Operation Inferno by Eric Nylund Read Free Book Online

it,” she said. “I had to correctly reposition the bone in the socket. Sorry.”
    Ethan rubbed his arm in sympathetic pain.
    He remembered how Bobby had held on to the chain as he threw it at the robot. When it wrapped about the axle, he’d held on a split second too long and it’d jerked his arm. He was lucky his arm hadn’t gotten yanked right
off
his shoulder.
    “There,” Sara told him as she applied a pain pad on Bobby’s shoulder. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
    “Yeah, actually, it was,” Bobby said. He smiled, though. “Thanks, Sara.”
    Bobby and Sara had gone through a lot in Santa Blanca. They found out how the real world worked. Alien invaders. That their parents really didn’t love them. They’d formed their own small resistance. They’d survived. And they’d grown close because of it. Ethan could see it in the caring way they looked at each other.
    He glanced sideways at Madison.
    She caught the look. The corner of her crooked smile quirked at him, but then quickly faded.
    What was it that he felt for Madison? They were friends. Wingmates. He trusted her with his life. There was more than that, though.
    What had that kiss been all about back in Santa Blanca when she thought she might not ever see him again? Neither of them had mentioned it since they’d been at Titan Base. In fact, Ethan hadn’t seen Madison much in the last week. Had they both been too busy? Had she been avoiding him? Or was he avoiding her?
    It would have to wait. There were life-and-death serious things that needed Ethan’s immediate attention.
    “So what happened?” Ethan finally asked Oliver and Lee.
    Oliver swallowed hard and backed up on the bed. “Okay,” he said. He removed his glasses and closed his eyes. “It started when we left the satellite relay room.”
    “We’d made the connection and repairs that Emma wanted,” Lee added, shaking his head. “It was weird, because as soon as we got the power hooked up down there, all sorts of electrical relays started clicking on … by themselves.”
    “It was like the base had been waiting to wake up or something,” Oliver whispered.
    The door to the hospital room swished open. Paul and Felix entered.
    “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant,” Felix said. “Paul and I finished sealing section three, and he insisted that we come here.”
    Paul crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to hear what they have to say, too,” he said. “I have a right to know what’s going on. It involves us all.”
    At least Paul was talking to him now. That was progress.
    Ethan examined Paul. From Paul’s scowling face, Ethan guessed information wasn’t the only thing he wanted here. He wanted a showdown.
    Well, it was long overdue.
    “Fine,” Ethan said. He shot Felix a cautioning look. Felix nodded back.
    “Go on,” Ethan told Lee. “What happened next?”
    “We saw something moving in one of those high-voltage electromagnetic relays,” Lee said, and his face scrunched up as he forced himself to remember. “It was the size of a mouse. A tiny robot. It sparked and started moving like it had just come to life after being dead for however long this place has been here.”
    “It repaired the relay,” Oliver said.
    “After we got over the surprise,” Lee said, “we figured it was supposed to be there. Part of the automatic maintenance—”
    “Anyway,” Oliver interrupted, “we heard you guys over the radio talking about the sortie to help Madison and Angel. We just wanted to get back as fast as we could and help.”
    Madison blushed at this—embarrassed, angry, or both, Ethan couldn’t tell. Ethan knew she’d hated that she and Angel had almost been ambushed by the strange bees and that she hadn’t even known they were there.
    “So we jogged back,” Lee went on, “and that’s when we noticed more and more of those little robot guys all over the place.”
    “Some rolled on one wheel,” Oliver added. “Some had four wheels. One was the size of a