The Black Stars

by Dan Krokos

  Slowly, Reckful curled his fingers over the disks, then let his hands fall to his sides.

  “Do you think Rhadgast are feebleminded?” he asked, his tone ice cold.

  Mason and Tom were frozen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tom shift his weight onto his back foot. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything we can’t undo. He had to trust Tom to be smart, because Tom was smart.

  “I desperately want to trust you both,” Reckful said. “I desperately want peace between our species. Desperately. You see, you two may be seen as heroes for the events that transpired this last year, but I have been on the front lines. I have seen the destruction of war.” His face was twisted in a grimace, so strange after seeing his near-constant smile and easygoing demeanor. “I know what enemy we need to face together. They’re coming for us right now.”

  “So do we, sir,” Mason said. It slipped. The words just bunched up in the back of his throat, then came out in a tumble.

  But rather than set him off, Reckful’s forehead unwrinkled, and he gave a long sigh out of his nose. “I suppose you do.”

  Mason knew he had two choices:

  1. Lie.

  2. Tell the truth.

  There were no other options. Reckful had come to them first, taken them to this room. Mason and Tom should already have been arrested. Or dead. But they weren’t.

  “Tell me the truth,” Reckful said. It was like he was reading their minds. Or, more likely, it was just the most obvious request.

  Tom looked at Mason, as if waiting for his call. It was up to him. But Reckful already had their communicators, so Mason had to assume he knew the truth.

  “I’m here for two reasons, sir,” Mason began.

  Reckful nodded. “Go on.”

  “When I was on the Will, a Stone—though I didn’t know he was a Stone at the time—told me that I should seek out the Rhadgast if I wanted to find out the truth about my parents.”

  If Reckful knew any of this, his face didn’t reveal it. He just listened.

  “So…” Mason continued, “… once I got permission to take the invite to this school, there was nothing that was going to stop me.”

  “And the second reason?” Reckful said.

  Mason licked his lips. Telling the truth would be a direct violation of mission parameters. An ESC spy wasn’t supposed to reveal himself to the first person who asked. He already knows, Mason thought. If you lie, you’re gone, and this is all for nothing.

  “If you refuse to tell me, or if I think you’re lying, you’re gone.”

  Mason began to speak. He had to trust his instincts, whether they were borderline treasonous or not.

  Reckful lifted his hand sharply. “Let me finish. There is no play here. You will not overpower me and escape. You will simply be locked away until the leaders figure out what to do with you. So I want you to think about that first. The truth, and nothing less, or your time here is finished.”

  Tom nodded at Mason. “Do it, Stark.”

  Mason sighed. “The ESC has intelligence indicating the Tremist might be working on some kind of weapon or project that is in violation of the new treaty. A project that may be based inside the Rhadgast school. Since I’m the only one allowed to be here, I, along with Tom, have been tasked with uncovering the plot—I mean, if there is one.”

  Reckful was silent for a very long time, but Mason could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. “I see,” he said after a long moment.

  Mason and Tom awaited their fate. All Mason knew was that he didn’t want to die here. Not after he already thought he was dying less than an hour ago. He wanted to see Merrin again first, to make sure she was all right. And Jeremy and Stellan, too.

  “What Rhadgast told you about your parents?” Reckful asked.

  “He wore a mask,” Mason said.

  “Would you recognize his voice?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said, though the memory was seared into his brain. “Possibly. Yes.”

  “I don’t know anything about your parents,” Reckful said. “Or about any secret project happening at the school. I would know about a weapon, I think.”

  Mason dared to hope they would be allowed back to their dorm.

  Reckful opened his hands; the communicators rested on his palms. “What happens if you don’t use these? Will there be a problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “We’re supposed to report that we got here safely.”

  “If we go off the grid,” Tom said, speaking for the first time, “there may be some kind of retaliation.”

  Reckful snorted, as if the very idea of retaliation against the Rhadgast school was hilarious.

  A moment passed. Reckful took a breath, but Mason and Tom couldn’t.

