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“Heartening,” Lawson responds.
“They want to occupy Earth, not blast it to inhabitability,” Lexa continues. “Doesn’t knowing that give us some advantage?”
“Could Setrákus Ra be bluffing?” Lawson asks.
“It’s true that my people want to occupy,” Adam says with a thoughtful frown. “In all likelihood, the fleet isn’t capable of another intergalactic trip. They need to stay here. But if you think that somehow limits their willingness to destroy even dozens of cities, you underestimate them.”
“So we’re back to a doomsday countdown,” Lawson replies. “Once you attack Ra, we have to assume that countdown stops and the destruction begins.”
“What happens when he recovers and realizes his deadline passed while he was licking his wounds?” Six interjects. “He’ll attack then anyway.”
“Exactly.” Lawson nods. “The attacks are an inevitability either way. That doesn’t mean we want to hurry them up. We want to be as ready as we can be. Get as many civilians to safety as possible. Use every minute of this delay you’ve given us.”
“You want us to wait,” I say, gritting my teeth. Although I still need more time to collect Legacies, I’m eager for a fight. Right now, it’s what I’m living for. Sitting through this meeting has been difficult enough. “How long?”
“It isn’t easy coordinating a series of international strikes against a technologically superior opponent,” Lawson says. “We’ve received the cloaking devices your team recovered from Mexico, and our science guys are attempting to reverse engineer them.”
Lawson’s people have probably spent more time with those cloaking devices than I have. Lexa—who I only met in person this morning—brought the Mogadorian technology to me first thing. They don’t look all that impressive. Solid black boxes with a few inputs and wires, about the size of a paperback book, but they’re the key to the human armies having a chance. We turned most of them over to Lawson a couple of hours before this meeting. We kept the one already installed in Lexa’s ship, and I set one aside for myself.
“I can help with that,” Adam says to Lawson. “I know the tech fairly well.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Mog,” Lawson replies. “Even if we do crack the devices and put them into production, we’ve still got to get this tech into the hands of our allies around the world. Now that we know what they look like, other countries, particularly India, have had some success knocking down the Skimmers during skirmishes and stripping out the cloaking devices themselves. Assuming we get beyond the shields, we’re still assessing whether we’ll be better served attempting to board these warships or rely on ballistic missiles.”
“Neither approach will be easy,” Adam replies.
“Can’t you just nuke them?” Nine asks.
Lawson’s eyes narrow. “We’re evacuating our imperiled cities, young man, but there are still people down there. Nuclear warfare is off the table here in America. I can’t say the same for other countries. . . .”
“Bad enough to blow up those giant ships over the cities,” Daniela mutters.
Lawson holds up a hand. “One problem at a time. Regardless of what approach we take, the cloaking devices remain our biggest hurdle. We’re working with an incredibly small stockpile when we need one per ship or one per missile. And then there’s the small matter of getting them into the hands of our allies.” Lawson pauses for breath. “How long will it take to have enough on hand to mount an attack on the warships?”
“All of them?” I ask. “At once?”
“That’s how this operations plays out, John. We hit them all at once to maximize our only advantage . . . the element of surprise. If we let them know we can break their shields too early, the parameters change. They might step up their attacks. Right now, they’ve got a boot on our necks; they think we’re pinned, out of the fight. They don’t know we’ve still got a knife up our sleeve. But we need that tech. And we’re up against a ticking clock. Unless you know how long Setrákus Ra will be in this vat of his?” he asks, looking at Ella.
Ella shakes her head.
“Then you understand how precarious our situation is,” Lawson concludes. “We’ll likely get one shot at this, and it needs to be soon.”
I take all this in, a little on my heels. Lawson doesn’t paint a very rosy picture. Maybe I’m not in the right mind-set to help coordinate an international counterattack. Luckily, I’ve got backup.
Six peers down the table at Ella. “There are new Loralite stones growing across the Earth, right?”
“Yes,” Ella says. “I can sense them.”
Six snaps her fingers. “There you go. We use those to deliver the cloaking devices around the world.”
Lawson looks at me. “These are the stones you mentioned to the LANEs in your . . . ah . . . psychic briefing, yes?”
I nod.
“Hmm.” Lawson glances at the map over his shoulder. “Once we caught wind of those, we encouraged our international partners to lock down as many of them as they could find.”
I cock my head. “You did?”
“Yes, John, of course we did. That said, some leaders have outright laughed at me when I asked them to divert resources to guarding some magical rocks. Not to mention, we only know the location of a fraction of these Loralite growths.”
“How many human Garde have been intercepted?” I ask, my voice cold.
“A few,” Lawson replies cagily. “For their own protection. Most of them are still overseas. Assuming we survive the next few days, maybe we can discuss how you’ll train them. With proper supervision, of course.”
I don’t like this. It feels like we’re giving away too much too easily, turning over the Loralite locations to Lawson, not to mention the fledgling human Garde he’s so interested in. Still, what choice do we have? Practically speaking, using the Loralite stones is our only way to get a counterattack ready fast.
“We’ll help you locate the rest of the Loralite,” I tell Lawson. “Once we’re ready to move the cloaking devices.”
Lawson smiles at my reluctant concession but moves on quickly. “That’s transport squared away. It still doesn’t solve the problem of quantity.”
“If we can’t make them quickly enough, we’ll just have to get you more,” I say, the beginning of a plan starting to take shape in my head.
Nine flashes me a wolfish grin. “Maybe we should go somewhere that we know will have a lot of them.”
“And where is that?” Lawson asks.
“One of the warships,” I reply.
“Didn’t I just explain—?” Lawson snaps, frustration breaking through his patient granddad routine for a moment. He gets hold of himself quickly. “If we attack them—any attack—we risk them laying waste to another one of our cities.”
“What if we could get in and out of one of their warships without them even noticing?” I pose this to Lawson, but it’s Six who I’m looking at. She smiles at me. I smile back. “What if we could get you a battalion’s worth of cloaking devices before the Mogs even notice they’re missing?”
“That . . .” Lawson rubs a hand across his jaw, considering. “That I could live with.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HERE’S THE TO-DO LIST.
Sneak aboard a Mogadorian warship.
Steal every cloaking device they’ve got without tipping off the Mogs.
Arm the governments of the world for one big counterstrike.
Meanwhile, learn every Legacy I can wrap my mind around.
Kill Setrákus Ra.
Not necessarily in that order. Especially not the “learn every Legacy” one. Because if I’m going to sneak aboard a Mog warship the way I’m planning, there’s one Legacy in particular I’m going to need first.
I have to learn how to fly.
The meeting breaks up after I promise General Lawson we’ll have a plan in place to covertly attack a Mogadorian warship by the end of the day. Hopefully, Ella was right and Setrákus Ra will be out of action for at least
that long. It’s barely even noon yet, and I feel like we’ve already burned too much of the day.
As everyone hurries through the hallways of Patience Creek to go about their tasks, I pull Adam aside. He looks pale as usual, with the addition of some dark circles around his eyes. Everyone at that meeting had a little bit of similar wear on them. Invasion fatigue is setting in.
