“Neither approach will be easy,” Adam replies.

“Can’t you just nuke them?” Nine asks.

Lawson’s eyes narrow. “We’re evacuating our imperiled cities, young man, but there are still people down there. Nuclear warfare is off the table here in America. I can’t say the same for other countries. . . .”

“Bad enough to blow up those giant ships over the cities,” Daniela mutters.

Lawson holds up a hand. “One problem at a time. Regardless of what approach we take, the cloaking devices remain our biggest hurdle. We’re working with an incredibly small stockpile when we need one per ship or one per missile. And then there’s the small matter of getting them into the hands of our allies.” Lawson pauses for breath. “How long will it take to have enough on hand to mount an attack on the warships?”

“All of them?” I ask. “At once?”

“That’s how this operations plays out, John. We hit them all at once to maximize our only advantage . . . the element of surprise. If we let them know we can break their shields too early, the parameters change. They might step up their attacks. Right now, they’ve got a boot on our necks; they think we’re pinned, out of the fight. They don’t know we’ve still got a knife up our sleeve. But we need that tech. And we’re up against a ticking clock. Unless you know how long Setrákus Ra will be in this vat of his?” he asks, looking at Ella.

Ella shakes her head.

“Then you understand how precarious our situation is,” Lawson concludes. “We’ll likely get one shot at this, and it needs to be soon.”

I take all this in, a little on my heels. Lawson doesn’t paint a very rosy picture. Maybe I’m not in the right mind-set to help coordinate an international counterattack. Luckily, I’ve got backup.

Six peers down the table at Ella. “There are new Loralite stones growing across the Earth, right?”

“Yes,” Ella says. “I can sense them.”

Six snaps her fingers. “There you go. We use those to deliver the cloaking devices around the world.”

Lawson looks at me. “These are the stones you mentioned to the LANEs in your . . . ah . . . psychic briefing, yes?”

I nod.

“Hmm.” Lawson glances at the map over his shoulder. “Once we caught wind of those, we encouraged our international partners to lock down as many of them as they could find.”

I cock my head. “You did?”

“Yes, John, of course we did. That said, some leaders have outright laughed at me when I asked them to divert resources to guarding some magical rocks. Not to mention, we only know the location of a fraction of these Loralite growths.”

“How many human Garde have been intercepted?” I ask, my voice cold.

“A few,” Lawson replies cagily. “For their own protection. Most of them are still overseas. Assuming we survive the next few days, maybe we can discuss how you’ll train them. With proper supervision, of course.”

I don’t like this. It feels like we’re giving away too much too easily, turning over the Loralite locations to Lawson, not to mention the fledgling human Garde he’s so interested in. Still, what choice do we have? Practically speaking, using the Loralite stones is our only way to get a counterattack ready fast.

“We’ll help you locate the rest of the Loralite,” I tell Lawson. “Once we’re ready to move the cloaking devices.”

Lawson smiles at my reluctant concession but moves on quickly. “That’s transport squared away. It still doesn’t solve the problem of quantity.”

“If we can’t make them quickly enough, we’ll just have to get you more,” I say, the beginning of a plan starting to take shape in my head.

Nine flashes me a wolfish grin. “Maybe we should go somewhere that we know will have a lot of them.”

“And where is that?” Lawson asks.

“One of the warships,” I reply.

“Didn’t I just explain—?” Lawson snaps, frustration breaking through his patient granddad routine for a moment. He gets hold of himself quickly. “If we attack them—any attack—we risk them laying waste to another one of our cities.”

“What if we could get in and out of one of their warships without them even noticing?” I pose this to Lawson, but it’s Six who I’m looking at. She smiles at me. I smile back. “What if we could get you a battalion’s worth of cloaking devices before the Mogs even notice they’re missing?”