have to self-destruct the missiles or risk getting blasted by their own weapons.

Ethan dove and used his wings to helicopter around one hundred eighty degrees, then hit his jets. Three missiles streaked past his forward viewscreen, unable to bank tight enough to follow his maneuver.

His wasp met the lead titanium bee, latched on, and tore its head off.

Three more bees immediately grabbed on to him.

Ethan was ready for that old trick. He had his stinger laser primed, and he aimed and flashed one at point-blank, leaving a gaping hole in the creature’s chest.

As the remaining two tried to chew off his wasp’s wings, Ethan angled his jets at them, opened the throttle, and blasted their titanium faces, washing the stunned insects off his back.

Around Ethan was the chaos of massive aerial combat.

Missiles streaked and left crisscrossing trails of exhaust. Rocket-propelled grenades thumped and detonated on exoskeleton armor, shattering both enemy and Resister I.C.E. shells. Laser and particle beams lit up the night as if it were the Summer Fireworks Festival back in Santa Blanca. Punctuating the fire and flashes, artillery shells looked like exploding supernovas and left smoky, smudged dots in the air.

Paul’s green mantis darted before Ethan, holding twitching locust limbs in either of its front claws.

Emma became a whirling machine of death, firing bombs in every direction, turning enemy I.C.E.s near her into smoldering bits of wreckage.

Felix’s rhinoceros beetle used its heavy particle beam
to spray destruction in a wide swath and melted off the wings of six incoming Ch’zar beetles. Their plummeting wreckage continued to glow red-hot until it hit the ground and exploded, taking out hundreds of wriggling, screaming army ants.

Through the smoke and fire, Ethan made out Jack Figgin’s squadron as they engaged a dozen squadrons of enemy locusts over the mountain.

Seed Bank exit tunnels collapsed inward, leaving rubble-filled craters—no more friendly I.C.E.s would be getting out of the base.

Jack’s Black and Blue Hawks tore through the enemy, flashing lasers, firing missiles, and going claw to claw. Locust bodies dropped from the air, but they kept launching from the carriers, and Jack’s people were getting boxed in.

“Jack!” Ethan shouted. “You’re surrounded. Circle around. Link up with us. We can—”

The signal from Jack’s I.C.E. went dead.

Ethan spotted a fireball where he’d been a moment ago.

Ethan stared, stunned, as more Resister I.C.E.s were taken out. A handful broke free from the firefight and jetted into the cloud layer above the battle.

“Watch out, you idiot!”

A black bug crashed into Ethan, knocking his wasp into a barrel roll.

Ethan shook off the shock of Jack’s death and the skull-rattling blow he’d just taken, and spun, laser ready … to see Angel’s black wasp grappling with two titanium bees, both of which had every missile still in their hind-leg racks, primed to detonate.

Firing missiles hadn’t worked, so the Ch’zar were going to make sure this time they took out at least
one
Resister I.C.E.

Angel was awake, though. She was fighting.

She’d saved his life while he’d been hovering in the middle of a battle like a complete fool.

Ethan fired his laser, slicing off the hind legs of one of the bees latched on to her wasp. It was a precise shot that severed the limbs at the joint, missing the stack of missiles by inches.

The bee’s legs tumbled away and detonated with enough power to pulverize the wasp I.C.E. had it been attached.

Emma came out of nowhere and crashed into the remaining titanium bee, effortlessly peeling it off the black wasp and tossing it aside—but too late. The Ch’zar bug exploded ten feet from her. The black-spotted ladybug
I.C.E. tumbled end over end through the air, legs twitching, wings motionless.

Ethan rocketed after his sister.

He caught the ladybug and stopped its free fall, but he had to use his jets on full power. Emma’s bug was
so
heavy.

As they slowed, Ethan saw a spiderweb of stress cracks shoot over the ladybug’s outer shell.

Worse … he couldn’t feel Emma’s mind inside her I.C.E. anymore.

His palms turned clammy. His heart skipped a beat.

“Emma!” he shouted with his mind. “Wake up!”

If his sister was dead because of his stupidity, he didn’t know what he’d do.

The ladybug suddenly grappled with him and, annoyed, shoved him off.

She was back, the song of her mind strong in his thoughts and mostly broadcasting embarrassment at having to be rescued by her “little” brother.

“I’m okay,” Emma said on the radio, struggling to regain her breath.

“Blackwood!” Another girl’s voice broke over the radio.

It took him a second to recognize it. “Rebecca,” he replied.

He switched to the encrypted commanders’ frequency. “Where are you? How can we help?”

“Glad you made it home, Ethan,” Rebecca said. “We could use a hand over here.” Her words were casual, but her voice crackled with tension. “We’re doing a run on the lead Ch’zar carrier. If we can take it out, that might start a chain reaction and take them
all
out.”

Ethan told his wasp to watch out for incoming enemy units, and then he turned his attention to the line of ascending enemy carriers.

He saw Rebecca’s plan in his mind. If her bumblebee bombers could hit the first zeppelin and
if
they could blow it up, they could set the whole line of enemy carriers off like a string of firecrackers.

Those were some big ifs, though.

The last time he’d faced a Ch’zar command carrier, Ethan had risked killing his best friend and sister to blow it up. But now the Ch’zar had compensated for the carrier’s one known weakness by covering the nose with spikes and deflecting armor plates.

Without a vulnerable spot to hit, there was no way for Becka’s Bombers to even get close. Covering the top of the zeppelins were platoons of defending ant lion artillery—able to blast anything that flew overhead into dust.

“What do you know that I don’t?” Ethan asked.

“Some physics,” Rebecca said with smugness. “A little
underhand toss so we don’t get cooked by their topside defenses.”

It was so simple Ethan should’ve thought of it. Becka’s Bombers were more than bombers. They were insects with flexible joints and superstrength. They didn’t have to
drop
their bombs. With a flick of their bodies, they could lob them
up
to the carriers.

They’d still have to get awfully close, though.

So that’s where Sterling came in.

“We’ll have you covered,” Ethan told Rebecca. “No matter what it takes.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said.

He switched frequencies back to his squad.

“Sterling, mop up the local enemy forces and then get back into formation. We’re going in.”

   
23
   
PILLAR OF FLAME