The Planet Thieves (10 page)

Susan let Mason lead her along, looking exactly like a shell-shocked prisoner.

Two Tremist turned around the corner ahead, marching right for them, talons held in the ready position. Mason tensed but forced himself to keep the same pace. His eyes darted over them, searching for some sign they knew who he was. His instincts screamed to raise his talon first, to cut them down before they had a chance. But the noise would surely draw every nearby enemy. The ship would register the energy discharge and alert the crew. Next to him, Susan let her head drop, and her steps shuffle. Mason followed her lead, yanking her along a little more. They were just Tremist and prisoner, to an outside observer.

And the Tremist hadn't raised their talons yet.

Closer they came, and closer still.

Until they passed.

Mason almost flinched away, but held it together. The Tremist footsteps traveled away evenly, no increase in pace.

The hallway began to curve to the right, heading toward the front of the ship.
A guard of three,
the king had said. Luckily Mason had the element of surprise.

Mason was about to try and convince Susan to stay with him again, but then they were at the door. “This is it,” Mason said.

Susan touched the grenades on his belt. “These are stun,” she said, touching the ones on his left hip. “And these are EMP,” she said, touching the ones on his right.

“How do you know that?” Mason said. He pulled two stun grenades off his belt and handed one to her.

“Academy II,” she said with a wink. “You're not
quite
done with school.”

“Don't remind me.”

When they got close enough, the door opened automatically, revealing a lavish living area. Everything was violet, and Mason wondered, not for the first time, what their obsession with the color was. The bed was covered in soft purple fabrics. The walls were hung with tapestries depicting odd forests and animals he couldn't identify.

The room appeared empty. Mason and Susan paused, listening hard, hearing nothing. It couldn't be empty. They took two steps forward and saw that the room extended to the left. The quarters were complete with a personal kitchen and eating area, a desk, and a chair that Merrin was currently sitting in.

Surrounded by three armed Tremist.

“Now!” Susan said. They tossed their grenades at the same time, right at the Tremists' feet.

“Cover your ears!” Mason shouted.

Merrin was quick. She clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tight. Mason turned away, doing the same. The twin blasts were still uncomfortably loud and bright, a wave he felt through his suit, like a full-body slap. He fell to one knee and couldn't see through the static fuzzing his mask. His body braced as the sound of talons filled the room. His vision cleared in what felt like hours, and he saw the Tremist stumbling about, slowed like he was, talons cutting into the walls. Any stray beam would end them. This wasn't going as Mason had planned; they should've waited outside, to make sure the Tremist were incapacitated. The green beams cut through the air above him. One sizzled off the right arm of his suit, blistering the skin underneath. He cried out, a distorted sound coming through the mask.

Then: a blur from his right, as Susan moved among them like smoke. She chopped one Tremist on the neck with the edge of her hand, then threw another into the wall so hard his mirror-mask splintered. The last one backed away from her, not seeing that he was backing right into Mason. Right as the Tremist was aiming his talon at Susan, Mason sidestepped and tripped him, then dropped both knees onto his chest.

“The blast will draw them!” Susan said. “Go!”

“Not without you!” Mason screamed back.

“Mason?” Merrin said. She was out of the chair, hands still over her ears.

The Tremist Susan had neck-chopped rose up and lunged at Mason, but he sidestepped again and swung both fists in a dual hammer strike at the Tremist's kidneys—or where he hoped the kidneys would be.

“Yeah, hi,” he said to Merrin.

“Where did you find a Tremist suit?”

“You're asking that
now
?”

The Tremist rebounded off the wall but Susan was there. Mason crouched and Susan jumped over him, high-kicking the Tremist in the throat.

But the armor was too thick. They'd need a lot more to put them all down. Susan reached for a talon but a Tremist kicked it under the bed. Mason was still feeling the stun grenade, and he knew Susan and Merrin had to be too. He crossed the room and grabbed Merrin's hand, pulling her around a Tremist that was still trying to stand up. Susan kicked that one in the head. Another talon was smoking on the floor, destroyed.

