The Planet Thieves (24 page)

“You don't deserve to wear that,” one Rhadgast hissed.

Mason looked down; he was still wearing his stolen Tremist armor, the oily surface shifting between purple and black. It was so natural to wear it, so easy, that Mason couldn't even feel it when he closed his eyes.

“Or those,” said another, stepping forward to strip Mason of his gloves.

But just because it was over didn't mean Mason couldn't fight. He clapped his hands with no warning, and the blade returned instantly, crackling and hot, spitting violet. The Rhadgast didn't step back like he thought they would; instead, the four of them clapped their hands in unison and there were now five rods of lightning in the cramped space. But clapping their hands had taken time—a half second, sure, but enough for Mason to swing his lightning blade horizontally, from right to left. The Rhadgast bowed backward from the swing, and Mason changed direction, from left to right, just as fast, a whipping motion. This time he met resistance from two of the other swords, and the heat in his gloves seemed to triple, but he gritted his teeth and put all of his strength behind it.

Which wasn't enough.

The two Rhadgast in the middle shoved hard, and Mason fell back, landing on his shoulders, the blade sparking out of existence. He swung his hands up to clap again, but they were already on him. They had his arms pinned. He thought about lashing out with a couple of knees, but didn't. There was no point, except to vent his own frustration. The first thing they did was pull the gloves off his hands. They broke the seals at his shoulders and peeled them off.

Even a soldier knew the difference between impossible odds, and near-impossible. The odds were only near-impossible when he'd been on his feet. He remembered a phrase from a second year class called
Battlefield Logistics
: live to fight another day. It was supposed to be an ancient saying, but he saw why it had lasted this long.
Live to fight another day,
he told himself.

The four Rhadgast marched the three boys off the ship and back into the dimness of the clearing. The trees swayed back and forth in the wind, bringing alien smells to his nose. Mason looked skyward but couldn't see the gate now. Maybe it had moved, or maybe it had expanded enough, and was now too thin to see.

At least they haven't found the Lock yet.

Ahead of them, the king was carrying Merrin under the Hawk's left wing, back toward the rear entrance. He desperately hoped Susan was still on the ship. Mason wasn't about to tell anybody, but he could definitely use a hug.

“Look,” Tom said, head craned back. There was the barest hint of hope in his voice.

Mason followed his gaze to the sky, where Olympus had crossed into view. It appeared half the size of Earth's moon from this distance. In actuality, the space station was a giant ring twenty miles across. It resembled a bicycle tire, with dozens of spokes running to a central hub. The spokes contained hyper-fast shuttles, which took ESC members from one side of the ring to the other in a few minutes. It was said that at any given time the population was around a million. There was no grander thing made by man, or so it was said. It was certainly the most effective weapon they had.

“There's hope,” Stellan said behind him.

Sure, there was hope—hope for humanity. Not for them on the ground, though. The Olympus might turn the tide with the Lock's help, but just as Mason thought it, he saw two mirror-masks jog out of the woods from the direction of the Lock.

“Master Gast,” one mirror-mask said to the Rhadgast holding Mason's arm. “We've found the device. We're destroying it now.”

 

Chapter Forty-three

Mason had already accepted their failure, so the news felt like a cold slap on the back of his neck, nothing more.

And still the ground vibrated under him.

“I do not like this,” a Rhadgast said, and got no response. He lifted a boot off the ground, then set it down gingerly.

The four Rhadgast led them around the Hawk and up a ramp and through a series of hallways, to a door big enough to fly their ruined shuttle through. The door had a smaller door built into it, one that opened at their approach.

“Wait,” Mason's Rhadgast said. He kneeled and began pulling pieces of Mason's stolen armor off. It sloughed off like snakeskin, the pieces thumping to the deck around him. Underneath he was still wearing his black formfitting ESC uniform, tall boots and all. It felt good to have the symbol showing again.

“Now go,” the Rhadgast said, the oval of his faceplate pulsing a soft violet.

