The Fate of Ten
Page 88

Marina. She stands at the crater’s edge, already developing another wicked ice projectile to hurl at Setrákus Ra. Next to her, Adam is on his feet. He stomps and a teeth-clattering wave of seismic energy rolls down the side of the crater, loose bricks and broken ship parts descending with it. If I wasn’t already on the ground, the seismic blast would’ve put me there. Setrákus Ra, with his already wounded legs, goes down hard. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think he shrinks a little bit when he’s knocked off his feet. We’ve messed with his concentration enough that he’s struggling to maintain all his Legacies. I try to use my telekinesis to fling some debris at him, but I’m still too close.
Blaster fire comes from the Anubis aimed at Marina and Adam, but it’s answered in kind by Mark and Sarah as the two of them race along the edge of the crater. Between their cover fire and the broken rocks of the Sanctuary, we’ve actually inadvertently managed to cut Setrákus Ra off from the rest of his forces.
At a glance, I see Mark is bleeding from a cut on the top of his head and Sarah has some pretty nasty blaster burns up and down one arm. Otherwise, they look just fine.
They look better, in fact, than Setrákus Ra. His face slashed, ear missing, legs carved up. He struggles onto his knees.
We’ve got him. We’ve really got him.
Marina slings another icicle towards Setrákus Ra. He thrusts a fist forward and shatters it in midair.
“I am not dying at the hands of children,” he rumbles. But you know what? He doesn’t sound so sure.
Sore as all hell and wheezing, I push myself back to my feet and sprint towards the opposite side of the crater from Marina and Adam. If we can stay separated then there’s no way Setrákus Ra can catch us all in the radius of his Legacy-canceling field. We can bombard him from a distance.
Mark and Sarah see me coming, even though they’re exchanging fire with the Mogs. They stop running along the edge of the crater about halfway between me and Marina and Adam’s position. I see them exchange a few words, and then Sarah doubles back towards me while Mark presses on toward the others.
“You look like you could use a hand!” Sarah says, coming a few steps into the crater to help me the rest of the way up.
“Thanks. You all right?”
“Hanging in,” she replies. I can tell she’s trying not to look at the blistered burns on her arm.
I’ve got a much better visual of our situation from up here. The Mogs still holding position in front of the Anubis are surprisingly few. The others must have killed a whole lot of them while I was fighting Setrákus Ra. Even while I’m watching, Mark dusts one of them with a head shot. There’s only a handful left.
Setrákus Ra doesn’t have any reinforcements.
He isn’t going down easy, though. The Mogadorian overlord, still way oversized, clambers up the side of the crater towards Marina and Adam. With his wounded legs, he has to scramble up on his hands. Smartly, the others don’t let him get close. Adam keeps unleashing seismic currents that cause Setrákus Ra to stumble backwards. Meanwhile, Marina alternates between freezing the ground beneath his feet and hurling chunks of ice at him. Setrákus Ra is able to absorb most of her volleys with his armor, but it has to be taking a toll. He isn’t talking smack anymore. Instead, the Mogadorian leader is looking kind of desperate.
“You covering me?” I ask Sarah.
“You know it.”
I nod and shout across the crater to Marina and Adam. “This is it! Throw everything you’ve got at him!”
I sense the ground shake as Adam amps up his earthquake and Marina redoubles her ice-chucking. Sarah and Mark keep firing steadily at the Mogs on the Anubis’s walkway, killing some and keeping the others at bay. I reach up, concentrating on the weather above, and start conjuring the biggest storm I can manage. The atmosphere around us gets heavy and humid as I pull the clouds low, even with the hovering Anubis. Pretty soon, the warship is wreathed in thickening fog.
“Whoa,” I hear Sarah say. It’s not every day you see storm clouds gathering so close to the ground.
Before I can finish, I hear a metallic tearing sound. Setrákus Ra’s given up on climbing out of the crater and getting at Marina and Adam. He was overconfident and bloodthirsty before. Now, he’s acting smart. With his telekinesis, he tears what’s left of his pipeline loose from the Anubis. The massive piece of machinery floats in the air for a second before he hurls it at the others.
“Look out!” Mark screams. He and Adam dive one way, Marina dives the other. The pipeline crashes to the ground in between them. None of them are hurt, but without them peppering him with Legacies, Setrákus Ra is able to start climbing out of the crater, his huge strides covering a lot of ground.
It’s my turn to keep him down there.
I twist my hands through the air, conducting the weather. The wind picks up, whipping around debris and dirt. My face gets stung by little rocks and my eyes burn from the dust. I power through. I’m creating a tornado, right on top of Setrákus Ra.
“Die, you son of a—!”
My back explodes in pain. A blaster shot, right between the shoulder blades. I fall forward onto my hands and knees, almost tumbling into the crater. My concentration is shot along with me, the wind immediately beginning to die down.
“Six!” Sarah cries out. She grabs me around the waist and together we roll behind a pile of rubble, just ahead of more blaster fire.