Sterling Squadron by Eric Nylund Page A

Ethan’s ribs.
    Ethan blocked—barely.
    The impact shuddered up his stick and numbed his arm. If it
had
connected, padding or not, it would have broken Ethan’s bones.
    Were they crazy? Did the Sterling teachers want these kids to seriously hurt each other? That made no sense, even for the Ch’zar.
    He’d figure out why later. First he had to
survive
this class.
    He couldn’t be scared. He had to fight.
    Ethan borrowed a tactic he’d learned battling in an I.C.E. suit. When ranged weapons didn’t work, you had to get in close to rip your enemy apart.
    He moved toward the bigger boy, got so near neither could swing, and Ethan socked him in the nose.
    “Ow!” The boy dropped to one knee, let go of his stick, and held his face. “You hit me with your
hand
! You’re supposed to use your stick, idiot! There are rules!”
    Ethan wasn’t interested in following the rules of
this
game, especially if that meant getting clobbered.
    But he hesitated and couldn’t bring himself to hit the boy again.
    This wasn’t a fight-to-the-death real battle with the Ch’zar.
    The bigger kid who’d tried to break his ribs a second ago was still human, maybe even someone Ethan could save and recruit into the Resistance.
    The boy started to get to his feet. He grabbed his stick, laughing.
    Madison ran to Ethan and kicked the boy over. She stabbed him once, hard, in the back of the knee.
    The boy screamed and went down.
    “You
want
to be hit?” she growled at Ethan. “Get your head in the game, Blackwood!”
    Ethan blinked. He looked around.
    Felix was ten paces from them and surrounded. He beat back five other kids. One got behind him and jabbed Felix in the kidney. He grunted and fell like a huge redwood, trying to clutch at the pain in his back.
    Ethan and Madison were on those kids in an instant—punching, kicking, and clubbing them off their friend.
    Paul appeared to protect their backs.
    The field fell quiet.
    There were just twenty kids left standing. They panted, nursed bruised hands, and tensed to spring. They were the meanest, toughest, and the best fighters at Sterling … and they all searched one another for any sign of weakness.
    One of them pointed at Ethan and his friends. “Hey! No teaming up!”
    “Why don’t you come over and try to stop us?” Ethan shouted back.
    Madison groaned and rolled her eyes.
    Ethan instantly regretted saying that, because the remaining kids did just that. They circled them and stepped closer and closer.
    Felix got up, grimacing with pain. He gripped his padded hockey stick so hard the wood crackled.
    Ethan had never seen Felix mad before, but now hesensed cold anger radiating from him in waves. Like his mother.
    “Let’s finish this,” Felix said.
    The other kids stopped in their tracks, calculating the odds of taking on the four of them (now with the addition of the much larger Felix to their group).
    They charged.
    Felix swept aside the first two in a single blow. Madison jabbed and poked the soft spots in her opponents. Paul calmly whirled his stick around like an expert martial artist.
    There were so many students rushing them at once that Ethan managed to connect with only one boy—and got his hands clobbered from the return blow for his trouble.
    He almost dropped his stick it hurt so much.
    He was wide open as the kid facing him reared back to smack him.
    Out of nowhere, a girl jumped at this opponent, swung, and connected with the side of the kid’s head.
    The boy about to clobber Ethan dropped to the ground, knocked out cold.
    The girl winked at Ethan, then spun, her bowl-cut hair
whoosh
ing around her, and hit the other kids, screaming like she was nuts (or totally having fun).
    It was the girl in the gang from last night. The same one who’d apparently taken an interest in Ethan in tactics class.
    A whistle blew and three teachers marched onto the grassy field, jotting notes on their clipboards.
    All the kids stopped fighting.
    Ethan sucked wind.
    He’d forgotten to