  “I don’t know if there is anything going on here or not, and I hope in time you report that there isn’t. I sincerely hope that.”

  He extended his hands, presenting the communicators to Mason and Tom. “Take these. Hide them well. If you’re caught, I will say I had no idea you had them, and I will stand by as you’re both tried for espionage, the penalty for which is death.”

  A chill ran up and down Mason’s spine.

  “I can’t help you,” Reckful added. “But if there is something to this intelligence, I want to know about it.”

  Mason and Tom took their communicators. Mason dropped his into the back pocket of his pants. His hand was shaking with relief now.

  “I am choosing to trust you boys.”

  “Why?” Tom blurted. Mason wanted to slap him.

  Reckful’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a good question. Perhaps I have my own reasons, Tom. Did you consider that?”

  Tom visibly paled.

  “Not everything is right at this school,” Reckful said. “I can feel it. And I want the truth.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mason said quickly. “We won’t forget it.” Reckful’s words left a chill in Mason’s gut.

  Reckful nodded. “See that you don’t. Now get out of here. You can find your way back, I hope.”

  Reckful opened the door, and Mason and Tom squeezed past into the hallway. The air was cooler out here. Mason took a big gulp of it, looking over his shoulder as Reckful shut himself in the small room.

  “That was a pretty close call for our first day,” Tom said flatly.

  “Tell me about it. We can’t do anything easy, can we?”

  Tom didn’t quite smile: they were both too tense for that. “I hope we know what we’re doing,” Tom said.

  “I don’t think we do,” Mason replied. But it’s too late now.

  They got back to the dorm and found the rhadjen had hung their robes from pegs on the wall. They were all in bed, working at their pull-out desks. Mason and Tom hung their robes in two open spaces, and now they wore a uniform not unlike the one worn by ESC cadets. Mason and Tom took off their boots in silence, sliding them into the row of boots, careful to make them as neat as the rest.

  “Welcome back,” Po said, and Mason was grateful he didn’t start asking a bunch of questions Mason couldn’t answer.

  The Blood girl known as Risperdel didn’t mind. “What was that all about? An after-hours visit from a teacher?” She looked around the room as if trying to gain support for how crazy of an idea that was. It didn’t seem so crazy to Mason.

  “He just wanted to make sure we were settling in,” Mason said.

  “Reckful’s manner was less than casual,” Jiric replied, studying them with his huge eyes.

  “Save your questions for tomorrow, please,” Po said. “Lights out in thirty seconds.” He seemed to be the captain of the room, or something. The rhadjen listened. Over the next thirty seconds, the lights began to fade. Mason caught Lore’s eye one more time before crawling into the bed below her. He couldn’t make out her expression in the dim light, but assumed it wasn’t that friendly.

  Mason listened hard in the dark. The sounds were familiar, since he’d been sleeping in a room with a dozen or so people his entire life. Fir
st there was the rustle of blankets and pillows, the sniffles and sighs. Then the change in breathing, indicating someone was unconscious. He listened hard for Tom, who was still awake but completely still. He could not see him in the dark.

  After another five minutes, Mason pulled his blanket up over his face, then slipped the communicator into his hand and squeezed. He felt a tingle build in his palm as the natural electric field produced by his body linked with the machine.

  Mason closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he stood in Grand Admiral Shahbazian’s office.

  “There you are!” GAS said, slamming his hand on the table. He was smiling. “I was worried. Are you safe?”

  GAS’s own communicator rested on a pedestal in the middle of his office, displaying a silvery-white re-creation of Mason’s face. Mason didn’t have to speak aloud, just think, and the head spoke.

  “We’re safe,” Mason said. “I’m sorry, this was the earliest we could make contact.” One problem with the communicator was that it blocked out the things happening around your body. Someone could be looming over him right now, watching, and Mason would be completely unaware.

  Suddenly, Tom snapped into focus next to him. He was using his own communicator.

  “Good, you’re both alive,” GAS said. Mason could tell his eyes were bloodshot, even though he was seeing them through a series of cameras on GAS’s communicator.

