Operation Inferno by Eric Nylund Page B

plasma heated and sparked between the rhinoceros beetle’s horned antennae.
    “Hold it, Felix,” Ethan cried out over the radio. “In this tight space, you’ll roast us all. Go hand to hand, guys.”
    “With pleasure,” Bobby replied. The bees moved, reacting a second before the Resisters.
    The three pinning Ethan’s wasp stayed and started pulling him apart once more. The other bees closed in on Bobby and Felix.
    It was as if these bees were listening in to Ethan’s encrypted radio transmission. It was a code the Ch’zar had never cracked before … but what if the Ch’zar had nabbed a survivor from the Seed Bank and knew everything they knew? Who could’ve survived the explosion that had destroyed the old Resister base? It’d leveled the entire mountain.
    More pressing questions had to be answered first,though. Like: how was Ethan going to stop these bees from dismembering his wasp?
    His insect’s limbs creaked from the stress. His right forelimb pinged and popped. The hydraulic pressure inside was at the red line as Ethan tried to pull back. His forelimb was either going to be yanked out of the socket—or explode from the inside out!
    He fired his laser, a continuous beam that drained his reserve energies, whipping the wasp’s stinger wildly.
    The temperature in the cave jumped. Old vines that had fallen on the ground ignited. Flickering firelight made the rock walls look like the inside of a volcano.
    On Ethan’s thermal imagers everything was tinged red.
    The laser struck one bee in the head. It released the wasp, shaking its head, stunned.
    Ethan had room to maneuver now. He pushed one bee off him so hard it slid on its back across the cavern.
    He slammed the remaining bee on him into the wall.
    Chunks of limestone fell around them. The bee was stuck tight in a bee-sized hole in the wall. It buzzed, helpless.
    Meanwhile, Felix wrestled with a number of bees.They piled onto the massive beetle. He shook them off like a dog shaking off water droplets after a bath. Bobby in his mantis tried to engage in hand to hand (or in this case, claw to claw) combat. He should have torn the smaller, weaker bees to shreds with the Crusher praying mantis, but because he’d never fought in an I.C.E. for real before, he was barely able to shove his opponents away.
    Ethan had to help Felix and Bobby, but first, he’d deal with that other bee on him.
    He turned to track the bee he’d pushed. It was on its feet and warily approaching him. Through the heat haze, Ethan noticed that one of its hind legs glowed slightly hotter than the others.
    Was this the bee he’d hit first with his laser? The one that had lured him into this trap?
    The anger he’d felt before came rushing back. But this time, it wasn’t the wasp’s insect rage … it was all Ethan.
    Ethan lunged forward, launching in the air, and dive-tackled the bee.
    They tumbled over and over, crashing through the wall and into a side tunnel. The wasp lashed out with its stinger, skewering one of the bee’s legs. Too bad therewas no energy left in the laser, or he could’ve fried the thing from the inside out.
    The bee struck back. It scraped at the wasp’s main external camera, catching, and pulled the lens off. Ethan’s central viewscreen burst into static.
    The wasp head-butted the bee and clamped its right forelimb in its jaws.
    The bee buzzed like an alarm clock and struggled, wiggling so fast that Ethan couldn’t clamp his wasp’s jaws hard enough to sever the limb.
    The bee furiously scrambled against the wasp’s abdomen, at a tiny section of its armor.
    Ethan heard a pop down there. An armor plate? Unlikely. And even if it was armor, there were no vital systems down there.
    He focused instead on curling his stinger around so he could thrust it into the bee’s heart.
    The bee pushed—and they went tumbling in a deadly embrace, back and forth … until Ethan slammed the bee up against a rock wall. It was a good pin.
    This thing was as good as