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“Okay, how long before they notice we just took out their whole grease monkey division?” Six asks, walking closer now that Dust is watching the doors.
Adam shrugs. “Depends when the next patrol’s supposed to go out.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, striding towards the double doors. “You focus on getting those cloaking devices detached. I’ll see to the rest of the ship.”
“Be careful,” Six says.
And then I’m through the doors, BK and Dust on my heels. The short hallway outside the hangar is empty, so I take a moment to crouch down and speak to the Chimærae.
Watch my back, I tell them. I can do this as long as none of them get behind me, take me by surprise. And we don’t want any of them getting through to Adam and Six.
As I speak, both Chimærae transform into more imposing creatures. They’re both still doglike, but they’re thickly muscled and razor clawed, with durable, leathery skin and wicked fangs. The only way I can tell them apart is from the streak of gray fur that runs down Dust’s spine.
“Good look, boys,” I say, and stand up and start deeper into the warship.
There’s an airlock on the next door that requires some strength to turn. Through that, the hallway opens up, red lit and austere, with doors branching off on either side of me. There’s a pair of Mogadorians walking right towards me, the two of them studying a digital map of Niagara Falls.
I fly forward, stab the first one through the eye and grab the other one around the throat.
“Which way is the bridge?” I ask him.
He points straight ahead. I snap his neck.
I don’t want any of these bastards getting behind me, so I take each room one by one. I’ll save the bridge for last.
The first area I step into looks like a barracks. The walls are honeycombed, with narrow pill-shaped beds. The vatborn basically sleep right on top of each other. There are hundreds of Mogs here now, at rest, many of them hooked into intravenous lines of that black ooze Setrákus Ra loves so much, augmenting themselves while they doze. I suppose they sleep in shifts, resting up for the next assault.
Today, their alarm clock is a fireball.
I hold out both my hands and let as much fire rush out from my fingertips as I can manage. I let loose until my clothes actually begin to smoke. Soon, there’s a wall of fire crackling out from me, roaring into the room. I smell burned plastic and a rotten roasting smell that I know is that black ooze boiling.
The fire begins to spread beyond my control. It occurs to me that I don’t want to do any irreparable damage to the ship. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, the sensation in my hands changes. I go from pouring fire into the room to spraying the charred space with crystals of ice and frost.
One of Marina’s Legacies. Hadn’t even realized I picked that one up. It works so similarly to my Lumen, it’s just like throwing a car into reverse.
What Mogs managed to escape their bunks and avoid getting torched are soon picked off by a volley of icicles.
Rampaging through the barracks gets their attention. As I exit, a small squad of warriors rushes down the hall towards me. BK and Dust dispatch them quickly, pouncing out from adjacent rooms just as the Mogs draw near.
The Mogs aren’t prepared for this, I realize. They’re not prepared at all.
Now they know how it feels.
I turn invisible before stepping through the next set of doors. Immediately, I’m greeted by a robotic voice alternating between English and Mogadorian. “Surrender or die,” says the voice. “Put down your weapons.” “Beloved Leader.”
It’s a language course, I realize. The Mogs are drilling their English skills. And that’s not all. . . .
Deeper into this room, I spot a firing range. People-shaped targets scream and run against an ever-changing backdrop of famous Earth cities: New York, Paris, London. There’s a digital readout for the shooter’s score, which currently sits at zero on account of the program being abandoned.
The Mogs training here—they heard me coming. They’ve quit their tasks and formed two groups on either side of the doorway, blasters at the ready. If I had walked in here, they’d have lit me up.
Too bad. I’m a different kind of target.
I quietly step into the middle of the room and turn visible. The Mogs yell—surprised—and open fire. Quickly, I turn invisible again and fly up, over their blaster fire. They end up shredding each other in the crossfire.
The survivors I finish off while floating over them. Stabbing down with Five’s blade, blasting them with fire and ice at close range, turning others to stone with a glance.
A few of them try to book it out of the room. BK and Dust wait outside, greeting them with claws and gnashing teeth.
At some point while I’m clearing out the training room, a shrieking alarm begins to go off. It echoes through the entire ship and is accompanied by a rhythmic flashing of the dull red lighting that runs across the walls and ceilings.
No more element of surprise. Now they know I’m coming.
When I start making my way towards the bridge, the passageway is conspicuously empty of enemies. Prowling a few steps behind me, both BK and Dust let out growls of warning. The Mogs have almost surely fallen back into a defensive position, a choke point, where they can throw all their firepower at me.
Well, let’s see what they’ve got.
Two high double doors stand in front of me. Beyond them is the bridge. The alarm continues to blare; the lights continue to flash.
When I get within twenty feet of them, the doors open with a hydraulic whoosh.
Through the doors is a wide staircase that leads up. Above the staircase, I can just barely glimpse the domed windows of the bridge’s navigation area, the blue sky of Canada visible. The ship is controlled from here. Surely, the trueborn commander is up there somewhere.
On the stairs, between me and my goal, are about two hundred Mogadorians. The first row on their stomachs, the next row on one knee, the next row standing, the row behind them on the first step, and on and on, filling the entire staircase. Each of them holds a blaster pointed in my direction.
Once upon a time, this would have terrified me.
“Come on!” I scream at them.
The hallway crackles with energy as hundreds of blasters are fired off at once.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“YOU THINK HE’S ALL RIGHT?” ADAM ASKS.
I take my eyes off the door leading out of the hangar for a moment to shoot Adam a look. He doesn’t notice on account of his face being buried in a tangle of wires and cords. He’s lying on his back beneath the ripped-open dashboard of a Skimmer. His hands work quickly to disconnect the cloaking device.
“John’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” I reply. So far, a new scar hasn’t burned its way across my ankle.
Adam sits up. I stand nearby, hunkered low, the cockpit of this latest Skimmer popped open. I’m carrying a Mog blaster and have my aim leveled on the door, just in case any Mogs should manage to get by John and interrupt what we’re doing. So far, it’s been quiet.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Adam replies.
“You mean psychologically,” I say.
“Yeah.”
We climb out of this Skimmer and move on to the next one. I place the detached cloaking device inside a toolbox that we emptied out, stacked next to the others that we’ve filled.
“I think he’s doing about as well as any of us,” I say. “I mean, what do you expect?”
“I don’t know,” Adam admits. “But he scares me a little bit.”
I don’t respond to that. I’d be lying if I said the changes that have been taking place in John lately weren’t a little frightening. He’s still the same guy I’ve known, relied on, loved—just, with an edge. With power. And a hunger for revenge.
Maybe that’s exactly what we need right now.
An alarm begins to whine, and the lights in the docking bay flash off and on. Adam snaps free a
nother cloaking device before looking up at me with raised eyebrows.
“I take it that’s a bad sign,” I say.
Adam shrugs. “It’s the high alert. For intruders or attacks.”
“So they know we’re here.”
“They were always going to find out eventually, right? If John’s going at the same rate he did down here, that alarm’s about twenty minutes too late to do any good.”
We move on to the next Skimmer, my grip now a little tighter on the blaster handle. Before we climb aboard, something catches my attention. A buzzing from the docking bay’s communications array. I touch Adam on the shoulder.
“What is that?”
He cocks his head to listen but can’t hear over the alarm. We jog over to the control panel in time to hear a brusque voice barking in Mogadorian. Adam immediately looks towards the wide-open entrance of the docking bay, the one we came through, blue sky and crisp air out there.
“The Skimmers on patrol detected the alarm; they’re asking for confirmation.”
