Operation Inferno by Eric Nylund Page A

smoldered.
    The wing seized.
    The bee plummeted into the jungle.
    Trees shattered into matchstick kindle.
    “Yes!” Ethan cried. “Gotcha.”
    “Hey,” Emma called over a private radio frequency. “Wait for us, hothead. I mean, Lieutenant. We lost the rest of those bees. They could be anywhere.”
    But Ethan ignored his sister and banked hard, circled back, and landed … Or rather he was going to land, but there could be no landing where the bee had crashed.
    There was a huge sinkhole whose edges were tangled with vines and clinging trees. It was three hundred feet across.
    Ethan couldn’t see the bee or its heat signature down in the pit.
    He scanned the nearby jungle. The impact trail of the bee had shattered trees and left skid marks right to and over the edge of the hole. The enemy I.C.E. had to be down there.
    He should wait for the others. But he just knew if the bee was still alive, it was thinking of a way to outsmarthim once again. He had to make sure it was out of the fight.
    “Watch the airspace over me,” he ordered on the squadron channel. “The enemy might have doubled back and still be flying. Watch for the faint thermal on the infrareds. Felix, Bobby, follow me down when you catch up.”
    “Roger that,” Felix replied.
    Ethan plunged into the sinkhole.
    Thorny vines and flowering orchids covered the walls. The plants stopped a hundred feet down, though, as shadows swallowed everything. Bats whirled around him, startled.
    Ethan hit his external lights and played them along the walls. They were limestone, cream and rust-colored and melted from a century of erosion.
    Four hundred feet and the wasp touched the sinkhole’s floor. A small river only a few feet deep ran across the cavern. There were three tunnels with streams that fed the larger river. Mist curled up into the air.
    There was an obvious impact crater, and a dragging trail across wet sand into one of the tunnels.
    So, that bee
was
down there. It couldn’t have gotten far. He had it.
    Which was exactly when ice water filled Ethan’s veins … because he realized that the darkness around him was moving. Faint blue and white smudges circled him, which were easier to see now against the pure black.
    He was surrounded by the entire enemy I.C.E. bee squadron.

   14   

WRESTLING
    E THAN FROZE .
    His wasp didn’t. White-hot anger flared in its insect brain. It knew exactly what to do.
    Ethan let his mind connect deeper with the wasp’s and they moved as one—
    Pouncing on the closest bee. The wasp pinned the bee, forelimbs to forelimbs, legs to legs.
    Camouflaged or not, the bee was still there, solid enough for the wasp to bite at the exposed wings. He tore one of the diamond-hard surfaces from its motorized gimbal with a sparking screech.
    The bee struggled and buzzed, but there was no way Ethan and the wasp were letting it get away.
    The rest of the bees had other ideas.
    They all jumped on the wasp, pulled and tugged and yanked until
its
limbs were stretched wide. They nipped at the unarmored joints.
    Fire lanced through Ethan’s arms and legs, pain flashing though the wasp’s mental connection.
    He screamed. Not in fear. He and the wasp were shouting in rage.
    The wasp snapped out with its jaws biting back—caught one of the bees’ legs and snipped it off.
    Two of the bees actually backed off.
    Ethan shook off the wasp’s blood rage.
    Ch’zar didn’t do that. They weren’t afraid to be hurt or die.
    And why was he so angry at them? For some reason this didn’t feel like fighting Ch’zar. If felt … it kind of felt like the worst time he and Emma had fought. Like it was personal. But that was crazy. Why would he feel like that?
    The ground shuddered. Dirt rained down the sinkhole walls.
    What now? Ant lions? Scorpions?
    A huge blue-black shape emerged from the darkness and mist. It was Felix’s rhinoceros beetle. Next to him was the ghost-green praying mantis. Bobby.
    Ethan grinned.
    Now
this was a fight.
    Blue