Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (23 page)

The encounter had taken less than a minute, but
the sight of the woman was burned into Aria’s brain. Suddenly, she didn’t feel
safe. Even more than the cough, she feared this new disease. She stepped
quickly to the stroller, assessing her children, a fierce sense of protection
welling in her.

Marise was speaking to her, and Daniel’s voice
brought her his mother’s words: “She says that’s why you have to listen to the
doctors. You have to be smart. Mother’s friend was eating berries she found in
the park, and a few days later, she started getting the marks. She has another
friend with the marks who walked home in the rain last week without an umbrella
and got too wet and cold. She thinks those things are . . .”
Aria heard the word again, tubba, and knew he was hesitating to speak it. In
fact, when he spoke again, he softened it: “Foolish.”

Aria was beginning to wonder herself.

“Daniel, are there others with the marks?”

He nodded. “Several people have gotten them
lately. I have a friend who has them. He’s very sick.”

“What are the doctors saying?” Saras employed
many doctors, and there were ample health services in the city.

“It seems everyone gets a different answer.” So
they didn’t know either, then. Aria felt a knotting anxiety. She needed to get
her children home.

She glanced down as Polara handed her doll to
Merelda.

“You keep her,” Polara said, “and play with her
every day.” Aria was proud of her.

Merelda held the doll with reverence. Her sister Nallie
stroked its string hair and ran a gentle finger over its painted face.

As Aria pushed the stroller out the door, she
heard the little girls calling in unison: “Dama! Dama!”

Galo felt an intense darkness threatening to
engulf him. Every effort he made was coming to nothing. He had tried to use the
new information Elencha had given him to locate the Vala on the little blue
planet he’d been circling. He had planned to collect his property and be on his
way. He had deliveries to make.

But he was no tracker. It had taken him and his
first assistant and scanner specialist, Uumbor, a few cycles just to get the
scanning equipment calibrated to detect not only Vala life signs, as he’d been
scanning for, but also the unique Vala trail that they left behind while in
their sleeping state, which Elencha had revealed to him. To calibrate the
equipment, they’d tethered one of his remaining Vala children to the ship and
floated her into space, running various scans on her until the sensors could
detect the Vala trail with ease.

As they had worked, he’d watched the Vala, so
seemingly weak, enter her sleeping state and become fortified against the
dangers of space that would kill him in seconds. When they pulled her back in,
she awoke unscathed. Such a valuable asset.

But they’d been scanning the planet for many
cycles now and even the new scans were returning nothing. Continent after
continent he scanned, waiting for the ping of the sensors that would reveal
where his slaves had gone. But continent after continent the sensors remained
silent.

“Scan this continent for any sign of a Vala trail,”
Galo demanded. Uumbor conducted the scan.

“Still nothing, sir.”

 That’s when Galo began to worry. He knew they
were here. They couldn’t have traveled anywhere yet. But what if the Vala had
not simply fled? What if they’d been stolen and were now being hidden from him
by someone on this planet? Their abilities were valuable beyond measure. Anyone
who learned of them would want the Vala for their own.

“Who is living on this planet, and where are
they?” he demanded.

Uumbor punched a pattern on his keyboard.

“They are the human race,” he said, “uninteresting.
Mostly industrial. Class 3.”

Galo nodded. That was good. If it came to
fighting, they were well-matched, and he would have a slight advantage.

The scan screen showed an outline of the planet.
Most of it was dark, but a corner of one continent showed a few red dots:
settlements. They were halfway around the planet from Galo’s Cliprig. There was
no civilization on this side. At least if there was a battle there wouldn’t be
many of these humans to fight.

Galo opened his fleet communications line. He
summoned eight ships and put the rest of his fleet on standby. “Have your Vala
ready at all times,” he said. “If I summon you, you must be here immediately.”

The ships that appeared around him in orbit were
his best-armed, but not his most agile. They were mostly skybarges, with two
windcraft in case he needed quicker maneuvering.

