The Planet Thieves (11 page)

“What about the Tremist?” he asked. The relief didn't last; there were twelve active Tremist on the ship. The cadets outnumbered them by six, but he'd already seen the enemy up close, in action. Engaging them directly would never work. They needed a plan, something with guile and surprise.

“There are six on the bridge. Five moving through the ship. And one in the bathroom. Plus the one you locked in the engineers' tunnel.”

The lift stopped and they got out. The way was clear, so they stepped onto the moving track and were propelled toward crewside, port. Elizabeth would have to be their edge; he knew where the Tremist were, but they didn't know where he was. It was a start.

“Can you isolate them?” he asked. “Can you lock the one in the bathroom?”

“Done,” Elizabeth replied.

Now there were eleven to worry about. “Brilliant. What about the others?” he said.

“The five are not near your position, but can move through certain areas. I cannot stop the six on the bridge from accessing the Egypt's controls, and I cannot stop them from leaving. They are trying to gain entrance to my mainframe, and I will not be able to hold them off much longer.”

Losing Elizabeth would be game over. Not only would the Tremist have complete control of the Egypt
,
they would be able to find the cadets without having to do a room by room search. They'd be able to eject the escape shuttles before the cadets could use them to escape.

“How much time do we have?” They reached a faster section of the track. Mason kept his balance, wind roaring in his ears.

“I suspect I will be loyal to the ESC for another hour, perhaps sixty-eight minutes.”

Mason and Merrin almost fell sideways as the Egypt began to accelerate. The cube had to be clear now, towed along by the Hawk's tractor beams. He imagined it floating in space.

And now the ship was moving. Not a good thing.

“Tell me about the weapon,” Mason demanded.

“Please narrow your query.”

“The big cube thing in the storage bay!”

“That is classified.”

“Tell me
something
. Who made it?”

A pause. “I have no information about its creation. I could not tell you even if ordered to.”

“Can you tell me anything?”

“Stand by. I will try to gather information for a more complete report.”

The walkway dumped them at the elevator on the left side of the ship. Sick bay would be four levels up, a couple hundred feet aft. The other cadets wouldn't be far. They
seemed
safe, but the moment the Tremist took control of Elizabeth, they'd be sitting ducks. Or, more accurately, fleeing ducks that would be easy to find. Not to mention the Tremist could leave the bridge and begin a manual sweep at any time.

Mason and Merrin rode the crewside elevator up, then jogged down the hushed hallway.

“Are we still clear?” he asked Elizabeth.

“Two Tremist are making a sweep toward crewside. The earliest they could be at your position is three minutes. I will inform you as they get closer. It's likely they will enter crewside, but not stray too far from the bridge.”

Mason broke out in sweat again. Elizabeth telling him was one thing, but he wanted eyes on the enemy, to know exactly how they were moving and where. Parts of the Egypt were still unfamiliar to him. He half expected the enemy to be around every corner, behind every door.

The ship was quiet save for the constant background hum. Not quiet in a good way. It was a tomb now. Nearly lifeless. The crew numbered in the hundreds when it left space dock two weeks ago—there was usually never an empty hallway; someone was always walking somewhere. Now the crew was either dead, or worse, on the Hawk.

They rounded the corner into sick bay, and Mason saw how alone they truly were.

 

Chapter Thirteen

The room held eighteen cadets counting Mason, Merrin, Stellan, Jeremy, and Tom. Ages seven to thirteen. All of them bunched on one side of the bay, doing their best to stand at attention but fidgeting for the most part. The younger ones were wide-eyed; the older ones sweated through their suits. They saw Mason in his armor and a few of them gasped, even though he'd removed the helmet. He thought about immediately tearing the rest off but decided losing the protection it offered would be foolish.

Commander Lockwood, bald head shiny with sweat, lay on his back in a bed, burns covering his neck and the side of his face. His ESC uniform was singed in places, but burned away completely under his right ribs. There the skin was black and red. He was going to die if they didn't get him to a real hospital soon, that much was clear. Mason felt hollow, because he knew Lockwood, who was the unofficial cadet herder sometimes. He also felt heavy, because when Lockwood died, they would truly be alone. Just Elizabeth to keep them company on a ship controlled by the enemy.

