“What’re we going to do, Six?” Sarah asks.
“Stay within arm’s length in case we need to go invisible,” I say, not just to Sarah but to everyone. “We’ve still got a plan.”
Mark snorts at that and his hands shake a little on his blaster’s grip. He’s got the detonator for our explosives in the dirt next to him.
“There’s no Sanctuary to protect,” Marina says forlornly.
“We can still take the Anubis,” I reply. “And there’s still Ella.”
“Man, I can’t see shit from back here,” Mark adds.
I turn invisible so that I can poke my head out from behind the log without running any risk of being seen. I get a way better view of the landscape than what Mark and Adam can see from their spots behind cover. The dust from the Anubis attack is still settling in the clearing; between that and the sunset, the entire area is cast in a gritty golden haze. Three thick plumes of black smoke curl into the air—booby-trapped Skimmers that had their bombs explode when the Anubis discharged its fury. However, even though some of them are flipped over or knocked into distant areas, I still see a bunch of the Skimmers that we set to blow.
So we might still be able to salvage one of our traps to fight off the Mogadorians. But the pit we spent so much effort digging is gone. Or, more accurately, it has gotten a whole lot bigger.
The land where the Sanctuary sat for centuries is now a smoking crater. It’s about sixty feet deep with stubborn chunks of the temple’s bricks still rooted in the ground and small fires from the Anubis’s cannon blast only now guttering out in the heat-baked dirt. That force field was in place precisely so something like this wouldn’t happen. We made it into the Sanctuary and this is the result. Total destruction.
Unless . . .
Still invisible, I climb up onto the log so I can get a better angle on the crater. Sarah flinches at the noise I make and brings her blaster up in my direction.
“Relax, it’s just me,” I whisper quickly. “I’m trying to get a look at something.”
“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 . . .”