“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.

“Closer!” I shout over my shoulder, gathering the winds again.

“On it,” Adam replies. “Rex, how are those shields?”

Rex hurriedly pounds away at a keyboard. When he answers, he sounds terrified. “I . . . I’m sorry; I can’t get the power to reroute. I’m a navigator; this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“You sabotaging us, loser?” Nine snarls.

“No!” Rex replies. “I swear, I need another minute or two—”