The Planet Thieves

by Dan Krokos

  Merrin stalked over and shoved Mason hard, with both hands.

  He stumbled back, banging his shoulder on a forklift. “Hey!”

  “Don’t you ever…” She didn’t need to finish. She was shaking her head, lips pressed together.

  “I’m sorry—” Mason began, but Merrin pulled him into a hug. Mason didn’t have a chance to hug back before she pushed him away and joined the cadets crowded around the dead Rhadgast. Now that he wasn’t flying around the room, the Rhadgast didn’t look so scary. Just another Tremist in a dress. He had landed in the middle of the other Tremist, on his back. Another few fractions of a second, and Mason would’ve been among them.

  “Now what, Captain?” Jeremy asked as he finished checking the talons: all of them appeared busted by the fall.

  Mason was about to say, Now we retake the bridge, but the four Tremist on the ground began to stir.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Uh, Captain?” one cadet said.

  The Tremist were groaning, limbs twitching on the floor, as if waking from a particularly long slumber. Their armor scraped softly against the metal.

  “Impossible…” Tom whispered.

  The nearest Tremist grabbed Merrin’s leg, and she shrieked, kicking it off.

  The deep purple face of the Rhadgast began to glow brighter.

  They had to move. Now.

  Mason lunged for the Rhadgast and grabbed his right arm. The tingle of building static made his hands itch, but Mason worked hard to strip the glove. Tom saw what he was doing and got down beside him, working on the other hand. The Rhadgast tried to pull away, but he was still weak, and Mason and Tom had the strength of fear.

  “Can you lock them in here?” Mason said to Tom.

  “I can!” Jeremy said.

  “Stun them!” Merrin commanded the cadets. A few fired their P-cannons at the Tremist, but it seemed to wake them up faster.

  “Elizabeth, how are they still alive?” Mason asked, fighting to keep his hands steady. He almost had the glove off. It was thinner than he’d anticipated, soft. He ached all over, and the sudden burst of adrenaline made his bruises burn in new ways.

  “I am unable to answer that question. Perhaps their armor has capabilities I am unaware of.”

  “Perhaps!” Mason replied.

  Jeremy was working at one of the terminals on the wall. “I can lock them in here, but once the Tremist gain full control of the bridge they’ll be free!”

  When both gloves were off, Mason and Tom stood up. The Rhadgast was fully awake now, and he grabbed Mason’s ankle.

  “Boy!” he hissed.

  Mason kicked him in the face.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted.

  The gravity disappeared once again, and Mason jumped off the floor as hard as he could. The cadets rose alongside him, drifting toward the ceiling. Mason removed the armor plates from his right hand and arm, then worked the glove on in their place. He felt it shifting the way the Tremist uniform had, shrinking until it was the perfect size for his hand. It covered from his fingertips all the way to the top of his arm, sealing against the armor on his shoulder. In the next second, he felt the glove link to his brain in some way he didn’t fully understand. It was like a second layer of skin now. He didn’t test it, but the electricity felt just within his reach, waiting for a command.

  Tom, rising next to Mason, had handed his own glove to Merrin. She was putting it on her left hand, since Mason had the right.

  “She’s the warrior,” Tom said, grinning.

  Below, the Tremist had almost gathered their wits. One had even pushed off in pursuit. Mason could hardly believe it: how had the fall only knocked the Tremist unconscious? The armor must’ve been more extraordinary than he first thought. Or they really were shapeshifting werewolf space vampyre ghost zombies.

  At the top, the cadets flew side by side through the door and into the corridor above, where they promptly fell to the floor. The dead crew were still in place on the ceiling, and Mason hated to leave them there, but respects could be paid later, once they were finally safe. The crew would’ve agreed.

  Mason locked the door shut behind them and asked Merrin to drop the pursuing Tremist again. She did.