The cadets waited quietly at a safe distance while Stellan administered fluids through the IV. Jeremy's eyes were red with tears. Tom was silent and sullen. Mason approached the bed slowly. He didn't want to see the wounds up close, but couldn't appear unnerved in front of the others.

Lockwood barely moved, just rolled his eyes toward Mason. “Cadet Stark,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Report.”

“Yes, sir,” Mason said. “We're the only ones left, sir. There are six Tremist on the bridge and five roaming the halls, and I had Elizabeth lock one in the bathroom.”

“A damn shame, that is,” he said. “Were you on the Hawk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Impressive.” He coughed, wet and deep. “You see our crew?”

“Yes, sir. They're alive. Prisoners, sir.”

Mason felt pressure behind his eyes, and a lump in his throat.
I will not cry.
He had to be strong. If they were the only ones left, someone had to be strong. If Susan were here, it'd be her, but she wasn't.
A Stark leads,
she told him, many times.
Our parents were leaders. Leading is a responsibility, not an honor. A duty.

Duty. He hated the taste of the word now.

“You listening, Mason?” Lockwood asked. The hair on the right side of his head had been burned away. His voice was shaky and weak.

“Sir,” Mason said.

“I understand your sister was acting captain before she left the Egypt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm hurt, son. Bad.”

Mason looked over the wounds. “It doesn't look so bad. Not for a commander in the ESC.”

Lockwood cracked a smile, but it turned into a grimace.

“Jeremy, another ten units,” Stellan said.

“No! No…” Lockwood said. “I need to be lucid. The pain is fine, boys. Pain can be a soldier's friend, if one uses it to stay sharp.”

“Sir,” Mason said. “What was in the storage bay? The cube.”

His eyes cleared, free of pain for a moment. “They took it, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know what it is?”

“No, sir.”

“It's the end of the world, son. We got greedy. The whole ESC, the whole united worlds, this is our doing. We got greedy.”

The sweat under Mason's armor turned cold. If it truly was a weapon, the Tremist had it now, and there was no one to take it back.

“What is it?”

“It's a cross gate. The biggest ever built.”

At first, Mason thought he misspoke. A cross gate was exactly that: a gate. A ship would deploy it, usually from the engineering side. It looked like a chunk of metal that would unfurl in space, pieces moving until there was a circle with rims no thicker than Mason's wrist. The circle would be big enough to fly a ship through. The gate would fold space until whatever distant location you wanted was right inside the gate. It allowed for instant travel throughout the galaxy, if you knew where you were going.

But what Mason had seen wasn't a gate. It was a chunk of metal from which thousands of gates could've been made.

“Sir?”

“It's one gate, Cadet. One gate.”

Mason remembered the size again, the length and width. Imagined it unfolding in space. His brain simply couldn't process it, the same way it was hard to imagine the distance between stars.

“We came out here…” Lockwood's voice rasped and gurgled until he coughed. “… to negotiate a treaty with the Tremist. To share Nori-Blue.”

The idea of a treaty with the Tremist rocked him. The war would be over, and both species would have enough of the planet to thrive on. It seemed too good to be true, even though the idea seemed so easy.

Lockwood's eyes said it
was
too good to be true.

He continued. “That's what we were here for on paper. But it was never going to happen. The ESC will not surrender even partial control of Nori-Blue. This is all classified, by the way.”

Mason just nodded. He felt Merrin grab his hand and squeeze. Across the bed, Tom watched the commander gravely. And still the other fifteen cadets remained quiet, listening, as they were trained to.

“Instead we were going to unleash the biggest cross gate ever created. The cube unfolds. It's really made up of hundreds of thousands of poles that will … telescope. Extend.”

Mason began to see the truth, the intent, before the commander finished, but he had to hear it. He had to hear it to believe.

