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“No,” I say, taking him by the shoulders. “I know you care, Adam. I know it’ll kill you to do it. But you also know that I’m right. That stopping Setrákus Ra is more important than . . . than anything. If worse comes to worst, you’ll pull that trigger.”
Adam holds my gaze for a few seconds, then looks away. He steps back so that my hands fall off his shoulders.
“Okay, John,” he says simply.
“Okay.”
I don’t actually need him to help me with the airlock.
Alone, I pass through the warship’s ravaged docking bay, open up the exit and fly into the night. Wilderness passes by beneath me, peaceful and untouched. The wind plucks at my clothes, cool against the sweat on my back.
The mountain rises up before me. Dark purple in the night. Waiting for me.
I go invisible.
The Anubis hovers over the mountain, an insectoid guardian. Its metallic hull reflects the moonlight. Searchlights from the warship’s underbelly comb the side of the mountain, the cleared space around the cavern entrance, the sparse woods beyond. They’re expecting us. The Anubis does a slow circle around the mountain’s peak, prowling just like it did in New York City.
This time, I’m not running away.
From my back pocket, I produce my satellite phone. I dial the number programmed in for Lawson. Two simple words.
“Open fire.”
I don’t listen for a response. I know what happens next. Soon, all around the world, counterattacks will begin.
I drop the phone. Let it smash down in the woods a few miles down. I won’t need it anymore. No more talking, no more politics.
I reach out to Six telepathically.
The Anubis is over the mountain. Get ready.
I glance back in the direction I came from. Our warship is too far off to see, but the storm clouds aren’t. Thick and dark, they blot out the stars, ruining what was a perfectly clear night sky. Lightning shivers through them, the wind picks up and I can hear hailstones falling in the distance. They roll towards me, towards the Anubis.
It’ll be a storm like the Mogadorians have never seen.
We’re coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“GAIN SOME ALTITUDE, REX,” ADAM SAYS. “I want to swoop down from above them. That good for you, Six?”
“Yeah,” I reply distractedly. “Got it covered.”
I stand right in front of the enormous windows on our warship’s bridge, my hands raised in the air, fingers twisting. I can see reflections of the others in the glass, but I’m more focused on what’s outside. I pull at the indelible threads of atmosphere that only I can sense and caress the wind into doing my bidding. If it wasn’t for the thick sheet of glass in front of me, I could reach out and touch the roiling clouds that I’ve created.
A storm. A bigger storm than I’ve ever managed. Over the years, I’ve mostly relied on lightning strikes, high winds, sudden surges of cloud cover—quick effects. Not much can stand against Mother Nature for long. I’ve never really needed to build and sustain a massive storm front before.
Well, Katarina used to say, discovery is born of desperation.
“Visibility is really bad,” Rex calls to Adam.
“It’s okay,” Adam replies. Ella stands next to him, her eyes rolled back in her head, seeing everything that John sees. “We know where we’re going, and our target’s hard to miss. Keep us climbing.”
I have surrounded our warship with storm clouds and fog. Lightning strikes sizzle right in front of us and sting my eyes with their brightness. Our ship is big, but my storm front is bigger. It stretches nearly a mile wide and up, up, like a tidal wave crawling through the sky. Adam has triggered a scrambling device for radar so, between that and the static from the lightning, we should be wreaking havoc on the Anubis’s sensors. They’ll definitely know that we’re coming, but they won’t know where exactly in the storm we’re hiding. Not until it’s too late.
Marina stands at my side. She’s ready to enhance my storm with chunks of ice when needed. For now, she wipes some sweat from my forehead.
“You’re doing great, Six,” she says.
It isn’t until I try to smile at her and hear my teeth chatter that I realize I’m shaking.
Press on. Grow the storm. Bigger and bigger.
The winds howl outside, audible even in here. Thunder rumbles.
“Imagine the looks on their faces,” Five comments from his spot at one of the weapons panels. “They’re probably shitting their pants.”
“Shut up,” Nine replies automatically.
The edge of my storm reaches the Anubis. At first, the clouds break across their force field, keeping the air within one hundred yards of their ship completely clear.
“Do we know if weather will breach their shields?” Sam asks.
“Let’s find out,” Adam says. “Pour it on, Six.”
In my mind, I take hold of a lightning bolt. Just a small one, a probe, and sling it against the Anubis’s force field. The streak of electricity bends, turned back by the Mogadorian technology.
“Doesn’t seem like it penetrated,” Rex reports, sounding anxious.
