The Planet Thieves (27 page)

And the king's Hawk.

Just then the king broke through on the dome's screen. He didn't waste time. “It seems we have a mutual mission.”

“There's no one left,” Mason said, then immediately regretted it. Whatever the Fangborn ship was doing to hold the two stations in place, it didn't seem to notice the two remaining ships. Maybe there wasn't enough power to destroy them just yet.

“
We're
left,” the king said. “And I won't leave my station behind. Unlike the rest of your ESC. My scientists think the Fangborn ship will deflect all energy weapons, including—”

“We have conventional weapons on board!” Stellan shouted, cutting the king off. He was more excited than Mason had ever seen him, no hint of fear. “We have a torpedo bay for when core energy has to be diverted to engines! We could fire them!”

Too much risk,
was Mason's first thought. The Fangborn ship was simply too enormous to damage, or so it seemed. But could they really sit by and surrender both stations to the Fangborn? All those lives would be lost, and on Mason's head if he gave the order to retreat. They had to try. He looked to Susan but she was already working on the weapons console, bringing the torpedoes online.

“I will provide a distraction,” the king said smoothly. “We have no conventional weapons.”

“Thank you,” Mason said.

The king's image disappeared, and Merrin looked over her shoulder at Mason.

“Take us in,” he said.

 

Chapter Fifty-one

The two ships that started as enemies now swooped in together as fast as their engines would allow. Mason glanced down at his armrest to find the speed meter rising too fast for him to read. The whole crew held its collective breath as the Fangborn ship grew in the dome, until there was nothing else to see.

“Target the source of the tractor beams!” Mason shouted, gripping the arms of his chair. “Prepare to fire all torpedoes on that location.”

Tom and Susan worked fast to make sure each torpedo was headed for the right place. They might not be able to harm the ship as a whole, but if they could break the tractor beams the stations would be free to escape.

The maw opened wide, fire curling within. Red and black was all Mason could see. Then a dazzling burst of white that hurt even with his eyes closed.
This is it
, he thought. But the blast was indirect. An alarm screamed as the entire crewside of the Egypt turned into superheated gas. Mason barely felt it, but suddenly the ship was offtrack, the engines failing to compensate for the imbalance. There came a series of thunks as the emergency doors sealed off outer space from the crossbar. They began to spin crazily; stars twisted across the dome, then the two space stations, followed by the Fangborn ship again. Clouds of atomized metal swirled around them—remnants of the entire port side of the Egypt. They were going to die.

But not before they took out the tractor beam.

The Egypt seesawed left and right, but centered back on the Fangborn ship. Merrin's voice pierced the multiple alarms. “Stabilized!”

“Fire!” Mason screamed.

Blue bolts of light sped out from under the bridge, giving off trails of rocket exhaust. They traveled fast and true, exploding on the underside of the maw in great bubbles of orange and red fire that faded as quickly as they came. All at once, the tractor beams were gone.

Mason punched the com: “Olympus, you're clear to go home!”

From under the Fangborn ship, the familiar white light began to grow. Mason instinctively flipped open the cover on his right armrest and slammed his fist down on the big red button. The dome ejected instantly, rocketing away from the bulk of the Egypt. If the cadets hadn't been strapped in, they would've been thrown to the ground. The Egypt ceased to exist a moment later, as the white beam turned it to dust like it had so many other ships in the last ten minutes.

But the angle was wrong. Instead of firing the dome away from the maw, they were headed right for it. Mason saw inside of it, close up for the first and last time. The maw was filled with fire. He could see the smoldering wreckage of ships inside, like pieces of meat stuck between a carnivore's teeth. But they had won: to his right, the part of his vision that wasn't filled with a fiery mouth, he saw the two stations zipping away from the Fangborn ship. The Olympus already had its extra-large gate deployed.

