The Planet Thieves

by Dan Krokos

  Finally, they agreed on something. The rage Tom was feeling would burn away all his fear, and it was always better to be angry than afraid.

  “Then let’s get out of here.” Mason pointed toward the terminal.

  Tom’s fingers danced over the screen, opening a complex series of menus meant to be accessed only by the Egypt’s programmers and engineers. The cadets were technically locked in, but if Tom could convince the computer it was an emergency, the door would open. Mason considered just asking Elizabeth, the ship’s AI, to let them out, but she had ears everywhere, and probably knew they were supposed to stay put.

  As he watched Tom type in strange commands, Mason thought about Susan. She was out there, maybe fighting, maybe dead. There would be a new captain now, automatically promoted, but Mason wasn’t sure who. Commander Lockwood, maybe.

  Half of the screen cycled through various cameras and showed Tremist pouring into the ship, marching along the catwalks in neat columns, laser rifles—what some ESC soldiers called talons—held at the ready. Tom closed the video feeds and replaced them with more menus.

  “Let’s be smart about this,” Stellan said. “We go out there weaponless, they’re just going to kill us or take us as hostages.”

  “No one is stopping me from going out there,” Tom said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “I dare you to try.”

  Mason wouldn’t try. He’d be at Tom’s side. If they weren’t quite friends, at least they had a common enemy.

  Merrin had been pinching the bridge of her nose, something she did when thinking hard. She lowered her hand suddenly, and her eyes were clear and focused. “I’m going too. We’ll find weapons. If we can help in any way, the punishment will be worth it. If we lose … well … it won’t matter.”

  That made perfect sense. And so it was decided. Tom gave her a grateful nod, then pretended to scratch his face so he could wipe away a tear.

  Mason said, “Jeremy and Stellan, I need you guys to stay here and watch the rest of the cadets.”

  “No way!” Jeremy gave him a look like Mason had just suggested they all step through the nearest air lock into outer space.

  “Who’s going to protect them?” He winked at Stellan. “Could Stellan do it all by himself?”

  Jeremy thought about that for two whole seconds. “I, uh, see your point.”

  Stellan smiled secretly, not taking offense, Mason knew.

  Mason leaned in and whispered directly into Jeremy’s ear. “If we don’t make it back, or it looks like we’re losing, get everyone to an escape shuttle. Okay?”

  Mason pulled back, and Jeremy nodded grimly. He would get it done.

  The computer beeped at Tom, who actually growled.

  Merrin said, “Let’s be smart. Where is the nearest armory?”

  “Two levels down, six hundred feet aft of our position,” Tom said at once.

  “We arm ourselves, then figure out how to help,” Mason said.

  “Great plan, did you come up with that all on your own?” Tom asked, not taking his eyes off the screen. Mason had to force his mouth to stay closed; Tom was allowed to be angry and snide in the wake of his mother’s death, as long as he kept it together.

  Merrin tapped her foot next to the console; now that they had a plan, Mason knew she’d be itching to move. “How close, Thomas?” she asked.

  “A few more seconds.”

  Mason nodded toward the younger cadets near the window, and Jeremy and Stellan took that as their cue to begin babysitting. The younger cadets didn’t seem frightened; they were all jostling for position even though the Tremist ship was hidden on the other side of the Egypt. Mason didn’t know whether they were brave or stupid. In fact, he didn’t know if he was brave or stupid. The smart thing, the thing his sister would want him to do, was to stay put. To wait until a soldier came for them.

  But waiting could bring Tremist instead of soldiers.

  The ship groaned around them, and Mason felt the floor rotate under him: the ship was turning. The stars spun sideways until a bright blue sun appeared not so very far away.

  “Almost there,” Tom said. Sweat rolled down his face, and maybe some tears, too. Merrin kept shifting from foot to foot, lower lip between her teeth. Tom typed in another command and the words UNLOCK and LOCK popped on the screen. He jabbed the UNLOCK with his finger and the door went plink! “There!”

  Mason grabbed the door and slid it open.

