Sterling Squadron Read Online Free PDF Page A

with Felix, who stood next to him.
    Felix was Colonel Winter’s son, raised to be a Resistance fighter and pilot, one of the best. On the walls of the office were dozens of framed photographs of Felix and Madison and many other kids standing proud next to their I.C.E. suits.
    Felix smoothed a hand over his closely shorn head and swallowed hard. Paul looked respectful but also supremely confident (as if he got hauled into the colonel’s office every day).
    Colonel Winter stood before the three boys.
    They all straightened.
    The colonel had no need for the guards. Just like Earth had a gravitational field, just like the sun emitted light and heat, Colonel Winter radiated cold, absolute authority.
    A bead of sweat formed on Ethan’s temple, trickled down to his chin, his neck, and slowly wormed down the back of his flight suit.
    It itched, but he didn’t dare break attention.
    She stopped staring at them and consulted the data pad she held.
    On the data pad’s screen were video clips from this morning’s flight simulation. He looked good tearing into those mosquitoes.
    She tapped the pad, and the scene shifted to footage from his and Paul’s onboard flight recorders. They zoomed through Knucklebone Canyon.
    Ethan’s pride over the earlier simulated run vanished.
    Would she blame him for what had happened? The race had been Paul’s idea.
    Ethan wasn’t sure. It’d been a stupid, reckless thingto do. And the Resisters didn’t let stupid people become pilots. His mouth dried up, and he tried to swallow but couldn’t.
    Felix (normally as pale as a ghost anyway) looked as if all the blood had just drained out of him.
    Paul seemed most at ease, almost relaxed—the kind of coolness that was the sign of a great pilot.
    And yet, who had lost his head out there today?
    And who’d gone back to save Paul from those black widows?
    On the data pad, Ethan saw the black widows move in for the kill. He heard Paul scream as he tried to escape their webs. Rocks fell from the sky, ripped the silk strands, and Ethan swooped in to carry him off.
    The colonel nodded and set the pad down.
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “Foolish. Arrogant. Criminal recklessness.”
    Ethan wasn’t sure which description applied to him. It took all his strength to stay standing at attention, eyes ahead, because more than anything he wanted to drop his gaze to the floor in shame.
    “You endangered the entire base with your performances today,” the colonel continued. “I am disappointed.”
    That last word dropped onto Ethan, crushing him with guilt.
    The colonel stepped closer to Felix. “Sergeant Winter. You were the deck NCO at the time this occurred, correct?”
    NCO
was an abbreviation for “noncommissioned officer”—sergeants, staff sergeants—the guys and girls who led squads and got the officers’ (all adults as far as Ethan had seen) orders carried out.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Felix said in a hoarse voice.
    “While Staff Sergeant Hicks was responsible for instigating this so-called race,” she said, “you failed to report his breach of our standing policy to fly in groups of three or more and thereby endangered one of our best pilots and a promising trainee.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Felix repeated, now barely audible.
    “You are hereby demoted to corporal. Your flight status is suspended for a month while you inventory every spare part in the refit bays as you consider where your loyalty lies: to your fellow pilots or to the Resistance.”
    Felix remained at attention, but Ethan thought he detected a slight tremble in him. The big guy stood straight, though, and took the punishment, his eyes locked ahead.
    The colonel moved to Ethan.
    It was suddenly very cold in the room.
    “Trainee Blackwood,” she said. Her voice was flat. Her eyes seemed to drill into his skin. “Simulator and flight recorder logs show impressive performance numbers. Our missions, however, are
not
simulations. The consequence of failure is
not
a bad score.