Mason could only hope the king would get his Hawk away safely, and eventually return the ESC crew where they belonged. He looked at Merrin first, then Susan, and wished they had more time. He wanted to say something to them; he wasn't sure what. He wanted to tell Merrin he was sorry—she would've had the rest of her life if he hadn't pulled her onto the Egypt's deck. If he hadn't needed her.

The maw was closing now, swinging upward in a bright orange arc.

Mason shut his eyes.

 

Chapter Fifty-two

Mason opened his eyes sometime later, after he regained consciousness. Later, he would learn that the dome was not equipped with gravity compensators, so when the dome was suddenly jerked backward at a speed too fast for the human body to handle, everyone on the bridge passed out. They were lucky no one had died. As it was, two cadets had ruptured blood vessels in their eyes, and one had a broken arm.

During the fifteen seconds he was unconscious, Mason saw the history of the People. The book in his brain finally unfolded, and the birth and death of a civilization was in his mind. It was too much to fully understand at once, or maybe ever, but he saw the troubles the People went through. The same things humans had been going through for nine hundred years. It was greed, he figured. The People had wanted more and more, and it took a solar flare to knock some sense into them. The surface of Nori-Blue had once been a city. The whole planet, one giant city. But the flare reduced all of it to just metal mountains. Everything electronic had been destroyed. It was then the Fangborn truly split off and became their own race, and legend said the flare had caused the Fangborn mutation. The People wanted to find a new way to live: though their planet was dead, there were signs it would return to its pure forest state. The Fangborn didn't care about changing, and so they warred.

Before Mason could see the war, he woke up. He woke up with the content feeling that, no matter what had happened between the two races, Nori-Blue
had
returned to its pure forest state. Only to be warred over by two races who wanted to destroy it all over again, but that seemed to be changing. He had some vague but deep understanding that the universe was cyclical. But maybe that was the human side of him—there could be other aliens out there who were truly wise, who had learned from enough cycles.

Mason's first sight was through the Egypt's dome: he was looking at the much smaller Fangborn ship. Smaller, because they were so far away, he realized. Behind him, the Hawk was at half thrust, engines glowing brighter than the stars. The dome was being towed along.

As the groggy crew regained consciousness, the dome was towed into the storage bay, where the rest of the Egypt's crew was waiting. The dome passed through the force field separating the Hawk from space, and then scraped along the floor to rest in the middle of the bay. The ESC swarmed around it, cheering, beating their fists on the dome. Every one of them was smiling.

Susan stretched and then yawned, tears running down her cheeks. “There were six hundred thousand people on the Olympus today, little brother,” she said.

Mason could only nod; he was shaking.

Jeremy opened the doors on the rear of the dome, and the cadets piled out and were lifted onto shoulders and carried around the bay. No one cared that they were all still on a Tremist vessel. It was quite obvious things had changed. How they had changed was still to be determined, but change they had.

The king showed up a few minutes later and beckoned Mason over to the dome. The king boosted him up the side, and then followed with a single leap to the top. The remaining Tremist had gathered in the bay, but their talons were stowed. Mason looked straight down at the captain's chair, wondering if he would ever sit in one again.

“We have a new enemy,” the king began, and together he and Mason explained to both races what Mason had learned from the book. While they spoke, mutterings rippled through the crowd and died away.

“What about Earth!” someone shouted. It was echoed many times.

The king held up his hands for quiet. “Earth is safe, and will be returned to your solar system when a new gate has been created. It is now a neighbor to our home planet. A place you will all visit soon, if we're to find a way to stop this new threat.”

Mason wanted another cheer to go up, but in truth the wounds between both races were still too raw. There was hope, though. Wounds beginning to heal, maybe. A few people clapped, but that was it.

The ESC stayed in the bay for the rest of the trip. Susan found him later on and squeezed his shoulder and bent down to say something in his ear. “Mom and Dad would be proud,” she said, and Mason felt like crying again, but that wasn't what a captain would do. Instead, he nodded.

The trip was long and a little boring, so Mason gathered the others and they went back into the dome and powered Elizabeth up and made her throw battle scenarios at them.

