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“What do you see?” Marina asks.
I see a mellow blue glow that emanates from the very center of the crater. I see the stone lip of the well where we dropped our Inheritances, the place where the Entity emerged from.
I hop down from the tree trunk and turn visible again. I want Marina to see the hope in my face because it’s very real.
“The well is still there,” I tell her. “He didn’t or maybe couldn’t blow it up. The Entity is fine.”
“Really?” Marina replies, wiping her hands across her face.
“Seriously,” I say. “We’ve still got an extraterrestrial god to protect.”
“Thing should be protecting us,” grumbles Mark.
“What if he wasn’t trying to blow it up, though?” Sarah wonders. “What if the whole point is to, like, get at it? What if he had to clear the temple away?”
“Shit,” I reply, because that theory makes a lot of sense.
“They’re coming down,” Adam hisses in warning.
The Anubis slowly moves closer to the ground. Even with the temple destroyed, the massive warship is still too big to land in the clearing. All the same, the warship hovers so that it’s centered right over the crater. Gears clank as two wide metal gangways extend from the sides of the Anubis, a couple of sliding doors opening at their tops. From there, ranks of Mogadorians begin exiting the ship. They look to be the usual breed of vatborn warriors, all of them dressed in black body armor and toting blasters. The Mogs exit the ship with speedy efficiency and begin securing the area. We’re outnumbered at least ten to one and it won’t be long until they either discover our position or find the bombs we’ve attached to the Skimmers.
“We have to attack now!” I whisper harshly to the others. I reach over and pull Adam close. “We’ll go invisible and flank them. You guys detonate the bombs and get them distracted. Marina, are any of the guns we set up still in position?”
Marina narrows her eyes in concentration, then nods once. “Some. I’ll make it work.”
Mark sets aside his blaster and picks up the detonator, arming our explosives. Three-quarters of the bulbs don’t light up at all, indicating that we lost those bombs in the Anubis attack.
“Ready,” Mark says.
“Remember, if it goes bad, run for Lexa’s ship,” I remind them.
Adam, peeking out from behind the log, snaps his fingers at us. “There,” he says grimly. “There they both are.”
Setrákus Ra steps into view at the top of the ramp. He’s as intimidating as I remember—nearly eight feet tall, pale, that thick purple scar on his neck visible even at this distance. He’s clad in some kind of garish Mogadorian armor made of the same obsidian alloy as his minions’, except his juts up into clusters of spikes along the shoulders and attaches to a fur-trimmed leather cape that runs all the way to the ground. He looks every bit the vain intergalactic warlord and he seems to relish it.
He holds hands with Ella, her small fingers clasped gently by his armored ones. Marina gasps when she sees her. I’m not sure I would even recognize Ella if she hadn’t been screaming in my head just a few minutes ago. She looks smaller and thinner and paler, like the life has been sucked out of her. No, that’s not quite right. She doesn’t necessarily look sickly or diseased, I realize.
She looks Mogadorian.
Ella’s eyes are empty and her head hangs so that her chin is pressed against her chest. She doesn’t look even remotely aware of her surroundings. Her movements are robotic and dazed. She follows Setrákus Ra onto the ramp with total compliance. The Mogs sweeping the area stop what they’re doing to watch their ruler and his heir descend from the Anubis, all of them doing this lame fist-on-chest salute.
Setrákus Ra stops about halfway down the ramp. His eyes sweep across the jungle, searching for us.
“I know you’re out there!” Setrákus Ra bellows, his voice carrying through the hushed jungled. “I’m glad! I want you to see what happens next!” Setrákus Ra shouts over his shoulder, into the Anubis. “Lower it!”
In response to his command, a trapdoor opens on the warship’s underbelly. Slowly, a large piece of machinery telescopes out from the Anubis. It’s like a length of pipe with support struts and scaffolding built around it. The pipe’s sides are covered with complicated circuits and gauges. There’s more than just Mogadorian tech to Setrákus Ra’s steadily lowering device, though. Engraved into the metal sides between all the electronics are strange glyphs that remind me of the symbols scarred into our ankles. Also, and I can’t be one hundred percent sure about this, but it looks like those engravings are done in Loralite. Whatever this device is, it looks to be as much a Loric-Mogadorian hybrid as Setrákus Ra.
“I don’t like the look of that,” I say quietly.
“Nope,” Sarah replies.
“We should blow it up,” Mark suggests.