They ran.

Back the way they came, several hundred feet feeling like miles. The lights in the walls were pulsing faster now—some kind of alarm? Mason was breathing too hard, a rasping sound in his ears. Footsteps pounded in the hall behind him as the Tremist followed.

“Don't slow down!” Susan said. “Don't slow down!”

The hallway straightened after the curve, and Mason could see past the door to the Egypt. Six Tremist ran toward them from that direction, talons raised, masks reflecting their small images in the dim light. Mason just made it around the corner, Susan and Merrin diving behind him, as green lances of talon fire sizzled down the hallway.

The two guards at the dock were ready for them, no longer acting like statues. But Mason had expected that. He dropped two primed EMP grenades. They bounced off the floor, crackling, and Mason's HUD winked out. It was destroyed.

And so were the talons the Tremist were about to kill them with. They fired without result, and Merrin was able to squeeze by on the left, hitting the ESC starship-grade metal with her feet. She spun around to help, but Mason lost sight of her as the left Tremist punched Mason so hard he fell against the tunnel wall, still inside the Hawk. He was vaguely aware of Susan engaged with the other guard, a flurry of punches and kicks, but pain throbbed in his head, blurring his vision. He knew nothing mattered, because the six Tremist had to be only seconds away now. They would be overwhelmed. If only Merrin could get the door shut, at least she would be safe.

The Tremist loomed over him, staring down, head cocked to the side as if he found Mason curious. Then he raised his broken talon high above his head, the advanced weapon reduced to a club that could crush Mason's skull—

He closed his eyes reflexively, but they flew open a second later, when Susan grabbed Mason and threw him onto the Egypt's deck. A second of pure relief while he was airborne: his head was in one piece. He could get back into the fight.

Mason tumbled hard and lost his breath, then rolled to all fours, head snapping up to see Susan now taking on the two Tremist by herself. He was about to charge forward, but Susan elbowed the door control.

No, that couldn't be right. She wouldn't lock herself in. Mason wanted to scream but the air hadn't returned to his lungs.

He watched as the huge dock door slammed shut between them.

The green light of talons filled the viewport. A flash of Susan's midnight hair dropping out of sight.

Silence.

 

Chapter Twelve

With a shudder, the Hawk detached from the Egypt and began to drift away.

“No!” Mason screamed, pounding on the door. “No no NO!” All at once he understood. His EMP grenades had kept them alive, but it had also knocked out the electronic door controls. The button she'd elbowed had been the mechanical release where the two ships met. But it was located
outside
the Egypt. Someone had to stay behind, and Mason had sealed her fate from the moment he dropped the grenades.

It was his fault she was trapped there.

The flash of green light still danced on his retinas, but he didn't believe it. They wouldn't have killed her.
No
. She was outnumbered. The king wanted to talk to her still. Yes, they would keep her alive. They would make her join the other prisoners. Maybe the talon fire had been to subdue her, or scare her.

He had locked his sister on the Tremist ship.

“Mason, we have to go. Mason!” Merrin was pulling him from behind, but he kept wriggling out of her grasp and pressing himself to the viewport. He had to see. There was nothing visible through the door; the Hawk had already dropped out of sight.

“She's gone,” Merrin said. “She's doing her duty.” She pulled at him again, but Mason shoved her hand away. He grabbed his helmet and ripped it off his head.

“What
duty
?” he spat. “To get caught? What good can she do over there?”

“Maybe she'll escape…” It was weak and they both knew it. Merrin looked like she wanted to take it back.

Her violet eyes were bright, pleading. Mason knew she wanted to comfort him any way she could, but the color of her eyes reminded him of a crucial thing. He could see the faint lines of purple veins in her neck, up the sides of her face.

Mason took a deep breath. He had to know what she knew. Friends or not.

