Titan Base (25 page)

They were inside the control room of the base. Madison had already dubbed it Titan Base, after the Titan Power Company, whose switch had opened the main flight-bay hatch.

It’d taken all night to find the power core and this auxiliary control room.

There was no time for sleep, though. They needed that power now.

Opening the flight-bay hatch had drained almost all
the energy from the base’s reserve batteries. They were down to the last 2 percent. If they didn’t get the hole in the dry lakebed sealed, the Ch’zar would spot it sooner or later. Sooner, probably.

Ethan had sent the Sterling kids to see if there was a way to crank the massive doors shut manually. No luck so far. Although Oliver was trying to use their I.C.E.s to pull them closed.

“Felix, Madison, Paul, come in,” Ethan said into the radio.

Static filled the speakers of the control room.

“Be patient,” Emma warned him. “The batteries won’t last if you keep asking for reports every fifteen seconds.”

Ethan exhaled his frustration.

He had let the others prime the fusion reactor they’d found on the thirtieth sublevel of the base. There was nothing wrong with the reactor. Madison had said it was in perfect working order. It just had to be turned on.

Of course, rebooting a machine that needed a million-degree spark to fuse hydrogen into helium wasn’t so simple.

And while the three Resister pilots had basic training in operating the Seed Bank’s fusion generators, that was all theory. None of them had actually ever worked on one. If they got it wrong now, they could blow up the reactor, the base, and themselves.

“Almost ready for a prefire test,” Madison’s voice crackled over the radio. “If that works, Felix is going to manually open the fuel tanks and go for a sustained reaction in the main chamber.”

Paul chimed in, “And if that doesn’t work, I got two sticks I can rub together down here, Lieutenant.”

Ethan let that last comment go. He wasn’t sure if one day he’d snap and punch Paul, or if he was almost coming to appreciate his razor-sharp sarcasm.

“What do you need us to do?” Ethan asked.

Felix answered this time. “Get ready to divert the last reserve battery power down to the capacitors,” he said.

“Roger that,” Ethan replied. “Stand by.…”

Emma and Ethan flipped switches and managed to coax the wavering computer display to show the energy pathways needed to charge the reactor’s capacitors.

“That’s going to be the last of our battery power,” Emma whispered. “We won’t get a second chance at this.”

Ethan nodded. “We’re ready up here, Felix. On your mark.”

“Okay,” Felix replied. “A few more tests. Hang on a second.”

Ethan and Emma waited and fidgeted in the gloom. The lights on the control panel flickered. Their lantern started to dim.

Ethan drummed his fingers. It was driving him crazy just sitting here.

Meanwhile, Emma took out the photograph they’d found in the control room. The thing had been there waiting for them. If Ethan hadn’t known better, he’d have said
it
was the thing psychically calling him and Emma to this spot.

She placed the yellowed photograph of their parents on the computer display. It backlit the picture, making it easier for them to see their parents’ faces.

Ethan’s heart fluttered every time he looked at it.

This one old photograph was the emotional equivalent of an overloading fusion reactor.

In the photo, his mom and dad looked fifteen years younger. Together they held a baby swaddled in a pink blanket. They looked down on her with expressions of pure love.

Ethan assumed the baby was Emma. He was born a year later in Santa Blanca General Hospital.

Melinda and Franklin Blackwood wore white uniforms in the picture. There was no special military insignia except for a silver sideways infinity symbol on their lapels.

They sat in this very control room, although back then, every light and indicator was on.

The expression on their faces, though, was totally
different from any Ethan had ever seen on his parents. Along with the adoration for baby Emma, there was worry in their eyes, almost verging on fear. It was as if they knew shortly they’d have to be in a neighborhood surrounded by mind-controlled slaves, in the greatest danger of their lives. They’d be bringing their new daughter as well.

Why would any parent do such a thing?

Ethan touched the picture. Under his fingertips the paper was slick.

It felt real, but it was so unreal, too.

Sure, it confirmed some theories about his mom and dad. They’d been part of something else—call it another resistance against the Ch’zar. They’d been free-willed and living outside Santa Blanca before moving into the neighborhood. They had set up that secret code in his and Emma’s goodbye notes because they wanted them to find this place.

There was more, though.

He flipped the picture over.

Written on the back in his mom’s neat cursive script was:

Ethan grabbed his backpack and pulled out the data crystal he’d gotten (and almost forgotten about) from the library in New Taos. It gleamed like a ruby in the dim light of the control room.

“Prometheus” is what the librarian had called a project that involved “mind expansion,” “extrasensory perception,” and “group-thought protocols.” It’d started before the end of the world war and apparently was still going on until a few years ago with something called Phase 4.

What did it have to do with his parents? What did it have to do with Emma and him?

Ethan turned the crystal over in his hand. If they got the power up and running, he might be able to find a reader to extract more answers from this thing.

But did he
want
to know more?

Did he really want to know what kind of parents would take their kids into a neighborhood, knowing the Ch’zar would come to collect them one day?

“We’re ready for you to divert power to the capacitors,” Felix said over the radio. “At full charge, we’ll fire up the reactor.”

“Understood,” Ethan replied.