“Whatever he intends to use that for, we can’t let it happen,” Marina agrees.
“All right. So we destroy his toy, rescue Ella and then either take the Anubis or hightail it back to Lexa,” I say.
“You make it sound so easy,” Adam replies.
Even though he can’t see us, Setrákus Ra is still on his rant. “For centuries I’ve worked to harness the power of Lorien, to utilize it in ways more efficient than nature intended. Now, finally . . .”
Blah, blah, blah. Quickly, I gauge the distance between Ella and the nearest wired-to-explode Skimmer. Pretty far. I don’t think she’ll be in the blast radius. As Setrákus Ra drones on, I glance at the others.
“I’ve heard enough. What about the rest of you?”
Everyone nods. They’re ready.
“Get low,” I say, remembering how Mark got struck by shrapnel just a few minutes ago.
Everyone takes cover. This is it.
“Hit it,” I say to Mark.
Fingers flying across the controller, Mark flips the detonation switches.
True, some of the Skimmers we wired to explode became disconnected from their fuses when the Anubis bombed the Sanctuary. And true, others already exploded during that impact. So we don’t get the widespread destruction that we would’ve if our neatly arranged Skimmer-bombs had all detonated at once as planned.
But it’s still pretty freaking effective.
The Mogs are too busy respectfully listening to Setrákus Ra’s latest pompous douchebag speech to see it coming. Five Skimmers scattered around the crater explode in blossoms of white-hot fire. I can feel the heat from here and have to shield my eyes. At least thirty Mogs are dusted immediately, their bodies completely engulfed in the flames. More perish when the Skimmers’ parts go flying in every direction. I watch one warrior get lopped in half vertically by a cartwheeling windshield and another crushed beneath a flaming seating column.
The best part is the panic. The Mogs don’t know what just hit them and so they start firing towards the exploded ships, not certain where the real threat is actually hiding. At least a few go down as a result of friendly fire. And then Marina and I use our telekinesis to fire off some of the blasters we hid in the jungle, confusing them even more.
A twisted wheel strut smashes down on the ramp right in front of Setrákus Ra and Ella. Maybe it was a little reckless of us to blow those ships—I think Setrákus Ra had to deflect that wheel with his telekinesis to keep it from hitting him and Ella. However, it’s good
to know that he doesn’t want to see Ella hurt any more than we do.
I grin. Setrákus Ra actually looks surprised by our counterattack. His speech ruined, the Mog leader hurriedly walks the rest of the way down the ramp, dragging Ella along with him.
“Find them!” he screams as he starts down the rocky incline of the crater, heading for the Loric well. “Kill them!”
“Let’s do this!” I yell, not loud enough to give away our position thanks to the crackling fires coming from the husks of the Skimmers, but loud enough to fire up my allies. It’s do-or-die time.
I grab Adam’s hand and we go invisible. I take the lead, bringing us in a wide arc around the Mogs that will eventually get us close to the crater and Setrákus Ra’s device. Marina keeps up the distracting blaster fire, using guns hidden in different locations to keep the Mogs guessing. I memorized the locations where we hid our extra blasters, so I’m able to avoid the cross fire.
At least, I’m able to avoid it for about the first twenty yards. Then, dumb luck strikes. One of the Mogs, his back on fire from the Skimmer explosions, stumbles towards us, firing wildly. I dive out of the way and so does Adam.
But we dive in separate directions.
Just like that, Adam pops back into the visible world.
“Shit,” he says, bringing his own blaster up and gunning down the nearest Mog.
“There!” shouts one of the other warriors.
So much for doing this guerrilla-style.
Seeing Adam in danger, Bernie Kosar is the first one to launch into battle. One second he’s a toucan, innocently flying towards the nearest group of Mogadorians, and a blink of an eye later he’s in the shape of a muscular lion, slashing and snapping his way through our enemies. A lot of the Mogs are still scrambling from the explosions and haven’t even seen Adam yet, so Bernie Kosar easily gets the drop on them. He’s faster and more ferocious than the last time I saw him fight, angrier maybe, and I remember that he nearly died back in Chicago. Whenever the Mogs do manage to draw a bead on him, Bernie Kosar shape-shifts into a smaller form—a bug or a bird—making himself an impossible target. Then, when he’s in a better position to kill, Bernie Kosar turns back into his predator form. The transitions are so smooth, it’s almost beautiful.