“I’m going around to those settlements,” he told
his ships over the communications line. “Stay with me.”

Galo was skilled at controlling the big ship, and
they were soon hanging in a steady orbit far above the settlements on the other
side of the planet. He squinted at the screens and spoke forcefully to Uumbor
at the scanner. “Scan for Vala life signs in these settlements.”

“I’m not showing any Vala here, either, sir.”

Galo emitted a low growl, and took some
satisfaction as his subordinates flinched.

“Then we will need to take a closer look,” he
said.

If they could descend, get closer and make a few
passes over the landscape, his scanners may be better able to detect the Vala,
or he may be able to see where this race of humans could be hiding them. His
success as a shipper had afforded him sophisticated scanning equipment. It
would take equally sophisticated technology to shield something from it. And if
this race was sophisticated enough to hide the Vala, they were probably
sophisticated enough to use them. He might not get his slaves back without a
fight.

Galo detested combat, but had done it before to
protect his interests, and it was in his interest to reclaim the Vala. The
Cliprig was a transport ship, but it was well-armed. He could handle any
attacks.

Galo contacted the eight ships which had just
arrived above the planet. “Hold in orbit,” he said, “and do not advance on the
planet. I will go down and begin scans. Stay on alert.”

As the Cliprig descended through the exosphere, a
pesky orbital defense system moved to interfere, so Galo sent a few well-timed
pulses out and the system was disabled. It may not have been so easy with
manned defenses, but these were remote controlled and automated. He liked
automation, because once he saw the pattern, he saw how to disrupt it. You didn’t
become the greatest shipper in the universe by not knowing how to deal with
orbital defenses.

When the orbital defenses were out of the way,
and Galo was sure they posed no threat, he began the descent.

***

Reagan’s checks were complete. It had taken over
two weeks, and a lot of overhauling, but Lumina was as ready now as Flynn or
Coriol. Reagan took some comfort in that as he walked down the liftstrip next
to Lumina’s chief defensive coordinator, listening to the defense plan as the
man gestured at various locations around the base. The days had turned warm
here in Lumina, and Reagan wiped beads of sweat off his brow under his hatband.
Besides the big battleship standing at the ready in an open hangar on the left
side of the liftstrip, the base looked no different than when Reagan had
arrived. But it felt different. Reagan had memorized every face, every piece of
artillery, every strength and weakness. He had reorganized and rescheduled and
though he couldn’t see it in the hangars to the left or the operations center
to the right, it felt more ordered and safer. Beyond the base, the circular
city of Lumina lay like a coin on the plain, and Reagan felt satisfaction
knowing that its inhabitants were better protected than they’d been two weeks
ago.

 Reagan flinched when his missive clamored with
news.

The orbital defenses were down. The automated
spheres that he had been counting on no longer stood between them and the alien
ship. He saw his newly-formed crisis team pouring out of the operations center,
heading across the liftstrip toward him.

“Report!” Reagan called as soon as they were in
earshot.

“The defenses are down, sir, and it seems that
the ship is descending.”

“How can they be down?” Reagan growled.

“It appears to have been caused by energy pulses
of some kind, sir.”

“Weapons?”

“It’s unclear. They could be. Or it could have just
been energy emissions from their thrusters. We’re not sure.”

Reagan swore. He couldn’t act on that. He had to
know for sure if it had been an aggressive move.

“We do know that it only took seconds, sir. The
ship swept the orbitals aside like a little Yynium dust in the air. One minute
we heard the alarms blaring that the ship was coming closer to the planet, the
next the missiles were firing, and the next the orbitals were offline.”

This was the problem with remote-controlled
defenses. If he’d had men up there, they could have evaluated and responded
quickly enough to do some good.

