Rook’s ships went straight for the runway to no one’s surprise.

I flew a more direct route, aiming for the control tower at the end of the runway. Stopping there, we all stepped out of the hatch, floating downward with anti-gravity and our suits’ camouflage engaged.

It might not be invisibility, but if no one had anything specific trained on us, we might be able to pass it off as a teleport in. That at least was the theory behind all of us turning visible together as we touched the ground.

Jaclyn, her colors now black with a swirling blue and white that suggested wind, shot forward toward one of Rook’s ships as Derecho.

They’d taken parallel runways. Jaclyn hit the closest one, bending it inward, grabbing the hull, and ripping it in half, leaving sharp metal edges and broken plastic visible to all.

It was easy to forget, given how much control she had, that Jaclyn lived in a world made of cardboard. This was a great reminder, had I forgotten it, of how much strength she held in check.

She didn’t stop there. She jumped over the shattered ship, landing on its other side and running straight for the second one.

We’d worried that the second ship might see what happened to the first and take to the air. She didn’t leave that to chance, creating a sonic boom shortly after she hit the ground.

When she hit the second one, she was moving fast enough that I didn’t see whether she hit so hard that she ran through it or ripped it apart. Either way, with a screech of tearing metal, it ended up in two pieces just like the first.

Meanwhile, Rachel had “teleported” out, but in reality, turned invisible and flew into the first ship Jaclyn ripped apart. That gave all of us a view into both spaceships since Jaclyn immediately stepped inside.

Jaclyn’s attack had done everything we’d wanted it to. Both ships worth of henchrooks were in disarray, many completely unconscious, and some awake but struggling to even get out of their seats, much less fight.

That was good for them because the ones that were able to fight didn’t last long. Jaclyn took each one out with a punch, throwing those punches quickly enough that the camera couldn’t capture them as more than a blur.

While we were planning, Rachel and I used our “Artificer vision,” sensing the Artificer tech had been moved into one spot in the back of each ship. We assumed it was a closet or storage area and probably locked because Rook wouldn’t be trusting random minions with ancient tech.

Jaclyn rushed down the hallway, ripping the door open and running into the storage room. Whatever they normally kept there had been moved somewhere else and ancient devices filled the place, all of them small enough to carry away one-handed. A few might have been weapons, but I didn’t recognize the devices or the materials. They were a collection of strange shapes and odd colors, some pastels, others iridescent, and more that morphed from one to another.

This time from the inside, Jaclyn ripped a hole in the wall and pushed the devices out, letting them fall to the ground.

Meanwhile, the rest of us hadn’t been sitting still. Cassie, as Burner, had been shooting holes through the hulls of the now damaged and unusable spaceships and chopping chunks out of them.

The henchrooks that remained conscious didn’t mount an organized resistance. A few did fire back, but more ran or cowered in their seats and the rows between them.

Rook himself ejected in the cockpit of the ship Jaclyn was looting. The front half of the shattered hull rocked with the force of the cockpit shooting out of the front. It might have been an amazing escape if it had happened anywhere but his base.

As it was, he shot forward down the runway toward the control tower and turned around to announce, “I don’t know who hired you people, but you won’t get away with it!”

That’s when the sirens started.

We hadn’t just been standing there, however. Rachel reached the storage room at the back of the other ship and started phasing devices through the hull and dropping them. Even better, I’d used my laser to cut a hole for the larger objects that didn’t fit within the mass limit Rachel could phase out.

Marcus and I put the fallen objects into heavy-duty trash bags that we kept on board the jet. They probably weren’t rated to hold evil, ancient artifacts, but what on Earth was?

Jaclyn joined us, having already filled her trash bags, ripping the hole I’d cut in the hull wider, jumping in, and grabbing the rest of the stuff in a blur.

Then she and Rachel jumped out and we all placed our bags into a larger “bag” made of repair material for our suits.

Jaclyn grabbed the giant bag and we activated camouflage on our suits along with the giant bag’s. We were between the two spaceships, but if any cameras were at the right angle or one of the few conscious henchrooks had looked through the windows, we’d seem to have disappeared.

Then we ran down the runway and floated into the air, slipping into the jet’s open hatch. I’d chosen to face the hatch toward the ocean on the theory that there’d be fewer cameras pointing in from the outside. With that, there would be a lower chance of recording a hole appearing in the air and shimmery movement as we slipped inside.

Correct guess or not, we pulled ourselves through the hatch, closed it, and the jet floated upward as the Nine’s security forces roared across the airfield toward the ships.

Four flying shapes dove toward the ships, three dropping to the ground next to them and the fourth hovering above them.

No one looked at us as the anti-gravity moved us away from the island. I didn’t dare say so until we were far enough away to activate our main drive, but we’d pulled it off.

I’d released some spybots as we floated away. Maybe listening in would help?