The three boys stepped through the doorway into the huge storage bay Mason had first seen with Susan, the one holding the Egypt's captured crew. Immediately he searched for his sister among the faces. Most of the crew was sitting or lying down, backs against the walls or on their sides. Mirror-masks patrolled up and down the rows, holding talons tight against their chests.

Everyone looked so
tired
. The fight was gone from them, as it was from Mason. He wanted to lie down next to them. The three of them walked forward, past crew that recognized them and gave a nod or a sad look.

“It was a good chase you gave them,” said one ensign with a fat lip. “They were complaining about you.”

Tom smiled, and Mason wanted to but didn't have it in him.

“A good chase,” said a woman's voice behind him. “By the bravest the ESC has ever known.”

Mason spun around and threw himself into Susan, almost knocking her over. Tears pricked his eyes, but he kept them in, swallowing against them again and again. She hugged him close and held her tears in too; he felt her breath hitch once, then twice. And he could feel a hole in her uniform, right next to her spine. She flinched when his fingertip brushed bare skin that was badly burned and swollen.

“Sorry,” Mason said, moving his hand. He wondered where else she was injured, but knew she wouldn't tell him. Not until the danger was over.

“Report,” she said, pulling back to look into his face, unable to hide her big white smile. Somehow, despite its radiance, it was sad, and Mason knew why. They were reunited, but only because Mason had gotten captured. Their fate was more uncertain than ever.

Mason told her everything he could, in the clipped shorthand the ESC learned when information had to be relayed quickly, but completely.

Her face never changed, even when he told her about the truth of their joint ancestry with the Tremist. Halfway through, a Tremist patrol forced them out of the aisle, so they sat against the wall, like the other prisoners.

Mason was just finishing up when the high ceiling went from opaque to transparent, turning into a skylight that spanned the entire room. It showed Nori-Blue's sky, and the Olympus wheeling overhead, firing pinpricks of nearly invisible light. The war was happening up there, all of the ESC's resources on hand.

Humanity's last stand.

But why would the Tremist let them see now?

All at once, Mason knew, and the realization made his head swim. The Tremist wanted them to see.

Because the ESC was about to lose.

The other prisoners watched in silence, like Mason was doing. They watched as another space station warped into view, right next to the Olympus. It was double the size, which meant it had to be at least forty miles across. The level of detail was identical, so Mason assumed they were the same distance away. It was similar to the Olympus—ring-shaped—but this one was a ring within a ring within a ring within a ring. Four concentric circles. It was a Tremist space station, one they had kept hidden since the war started.

“Oh,
come on,
” Tom said. “Can we get a break?”

“Seriously,” Stellan muttered.

Mason was almost overcome with the urge to laugh crazily: the day had started out with a prank gone wrong and had escalated to
this
.

In the next second, the two space stations began to trade fire. It lit up the sky. The prisoners began to talk in hushed tones, which turned louder, and louder still, until someone was shouting, and then a Tremist was bashing an ensign in the face, and then a sergeant was running, then diving under a talon beam, and the mirror-masks were barking harsh orders at each other.

The ceiling became opaque again. Mason could feel the energy in the room—the prisoners were turning defeat into a nothing-to-lose mentality. The energy was infecting him, vaporizing his fear and replacing it with anger. So what if the enemy had talons: it was time to fight. The Tremist were never going to see the truth about their shared history; they would never understand. There would never be peace.

Both races loved war too much.

So Mason decided to start the fire.

He told Susan the one thing he'd held back from his report. One thing he didn't want to tell her, because he didn't know enough. He didn't know the ultimate fate of Earth, where it was or how many had survived the trip.

But he decided to tell her anyway. “Susan.”

When she turned her head, tears were streaming down her face, but her expression was perfectly clear.

“The Tremist took Earth,” Mason said, nearly choking on the words. “They used the gate. They stole it.”

Her lips parted audibly, but she said nothing.