Reagan glanced around, at the wide liftstrip, the
offices, the hangars, and tried to recapture the feeling of security he’d had
moments ago. The sun was just as bright, the buildings just as solid, but it
all seemed more tenuous now, somehow. Mechanics and servicemen moved about the
strip, most performing their duties purposefully, some taking a break near the
big doors of the hangars. Reagan started to snap at them to get back to work,
that something serious had happened, but the sight of a shadow on the liftstrip
stopped him.

Reagan tilted his head back and watched as a big
ship dropped slowly from the sky like a spider on a string. It was just as he
imagined an alien ship would be: an oblong beast spewing plasma exhaust. The
ship was squat and dark, made of a tarnished metal that gleamed dully in the
afternoon sun. It descended slowly, its exhaust burning red and adding to the
heat of the Minean afternoon.

The city lay in stunned silence.

Reagan glanced at the operations center and
willed himself to move. Calling on his battle experience, he grappled with his
fear and relegated it to a corner of his spinning mind as he strode across the
strip. The crisis team followed, and he noted that the other personnel were
following protocol and taking shelter in the bunkers.

He entered the wide lobby, walked down the hall
past the office that had been his for the past two weeks, and hurried to the
communications center.

When he arrived, it was obvious they’d forgotten
their situation response training. The room was total chaos. The communications
officers were talking, shouting, yelling to each other over the blaring
airspace perimeter alarms. Out the window, the dark ship moved slowly down
through the sky, growing larger with every passing second.

Regan had never been under alien attack before.
He had fought human foes, had fought natural disasters, had fought space itself
once, but never an alien force. Only two people he knew had that experience. He
spun the dial on his missive and called his daughter.

Sitting against the warm wall in the heat of the
sauna room, Ethan could see the crew around him, heads on their packs,
illuminated by the soft glow of their shoulder lights. Traore’s big Maxlight
had gone out back in Bleak House, and he’d left it there. The shoulder lights
would last longer, but not much. The crew reminded him of his children when a
long day had overtired them and drained them of their ever-present energy:
sprawled out, sleeping soundly.

Ethan himself had slept again, dreaming, for the
first time since the crash, of sunshine and the laughter of his children. Now,
as he sat looking over the four surveyors, he pushed back the fear that he
would never hear that again.

He breathed deeply and slowly, pulling in the
warm air of the chamber. He remembered what his friend Yi Zhe had said about
qi, that it runs like water through the world, in and out of people and things,
and that one must not block it. One must let it flow.

He let his thoughts flow. Aria’s green eyes came
to his mind. She would love to see these things, if they were on a vacation
instead of buried alive. He ached to talk to her, ached for her company. He
longed to hold his children.

Brynn stirred and sat up, pink-cheeked in the
glow of the reflected light off the curtain formation. In fact, the whole room
had a pinkish tinge.

Brynn scooted over to him. “That was wonderful,
what you did for him. I heard you sing.”

Ethan looked at his scuffed boots and deflected
the compliment. “How did you even hear me? You were three people away.”

“It was a pretty tight fit, and we were pretty
still, waiting back there. How did you remember those words?”

“I’m a linguist. Words come easily to me.”

He saw her shake her head in the half-light. “That’s
pretty amazing.”

***

The crew napped throughout the day, enjoying the
warmth and freedom of the Sauna Room so much that they took off their coveralls
and slept atop them to provide some cushioning from the unyielding stone floor
of the cave. They were arranged in a loose circle, where they could see each
other as they talked about their plans for escape and about what they had
waiting for them back home. Restored and warm, they turned festive, and Ndaiye
even coaxed a few chuckles out of Maggie. They worked especially hard to cheer
Traore. He had not returned to his usual self after the tunnel. He remained
quiet and jittery, crying out sometimes in his sleep. When he wasn’t sleeping,
he sat at the edge of the circle, his back against the warmest wall, and stared
down at his hands. Brynn sat beside him now, her hand entwined with his,
chattering about her danceball team back on Earth and how they’d taken the
championship when she was nine.