  * * *

  With two Rhadgast gloves, Mason hoped it would be easier to retake the bridge, but knew the odds were still stacked against them. The Tremist had the defensive position, and there was no way the cadets could use gravity against them this time. Not to mention they were up against eight Tremist this time, not three. It seemed hopeless. He should save the others, order them to take escape shuttles, then blow up the ship. If they didn’t, and the Tremist gained control, it would not only mean their end, but the end of countless others. It would be so easy for the enemy to fly the Egypt into ESC territory, ignore a few hails while they got close enough, then unleash a surprise attack on an unsuspecting base. Or even Olympus.

  But the massive cross gate was still in Tremist hands, and no one knew it.

  Giving up wasn’t an option.

  “If we fail…” Mason whispered to Tom during the walk. He was hoping Tom would have a similar thought. And he did.

  “The Tremist won’t have the ship for long,” he whispered back, holding up his dataslate. Mason saw a self-destruct countdown on the screen, set for nineteen minutes. By then the Egypt would explode, or they would have control of the ship.

  Mason nodded at him, unable to speak. Nineteen minutes, and they might all be particle dust drifting through space. The thought chilled him so much it actually steeled his resolve. That was no way for a soldier to die, vaporized by his own ship. So his mind turned to getting the job done.

  It still amazed him that the electricity came from the gloves, and not the Rhadgast themselves. They weren’t wizards after all, just a different kind of Tremist, with different weapons. Mason suspected there was more to them, though, otherwise their legend wouldn’t be so terrifying and widespread. They would be men, not myths. He wondered what would’ve happened had the Rhadgast chanced across them on solid ground, where the cadets would’ve had nowhere to run and no tricks to pull.

  Along the way, Merrin and Mason went over a plan. They stopped in the brig and picked up locking bracelets, to immobilize the Tremist after knocking them down.

  Mason touched under his ear. “You figure out how the Tremist survived that fall?”

  “Uncertain,” Elizabeth replied. “The moment before, all vitals were gone. I noticed an energy surge around their armor. Sir, I posit their armor is responsible for bringing them back. The energy field may have restarted their hearts and bolstered their central nervous systems.”

  Mason shivered. Hopefully I don’t have to test that function on myself.

  “They’re still in the gravity-free bay?” Mason asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Good. Keep turning gravity on and off in case they get any ideas about crawling out of there.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Mason smiled. “What would I do without you, Liz?”

  “You would be at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “A big one. Is the bridge aware that their friends are neutralized?”

  “I put up a communication barrier between starboard and the bridge. No transmissions got through. They may be on alert because of this, but they don’t know what happened.”

  They reached the stairwell that would take them up one level, right outside the bridge. Mason went over the plan one more time. Willa, a wiry fifth year, began rubbing her eyes and yawning to get them to tear up. Her right eye was blue, the other green.

  “I’m ready,” she said, tangling up her strawberry hair with her fingers.

  “The bridge is still locked,” Elizabeth said in his ear. “All eight Tremist are accounted for.”

  “Perfect,” Mason said. They walked up the stairs slowly, but their footsteps still rang softly on the metal steps. At the top, Mason opened the door and stuck his head out, just to be sure: it was clear, an equal stretch o
f hallway to both sides, punctuated by doors and lifts that ran to different places. The hallway was starkly lit in white. Just across the hall was one of the bridge entrances—a wide, automatic door that split down the middle.

  Mason stepped out, P-cannon in his left hand, Rhadgast glove on his right. The doorway to the left of the bridge led to someone’s office, and it was indented enough to provide cover. He pressed himself there and waved out Merrin and Willa. Merrin squeezed in next to him and said, “Hi,” softly.

  “Do you forgive me?” Mason whispered.

  “Eventually,” Merrin replied with a smile. Which was good enough for him.

  Mason nodded to Willa, who sat down right in the middle of the hallway, grabbed her ankle …

  And began to scream at the top of her lungs.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Long, wailing screams that rattled Mason’s eardrums. Real tears welled and spilled from her eyes, and she rocked side to side, shaking her head all around. “My leg!” she screamed. “MY LEG! HEEEELLP!”

  It took ten seconds, but the door to the bridge hissed open. Two Tremist marched out with talons. Mason ducked back into the doorway, then peeked around the corner with one eye.