  “Were you expecting otherwise?” Mason asked.

  GAS made a beckoning motion with his hand. “No, no. Just give me your report. In detail.”

  So they did. Mason and Tom gave a play-by-play of their experiences since leaving the grand admiral.

  “I’ll expect to hear from you when you have something useful to report.”

  Mason thought the revelation that there were two kinds of Rhadgast was pretty important, but maybe GAS had already known that.

  “When do you want us to check in?” Tom asked.

  “When it’s safe. Get some sleep you two. Watch your backs … and well done.” GAS killed the feed, and Mason returned to the darkness of the room, surrounded by sleeping rhadjen.

  He had expected to stay up the entire night. He was on an alien planet, in an alien school, on an impossible mission he didn’t know how to begin. Using the communicator had left his head feeling buzzy, his skin itchy.

  But once he closed his eyes, Mason slipped into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  A loud buzzer ripped Mason from sleep, followed by a voice: Welcome to the morning, rhadjen. Be in the refectory within five minutes.

  Mason jolted upright and banged his head on Lore’s bunk, not used to sleeping with something above him again (at A2, he was given the top bunk by fellow cadets as a sign of respect, which had only made Mason feel more alienated).

  The others were already out of bed, filing in and out of the bathroom. Mason could hear running water. He followed them in, found a stall, and went inside to take a five-second shower. The water blasted his body so hard it hurt. He bumped into Tom on his way out.

  “Let’s stick together,” Tom said.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Mason replied.

  “Watch it,” Jiric said, bumping into Mason from behind. It didn’t seem on purpose.

  In the main room, the rhadjen dressed in their robe jackets. Mason thought the robes were cool, always seeming to hover a millimeter off the floor, but he couldn’t understand the tactical advantage of them. The robes the full Rhadgast wore seemed even more complex, with layers that moved and flowed like they were alive. Mason remembered seeing his first Rhadgast, how his robes had rolled out from him like a tapestry of lashing snakes.

  “We’re already late!” Po called out. As they finished dressing, Mason worked a finger under his collar and tugged to get some air.

  Mason pulled Po aside as the others pulled on their boots. “Where do we go?”

  Po winked and patted Mason on the back. “You’re with us, humans.”

  “Thank goodness,” Tom said.

  “We join you guys for class?” Mason said. “All day?”

  “Yep. Bunkmates take classes together to build trust as a unit. One day when we graduate, we’ll be deployed as a unit, too. For right now, I’m the team captain, until someone proves they’re better for the job.”

  “And I’m coming for you,” Risperdel said, grinning.

  Genius, Mason thought. Academy I and II had units, but you didn’t train with the same group of people during your entire time at school.

  Po started for the door, but Mason grabbed his arm lightly. “Wait.”

  Po huffed a sigh. “Do you want to be late?”

  “No, just … there’s a lot of extra beds. Who else used to be here?”

  The rustle of fabric faded away, silence took its place, and Mason realized everyone had stopped getting dressed and was now staring at him. Mason regretted asking, but if there were members of the team he and Tom had just replaced, he wanted to know. Mason and Tom didn’t need another reason to be hated.

  When Po looked at him, his eyes were solemn. “We don’t know where they are. They’re probably dead. Don’t ask about it again.” He looked at the others. “Finish up. Now.” They listened.

  Two minutes later Mason and his new team were in their first class of the day. There were no desks, no chairs. The classroom was a cylinder-shaped room on level 43, on the Stone side of the dome. Mason had assumed Bloods didn’t travel to the Stone side of the sphere, and vice versa, but it appeared he was wrong. There were no “sides.”

  The seats were molded force fields that sprouted from holes in the floor. His teammates spread out and sat down in them, shifting around into comfortable positions. The force field chairs shifted along with them, molding to their bodies. It beat the crappy plastic chairs Mason had sat in his entire life, and they didn’t even make your hair stand up.

