The Black Stars (5 page)

“Why do I have a feeling,” Mason puffed, “that they would leave us behind if we lose them?”

“Because that's probably what would happen,” Tom puffed back.

The forest floor was thick with gnarly, curling roots, each one a hazard. Mason kept his knees high as he ran. They skirted the edge of a pit filled with bubbling black liquid. The smell in the forest was suddenly rotten, almost a feeling on his skin. Then all at once the lights ahead disappeared.

Mason realized something odd: there were no animal sounds coming from the forest. No chittering insects. The woods felt dead. The only sounds came from their lungs and feet and the rustle of their clothes.

Tom began to slow but Mason grabbed his arm. “Keep going!” he said, putting on a burst of speed.

A low moan came from the branches above them—
ErrmmmmmmmUHHH
—and then thick vines were unfurling from the darkness, dropping down and lashing at Mason and Tom. One coiled around Mason's wrist, tightened like a fist, and tried to yank him off the ground.

“The trees are alive!” Tom yelled.

“You don't say!”

Mason skidded to a stop, and a vine took the opportunity to curl around his neck. Little barbs on the vine dug into his skin, drawing beads of blood. Tom was suspended in the air, two vines holding him up by the arms. Mason growled in defiance, but it turned into a choking sound when the vine constricted and tugged, trying to lift him off the ground. He closed his eyes, let his gloves slide over his hands, then he clapped them together; a blade of pure electricity appeared. The lightning sword shone brightly in the darkness, crackling in his hands. Mason flicked his wrist, severing the vine around his neck. He dropped back to his feet as the severed length slipped from his shoulders. Then he leapt forward, swinging the sword in an overhand slash. The blade bit through Tom's vine with a sizzle, and the tree actually
screamed.
The scream wasn't just a reaction: it sounded angry. Spinning leaves began to drift down from above, but Mason ignored them, until one spun toward his neck and drew another bit of blood.

Mason grabbed Tom's ankle just as the second vine pulled them higher toward the canopy.

“Just let me go!” Tom said.

Mason didn't bother with a response. He opened his right hand, and the blade snapped out of existence. Then he shot a bolt of electricity from the same palm. It hit the vine a few inches above Tom's hand, and together they fell hard to the forest floor.

Tom groaned. “I think a root just impaled my kidney.”

“You're fine,” Mason said, pulling him up, batting away a few razor-sharp leaves. More vines were snaking down from the canopy. “Let's move!”

They started to run again, but the vines weren't giving up. Mason shocked the ones that came too close, but he couldn't get them all at once. A vine grabbed his ankle, and he fell to one knee. The other vines seemed to sense his vulnerability, and they turned away from Tom and shot toward him.

Mason felt something in his gloves, a kind of yearning, an urge to break free. The material was humming against his hands. He lifted them up, palms out, and released the pressure. A crackling dome of electricity snapped into place around him, severing all the vines within its radius. The veins of light curled and wove together, making the dome more and more opaque, until the dome solidified into pure violet light with a deep metallic sound, like plucking the galaxy's biggest guitar string. But just as soon as it formed, it disappeared, leaving the ground around him smoking and scorched. His head felt swimmy and his hands were buzzing with energy. He held them up to his face and stared. Around them, the vines were retreating slowly, almost respectfully.

Tom was staring at him, mouth agape. “Um…”

“Well, that's new,” Mason said.

“How…?”

“I have no idea.” Mason swallowed, then stood up on shaky feet. He shook his head to clear it and almost fell over. “We're too far behind.”

Tom was still staring at Mason, not with shock now but concern. “Are you okay?”

Mason shrugged. “Okay enough to get out of this place.” He thought he saw something then, a large shadowy form through the tree trunks. It had the shape of a man but was much taller and wider than any man could be. He blinked and it was gone, more shadows in its place.
Just nerves, and creepy trees,
he thought.

They broke into an easier jog in the direction the Rhadgast had gone. No more vines came near them. They ran for fifteen more minutes, until light appeared through the trees ahead. It grew brighter and brighter, until they stepped out of the forest. The Rhadgast school was just ahead.

 

Chapter Seven

 

The school was one enormous dome in a perfectly circular area clear of forest. It rose so high, Mason had to crane his head back to see the top. The dome was halved by a black line right down the middle, from top to bottom. To the left of the line, the dome was painted a deep crimson. To the right, the brightest violet. The dome was on the edge of a cliff: beyond it, the ground dropped away completely, and didn't rise again for many miles. In the hazy distance, an enormous mountain range was visible.

Mason suspected the dome was one half of a sphere, the other half hidden underground.

“I can't believe we're actually here,” Tom said, echoing Mason's thoughts. He reminded himself of their mission:
It's not to learn the ways of the Rhadgast. There is something happening in this school that has the ESC scared, and you're going to find out what it is.

He would also find the truth about his parents. No order would dim that desire or keep him from pursuing it.

The king's Hawk was parked next to the sphere, by a row of Sparrows, which were the needlelike fighters the Tremist deployed in space battles.

“They made us take the long way on purpose,” Mason said.

“Of course. If we couldn't make it through the forest, I guess we have no business being a Rhadgast, right?”

Tom had a point. Mason still felt weak from creating the electric dome. The gloves had taken something out of him to do that, and he couldn't help but wonder what else the gloves were capable of.

