Read Operation Inferno for Free Online Page A

floor deck, face-first. The impact drove the robot
through
the deck plates. Its arms, one with a jackhammer still sputtering, bent at right angles. Red hydraulic fluid gushed everywhere.
    Behind the mutilated robot, the other mechanized men halted … unable to pass over the wreckage. They looked back and forth and murmured chirps of static. They then started to cut and hammer apart their still-struggling teammate to get past.
    Ethan blinked at the horrifying sight. He got to his feet.
    Bobby’s left arm hung at an unnatural angle, clearly broken, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
    “Come on,” Emma urged. “That bought us maybe a minute.”
    She ran down corridor G-422.
    Ethan and Bobby chased after her. Bobby’s busted arm slowed him down, and he grunted from the pain every time it moved.
    Ahead on the wall were sparks and snaps of an intense white light. Ethan squinted and made out the shadowy outline of Angel, kneeling with the plasma torch by one of those stuck submarine-like doors.
    With a
clang
the door’s lockbox dropped to thefloor. Angel yanked the door. It squealed on its hinges and opened about a foot. She didn’t wait for the others. She slipped inside.
    Emma was right behind her. Ethan shoved Bobby through and then followed.
    It was dark. There were no echoes like out in the tunnel. The space felt smaller.
    Ethan reached for his flashlight but realized he’d dropped it at the intersection. There was no going back for it now.
    Angel waved the plasma torch about. Ghostly shadows flickered over the walls near the door. They made her face look more psychotic than usual.
    Ethan pulled the door shut … or tried to anyway. He strained and used his full weight and it squeaked shut.
    Emma then attacked the metal door with the rivet gun, tacking it to its frame.
    “That’s not going to last long,” Ethan said. “Look for another exit. There has to be one in—”
    The rest of his words stuck in his throat.
    The room was only six paces wide. But it was long. Very long … vanishing into the distance. Along the walls were shelves and a series of tracks with tiny deadrobots that looked as if they had once rolled up and down the tracks.
    The thing that made Ethan pause, though, was what was on the shelves. They were packed with slender crystalline rectangles. Even covered with dust, they still glimmered sapphire blue, ruby red, and clear, sparkling diamond.
    These were the same electronic crystal books he had seen at the library in New Taos.
    Whoever built Titan Base had stored a treasure trove of ancient knowledge down here.
    More important, there had to be a reader for these electronic books nearby. Ethan had checked out a book from New Taos containing information on Project Prometheus. It was connected to his parents and the strange mental abilities he and Emma seemed to have. It might have been the key to unlocking the mystery of why their parents had raised them in Santa Blanca.
    He searched the nearest self. There had to be a reader here somewhere.
    Angel, however, moved farther down the long room … taking their only light with her.
    Ethan was about to ask her to hold up, when a robotpounded on the door, making it ring like a gong. Another great
thump
popped a few of the new rivets.
    “That didn’t take long,” Bobby whispered. “They must really want us.”
    “Go. Go,” Ethan said, pushing Bobby ahead.
    Emma wrapped Bobby’s good arm around her neck and handed Ethan the rivet gun. They trotted as fast as they could.
    The pounding on the door increased, as if there were two or three robots on it now.
    Ethan paused every dozen steps to cover their escape. He wasn’t sure what one rivet gun was going to do against those things.
    Ahead, Angel and the lit plasma torch halted.
    The room was a dead end. There was a set of elevator doors. Angel pushed the call button.
    Ethan, Emma, and Bobby caught up to her.
    “Is there power?” Bobby asked, panic creeping into his tone.
    Ethan and Emma