Operation Inferno Read Online Free Page B

clouds boiled away in front of her, clearing a space five hundred feet wide.
    “Nice!” Felix cried. He charged his beetle’s plasma emitter antennae and let loose a column of superheated ionized gas.
    The cotton puff clouds disappeared so fast it looked as if they leaped out of the way to avoid getting scalded.
    Ethan added his stinger’s laser heat to the offensive, painting the wall of iron gray ahead of him. More cloud vapors curled and vanished.
    There was a cluster of five bees at five o’clock and a thousand feet higher. A perfect attack position.
    Felix saw them, too. His beetle turned and launched a bolt of plasma.
    The bees disappeared farther back in the cloud cover.
    “Do we go after them?” Emma asked.
    “Ethan? Lieutenant?” Madison’s voice squawked over the squadron channel. “What’s going on? What are you guys doing out here?”
    Far on the edge of his radar, Ethan saw dragonfly and wasp silhouettes on an intercept course.
    “Didn’t you see them?” Paul asked.
    “See who?” Angel replied. “You guys are the only thing on the radar for two hundred miles.”
    “Form up on us,” Ethan ordered. “Go radio silent.”
    There was a grumble from Angel … but then the channel was quiet.
    Ethan dove lower to get out of the cloud. The squadron followed him.
    All of Ethan’s pilot instincts told him to stay and finish the fight. But now was not the right time to engage an unknown enemy whose technologies baffled them.
    He had to get back to the base and think …
    Because Sterling Squadron was no longer the biggest threat in the air.

   5   

OPEN YOUR EYES
    E THAN STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF T ITAN B ASE ’ S stadium-like Command Center. He toweled off the last of the acceleration gel from his flight suit. The stuff kept him from getting battered and bruised (mostly) at high-g maneuvers in combat but was a real mess.
    And it was hard to look dignified and in control covered in goo.
    Standing at various computer stations and sitting in ultramodern curved chairs was everyone in the entire squadron, along with Bobby and the other Santa Blanca refugees.
    Well,
almost
all of them were here.
    Lee and Oliver were on the radio, listening in. They were still hiking back from deep within the subbasements of Titan Base, where they’d been repairing the satellite relay.
    Ethan tapped the intercom system. “You guys hear us okay?”
    “Loud and clear,” Lee said.
    “No problem,” Oliver said. He was breathing hard from the fast pace they were setting to get back.
    “So let’s run over it once more,” Ethan said. “We’re probably missing something important.”
    Paul shook his head as if Ethan was a complete idiot, but this time he said nothing. Instead, he turned his back to Ethan and took in the 360-degree viewscreen.
    “Angel and Madison left at sunrise,” Felix told them all, starting off the recap.
    “What did you see on the way out to the satellite dishes?” Ethan asked.
    Madison opened her mouth to speak—but Angel jumped in first.
    “There wasn’t much in the air,” Angel said. She shook her angular bangs from her eyes. “I mean, there was an I.C.E. or two, a mosquito spotter and a heavylifting beetle, but no combat squadrons. I wanted to pick off that pesky mosquito, but—”
    Madison interrupted her, shooting her a dirty look. “We followed stealth protocols to the letter, sir.” Madison then stepped in front of Angel to address Ethan directly. She crossed her arms over her chest. “And didn’t break radio silence until we saw you. There was no way we were spotted.”
    Angel made a mocking strangulation gesture behind Madison.
    Madison whirled around and almost caught her.
    Madison and Angel. He and Paul. Why were they at each other’s throats?
    Ethan felt the lines of tension drawing tight between them all. It was as if this ginormous room
still
wasn’t big enough to contain the bad feelings.
    How would Colonel Winter have handled this?
    Probably by throwing them