by Greg Pace
I winced as a series of weapon blasts rocked the sky. I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of the massive explosion that came next.
Suddenly, everyone in the war room cheered louder than ever. I opened my eyes. Ivy and Darla had come to Malcolm’s rescue. The aliens, so focused on chasing X-Calibur, hadn’t seen the two girls sneak up behind them. While Ivy and Darla unloaded all they had into the alien ships, Kwan and Tyler finished off the damaged ones. More explosions lit up the sky, and just like that, it was over. The Round Table Reboot had successfully protected Earth from alien invaders.
39
PELLINORE SPARED no expense for the celebration in the atrium of HQ. I was wearing a suit that he had given me for the occasion, only the second time in my life that I’d worn one. Ivy was wearing a green dress that made her eyes even more radiant. She and the other knights beamed with a sense of fulfillment that I wished I could have shared. I felt like I was crashing somebody else’s party.
Malcolm strolled around the room in his own new suit and tie. Techs congratulated him and shook his hand while Pellinore walked by his side. Tyler strolled over to me, chowing down on a massive plate of rice and grilled vegetables.
“You gotta try the brussels sprouts,” he said through a mouthful. “They rock.”
I wrinkled my nose. “No thanks. But hey—awesome job up there. I saw you using moves from Barrington’s class. Genius!”
He grinned. “Thanks. Maybe I’m smart enough for college after all, huh?”
“Definitely,” I replied.
When Ivy saw Tyler and me talking, she came over and gave me a playful nudge. “Look at you. All fancy.”
I tried not to blush as Kwan and Darla joined us. We’d all developed a bond, especially now that the competition was over. Even Kwan and Darla seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.
“How awesome are we?” Kwan crowed happily and offered us burgers from his plate. We each grabbed one and tapped them together with one of Tyler’s brussels sprouts like glasses of champagne. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like an outsider. They had been up in the sky fighting, not me.
“The aliens never even had a chance against us,” Tyler boasted, and it was true. The aliens had been way outmatched.
“Kinda sucks that the world doesn’t know how lucky it is to have us, huh?” Tyler sighed.
“All I know is, there’s no way I’m going to quit surfing now,” Kwan said.
“What about your parents?” I wondered.
“They’ll just have to deal. I’ll still do my best at school, but you know what? I’m an action guy. And the world already has plenty of doctors and lawyers.”
“I’ll toast to that,” Darla said with a grin. She and Kwan bumped bacon cheeseburgers again. The rest of us laughed as Malcolm came over to join us.
“Hey. I just wanted to thank you, Ivy,” he said softly. “And you too, Darla. If you both hadn’t helped me up there . . . I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t be anywhere.”
Ivy waved him off. “We’re all on the same team here, remember?”
“I second that,” Darla added.
“Then I want to apologize,” he countered. “To all of you. I’ve been kind of an idiot. I got so caught up in trying to be who I’m supposed to be, and the truth is, I forgot we were a team. But from now, I’ll remember. That’s a promise.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his grandfather’s war medal, eyeing it with a new sense of peace. “I’m going to give this back to my grandfather as soon as I get home. This was his life, not mine.” He looked at me after saying that, and I gave him a little nod.
“Can I have everyone’s attention please?” Pellinore announced into a microphone. He was standing on a stage by the atrium’s back wall. “Today is a day of celebration. A victory for each and every one of us.”
Everyone applauded.
“But that victory is especially sweet for our courageous knights.” The cheers grew as everyone turned to look our way. “Let’s hear a speech from our heroes! Where’s our esteemed X-Calibur pilot?” Pellinore boomed.
Malcolm was making his way to the stage when there was a sudden deep rumble. A moment later it came again, and this time the walls around us shook. My insides went numb with horror. Merlin and I exchanged a glance, and that’s when I knew.
Dredmore.