  The teacher’s name was Broxnar, and he was by far the largest Tremist Mason had ever seen, with an immense pale bald head. He wore silky purple and blue robes, closed by an ornate sash that was ready to burst apart if he inhaled too deeply. But when he saw Mason and Tom, he gave a genuine smile, and there was excitement in his eyes. To Mason, it seemed similar to the excitement a child has when they visit a zoo for the first time and see some long extinct animal clone.

  Broxnar rubbed his meaty hands together. “Welcome to our two newest students. How do you say your names—May-sun and Tome?”

  The team laughed, almost all of them, including Po. It wasn’t a mean laugh, which was a start.

  “Mason and Tom,” Tom corrected him.

  “Yes, yes, May-son and Tommm,” he said, tasting the words. “You’ll excuse me, I don’t have an implant for your language.”

  To Mason’s extreme surprise, Lore giggled.

  “Now, I have a special treat for you all, in honor of our new friends, our new brothers in attendance. Today we’re going to experience the Divider and the Uniter.”

  A halfhearted cheer went up. Po actually started clapping. He leaned in. “Normally Broxnar teaches Rhadgast history, but with lectures and homework. Today we get to live something, thanks to you guys.”

  Mason had no idea what that meant, but he said, “Uh, happy to help.”

  Suddenly the room went dark and silent, and then a lone Tremist appeared in the middle of the room, like magic. Tom stiffened beside him, and Mason almost jumped out of his seat. But it was an illusion. It had to be. Just like Merrin had been.

  When this Rhadgast, clad in robes of silver and sage, turned around and seemed to look directly into the eyes of every student in the room, they all cheered.

  “Quiet!” Broxnar said. “You may have seen this before, but there will be a new test.”

  Over the next hour, Mason watched a series of events unfold right before his eyes, as if he were living it alongside the ancient heroes of the Rhadgast. The events told the story of the Uniter and the Divider.

  Six hundred years earlier, the Tremist had n
ot achieved space flight, but they had mastered electricity. Like humans once had, the Tremist warred on their own planet. The Rhadgast, elite warriors sworn to defend the people, were deployed to quell uprisings as they came, but soon there was a rift in the mighty order. Many Rhadgast were dying, and some wondered why they were sacrificing their lives for others when no real progress toward peace was being made. These Rhadgast wanted to get serious with their attacks and brutally strike at their enemies until the only option was surrender.

  The other half of the order said these Rhadgast were hard as Stone and had forgotten why the Rhadgast had chosen them. Their power was given to them so they could protect people.

  Today, Broxnar was quick to point out, the Stones no longer believe in such ferocious tactics, thanks to the leader of the Stones, Master Rayasu. They simply believe in the greater good. The value of one life does not compare to many, but they will still protect the innocent and die for them. Broxnar didn’t elaborate on what involvement Master Rayasu played in changing the Stones to a less-extreme faction.

  The first Tremist Mason saw in the room was the Divider, Jo-tep. He split the Rhadgast order one morning at the start of a long winter. There was no Rhadgast sphere in those days, just a series of wooden buildings linked together with tunnels underground.

  Mason watched as the Divider walked up to the house of the Blood leader, put his hands on the wall …

  … and let his gloves heat until the wood caught fire. The Blood leader escaped with his life, but the war was on. It lasted forty-seven years, closer to thirty Earth years, since Skars orbited its star faster than Earth. Skars suffered as much as the Rhadgast, for they revered their elite warriors, and to see them fighting among themselves demoralized the entire planet.

  It was a dark time. The king was assassinated, and for twelve years there was no leadership.

  Until the Uniter, Aramore.

  The Bloods in the classroom cheered when he appeared. He was riding what appeared to be a large jungle cat with red and black stripes, to match the red and black stripes in his hair. The cat reminded Mason of a saber-toothed tiger, but with the two big fangs jutting up from the bottom, not the top. The Uniter wore leather armor and a cape of crimson silk. He wore gloves more powerful than anyone else’s, Broxnar said. The gloves were neither red nor purple, but black. Completely black. Where he got the gloves from was a mystery. Where he came from was a mystery. One day he just showed up, wielding the gloves of power.