Ethan watched for any response from Traore. There
was none. Brynn reached around herself and dragged her pack to the middle of
the circle. Digging inside, she pulled out a packet of fried, salted bean
crisps. She tore them open and poured a few of the crisps onto her hand, then
held them in front of Traore. Ethan saw the man’s eyes dart up to hers, then he
carefully took a few and put them in his mouth.

“Here,” Brynn said, passing them around the
circle. “Let’s have a feast!”

Ethan let the savory, crunchy beans roll around
in his mouth for several minutes before swallowing them. After days of dry
nutrition bars, they tasted amazing. He passed them to Maggie, who graced him
with a rare smile before having some herself. When she passed them along, she
dug a package of sweetbean candies out of her pack and shared it around. There
was a celebratory feeling, and for the first time in days, Ethan felt his
breath come a little easier. When the chewy candies passed from Brynn to Ethan,
he held them like a gift.

Ethan wanted to give something, too. He dug in
his pack and pulled out the apple. Though a bit bruised, it looked delicious.

“Try this.” He handed it to Maggie, who crunched
into it and passed it to Ndaiye. The man scooted his makeshift bed closer as
she handed it to him, anticipation in his eyes. A hint of a smile played at the
corner of Ndaiye’s mouth as he tasted it, then laid it gently in his cousin’s
hand. Traore took a bite, and Ethan saw his eyes close briefly. He passed it to
Brynn.

“Mmmmm.” Brynn breathed as she savored a taste of
the apple, then passed it to Ethan.

He took a bite. He closed his eyes as he reveled
in its sweet, tart flavor and bright finish. He glanced around at the others
and they were smiling. The five passed the fruit around again and again, taking
small bites and making each bite last. They savored each drop of sweet, sticky
juice. They even ate the core, spitting the seeds out with little clicks onto
the stone floor.

Ethan chewed the last jagged bite of the core and
swallowed it, feeling a disappointment that made him think of the time when
Polara used all her scrip on candy and cried when it was gone.

From the corner of his eye he saw movement and
jumped as he heard a tiny scratching. He looked, expecting the horrible cave
krech, but instead caught a glimpse of a small, pink rodent. It snatched one of
the apple seeds and scurried back into the arc of darkness surrounding the
little group.

“Did you see that?” Ndaiye exclaimed. “It didn’t
have any eyes!”

“Makes sense,” Maggie spoke for the first time
since they’d started the apple, “there’s no light down here. He doesn’t need
eyes.”

“How did he know the seed was there?”

“He heard it, or smelled it.”

“Many animals have heat sensors. Maybe it could
feel the seed.”

“Here’s another one,” Brynn said softly as one
made its way toward her. Brynn didn’t cower from it. In fact, she reached out
and picked up a nearby seed, tossing it closer to the little rodent. It
snatched the seed, then sat up and chewed it. Soon, several of them had come
out to clean up the seeds.

Ethan watched them scamper out into the light,
their little noses twitching under the smooth pink skin where their eyes should
have been. They didn’t move hesitantly, instead scurrying purposefully forward,
finding the seeds, and eating them without fear. They had pink pointed ears and
seemed aware of any little sound the crew made. Ethan found himself being as still
as possible so as not to scare them. He missed living things. The deprivation
of the caves made him appreciate all the little things he’d taken for granted
above ground.

The little rodents had protruding front teeth and
huge claws, but neither looked like they’d be much use for defense. They were
comically large, like costume accessories, and Ethan assumed they were great
for digging. The room was quiet except for their scratching.

“Have you read the Callitas Chronicles?” Ndaiye
asked, referring to a text containing Klaryt myths.

“I have,” Ethan said.

Ndaiye scoffed. “You probably read it in the
original language.”

Ethan had, in fact, and he grinned.

Ndaiye shook his head. “I read a translation, but
it was still really interesting.” He gestured at the little animals. “These
guys remind me of the Xyxos.”