There was a cracking sound above us as half the ceiling gave way under the force of some kind of blast. Chunks of concrete and metal suddenly rained down as we scattered like ants. The bulk of the destruction had occurred above the stage, and I got a fleeting glimpse of Malcolm and Pellinore getting hit and falling, unconscious. I grabbed Ivy as Kwan grabbed Darla and Tyler tried to grab all of us, doing his best to shield us as we scrambled aside.
The floor was already littered with people who had been hit. For the rest of us, it was chaos. When I dared to look up, I wished I hadn’t. Through the massive hole in the ceiling I saw various ravaged levels of HQ, all the way up to a glimpse of the dusky sky high above. Through the smoke and dust, I could see alien ships up there. Tons of them.
It had all been a ruse. They’d lulled us into a false sense of security, letting us believe five kids had saved mankind. We were sitting ducks, and the planet was clueless to the threat because we had kept everything a secret.
Someone grabbed me from behind. I whirled to see Merlin. He wobbled slightly as a trickle of blood ran down his forehead. I grabbed him, held him up. “This is it, Benjamin,” he whispered urgently.
“This is what?” I pleaded. Over his shoulder I saw frenzied techs dragging Malcolm and Pellinore, both out cold, to safety. Merlin seized my face and looked me square in the eye.
“Become your destiny.”
40
I RAN THROUGH the crumbling halls of HQ with Ivy, Kwan, Darla, and Tyler. Entire sections of the walls and the floors fell away around us, forcing us to change direction and take new paths.
“Where are we going?!” Kwan panicked as he dodged a piece of flying debris.
“We’ve gotta get up there and fight!” I shouted. If we could get to our equipment and weapons in time, we’d still stand a fighting chance. “We’ll need our helmets, then we’ll get into our ships!”
I led the way down another corridor as the ground shook beneath our feet. The lights above us flickered and sparked, and we had to brace ourselves against each other as we ran just to keep our balance.
“Who’s going to fly X-Calibur?” Darla asked.
“I am,” I told her without hesitation.
Up ahead, I spotted something moving down the hallway. I almost mistook them for hefty, oversized humans at first, but one of them wasn’t wearing a helmet, and when it looked our way, I heard Kwan let out a small cry of surprise. Its eyes were two long slits, and its nose was a shortened hook. A large mouth stretched around its head, all the way under its ears, full of hundreds of tiny, jagged teeth, and a row of fleshy spikes ran across the top of its head.
The creature hissed, and then he and his crew turned and came rushing toward us with metal clubs, the tips sizzling like cattle prods.
“This could be a problem,” Kwan whispered.
“C’mon!” I grabbed Ivy’s hand as we all turned and ran. How on earth were we going to get out of this?
Another blast practically knocked us over, but we stayed close, using each other as support. Tyler pulled Darla up as she tripped on a cracked floor panel. I stole a glance behind me and saw the aliens struggling through falling debris.
“Uh, guys?” Kwan pointed to the ceiling. “There’s more coming from up there, too.”
A handful of them were climbing down from a hole in the ceiling, like termites crawling out of the woodwork. I felt Ivy’s hand squeeze mine tighter. This didn’t look good.
Suddenly, a wall crumbled up ahead and then collapsed, giving us a view into another hall
way. “That way!” We climbed through the wall and down the hall, but we didn’t get far. The floor had collapsed into the level beneath it. When I saw what was down there, I was flooded with new adrenaline.
It was Pellinore’s secret room.
“We gotta get outta here!” Kwan shrieked, the aliens getting closer with every second. But there was no place else to run now, and we had backed ourselves into a corner at the end of this hall.
“Stay here!” I shouted, but Ivy grabbed me by the shoulders. “Trust me,” I breathed, before she could say anything.
The hallway floor had collapsed at an angle, with one side of it still intact. I got down on my butt and slid down the fallen floor, entering the secret room and rushing to the glass display case in the wall, the one that held Excalibur. The glass already had a crack running down the center of it, but it was still intact and strong, six inches thick. I could see a vague reflection of myself in the glass. I smirked at the ridiculousness of me wearing a suit and tie right now, then grabbed a chunk of broken concrete and smashed it against the glass until it shattered around me. As I grabbed the legendary sword, I was overcome by memories of Dad at my bedside, whispering to me the stories about King Arthur and Excalibur. In that moment I felt the closest I’d felt to Dad since his death.