“Are you a Tremist?” he asked.

You know what she is. She's your friend. Your only friend.

“Why would you…?”

“I saw one. They have the same hair and eye color as you. The same kind of skin.” He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. “Do you dye your hair? Did you change the pigmentation in your eyes?”

“No, I—”

“So are you a Tremist?”

She pressed her lips together and glared at him. His stomach clenched with regret; he hadn't meant to sound so cruel. But if Susan had just stayed behind so Merrin could be free, he wanted to know she was ESC to the core. Especially since they still had to deal with the Tremist controlling the Egypt. He needed to trust her, badly.
You do trust her, you idiot,
Mason thought.
As much as Susan. What are you doing?

“I'm
not
a Tremist,” she said finally. “The fact that you would ask me that says a lot, Stark. We've known each other since
before
we were cadets, and you ask me that?”

Mason felt a sharp sting in his chest. He made his voice softer, not as accusing. “I saw one close up, Merrin, that's all. I took his armor and saw his face.” He reached up absently to touch her cheek, but she pulled away before he could.
His
cheeks heated up.

“My name is Merrin Solace. My mother is a commander in the ESC. My father is a doctor. I was born on Mars in 2787. If you don't trust me, that's your problem.”

She started to walk away. Mason grabbed her wrist.

Merrin looked at where he touched her, then let her eyes drift to his, slowly, almost lazily. Dangerously. “Let go of me,” she said, voice cold as ice.

He did.

“I'm going back to the others now. They need us.”

He couldn't forget what he saw. The logical part of his brain said it wasn't a coincidence. But his gut said
trust her
. It said that whatever blood ran through her, it belonged to the ESC, like his. But how could he really know? He would have to wait, and see, and keep his guard up at all times.

Tremist or not, she's on your team, and you're on hers
.

He put out his hand, and she looked at it for a second. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You know I would do anything for you.”

She nodded stiffly, then grabbed his hand and shook it once.

Through the window, the Hawk was positioning itself outside the Egypt's storage bay. They weren't coming back for Merrin.

The weapon was more important to them.

“You'll help me find the other cadets?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mason said. “But there's something I have to see first.”

*   *   *

She followed him as he retraced his steps to the storage bay.

It was locked.

The main doors were open to outer space; there wasn't an atom of breathable air in the room. Through the window, the cube was visible as it moved sideways out of the bay, completely silent. The Hawk was towing it out somehow, most likely using the twin tractor beams underneath the engines.

The Tremist had the weapon now. Whatever that meant, it was a mission failure. Mason had failed to stop the enemy. The soldier part of him was shamed he chose his sister and Merrin over the goal any superior officer would've given him: to keep the weapon out of Tremist hands.

The brother and friend part of him didn't care.

“What is it?” Merrin said, her voice full of awe. The size of it still startled Mason. It was one thing to see something huge made by man, like the Olympus space station, but a different thing when you had no idea what you were looking at. It was the mystery of the thing. He had no idea how it was built, or where it came from.

“It's the reason the Tremist boarded us, whatever it is. I know it.” He turned to her. “We have to be careful.”

They left the door, heading for the elevator that would take them to the lowest level of the crossbar. Once inside, Mason pressed the down button. He touched the space under his ear. “Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Cadet Stark,” she said in his ear.

“How many personnel on this ship? ESC and Tremist.”

“There are nineteen ESC personnel on the ship. And twelve Tremist, not including the unconscious one in the engineers' tunnel.”

That stole the breath from Mason. There were eighteen cadets total. There had to be a mistake, so he asked, “How … how many ESC of rank?”

“Commander Lockwood is the only remaining officer on the Egypt. Two hundred and ninety-six have been captured and are on the Tremist ship, thirteen have been killed. Commander Lockwood is in critical condition in the sick bay, along with the cadets.”

He released the breath he was holding. The cadets were okay, and together. A fierce rush of pride gave him strength: his fellow cadets had evaded capture.