 

Chapter Fifty-three

Two weeks later it was two days before the start of Academy II. Mason was nowhere near Mars, however—not even in the same solar system. He was aboard the Tremist space station he had helped save. It was called the Will.

The treaty ceremony took place in the central pod, which was a perfect recreation of a park. There was a pond and trees with blue and green leaves, and animals that chittered in the branches. Dark shapes swam under the surface of the pond, which was tinted pinkish gold. There was a clearing in the trees. The inky purple-black of space was visible above them, separated by a dome much like the Egypt's. And through that space Mason could see two planets sharing the same orbit. Earth was the cloudy blue sphere, and the Tremist homeworld, which they called Skars, was a yellowish, slightly smaller orb.

Grand Admiral Shahbazian stood with his entourage on one side, and the king stood with his on the other. The king was not wearing his mask. He was Merrin's father, through and through. Violet hair, pale skin. And kind eyes, somehow. Mason didn't believe it at first. He still wore his armor the color of dried blood. The king was flanked by four Rhadgast. Mason felt like they were watching him the entire time.

In between the two groups was a podium, and on the podium were three pieces of paper and an ancient fountain pen.

Grand Admiral Shahbazian said, “Today I sign this treaty in the hopes our great races might work together against this common enemy. That we might rediscover our past together and find the link that makes us brothers.”

A few photographers snapped pictures. A video feed was being broadcast to both worlds, and every ship in between them.

The king said, “Today I sign this treaty, for those things too.”

Tom laughed. Susan nudged him. Mason couldn't help but smile.

“On one condition,” the king said.

The manufactured breeze in the park seemed to stall, and there was nothing to hear except the shuffling of branches going still.

“What condition?” Shahbazian said.

Mason thought he knew. Merrin was standing next to him. She was in her ESC uniform, her violet hair tied back in a ponytail. He grabbed her hand, and she squeezed before he could. It felt like a goodbye squeeze. Mason almost opened his mouth to say something.
Wait.
Or,
Don't go
. He never got the chance.

“I would have my daughter returned,” the king said.

Merrin tore free of Mason's grasp before the grand admiral had a chance to say no. She stepped forward and said, “I will go.”

No one spoke. Merrin walked toward the podium, the halfway point. She turned toward the ESC. “I have to go, but I'll be back.” Mason understood her sacrifice then. He knew she probably didn't want to go, even if she was curious about the world she'd been taken from. But by going, she was keeping the treaty alive. By volunteering, she kept the choice for herself. No one was going to make her stay or go. Mason admired her even more then, and wondered if he would be strong enough to do the same, if he was in her position. He hoped so.

Merrin Solace rejoined her father at his side. The news of how she was taken in the first place had made her a celebrity. When she was two years old, an ESC commando named Howerdell had stolen her from the king's previous Hawk during a raid. Rather than reveal who she was and use her, the grand admiral at the time had given her to a couple to raise as their own. The couple—a high-ranking doctor and a junior lieutenant in the ESC—agreed to the task, having waited on an adoption list for eight months. It later came out that Merrin and her new family were watched the entire time, and the ESC had plans to use her when it came down to humanity's last stand against the Tremist. A final bargaining tool. Mason was surprised that news didn't create more Tremist sympathizers. Merrin had tried to reach her family after the battle above Nori-Blue, to hear their side of it, but the ESC had her mother and father locked down somewhere.

There was nothing left to do then but sign the treaty. Afterward, both parties shook hands, but there was no celebration. Too many had been lost, the reason for a treaty too grim.

“I have one more request,” the king said after he finished shaking Shahbazian's hand.

“What is it?” the grand admiral replied.

The king looked at Mason and raised an eyebrow. “My Rhadgast have requested this boy come to their school to train. They say he has the gift.”

“Out of the question,” Shahbazian said in a low voice Mason only heard because he was right next to him. “You've already taken one of my cadets today.”