  “Quiet!” one shouted. “Quiet or I’ll blast you!”

  Willa stopped screaming and rolled onto her side. “It hurts! They left me they left me!”

  “Where are the others?” one said.

  Mason wanted to yell, “Right here!” but they were facing away from him at the moment, and throwing away that advantage would be foolish. So he just stepped out from behind cover, raised his hands, and fired off a volley from both weapons. The glove only required a thought and the P-cannon a squeeze of his finger. Merrin was right beside him, doing the same thing. Violet lightning crackled down the hallway, narrow and precise, until the Tremist were on the ground, convulsing next to Willa.

  “Now!” Mason said.

  Willa sprang upright, and behind her the thirteen other cadets burst through the doorway, P-cannons at the ready. Mason led the charge into the bridge, where the six Tremist remained. They froze. Mason wanted to laugh. The sight of that many ESC cadets pouring into the room, automatically using the various consoles for cover, had to be startling. In four seconds the cadets were well covered, with sixteen guns pointed at the Tremist, not counting the two Rhadgast gloves.

  Not a weapon was fired. The Tremist didn’t raise their talons with that much firepower pointed at them, and the cadets didn’t want to risk damaging the equipment. Mason could tell the Tremist feared the Rhadgast gloves from the subtle way they shifted and stared. The talons were superior to P-cannons, sure, but the cadets already had line of sight. Outside the dome, space crawled by, the black punctuated with dazzling white pinpricks. The Coffey system’s sun glowed like a hot marble millions of miles away, and the large green planet of Nori-Blue dominated the front view. It was so beautiful, Mason had to work hard not to look, to keep his eyes on the targets.

  “Hands where I can see them,” Mason said, trying to keep the grin out of his voice; it wasn’t too difficult when he remembered the hard part was just beginning.

  He and Merrin kept their gloved palms pointed toward the Tremist as the cadets slowly circled around from behind. Mason watched carefully, tense, as the cadets slapped locking bracelets on all the Tremist, then forced them into kneeling positions.

  Willa and another fifth year, Terrence, went to rip their helmets off, but Mason said, “No,” and they stopped. He didn’t want the crew to see their purple hair and too-pale skin. Merrin didn’t deserve their suspicion, and it would only make their jobs harder. She seemed to recognize the danger of being revealed and bit her lower lip. She mouthed the word thanks at Mason, and he nodded discreetly.

  “All Tremist neutralized for at least the next three hours,” Elizabeth said through external speakers.

  A deafening cheer went up on the bridge. The cadets pumped their weapons in the air, jumping up and down. Mason was glad for it; they would need that feeling to get them through. He wanted them to hold on to it, wear it like armor.

  One of the Tremist began to laugh. A long, cackling laugh that Mason knew was forced.

  “What you laughing at?” Jeremy said, moving to kick the Tremist in the chest.

  Mason stopped him with a hand and stepped forward. He held out his glove and let electricity crawl over it.

  “Tell me the joke, so that I might laugh with you,” he said.

  The Tremist shook his head and got himself under control. “I’m just imagining how the king will peel the flesh from your bones … when he finds out you still have his daughter.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Luckily, only Tom and Merrin got it. The other cadets had no idea what the Tremist was talking about. So Mason had Stellan and Jeremy and Tom, and four fifth years, stand the group of Tremist up and march them off the bridge before anyone could ask questions. Merrin went with them, since the threat of her glove would go a long way to keeping the Tremist in line.

  “Keep your distance,” Mason called after them. Their hands might be bound, but their feet were not.

  The fifth years half dragged, half carried the two unconscious Tremist behind them.

  Mason approached a curly-haired cadet named Andrew, who was dragging a Tremist by the leg. “After you’re done, relieve the two cadets in sick bay and report on Commander Lockwood’s condition.”

  Andrew dropped the Tremist’s leg, and was clearly about to complain, but Mason just raised an eyebrow.

  “Sir, I’d prefer not to,” Andrew said anyway.