“Big enough to pass a planet through…” Lockwood said.

“Sir…”

“We were going to cross Nori-Blue into Earth's orbit. It would share the same orbit as Earth, just on the other side of the sun. After Nori-Blue adjusted, we'd have an inhabitable planet right next door. With the planet that close to the ESC's main bases, the Tremist would have no chance. No chance to win.”

It was brilliant, yet horrifying. To steal a planet from its natural orbit and add it to our solar system. Mason couldn't understand how the ESC could've come up with this plan and put it into action. Nori-Blue didn't
belong
in our solar system; it wasn't natural. Could they even know for sure what effect it would have? The balance of gravity in the solar system would be thrown off. Unless they had some way to compensate.

Lockwood seemed to read his mind. “It's better than the first plan. We were going to destroy Nori-Blue, so the Tremist couldn't have it if we lost. But none of that matters now. None of it. What matters is they have this gate we created, and they know what we intended. I don't know what they're going to do with it, but it won't be good. It won't be … you understand?
Do you?
”

Mason felt his heart thud, and pause, and thud again. His insides were as cold as space. It wasn't hard to imagine what the Tremist would do with the gate. If the ESC had planned to steal Nori-Blue, the Tremist would want to steal it first.

Lockwood reached up and squeezed Mason's arm so hard he felt it through the armor. The commander was shaking now.

Mason's words came out in a tumble. “Sir, we'll be okay. I had Elizabeth lock a Tremist in the bathroom. And Tom locked one in a tunnel. There are only eleven left. And I made it off the Hawk with Merrin. We can take the ship back and rally a hunting party to track the gate down.” He was speaking for Lockwood's benefit, trying to offer the man some comfort. He knew this was the worst way to die, leaving eighteen cadets alone to fend for themselves. But maybe he was strong enough; maybe he would hang on a little longer.

“Can you do that?” Lockwood seemed to really be asking.

“I promise, sir.”

Lockwood nodded gravely.

“Cadet Stark. I name you captain of the SS Egypt. Take her back … and stop those bastards from using the gate.”

 

Chapter Fourteen

Commander Lockwood sank back into the bed when Stellan administered more of the painkiller. His eyes fluttered before closing. “He needs to rest,” Stellan said. “There's hope for him if we get to a base with a proper hospital.”

Mason's mind was still, like a stalled fossil-fuel engine. He tried to get it running again by replaying Lockwood's words. He'd just been named captain. He was captain of the Egypt
,
responsible for the cadets, and responsible for recovering the ship from Tremist hands.

Mason wanted to turn off his emotions but didn't know how. He wanted to be cool and calculating like the captains who made it into the lore books, like Captain Renner certainly would. That was impossible, though, so he decided to fake it. He'd read in a textbook once a quote by the famous Captain Reynolds:
I am not a brave man. But bravery, like most things, can be faked. And sometimes, in rare instances, it will lead to the real thing
.

“I need you with me if we're going to take back the ship,” Mason said to Stellan. Someone else would have to watch over the commander. Lockwood's condition was awful, yes, but the man had given him an order. It was time to stop thinking about his health and start thinking about the mission.

“I'm sorry,” Tom said, wrinkling his nose. “Did he just name you captain?”

“You heard him,” Merrin said.

Tom looked at Merrin for what seemed like the first time, as if he was just now remembering the unmasked Tremist on the engineering deck. Thankfully, he didn't bring it up and make a huge deal in front of the other cadets.

“And we're just going to follow your orders?” Tom said.

“If you want to remain in the ESC, yes.” Mason didn't want it to be like that, not right away. Pulling rank was not something he admired. But it was something Susan had once talked to him about, when Mason took his
Future Commanders
course in fourth year. How if you didn't put someone in line it could show weakness. Which would spread. Being in command meant sometimes you had to sacrifice a friendship. Not that Tom was his friend or anything. Or at least a good friend. Mason didn't really know.

“Then what's your plan, Captain?” Tom said.