“Thrusters!” Adam yells. “Sam, get me back thrusters.”

“Ship! Engage thrusters!” Nothing happens. “Damn it!”

“Ella, I’m trying to imagine how these look. . . .”

That’s it. The same trick we used at Niagara Falls.

“Done,” Ella says immediately. “Over to you, Sam.”

“Ah . . . thrusters! Ship, give me back thrusters!”

It works. The ship actually listens.

We level off. We don’t crash. The seesawing in my stomach calms.

And the storm outside parts, revealing nothing but flaming wreckage below.

Everyone on the bridge cheers. Marina hugs me. So does Nine. I elbow him in the stomach.

It’s not over yet.

I turn to look out through our cracked window. We’re hovering over the mountain now, a few hundred yards from its force field. The entire area is illuminated by the trails of fire left by the Anubis. I see them down there, piling out of the cavernous entrance to the base. A horde of Mogadorians, their blasters pointed up at our ship.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think those assholes look scared.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I TRY NOT TO STARE TOO LONG AT THE FIERY swath of destruction created by the crashed Anubis. There’s still work to be done, but the sight of the warship broken into pieces on the mountainside gives me an undeniable thrill.

Still invisible, I fly underneath one of the Skimmers that survived the titanic clash of the two warships. Quickly, I unleash a torrent of ice that freezes the engines. The small ship drops like a rock, right towards the steadily gathering crowd of Mog vatborn outside the base entrance.

For a moment, the sky is clear. I’ve taken care of all the Skimmers that weren’t destroyed by our warship.

There’s an explosion to my right. The Mogs down below aren’t happy. They’re taking potshots with their blasters, and others are letting loose with what look like bazookas. Nothing penetrates the shields of our warship.

They aren’t prepared for this kind of attack. Why would they be? Their base’s force field, not to mention their regular energy weapons, are enough to repulse anything the humans could throw at them.

Overconfidence gets you dead.

I fly behind the safety of our warship’s force field and back on board the ship. The others are waiting for me in the docking bay.

I’m soaked from the rain and bleeding from my neck. The stitches pulled while I was out there using my stone-vision to knock down Skimmers, all while darting around lances of energy from the Anubis and getting thrown about by Six’s wind gusts.

Six looks almost as rough as me. Her hair is a tangled mess, like she was in the windstorm, sweaty and matted to her face.

“So far so good,” she says.

“Most beautiful storm I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.

Lexa is already in the cockpit of her ship, with Marina riding shotgun. Adam sits in the back, a Mogadorian blaster across his lap. He avoids making eye contact with me. I notice a rustling in the front of his shirt and realize he’s got Dust with him, the Chimæra shrunk down to a gray mouse until it’s time to join the fight. Nine piles in across from Adam, and Bernie Kosar bounds in after him. Five follows after Nine but pauses in front of me and Six, his one eye lingering on the light show outside.

“You know, they’re going to shoot us to pieces the minute we fly out of here,” he says.

“Not if we give them something else to shoot at,” I say.

Six and I usher Five onto the ship, follow behind him and close the door after us.

“Good to go?” I call out to Lexa.

“Say the word,” she replies.

Sam and Rex, now in charge of maneuvering our warship, have us positioned so that the docking bay doors are right above the horde of Mogs gathered below. They crowd the area in front of the mountain’s entrance, shooting up through the force field that prevents us from returning fire. They haven’t breached our warship’s defenses yet, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. I guess we made them mad when we took down their flagship.

“All right, everyone with telekinesis, grab hold of those Skimmers,” I say, indicating the dozens of Mog ships that we stripped for parts earlier. “Let’s dump them. Lexa—”

“Use the ships as cover,” she finishes my thought. “I got it, John. The drop won’t take more than ten seconds.”

Nine cracks his knuckles. “We’re ready.”

As a group, we exert our telekinesis to shove the dormant Skimmers out the docking bay doors. To the Mogs down below, it must look like they’re being dive-bombed by dozens of their own ships. Lexa eases our ship out with the others. If it wasn’t night, if it wasn’t chaos, maybe the Mogs would be able to pick our vessel out from the others. Instead, they shoot at everything; the darkness comes alive with streaking arcs of blaster fire.