Operation Inferno by Eric Nylund

spectrum. There were a couple of faint red smudges, but no jet exhaust signatures from those bees. Their jets weren’t deployed.
    That could give Ethan an advantage, assuming his squadron’s jet fuel held out.
    He tapped his screen twice to call up the drawing pallet. He drew a circle around the nearest bee, then the others he could make out. He wrote in block letters next to the circled bees: WAIT .
    Ethan gave the “go silent” command over the squadron channel and then transmitted a picture of what was on his screen.
    He hoped Angel and the others kept their cool, waiting for his lead, and didn’t start blasting away!
    He held his breath.
    Good. They all stayed flying in formation as if nothing was going on.
    Seven radio clicks returned, signaling that his team had indeed received his nonverbal message and understood.
    Ethan considered his options. The best seemed to be action. Ambush these ambushers!
    On-screen he circled the closest bee a few times and then the next closest pair. He numbered them and wrote:
    CONCENTRATE LASER FIRE ON NUMBER 1.
    TAKE IT OUT FIRST.
    THEN 2 AND 3.
    WAIT FOR ME!
    He sent that over the short-range encrypted squadron channel.
    They’d only get one shot to take out as many bees as possible before they scattered. After that it was going to be tricky to pick them out again from the surrounding sky.
    He slowly heated his laser to combat readiness.
    Inside his gloves his palms were slick with sweat.
    He gripped the controls tighter and snapped the wasp’s wings forward to turn and blast the enemy with his laser.
    The bees darted out of his line of fire—moving a split second before he’d committed to battle.
    Ethan didn’t have a clear shot. He fired anyway. The laser missed the bee’s abdomen, but grazed one of its trailing legs.
    That wouldn’t slow the thing down. It did, though, heat the exoskeleton by a few hundred degrees and make it flare on his infrared thermal display like a slice of sunshine against the sky.
    “Where’d they all go?” Bobby cried over the radio.
    Ethan spared a split-second glance. The other bees were gone. They were so well camouflaged they might as well have been invisible.
    Except for the one Ethan had tagged with his laser.
    He could still see it, for now, but it was cooling, getting dimmer on his infrared display even as he watched.
    “Come on,” he said. “Turn on your thermals. You can see one. Follow me—quick.”
    He chased after the enemy bug.
    And
again
it guessed his maneuver, and barrel-rolled in the other direction.
    How did they know? This guy was good.
    Ethan rolled into an inverted dive. He used his jets. The acceleration crushed him into his seat. He banked into the correct angle to catch the bee. The distance between them was closing fast.
    On his rear-facing displays, though, Ethan saw that he’d left the rest of his squadron behind as they oriented and turned to catch up. It would take a few seconds for them to get to where he was. And a few seconds in aerial combat could make all the difference.
    He couldn’t wait for them. He had to go for it.
    Part of him knew this wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
    On the other hand, wasn’t it just as stupid
not
to take advantage of his luck? Nab this nearly invisible enemy while he could see it?
    The thing’s fading thermal glow was almost at ground level now. Ethan rocketed after it.
    The bee was so low it brushed the tree line. Branches and leaves flew into the wasp, bouncing harmlessly off, but Ethan almost instinctively yanked up on the controls … which would’ve given that thing more maneuvering room.
    It was exactly what he would have done in its place.
    The bee swayed and rolled back and forth, so Ethan couldn’t get a weapon’s lock. He opened fire anyway, hoping for another lucky strike.
    The laser missed, but Ethan kept firing wildly. He hit the trees and set them on fire.
    His laser then sliced across one of the bee’s wings, right at the shoulder joint, and it