I heard Darla scream above me, so I whirled and scurried up the fallen hallway, taking the heavy sword with me. Back in the hallway, a dozen aliens were ready to pounce on my fellow knights. Tyler didn’t waste any time in unleashing a guttural battle cry and charging the nearest alien. It was so taken aback that Tyler managed to grab it around the belly and send it flying backward into its peers, who toppled like bowling pins. That was all I needed to rush forward and raise my sword.
“Hey! Butt-uglies!” I yelled, and the aliens turned, scrambling to get up. A few charged at me, and, with both hands around the handle of Excalibur, I went to work.Doing, not thinking. The crazy thing is that the weight of Excalibur made me feel bigger and stronger, like I’d been wielding a sword my whole life.
I had already taken out half the aliens by the time Tyler finally got his wrestling opponent to pass out. As he scrambled out from under the unconscious creature, Ivy rushed over and grabbed the cattle prod thingy the alien had dropped. Then she turned and rammed it into the back of another alien I was fighting. The creature shuddered and shook, its eyes lighting up blue. There was a horrific odor, like something rotten being cooked over an open fire, then the alien toppled forward, fried from the inside out.
Darla and Kwan took Ivy’s lead and seized two more of the fallen weapons from the aliens I had already defeated. We worked like a team, and the floor was soon littered with aliens we’d defeated.
But we still had plenty to do. The hallways were hardly distinguishable anymore, just crumbled walls and floors and ceilings everywhere. It could take all day to find our way out.
“Which way do we go?” Ivy asked. “Any idea?”
Then I saw it: a lone ceiling light that had remained intact about fifty feet away. It was pulsing. I looked twenty feet past it and saw another one, also pulsing, beckoning me forward.
I sighed with relief. All the others looked down the hall, confused.
“What is it?” Ivy asked.
“X-Calibur.”
41
AS X-CALIBUR’S virtual seat belt strapped me in with Excalibur at my side, I could still hear the walls of the underground hangar rumbling around me. I was pretty sure that all of HQ would be nothing more than a cavern of dust in a few minutes.
Ivy, Darla, Kwan, and Tyler had rushed to their own ships without a single word or glance. No good lucks, or hugs, or anything else—there was no time for good-byes.
The hangar wall in front of us slid up and revealed the underground runway. I gripped X-Calibur’s steering mechanism and took a shaky breath as I lifted off. So far, the ship didn’t feel all that different from a prototype.
The others hovered in place, waiting for me to take the lead.
“Let’s do this,” I commanded, and blasted into the tunnel. Within seconds, it sloped steeply upward, and then daylight appeared like a lightning flash. We soared out into the dreary dusk.
“Let’s go higher,” I told the others. “Above the fog. Maybe the aliens won’t be able to see us.”
As the five of us climbed, the fog grew thicker, making visibility weak. We were more vulnerable than I would have liked, but then we rocketed above the murk and into a wide blue sky. It was exhilarating, like sitting on top of the world. I flew ahead and spun around, toward the heart of London. That’s when exhilaration turned to fear.
“Holy ravioli,” Kwan breathed.
“Are you seeing this, Ben?” Ivy asked.
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
Dozens of alien ships were lurking in the dense shroud of fog over London. They were firing down into HQ. I thought about Merlin and Pellinore and Malcolm and everyone else down there who had dedicated their lives to protecting Earth.
“We have to catch ’em off guard!” I ordered. “Hit ’em hard!”
We all rocketed down at once, unleashing a storm of weapon fire, catching the aliens by surprise. Some of their ships exploded brilliantly around us. But then the aliens spotted us, and they abandoned their attack on HQ to fight back. It was five of us against almost two dozen of them.
“Try to corral them!” I shouted.
