“What the hell does that mean?”
“They’re being little bitches,” Mark explains helpfully.
“They don’t want to throw themselves into a conflict against Setrákus Ra unless they know they can win. So, they’ll support us, but they won’t fight him directly. Not yet, anyway.”
“Pathetic,” I say.
Sarah looks at Adam. “John still wants you to get those cloaking devices out of the Skimmers.”
“So he can turn that technology over to the army that won’t help us?” Adam asks, an eyebrow raised.
“Pretty much.”
“Already taken care of. I took them out before we wired the ships to explode,” Adam replies, glancing at me. “Whether or not we turn them over? We can decide that later.”
“Why the hell would we if they aren’t going to help us fight?” I ask Sarah. This whole deal sounds an awful lot like what Agent Walker described to us back at Ashwood Estates. MogPro. Even now, with their biggest city practically a smoking crater, the government is still playing angles and trying to scam cool swag from the friendly aliens.
“Because diplomacy?” Sarah replies, shrugging like the situation is out of her control. Which it obviously is. As usual, we’re on our own. “John thinks they’ll be more inclined to help us once he can show them a way to beat the Mogs.”
“When’s he getting here?” Marina asks.
Sarah’s face falls. “More bad news there. Five has taken Nine hostage in New York.”
I hear a crackle of frost as Marina’s fists clench tight. “What?”
“Yeah, not good,” Sarah replies. “John and Sam are trying to track him down and stop him from doing—well, whatever the hell that psycho has planned.”
“I should’ve killed him,” Marina mutters. I shoot a quick look in her direction. She’s been peaceful while we’ve been at the Sanctuary, so much like the old Marina, all nonviolent and serene. One mention of Five, though, and the darkness comes rushing back.
Sarah continues, not hearing Marina. “Once they’ve got that sorted out, John will be on his way, but . . .”
I look towards the jungle’s tree line. The sun is already starting to get low.
“He won’t make it in time,” I say, feeling it in my stomach. “It’s just going to be us.”
“He’s going to try,” Sarah insists, and I can tell she’s hoping to see her boyfriend appear on the horizon like some conquering hero, he and Sam backed by the full might of the U.S. armed forces. I don’t hold on to any such delusions.
“We need to get back to it,” I say. “We need to get ready.”
“Or we could bail,” Mark says, raising his hand. When that earns him a dirty look from Marina, he backs down. “All right, all right. Show me where I need to dig.”
We get to work.
First, Adam moves Dust’s twisted body onto Lexa’s ship. The Chimæra seems a bit more alert now, like the tension is going out of his muscles, but he still can’t change forms and is nowhere near fighting shape. He’s just going to have to sit this one out.
Lexa wants to see the cloaking devices we stripped out of the Skimmers, so then Adam and I show her where we piled them in the ammunition tent. Each one is a solid black box about the size of a laptop.
“They were hooked in to the Skimmer consoles, behind the piloting controls,” Adam says, fingering the ports and cords on the back of one of the devices. “I tried to keep them as intact as possible.”
We gather them up in a duffel bag and bring them onto Lexa’s ship, ready to be delivered to our generous friends in the government, who, in trade, will be giving us a whole lot of nothing.
Of course, that’s all assuming we get out of Mexico alive.
“Will it work?” I ask her.
“I think so,” Lexa replies. She strips the rubber off a cable and then connects the exposed wire to the cloaking device’s power port. “I guess we won’t know for sure until we try flying through their warships’ shielding.”
Careening towards a massive warship while on board a refurbished Loric vessel that may or may not be able to pass through the impenetrable force field surrounding it. There’s a situation I’m not looking forward to.
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“We’d explode,” she says, before I can even finish the question. “Let’s not rush trying it out, okay?”
While Adam and Lexa continue to patch the cloaking device into the Loric systems, the rest of us get to work on the pit in front of the Sanctuary’s entrance. Adam did manage to find a few shovels buried among the Mogadorian equipment—apparently, they gave up trying to dig their way under the force field pretty early on. Mark seems a little too happy to take off his shirt and start tossing shovelfuls of dirt over his shoulder. Bernie Kosar gleefully jumps in, too, the Chimæra morphing into a large mole-like creature. With his three-toed claws, Bernie Kosar sends funnels of dirt raining messily out of the pit. It seems like he’s having a blast. Mark, on the other hand, doesn’t last too long. The jungle heat quickly takes a toll. “This sucks,” I overhear him complain to Sarah, wiping sweat off his forehead.
“Wait until the Mogs show up and start shooting at us,” Sarah replies. “You’ll be wishing we had more manual labor.”
Pretty soon we reach a layer of earth that’s just too rocky to get through by hand. It’s easiest if Adam comes over and uses a quick seismic burst to break up the ground, and then Marina and I use our telekinesis to lift the big chunks free of the pit and hide the displaced dirt in the jungle.
Eventually we’ve got an honest-to-goodness pit dug. Now that we’re finished, Marina and I carefully use our telekinesis to lift our surgically removed dirt cube back into place. It’s suspended over the pit pretty precariously and it sags a little in the middle, but it looks natural enough if you don’t know the difference. I’m pretty sure it’ll cave in as soon as Setrákus Ra reaches the middle, and drop him down about thirty feet, so he won’t be able to jump right out. Hopefully, between this and our other traps, we distract him enough to get on board the Anubis.
Back in beagle form, Bernie Kosar sniffs around the pit’s now-hidden edge, wagging his tail. He seems to approve.
“What’s next?” Mark asks, dusting off his hands. “We going to set up some trip wires that trigger hidden crossbows or something?”
“I haven’t seen any crossbows lying around,” Adam replies, rubbing his chin. “However, we might be able to fashion some spears from the tree branches. How are you at whittling?”
Either Adam doesn’t quite get that Mark’s being sarcastic, or he really likes setting traps.
“Yeah, let’s table that for now,” Mark replies, inching away.
Sarah and company actually had the foresight to pack some supplies. Everyone takes a break, passing around bottles of water and food. We all do a pretty good job of pretending not to be scared as hell of what’s coming.
I stand a little ways away from the rest of the gang, eating my sandwich and considering the Loric ship parked on the runway. Something’s nagging at me, but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s like there’s a little voice shouting a warning in the back of my mind and I can’t quite make out the words. Seeing me locked in a staring contest with her ship, Lexa approaches me.
“You think this will work?” she asks me, inclining her head towards our defenses.
“Are you asking me if we’re going to win the war today thanks to a big hole in the ground and some guns hidden in the jungle?” I shake my head solemnly. “No way. But maybe we can screw up Setrákus Ra’s plans somehow.”
“I know this probably doesn’t mean much coming from me,” Lexa begins hesitantly, clearly uncomfortable. “But you’re a good leader, Six. You’re holding it together. Your Cêpan would be proud. Hell, all of Lorien would be proud of the fight you guys are putting up.”