The group of prisoners to Mason's left overheard, as he knew they would:

What did he say? What did he say? He's just a boy. No, I believe it. I helped load the gate. It's real. He's just a boy. What did he say? Those bastards! Tremist scum. What did he say?

They repeated Mason's words, and repeated them again.

And the fire started.

 

Chapter Forty-four

Mason had used the truth to rally the soldiers, and it felt like the most evil thing he'd ever done. On one hand, it would give them strength. Their anger would crush their fear. On the other, some of the crew would die. That's just how it would be. He realized this as a massive weight on his shoulders, and instant regret. He wanted to pull back his words, whisper them this time.

No,
he thought,
if we stay here, we die. This needs to happen
.

He was just comforting himself now. He knew he was rationalizing.

The word spread. The soldiers were standing now. The mirror-masks tried to beat them back, but the soldiers' hearts were pumping flames.

The vibration was back; Mason could feel it through the deck. Maybe the Hawk was just preparing to take off.

Which meant they needed to overtake the Tremist
now
.

Apparently his fellow soldiers had the same mindset. They rose as one—a wave starting at the walls and rolling inward. The mirror-masks fired random beams of green light, but as Mason watched the Tremist were swept underfoot, their weapons stripped away, their armor barely protecting them from stomping feet. Mason watched as a soldier kicked a mirror-mask in the side of the neck, popping the helmet off. If the ESC were startled by their human-like appearance, they didn't show it. The fire was burning too hot now, the wave of soldiers crushing the remaining guards, stripping their weapons, firing the talons into their owners' bodies.

Susan held the boys against the wall, to keep them from being trampled as the wave moved toward the big door. Someone found the controls, the door zipped into the ceiling, and the wave moved into the corridors, screaming a battle cry the whole time. Mason saw what would happen next in his mind, and it was a beautiful thing. The ESC would break free from the ship, and enter the forests of Nori-Blue, where the footing would be even: the soldiers were trained for forest warfare, weapons or not.

But it never happened.

The stasis is over,
Child whispered in his head.
Be brave.

The vibration underneath Mason ceased, and with a final, crunching release, the ground dissolved under them, and the Hawk fell into the hole.

 

Chapter Forty-five

Mason floated for two whole seconds, until the Hawk's landing thrusters kicked in and his boots thumped back to the deck. The thrusters cushioned him with a side-to-side motion, making him bend his knees and stumble. Deep thumps echoed through the ship as it was pummeled by huge chunks of rock. The ship landed hard, knocking Mason and everyone else off their feet. His shoulder throbbed hot and red and he tasted the now-familiar tang of blood on his lips.

The corridor was layered thick with people trying to stand upright. A few were groaning, but most were stoic, doing their best not to step on anyone. Bluish smoke curled from a power port in the wall.

“You okay?” Susan said. She was next to him, holding his arm.

“I'm fine,” he said, a little dizzy but not about to admit it.

“What the hell happened?” someone asked.

Through the hull, Mason heard a rhythmic low buzzing. Probably the engines trying to restart.

“Keep moving!” someone shouted, and the ragged stream of men and women began to shuffle forward, picking people up along the way.

Stellan helped Tom to his feet, then pressed a hand to a cut on his forehead. “You
had
to go in the creepy alien tower,” he said to Mason.

“Kinda wish I'd stayed there,” Mason replied.

“You're all with me,” Susan said, herding them into a loose square shape. She kept one hand on Mason and the other on Stellan, guiding Tom forward with the group. They marched for a hundred feet or so. A Tremist appeared at one point, firing a short burst from a talon, but was stopped. Mason didn't see how.

Then all power was cut to the ship, and the blackness around them was complete. Mason could only rely on his ears: the sound of heavy breathing, the scraping of boots.

“Maintain order!” a soldier shouted.

“Stay calm,” said another.

Susan's grip on him tightened, but then someone plowed into him from the left, pushing him down a side corridor.

“Mason!” Susan's fingers brushed him in the darkness.