  The three of them stepped into the hallway and crouched, making themselves smaller targets. The backup lighting was dim; panels flickered white and red in the ceiling. Mason’s eyes darted through the gloom, searching for immediate danger. He expected screams but it was quiet, save the omnipresent whisper of the ship. Where the cadet quarters were alive with bodies and hushed voices, this felt like stepping into a tomb.

  Go back, a voice inside him whispered. You’ll get in the way, you’re not a real soldier, you’re not safe out here, where monsters roam the halls.

  He clenched his jaw, grinding the thoughts under his molars.

  To the left, the corridor ended at an elevator. To the right, the corridor ended at a sharp left turn. It would lead them back toward the crossbar, and to the bridge.

  From around the crossbar corner, Mason heard feet pounding on the carpeted floor. “Fall back!” someone shouted. “Fall—” The voice cut off as a beam of green light etched the wall at the turn. The talon beam rose and fell, cutting off screams. The weapon buzzed like a thousand angry hornets, yet Mason could still hear bodies hitting the floor.

  To run from the enemy was only cowardice when you had a fighting chance: the lesson echoed now in his brain, but hearing those screams made it difficult to retreat. Be smart, he told himself.

  Merrin tugged his sleeve toward the elevator. “Move it!”

  Mason began to move, but Susan’s voice boomed through the ship: “This is Captain Susan Stark.”

  Despite the danger of being out in the open, Mason smiled. Susan was alive. There was no pain in her voice; she wasn’t injured. His little prank hadn’t ruined her concentration after all.

  Her microphone clicked again. “All crew—”

  Susan’s voice was cut off by the too-familiar buzz of a talon.

  Chapter Five

  Mason froze, waiting for his sister’s voice to come back. Death was something they talked about at the Academy, but talk was talk, and this felt like a bucket of cold water to the face. A second passed, and then another, and she did not speak again, and Mason was paralyzed, remembering what it was like to see Captain Renner fall. This is how Tom felt, he thought.

  Susan wouldn’t leave him; she knew she was all Mason had left. Without her he was just a person, not a brother. Without her, he didn’t mean anything to anybody, except Merrin, of course, but that was different. Susan was the only family he had left, and he would do whatever he could to help her.

  Merrin grabbed his hand and gently pulled, then tugged when it was clear Mason wasn’t moving.

  “C’mon,” she whispered. “She’s okay. I’m sure they just knocked out the com.”

  Mason wanted to move, but it felt like he was going to throw up. He could taste it in the back of his mouth, the burn of acid and fear, and he didn’t know how to make it go away. Susan had told him about a trick once, but something she only used rarely. Sometimes, if she was afraid, she’d take all her fear and gather it up and turn it into anger. Anger didn’t paralyze the way fear did. It was the opposite of being helpless. But it was dangerous too, because you could end up being angry all the time.

  Mason got angry.

  He let it flow through him, didn’t bother trying to temper it with logic or reason. He could feel it scouring the weakness from him, giving him the strength he would need to keep going.

  Tom waited for them in the elevator, holding it open with his arm. “Get in!” he hissed.

  Just as the talon stopped cutting into the wall.

  “Shh, quiet,” a man’s voice said from down the corridor. �
��Listen.” But Mason knew there could be no men left; the chuffing sounds the P-cannons made had faded to silence. So who had spoke? It didn’t matter: facing the Tremist unarmed would help no one. Mason and Merrin padded toward the elevator as quietly as they could. Now he wanted to run, but their footsteps would give away their presence.

  Then the ship’s computer, Elizabeth, said, “Cadet Renner, please stop blocking the elevator door.”

  Mason and Merrin jumped into the elevator and spun in time to see three Tremist charge around the corner. They were at full sprint, faster than he thought men could move. Their plate armor shimmered wetly, shifting between purple and black, catching the sterile light of the spaceship and making it alien. Mason saw his own face in the flat mirrored surface that was the leading Tremist’s faceplate.

  Tom had moved his arm, but the door was still open. They were only thirty feet away now.

  “Shut the door!” Mason yelled, pressing himself against the wall.

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth replied airily, and the door began to shut.

