The Planet Thieves (23 page)

“Just carry it. You can share it with others. But don't try to look until you're somewhere safe. Somewhere you can sleep.”

Mason nodded.

“What did you do to him?” Merrin demanded.

From the tunnel, the howls increased. Howls and roars and strange chuffing sounds. Mason could hear the Fangborn breathing.

“Mason Stark is now the living conduit of the book, the messenger who will bring peace to the Adams' children.”

“Oh,” Tom said. “Is that all?”

“The book must remain here in case you fail.”

By now Mason's head was clearing, but he felt the knowledge dwelling inside him. He understood what Child meant by
fail
. He meant if Mason died, and another conduit was needed.

“Go now,” Child said. “Back up the tunnel, back to your ship, back to your fleet. Make the truth known before there is nothing left to save. Go!”

They went.

Up the tunnel, as fast as they could. As the cries of the Fangborn dwindled, Mason could hear the blood pounding in his ears. The return trip went too fast—he didn't want to be topside just yet, where they would have to keep running and fighting. All Mason could think about was the wealth of information in his head, the insane truth that could change everything. Suddenly he was afraid for his life for a totally different reason.

They sprinted across the main floor, past Child's pillar, and through the doorway into murky daylight. Just then the com clicked in Mason's ear, and by Merrin's and Tom's reactions, he knew they heard it too.

“This is Vice Admiral Renner broadcasting across all frequencies. The Tremist force is in system now. Do not fire heavy weapons. The Tremist have stationed themselves low in the atmosphere, betting we won't use heavies against them at the risk of contaminating the planet below. The gate—”

There was a bright spark in the sky, and the vice admiral's voice crackled briefly with static, then he coughed wetly. The word
gate
sent a chill across Mason's shoulders.

He could see the gate now, unfolding low in the atmosphere. It was just a tiny speck at this distance, a shiny dust mote. The Tremist were already in the process of stealing their second planet of the day.

“We need to stop the gate,” the vice admiral said, sounding defeated already, with just a hint of steel left in his voice. “The Olympus is on its way. We hope it will scatter them like—” He cut out again.

The gate was growing, looking again like a spider with a thousand unfurling legs. If the Tremist took Nori-Blue, that was it. There would be no home for humans. And the Tremist would definitely be at risk if they settled down on Nori-Blue: the Fangborn would devour them, and possibly use their technology to spread throughout the galaxy.

His ear clicked twice more, which Mason knew meant the speaker was only speaking to him. “Stark,” the vice admiral said. “Did you get the Lock in place?”

“It's done, sir,” Mason replied. Tom looked at him quizzically.

“Good.” That was all he said.

“We have to stop this,” Mason said, hearing the frustration in his voice. Frustration he saw on Merrin's face and in Tom's eyes.

But it wasn't enough that the odds were already impossible. Right as they were about to run for the shuttle, the king's Hawk crested the trees behind it, its weapon clusters bristling with green light.

 

Chapter Forty

They ran anyway. Mason ran as fast as he ever had before, ignoring the way the soft ground sucked at his feet with each step, how the tall grasses tangled around his ankles, threatening to trip him, as if the whole planet was aligned with the Fangborn. As if it too was saying,
You don't belong here. Be gone.
Or more likely:
You don't belong here, but you're never going to leave.

They never had a chance. Mason screamed when he saw the Hawk fire the first thick green laser from under its belly. He could see Stellan in the window, waving them forward. He could hear the shuttle itself powering up, now that Child wanted them to flee. But the Hawk didn't shoot to kill, only maim. The rear engines on the shuttle exploded in a geyser of blue and silver flames. One of the underside engines gave a high-pitched whine—
errrrrreiiiiiiiii—
and then it exploded too, shoving the rear of the shuttle upward and almost sending it into a somersault. The shuttle slammed back down, smoking and crackling, completely useless. Stellan popped up in the window a few seconds later, seemingly okay.

They were stranded now, on a planet full of monsters that wanted to kill them. Monsters underground and now monsters in the air. Mason wanted to scream again, in frustration this time. The heroes in the stories always had something go right for them, there was always a bit of luck. No matter what the odds were, they found a way. He wondered how many would-be heroes didn't get that sliver of luck, and were never mentioned again.

Not only were they stranded, with the king's Hawk closing in, but the Lock was only a few hundred feet away in the shallow woods. If the Tremist had any way to track the Lock, it would be destroyed sooner than Mason had hoped.

The Hawk hovered over the clearing, taking its time like a slow predator stalking its prey. This close to the ground, Mason saw it was truly massive, taking up over half of the clearing, casting a long, wide shadow on the ground.

“C'mon, we have to make a stand,” Mason said. The others nodded—no question, because they were the best the ESC had to offer—and they took off again for the shuttle. The wiser plan would've been to try to lose them in the forest, to try and force a pursuit, since Merrin was what the king was really after, but none of them were about to leave Stellan behind. That option had only crossed Mason's mind for a single instant, and the very idea disgusted him.

When they got there, Tremist were rappelling down from the sides of the Hawk, enough to kill all of them. Mason reminded himself he had the Rhadgast gloves and was not completely helpless just yet.

Stellan was waiting for them at the rear door, which was smoking and barely wedged open. Mason held his breath as they wiggled through, not wanting to inhale the sharp and hot gases coming off the wrecked engines. Together, Mason and Tom wedged the door shut, not quite sealing them in. If they were about to become POWs, they would make the Tremist earn it. And maybe, if they were a good enough distraction, the Lock would survive a little longer.