  Mason lowered his voice. “I can see the burn on your neck. Get it taken care of.”

  Andrew tried to pull his collar over the burn, which made him wince. “I’m functional,” he said.

  “I know that. Let’s make sure you stay that way.”

  Andrew nodded somewhere between reluctantly and thankfully. Mason clapped him on the arm, then reentered the bridge.

  He was left with seven cadets staring up at him. He stood on top of the slightly raised platform in the middle, where the captain’s chair was, but had not yet taken the seat. It felt wrong. The bridge was shaped like a circle with an X in the middle. In the center of the X was the captain’s chair. Forward and to the left was the pilot console. Forward and to the right, weapons. In rear left was communications. Rear right was the link to engineering, where Susan usually sat.

  Surrounding the perimeter of the circle were long, low consoles that monitored every other function on the ship. A station for life support, for the synthetic gravity, for controlling cross gates.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “Find a station you think you can handle. No fighting. If you don’t feel comfortable on the bridge, I could use someone in the engine room, and in life support. There are enough of us to fill all the spots.”

  They stared at him.

  “Get to it,” he said.

  They did.

  Mason watched for a moment, then left the bridge and moved down the crossbar until he caught up with the others.

  “She’s one of us, you know,” the lead Tremist was telling Stellan and Jeremy. “Don’t trust her. Just take off my helmet and see for yourself.”

  Mason brushed him with the glove, letting electricity come to the surface. The Tremist yelped and jumped off the floor. “Stop talking,” Mason said.

  Once they reached the brig, Mason gave each Tremist a cell and had Tom turn on the audio-dampener so they couldn’t talk to each other. Then he sent the fifth years back to the bridge, minus Andrew. Only Stellan and Jeremy, the two who didn’t know Merrin’s secret, remained.

  Mason stepped into the first cell and pulled the leader’s helmet off with one smooth motion. His violet hair was plastered flat under his suit, and his violet eyes were narrowed in disgust, studying the cadets before him.

  Until they settled on Merrin.

  “As you can see, Merrin has some resemblance to the Tremist. We don’t know what that means, but we kn
ow it doesn’t matter. Merrin is one of us. For right now, it doesn’t leave this room. If that is a problem, let me know and I’ll put you in one of the cells.” Since there were only six cells, all full, Mason hoped that didn’t seem like a fun option.

  “Understood,” Stellan and Jeremy said together.

  Merrin was staring at the Tremist with her lips parted, shaking her head so slightly it seemed like a tremor. “No…”

  “We don’t know what it means,” Mason was quick to say. And it doesn’t matter anyway.

  “But the resemblance is there,” Tom added.

  “It’s hair and eye color, so what?” Jeremy said.

  “It could be a trick,” Stellan said. “They’re rumored to be shapeshifters. Remember how they just reanimated in the gravity-free bay? There is not enough data to make a conclusion.” Mason appreciated Stellan’s logical take at the moment. Thank Zeus no one was making a big fuss.

  Merrin was looking at the floor now; the Tremist was staring her down, sneering really, like, Ha ha, got you in trouble. Mason was tempted to black out the cell, so no one could see in or out, but he didn’t want to make it seem like Merrin couldn’t handle it.

  “You okay?” Mason asked, because he had to.

  Merrin nodded after a moment. “Thanks. I just … I want to know what it means.”

  “We’ll find out,” Tom said plainly, as if it would be the easiest thing in the galaxy.

  “The girl isn’t just one of us,” the lead Tremist said. “She’s a princess. Stolen from her parents by human scum.” Merrin stood tall now under his gaze. “Remember your old life, princess? Your father misses you.”

  Mason didn’t want to believe it, but then he remembered the cold recognition the king had on the bridge. If Merrin truly was a princess, Mason had a feeling they would see the king and his Hawk again. Which might work in their favor, if they were smart about it. He tried to imagine his best friend as alien royalty and just … couldn’t. Not that she wasn’t regal—there was definitely something about her, something he hadn’t quite figured out yet. But it was just too crazy of an idea.