“There’s too many,” Darla cried back, her voice badly garbled by a faulty reception. “They keep coming!”
“Same here!” Tyler and Kwan agreed. Even through the bad reception I could hear the terror in their voices. I kept blasting alien ships out of the sky, but there seemed to be more now than there had been two minutes ago.
“There’s no . . . -ay we -an stop all—!” Kwan’s voice broke up as the comm system failed.
I looked up through my windshield at a layer of clouds high above. That’s when I saw the ships rocketing down from the clouds. There’s something up there.
“Can any of you still hear me?!” I bellowed. Only Ivy responded.
“Listen,” I told her as I scanned the trail of aliens above me. “I have a plan. Help the others fight while I’m gone. They’ll follow you!”
I blasted straight up and disappeared into the clouds. The comm system was useless now. I was all alone. Faster and faster I climbed as X-Calibur seemed to pick up speed on its own. In less than a minute I approached the edge of the atmosphere.
Looming ahead, like a dark floating mountain, was the alien mothership.
42
THE MOTHERSHIP looked like it had been constructed out of a million tons of junk, a hodgepodge of welded-together spaceships—hundreds of them, easily. It was shaped like a gigantic beehive, with the mangled and rusty ships poking out of it like thorns. I leveled out and flew closer, trying to figure out what to do next. Shooting at it would be a waste of time. By the time I could do any damage, I’d probably have fifty fighter ships attacking me.
I had to get inside it.
I veered off to go wider and circle the mothership. I was still too far away to see every nook and cranny, so I needed to get closer—a risk, but one I had to take.
Sure enough, some of the fighter ships spotted me.
“Welcome to the party,” I muttered. I gave X-Calibur more power as I whisked around the ship, still looking for a way in. I soon had a line of fighter ships trailing me, with more and more aliens blasting out of the mothership like angry bees.
“Don’t think. Do,” I hissed through clenched teeth, then spun X-Calibur around and started firing at the aliens chasing me. As I unleashed all I had, I spotted a gap in the mothership’s exterior up ahead, but it was too thin for X-Calibur to fit through it.
If only I could slip through that crack.
A mysterious round gauge on X-Calibur’s console began pulsing, just like my countdown watch had. And,
with my heart thudding in my chest, I was hit by the biggest realization of all: The gauge was pulsing in perfect time with my heartbeat.
“What the—” I gasped as X-Calibur’s walls started to shift around me. They shimmered and softened, like liquid metal. The entire shape of the ship was changing, its arrow-like design transforming into a flattened disc. I remembered the X-ray Merlin showed me in his lab: Thousands of intersecting rods inside X-Calibur’s walls. That skeleton was going to work now, molding the ship to become what I needed. Not what Malcolm or anyone else needed. What I needed. It was mind-boggling.
With the transformation complete, I soared forward. The aliens came at me, but I slipped through the crack in the mothership’s exterior, leaving them in my dust. Once inside, X-Calibur began returning to its original shape.
The inside of the mothership was lined with flight bays, stacked on top of each other like towering garages that held hundreds of fighter ships. Many of the ships were already headed toward the open panel at the front. I couldn’t let them reach it.
All the buttons on X-Calibur’s control console now pulsed in time with my heart. If I could get X-Calibur to change shape just by thinking it, what if I could also command its console with my thoughts? I looked to the huge open panel at the front of the mothership, trying to envision something that might stop the fighter ships from using it as a door.
Something to block them. A force field.
“Here goes nothin’.” I pressed one of the buttons and kept my finger on it. That feeling of warmth I’d felt when I first touched the side of the ship days ago returned, racing up my finger, across my chest, and into my head. I gasped as I felt an indescribable rush, and X-Calibur fired.
When the blasts from X-Calibur’s wings got to the open panel, they expanded outward to form a barrier across the exit, sizzling and glowing like a huge, electrified spiderweb. Some of the fighter ships that had been on their way out crashed into the barrier and exploded. Flaming debris rained down.