  The three Tremist paused when they realized they wouldn’t make it in time, and then lifted the talons to their shoulders. The soldier part of Mason’s brain, the part that didn’t get afraid, noted the angle at which the Tremist held their weapons, how, in the next second, each beam would slice through them at the breastbone.

  The door sealed; Mason dragged Merrin and Tom to the floor as the talons’ green beams crisscrossed through the door and heated the air above them until it was crackling. Then the car descended, giving the illusion of the beams rising up through the door until they disappeared through the ceiling.

  The air was hot and baked and smelled like electricity.

  The door opened on the next level down, into a corridor identical to the one they just left. Tom had his dataslate plugged into a port on the elevator. “Erasing our destination level … now! Bought us a few minutes.”

  Merrin took the pad out of his hand. Her fingers danced over the screen until it flashed red. “There—the elevator is frozen.”

  Tom scrunched his nose. “How did you…?”

  Mason was already out of the elevator, straining to hear anything over the background noise. It was quiet, and the ship didn’t feel like it was moving anymore. They walked down the hall and passed through a doorway on the right, to a parallel corridor that would take them to one of the armories. Mason hoped his weapons training would serve him: Weapons and Tactics was one of his best classes. It was time to see how all that practice translated in a real live combat situation. A simple instruction came to his mind: Relax, breathe, aim.

  The whole left side of the ship was made up of these corridors stacked atop each other, with rooms crammed in between them. A number on the wall showed this was level six. Level two held the theater. Levels four and five held the gym. Most of it was crew quarters, though: the Egypt was equipped for battle, but it was also the ship you took when you wanted to move a lot of ESC troops from one place to another. Though she was only packed with a couple hundred crew at the moment, the Egypt had room for two thousand.

  They passed an adjacent, empty corridor, and Mason heard the faraway buzz of talons. Orders were being shouted. The battle was on. Once he had a gun, he could fight his way to the bridge and … Susan was still alive. She had to be, and he’d save her.

  The armory was up ahead; the door was open. Crisp white light flickered from within.

  It was quiet and still. Mason held up a hand, and they slowed their approach, making their footsteps silent on the carpet. He smelled burnt metal and something that reminded him of Steak Tuesday in the galley. The smell of charred meat. His stomach churned.

  Tom was too dazed for caution, and he muscled past Mason’s outstretched arm and stepped inside, no hesitation, almost like he didn’t care about whatever danger lay within. So of course Mason and Merrin were right behind him.

  The armory was destroyed. The walls, floor, and ceiling were once panels that gave off soft white light. Now they were cracked and sputtering. Now ESC soldiers littered the floor, eight of them, just lying there, smoke still rising from their uniforms. The walls, once lined with weapons of every kind, were mostly bare. The weapons were scattered over the floor, destroyed.

  Tom spit on the ground and bent over, like he was about to throw up. Merrin put her hands over her mouth. Mason wanted to do the same things they were doing, but he recalled his sister’s voice as it was cut off, and he didn’t. Instead, he crouched and began going through the weapons, looking for one that was functional. They couldn’t all be broken. The nearest armories were sub-armories—small caches hidden in the walls—and Mason doubted even Tom could access them.

  “What are you doing here?” a man said behind them, softly. Mason spun around, almost tripping over one of the bodies.

  Ensign Michael, a portly recruit not much older than twenty, stood in the doorway, frowning at them. Mason remembered him from the crew meet-and-greet when the Egypt left port two weeks earlier. He had two black eyes and a patch of burned skin on his neck.

  “I know for a fact you’re not supposed to be roaming the halls,” he said, so calmly Mason wondered if he was in shock.

  “We’re last years,” Mason said. “My sister—” He was about to say his sister was captain now, and he was going to help her no matter what, but that would’ve sounded terrible with Tom standing right next to him. “We need weapons.”

  Ensign Michael nodded and entered the armory, stepping carefully over the fallen soldiers; Mason hadn’t quite looked at them yet, and he didn’t plan to. Ensign Michael unlocked one of the still-glowing panels on the wall and swung it open. There were more weapons inside, unscathed.