At the base of the dome, Mason saw the four Rhadgast waiting for them, so he just rolled his shoulders to loosen them up, then marched forward with his head held high. He might be here to train, at least officially, but Mason Stark was ESC first and always, and he would make them proud. If he couldn't live up to his impossible legend, he would still try his hardest.

Reckful began to clap as Mason and Tom approached. The four had removed their masks again, and Reckful was smiling. “How does it go? You clap your hands together, yes? To show approval?”

“You got it,” Mason said.

Reckful clapped a final time. “Wonderful! See, I'm learning.”

A huge door in the dome slid into the ceiling. Mason started toward it, but Reckful held up a hand. “I'm afraid we'll need those back, for the moment at least.” He was pointing at Mason's forearms, which hid his gloves.

Mason didn't want to give them up, but there wasn't much choice. He pulled them off and handed them to Reckful, who tossed them to one of the purple Rhadgast. “Perhaps you'll get them back soon,” Reckful said. “Though I'm hoping you have blood.”

Mason had no idea what that meant.

The closest purple Rhadgast made a rude sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sigh, but full of contempt; he kicked at the dirt.

“He cheated!” the other purple one said. “I have his gloves right here!”

“Not my fault you didn't take my extra pair,” Mason said. Reckful winked at him.

The open door was waiting. Together they walked through.

*   *   *

The next hour was a blur. Mason and Tom were ushered through a series of hallways, where they were scanned by lasers of every color. Their possessions, including their boots, which held their hidden communicators, were taken to another room. Mason didn't know what to do. He couldn't just say,
Um, actually, can I have my boots back? There's a device I need in there so I can spy on you guys.
They'd figure something out; they always did.

Mason and Tom put their uniforms in a bin reluctantly. Tom rubbed his thumb over the ESC insignia, staring down at it wistfully.

“We'll wear it again,” Mason said, before they walked into the next chamber, this one with hoses hanging from the ceiling. Here they were sprayed down with a sticky liquid that smelled a lot like pine sap. Once Mason and Tom were covered head to toe, they were doused in a second liquid that washed away the first.

The Tremist who decontaminated them (Mason assumed that's what they were doing, since they were definitely carrying germs alien to Skars on their skin) wore masks and never spoke to them, even when Mason tried to greet them.

“They must think we're dirty humans,” Tom quipped, and got a face full of spray for it.

The whole time, Mason wondered what would happen if they couldn't recover their com devices. Would the grand admiral send in a small team of Reynolds to retrieve them? Would he think Mason and Tom were dead, and declare all-out war? No, you didn't get to the head of the ESC by being an idiot, of that Mason was sure, or at least partially sure.

Toward the end, Mason and Tom were fitted with thin belts that had silvery discs embedded on the surface. A Tremist technician, speaking to them for the first time, explained, “These belts will allow you to control your movements in zero gravity, and they are never to be taken off. Do not try to remove them.”

So that's how they fly around!
Mason almost wanted to laugh, having guessed belts the first time, when he and his crew fought their first Rhadgast in the gravity-free bay. Mason winced as the weird plastic heated up and fused around his abdomen. He picked at the edge, but the belt was firmly in place, like it had melted to the skin. The silvery discs began to glow with a soft blue light.

Tom was picking at his, too.

“Try not to break it, Renner.”

Tom gave him a look; he was clearly not amused by all the poking and prodding.

The implants came last. Another Tremist, this one a tad friendlier than the one before, said, “This implant will allow you to understand the Tremist language as if it were your native tongue. Everyone in the school is not going to speak human just for your benefit, understand? This will be the last time anyone speaks your language here.”

Mason never saw the implant, but he felt the Tremist probing the base of his skull. “There is a two percent chance you will reject the implant and die immediately.”

Mason was about to protest, but something punched him in the back of his head, and then a cool liquid sensation spread throughout his brain. It was a different feeling than when he downloaded the history of the People on Nori-Blue. He'd unpacked that knowledge while he was unconscious aboard the Egypt, and now it was always waiting in his head, a part of him. He didn't have to study it. As part of his mission to spread the truth, he'd shared his knowledge with hundreds of ESC, and the king had done the same with his people. Scribes on both sides were re-creating the book from memory, and soon everyone would be able to read the history.

The sensation faded to nothing, and he could actually feel the knowledge, a new weight in his brain. He thought of the Tremist word for “sky” and realized there were many different languages on Skars. Not just different dialects, but different languages entirely.

“Implant successful.” The technician spoke now in the Tremist tongue.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Tom said, holding up his hands. “What did he say? About dying? Could you understand him just now?”

The technician held a cylinder to the back of Tom's head, and then Tom flinched, blinking rapidly.

“Congratulations,” the technician said. “You have survived.”

“Thank you.” Mason used the Tremist dialect preferred by the school (which he also inherently knew; the dialect was called Mhenlo dai Cross, which roughly meant “People of the Fields”). Mason had to stop and think about it to realize the words for “thank you” came out sounding like
pelly vos.
That's how natural the language now felt. What Mason really wanted to say was:
Don't ever operate on us again without our consent,
but he didn't.

“There are two chickens in the garden,” Tom said in the correct dialect. He caught Mason's eye. “What? Just testing it out.”

“If you're quite finished,” the technician said, “you're late for the address.” He held two folded sets of clothes in each hand. Mason took his and unfolded them. There were simple fitted pants, an undershirt, and a jacket that buttoned up the front, with a high collar and a long, rounded tail in the back. It was almost a robe but not quite. All of it was gray, he noted, not purple and not red. His gray boots were softer than his ESC boots and ended mid-shin.