“No, it doesn’t matter,” I reply through gritted teeth. “We’re close enough now. I don’t need to break their force field. I can go around.”
I let the dark clouds and swells of fog coalesce around the Anubis, hiding us, blinding them beyond the range of their force field. Then, maintaining that, I start over. My left hand twirls above me, spinning the wind, building it up, creating pressure. This time, the storm gathers within their shields.
“The air . . . ,” I say. “The air belongs to me.”
The wind outside the Anubis screams, the pressure drops. The wind swirls into a vortex, its velocity as fast as I can make it, fast enough to uproot trees and tear off weapon arrays, so fast that I’m starting to get a little dizzy. The vortex splits, then splits again. Three small funnels on top of the dark metal hull of the warship, shearing away at its armor, knocking it out of its orderly hover. Three tornados to shove this bastard to the ground. I send in some rain as well, and, next to me, Marina presses her hands to the glass. She freezes the water as it lands on the Anubis, adding weight, hopefully jamming up important functions.
“It’s retreating!” Rex yells. “The Anubis is retreating!”
“That’s not a good thing,” Adam replies. “Six needs to be able to create weather inside their force field’s perimeter to knock down their systems.”
“Keep me . . . unh. Keep me close,” I grunt.
The farther the Anubis edges away from our hiding spot in the clouds, the harder it is for me to maintain control of the weather around it. The strain is immense, each weather pattern pulling at a part of me, requiring my attention. To keep our camouflage up along with the attack on the Anubis, I need us to be within a few hundred yards of each other.
From the corner of my eye, something bright red explodes in the air outside our ship. A second later, it happens again. Like fireworks going off.
“They’re shooting at us!” Sam yells.
“They’re blind-firing,” Adam replies calmly. “Steady, they can’t see—”
Explosion. The entire floor bucks, our ship vibrating. We’ve been hit. For a moment, the entire world is colored red. It’s our own warship’s shield activating in response to being struck by the Anubis’s energy blast, the impact illuminating the force field outside. It effectively highlights our location for the Mogadorians.
“They see us!” yells Rex. “Locking on . . .”
“Brace yourselves!” Adam screams.
The next impact is worse. It’s a sustained torrent of energy that rocks our ship. I crash into Marina, and we both fall to the floor. Everyone else holds on to their station for dear life. A siren begins blaring inside the warship, the same one that went off before when we were the ones doing the attacking.
“Shields are down to forty-eight percent!” Rex says.
“Forty-what??
? Sam exclaims. “I thought these force fields were impenetrable!”
“Impenetrable to your weapons,” Adam snaps as he begins hurriedly tapping buttons on the command console. “They’re recharging their main cannon. I don’t know if we’ll survive another hit.”
Nine scrambles over and helps Marina and me back to our feet. My head hurts, and I realize there’s a small cut on my forehead. For a moment, my concentration was lost, and that’s all it took. My storms have begun to dissipate. Worse yet, below us, the Anubis is moving out of range of my Legacies.
“Hurry up and hailstorm their asses!” Nine yells at me.
I press my hands to the glass. “Get me close!”
“Help me, Rex,” Adam says. “Divert all unnecessary systems to power the shields. Bring us around so we can get a clear shot at them with our cannon.”
Rex leaps up from his navigation console, and Lexa sits down where he was. Working the levers, she keeps us floating above the Anubis, brings us steadily closer.
“Here they come,” Five growls.
From my vantage point, I see the Anubis open up, and a swarm of flies explode forth from its side. Skimmers. The little ships pour from the Anubis and streak through the night sky towards us. With their cloaking devices still equipped, this armada will pass right through our force field and take easy potshots at our warship.
“Weapons ready!” Adam yells at Malcolm and Five, who immediately key in to their stations. “Don’t bother shooting until they’ve cleared the shield radius of the Anubis.”
“How will we know—?” Malcolm starts to ask, a sweat ring visible around his neck.
“Now!” Adam barks.
The warship rattles as Malcolm and Five begin discharging the auxiliary guns. The effect is like a cluster of fifty Mog blasters going off at the same time. Five fires wildly, his breathing sharp and excited, while Malcolm takes his time and tracks his targets methodically. It only takes one shot to bring down a Skimmer, but there’s a whole hell of a lot of them.
I notice that some of the Skimmers careening towards us drop out of the air without even being hit. Each time before it happens a silver glow illuminates the Skimmer and then it drops like a rock . . . because it is a rock. That’s John out there, invisible, flying, using his stone-vision to play defense.