Yeah, they’d fire up the reactor and it’d have a stable
burn … or it’d sputter out and leave them in a dead base … or the reactor would blow up and send them all to the moon.

He nodded at Emma.

She flipped the manual override switch and diverted the last energy from their reserves.

Ethan crossed his fingers.

“Capacitors at full charge,” Felix announced. “Prefire test in three … two … one …”

The lights in the control room went dark, then flared to life and wavered.

“Fusion ignition successful,” Felix said, uncertainty thick in his voice. “But the magnetic fields aren’t stabilizing.”

Computer displays in the control room went on, filled with static, and went dark.

“We got it!” Felix cried over the radio. “Fields are stable and symmetric. We’re in business.”

All lights and displays came on at full brightness. Computers showed a cutaway view of the fusion reactor churning away with a mixture of hydrogen and helium boiling at a billion degrees kelvin. The displays also showed weapon systems active and tracking the airspace over Texas. They showed computer subroutines feeding false visuals into the Ch’zar satellite network.

“Hey!” Oliver called over the radio. “The lakebed doors are shutting! Move those I.C.E.s inside—fast.”

“All clear,” Kristov reported, sounding slightly panicked. “Landing now.”

“Home sweet home,” Angel said with a laugh and a smack of her bubble gum.

Ethan and Emma sighed.

“We did it,” his sister said. She slumped in her seat. “We’re safe. I could use about three days of solid sleep. But I guess we have to explore this place and find out what we can first.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. He stared into the depths of the red data crystal. “And no.”

Ethan had an uneasy feeling, like he was missing something dreadfully important.

This wouldn’t be over until the humans had won and the Ch’zar were gone. Until then, there could be no rest for him.

Ethan keyed the radio. “Listen up, people,” he said. “I want our I.C.E.s refueled, recharged, and flight-checked in one hour. We’re moving out.”

He paused, realizing that he sounded exactly like Colonel Winter using her “follow orders, no nonsense or there’ll be a court-martial” tone of voice.

To stop any protests, Ethan added, “People’s lives are at stake, so no grumbling.”

Felix said, “Consider it done, Lieutenant.”

“Why?” Emma asked. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

At that moment, Ethan had never seen his sister so tired. “Before we left the Seed Bank,” Ethan whispered, “I told Colonel Winter I wasn’t comfortable being in command. She said that’s exactly
why
she put me in command.”

Emma opened her eyes and shook her head, not understanding.

“I didn’t get it either, until just now,” Ethan said. “It means that because I’m not comfortable leading, I’m never going to stop trying to be a better leader … and I’m never forgetting about anyone I left behind.”

Emma’s eyes widened. She now understood what they’d forgotten.

There was one more thing. Ethan wouldn’t admit this part, but it had to do with Colonel Winter’s last words to him: the Resistance would live on through
him—
specifically him, Ethan Blackwood.

Because he was in charge now.

Ethan stood. He held out his hand to his sister.

“Come on,” he whispered to Emma. “There’s one more fight.”

   
E
PILOGUE
   
ALWAYS ONE MORE FIGHT

IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT IN SANTA
Blanca. All the kids should have had their homework done hours ago, been tucked into their beds, and been fast asleep. They absolutely, 100 percent should not have been running through the streets and fighting for their lives.

That was, however, exactly what Bobby Buckman was doing. He ducked as a gas grenade arced over his head.

It landed thirty feet away, downwind, and spun on the asphalt, harmless—unless they had to make a break that way, in which case they’d get gassed and pass out.

The adults from the Neighborhood Watch were taking
blind shots at them, still only guessing where they were hiding.

He and two of his Grizzlies teammates, Sara and Leo, had taken refuge behind the Blanca Dairy milk truck that someone had abandoned in the supermarket parking lot.

The adults had chased them here, and Bobby had been forced to abandon the school bus he’d liberated. He told the kids inside to scatter into the neighborhood, watch, wait, and see if his team could lure the adults away … but then what?

Bobby hadn’t thought through his plan far enough.

What were they going to do if they got away? Run up into the mountains? How much time would that buy them?

It was no use thinking about that. Bobby and his friends had to survive the next five minutes for any of it to matter.

He steeled himself and peeked around the bumper of the truck.

Three adults moved along the edge of the parking lot, searching one by one the cars left from before a town-wide, twenty-four-hour lockdown had been set.

There was no way they’d be getting out that direction.

Once one adult spotted you, they
all
swooped in on the same location at the same time and grabbed you.

He took a deep breath and forced down the panic rising inside him.

Maybe they could hide inside the milk truck, lock the doors, and hope no one could see in back.

Bobby snuck to the rear door. It was open.

He eased inside, crawled to the front, and motioned for Leo and Sara to follow him. By some freakish good luck, the keys were in the ignition.

Bobby decided to make a break for it. They were sitting ducks here otherwise.

He’d seen his mom and dad drive the family minivan for years. He should be able to work one stupid truck.

At the thought of his mom and dad, though, a lump formed in his throat.

Four days ago, they’d told him that he was sick, that he needed to take one of those new buses to the hospital facility in Terra Nova, West Virginia.