The Fifth Hero #1: The Race to Erase by Bill Doyle

Author:Bill Doyle [Doyle, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The four heroes were thrown apart and then bounced back together into a pile as the ship spun a few feet into the soft ground. As they disentangled, they all reported feeling rattled but okay. By Jarrett’s count, this was the third time he’d crashed in an FF in his entire life. And all three had been in the last couple of hours.

Why hadn’t the Ponies started talking to them? Maybe the Ponies were just a limited-time perk, like everything else the Calamity Corporation made?

“How far did we get in the ship before we crashed?” Malik asked.

“Ugh, I recognize that rock,” Agnes said. “Maybe a hundred feet or so.”

Jarrett couldn’t believe it. No, it wasn’t possible, was it? All that for just a hundred feet! They must have traveled straight up into the air and just spun there the whole time before dropping back down.

The ship had landed so that it faced away from the woods. Now the window gave them a clear view up the riverbed, where they’d left the family.

Much too clear. The hulking shapes of Slicer and Dicer were just now coming around the rock that jutted out into the river—the same one that had forced the heroes to wade out into the water.

Their first close-up look at the pair was even more terrifying than Jarrett thought it could be. Their arm-length blades that swirled and cut into the air as they moved looked more deadly in real life. And the blades appeared to be much sharper and stronger than they had in the hologram Lina had shown them earlier. While their bodies still bore some of the scorch marks from reentering Earth’s atmosphere, the blades shone like they were brand-new.

Jarrett did spot one good thing. The robots had been designed for the low gravity of space. Up there, they were like prowling, liquid panthers, but back here on Earth they were heavier and more clunky, like bulldozers in mud. With each footstep—claw step?—they left giant divots in the shape of buckets behind them. Luckily, that seemed to slow them down a little. Every time they moved ahead, they had to pull one leg out of the hole they’d just created. As they got closer, the whirring of their blades got louder, as if they were getting hungrier.

The kids had to get out of there.

“Maybe try again, Freya?” Jarrett said. “Just use little puffs this time?”

“Okay.” Freya nodded and tried blowing out the hole in the wall again. When the FuelFlighter lifted and spun this time, she was able to move the tornado so that the ship was now in the eye of the storm. It reminded Jarrett of how the family had been safer inside the whirlpool. The same thing was true here. Things were a bit steadier. And while the view out the window was just a mass of swirling dust, Jarrett could tell they were moving away from Slicer and Dicer, and quickly.

“What direction do we want to go in?” Malik asked.

Jarrett squinted out the window.

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