  “Hand P-cannons,” he said, pulling out three handheld photon cannons that resembled ancient handguns, back when humans made their weapons out of explosive powder and projectiles. The plastic barrels glowed, a swirling mixture within that shifted between green, white, blue, and yellow. “They pack a punch. But promise me that if I give them to you, you’ll hide and use them for defense only. We should have these Tremist dogs cleaned up shortly.” His voice was watery and he was sweating through his suit. The black fabric was stained darker under his armpits and around his neck.

  Mason hoped he was right, but he didn’t see anyone around to help carry out that threat. They were on their own.

  “Promise me,” Ensign Michael said again.

  “We promise,” Tom said. The lie came so easily that Mason wondered if Tom had a lot of practice.

  “Good. Now go hide.” He looked down at the floor. “I have to take care of this.”

  Mason took his P-cannon and left with a nod to Ensign Michael. He needed to find his sister. Now. Tom and Merrin followed him, turning on their P-cannons. The handheld devices whined to life then quieted. Mason could feel the heat of it in his hand. The trigger was touch-sensitive, so pressing harder would create a more powerful energy burst. He planned on squeezing as hard as he could.

  They passed windows on the way back, but they only showed more dark space. It was impossible to see the Tremist ship from this angle. Mason was heading toward the bridge, since that was the most logical place to find his sister. Merrin and Tom seemed on board, since they didn’t ask where he was leading them. This part of the ship was quiet, but he could hear shouts from many corridors away and the constant background hum of weapons. The air moved hard, briefly, ruffling his hair; an energy weapon had probably cut through the Egypt’s hull, creating a hole that sucked at the atmosphere until the auto-sealer could plug it. They’d been told on day one not to panic if there was a stiff and sudden breeze.

  In the elevator, Merrin stepped to the front. “I should go first. I’m the best with a P-cannon,” she said. “Last year I won the competition.”

  That was true, but Mason had come in second by 1.5 points, and he figured they were about equal in skill. The night before the contest he hadn’t slept well because David Schatz, the cadet who slept in the bunk above him, wa
s snoring loud enough to vibrate the water in the glass Mason had on his shelf. He wanted to go first, but if she truly was a better shot, it wouldn’t make sense.

  “We move fast,” Mason said. “Once we’re in there, take out your targets as quickly as you can. Don’t hesitate.” It wasn’t much as far as plans went, but Mason didn’t know what to do besides assaulting the bridge while they had surprise on their side.

  “Worry about yourself,” Tom said.

  The door opened on the corridor that allowed access to the bridge, the same one Susan had dragged him across not so long ago. The first doorway to the bridge was just twenty feet away, across the hall to the left. The angle was too deep to see inside. Mason held his breath, listening. He heard a man’s voice inside the bridge, too faint for any details. No way to tell how many Tremist there were, and how many ESC.

  Merrin stepped into the corridor first, but Mason stayed with her; they could go together. He reached the opposite wall first, and pressed himself to it, then inched closer to the door. The man spoke again: “Who is captain here?”

  “I am,” Susan said.

  Mason peered around the corner.…

  And saw his sister, face bruised, on her knees, along with a few other officers he’d seen earlier on the bridge.

  His sister’s eye, the one that wasn’t swollen, found him peeking around the doorway, and the sadness and defeat he saw in it was enough to steal the resolve from the strongest ESC soldier.

  But that wasn’t what made his blood freeze.

  Standing among the Tremist, talon at the ready, was the Tremist King himself.

  Chapter Six

  Of the Tremist King, Mason only knew that he wore a long black cape, and that his oval mask was not mirrored like the others’, but rather a perfect black. Like staring into a black hole. His armor wasn’t the standard shimmery purple-black, either, but dark red, like he’d been dipped in blood and left to dry. An image of him had circulated through the ESC with a kill-on-sight order. There was a rumor he once boarded the SS Italy and killed every crew member with his bare hands. When Mason was a first year, an older cadet told him the king liked to eat human skin to become stronger, but Mason hadn’t believed him. Human skin probably wasn’t any more nutritious than anything else.