Through the front part of the curved windshield, they watched the Hawk settle into the clearing, touching down on the pieces of broken skyscraper. The segments collapsed like rotten tree trunks, crumbling into puffs of silvery dust.

Help us, Child,
Mason thought. But there was no answer.

At the edge of his hearing, Mason heard a low rumble coming from somewhere. Underneath his feet, maybe. It was probably just vibrations from the Hawk traveling through the ground. How much time had passed since Child had warned them about the stasis field? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Mason had no idea.

“We have to do something!” Tom said.

“What defenses does the shuttle have?” Merrin said coolly. Stellan was sweating over the controls, hands shaking.

Tom opened a panel in the floor and pulled out fresh handheld P-cannons. He pressed one into Stellan's hand and held it there until Stellan took a breath and closed his fingers around it.

Suddenly, Mason heard a voice:

You are a Rhadgast now
.

It was
Child's
voice. In his head.

You are a Rhadgast, so clap your hands.

Clap your hands?

Whatever. Mason was ready to try anything at this point.

So he clapped his hands.

And the gloves sparked with purple light. In the next instant, Mason was holding a crackling sword forged entirely from lightning the color of Merrin's eyes.

 

Chapter Forty-one

The others froze.

The blade felt solid under his hands. If he closed his eyes, it would've felt like he was holding some kind of ultra-light pole. But Mason could smell the heated air and hear the buzzing. He swung the blade sideways and it still felt solid.

He took his left hand away, and the blade remained. He opened his right hand, and the blade snapped out of existence, just a wisp of smoke to prove it ever existed in the first place.

“Cool,”
Tom said.

“How—” Stellan said.

Merrin was just smiling at him, a slight upward curve to her lips. The sword wouldn't get them out of trouble, Mason knew, but it might be that sliver of luck he thought about before. It might make the odds tip in their favor.

He was trembling with the new possibilities. Through the windshield they could see the king walking toward them, flanked by a small guard of mirror-mask Tremist. The king's black oval of a mask seemed to eat the light around him, making shadows from nothing.

“Make it come back,” Tom said.

Mason clapped his hands again, and the blade returned. He could feel the power coursing up and down his arms, as if the gloves gave him some kind of new strength that didn't fully belong to him.

The rumbling sound under them increased, which didn't make sense. The Hawk should have been powering down, not up. Maybe they thought it wouldn't take too long to recover Merrin, and weren't planning to stay on the surface.

“Here they come,” Stellan said, helpfully.

Through the 360-degree view, Mason watched way too many Tremist line up at the rear door. He had a brief vision of cutting through all of them with his lightning sword, but knew it would never happen. It was the fantasy of a kid, not a soldier. Still, if someone tried to take Merrin, they'd be losing an arm one way or another.

The breach was quick. Four Tremist cut a hole through the door with their talon beams, reducing it to saggy, melted metal in a matter of seconds. Before the smoke cleared, the king stepped inside, boots the color of dried blood stamping down the smoldering metal. Smoke curled around his passing, rising from him as if he was some demon just come out of hell.

Mason held his sword high.

“Impressive,” the king said.

Then reached out, grabbed the sword, and squeezed.

The sword extinguished, snapping out of existence.

“But not impressive enough,” the king said.

Tom fired his P-cannon next, but the king only absorbed the blow with his impossible armor, and then kicked Tom's legs out from under him. He hit the deck hard, breath gone.

Mason clapped his hands together, but just as the blade sprang back to life, the king punched him hard in the chest, and Mason fell next to Tom. The king put his boot on Mason's chest, and that was it. Mason couldn't breathe, not an atom of air, and he knew he was going to suffocate. There was no way around it. He could feel the blood thumping behind his eyes, felt his lungs spasm as there was absolutely no room to inflate.

Then the king let up, and Mason gasped along with Tom as the king kneeled in front of Merrin.

“My princess,” he said. “I never meant for this to happen. Let me explain.”

“You murdered an entire planet, Your Grace,” Stellan said as calmly as Mason had ever heard him say anything. “There will be no explaining that.” He still held his P-cannon, but was wisely holding it with the point down, away from the king.

The king's face was as empty as ever. “I did no such thing.”

“I don't
want
your explanation,” Merrin said. “I don't care where I came from.”

“You must know,” the king said.

“I said I don't want to know. Whatever side I started on, I'm on the right one now.” Her words were forceful, but her eyes looked slightly wet, like she was holding back tears.

The rumbling grew, enough so that the king looked around the shuttle, as if trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Two Tremist stepped back outside to investigate.

Mason felt something strange—hope, maybe—when the king had said he did no such thing, that he hadn't murdered an entire planet. It could've been a simple denial or it could've meant something more, that Earth was not truly lost.

Mason thought about springing up again, clapping his hands and swinging down at the king, but the king took a hand and pressed his torso to the floor again, not too hard, just enough to keep him pinned.

Abruptly, the king scooped Merrin off the floor. “I will help you understand,” he said. He held her against his chest like a father would do with his child. Then he stalked out of the shuttle, leaving the three boys behind.

They weren't alone for long.

Mason had just gotten to his feet, and was helping Tom stand up, when four Rhadgast stepped into the shuttle.

 

Chapter Forty-two

It was over. Mason knew that now.

Maybe it had always been over, and their efforts had only been delaying the inevitable. Maybe in some parallel timeline, a Mason Stark won the day and beat back the Tremist and then showed them the truth in time. He wished he were that Mason Stark.