“The who?” Maggie demanded, albeit more softly
than she usually spoke.

“They were gods, well, not gods, exactly—”

“Demi-gods,” Ethan helped out.

“Right. Demi-gods in the afterlife whose job was
to usher the dead to their assigned kingdoms. The Callitas thought of the
afterlife as a series of various paradises and purgatories arranged in a
complex web through the center of their planet, like these caves.”

Ethan could see the comparison. “There were
judges who made the rulings on where the soul of each person should go, then
the Xyxos would lead them through the labyrinth and leave them to their fate.
The judges couldn’t navigate the underworld. The story goes that after
centuries of seeing the terror on the faces of those they were leading to
purgatories, the Xyxos ignored the rulings of the judges and took pity on the
souls of the damned, leading them to paradises they hadn’t earned. When the
judges found out, the Xyxos were blinded as a punishment. They could no longer
see the faces of their charges, so they were not moved to disobey the rulings
of the judges, but the myth says that they knew the passageways and rooms of
the underworld so well that they still navigated with ease, even without their
sight.”

“So we’re in purgatory, then?” Maggie spoke up.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then
Ndaiye laid back on the warm rock and stretched out. “Nope. This feels more
like a paradise to me.”

 Ethan glanced back at the little rodents. The
Xyxos were said to know every corner of the underworld. These creatures
certainly seemed to know their way around as well. He wished he could be as
confident in the dark as these little Xyxos creatures. As the Maxlights had
gone out he couldn’t help feeling the dark of the cave closing around them
minute by minute like a tightening noose.

A rock clattered somewhere behind them, startling
the Xyxos, who froze, then fled, stuffing the last seeds into their cheeks and
scampering between and behind the columns, where they disappeared.

Watching them go, Ethan’s attention was drawn to
the magnificent formations all around the Sauna Room. In addition to the red
drapery formation, the far end of the cave had beautiful green splattermite
formations: stalagmites that had formed in big leaping droplets that were
frozen now in the midst of their action.

And behind them, where the top of the cavern
sloped to meet its floor, the roof was covered with brilliant, sparkling white
popcorn formations.

Ethan wandered over toward them, inspecting their
glistening surfaces. Short and blunt, the bulbs of calcite stuck out along the
ceiling and covered the back sides of several of the stalactites and
stalagmites. It was beautiful. He followed it up the cave ceiling. About
halfway across the room it tapered down to a few knobby protrusions and then
stopped altogether. He shone the light along the edge of it. Then something
else caught his attention.

But it wasn’t possible. Ethan couldn’t be seeing
what he thought he was seeing. At the top of the cavern, at the very limit of
his light, carved into the stone wall, were the curves and cusps of Xardn
symbols.

He scrambled closer to them, extending his arm
above him to get the best view he could. Xardn, the dead alien language he had
spent his life studying, was beautiful wherever it was found, but here, carved
into the smooth stone, with the light glancing off the crystalline formations
around it, it was especially so.

Ethan squinted, trying to translate. Something
was off. Never mind that they were nowhere near the Circinus galaxy and that no
record of Xardn-speaking populations existed here on Minea, and never mind that
they were hundreds of feet into a cavern where no one should ever have been,
there was something wrong with the Xardn sentence he was looking at. There was
a symbol he didn’t recognize, and the arrangement of the symbols was wrong. As
it came to him, he shook his head in disbelief. Ikastn. It was in Ikastn.

Ikastn was a slightly altered form of Xardn. It
had been used in the Circinus Galaxy, perhaps still was used, but Ethan had
never heard of a modern population of Ikastn speakers.

The real puzzle was what it was doing scratched
into the soft limestone of a cave this far from the Circinus Galaxy. And it
looked freshly carved. The symbols stood out in pale relief. They weren’t worn,
as they would have been if the cave’s winds and water had scrubbed them for
centuries. Someone had been here. Recently.

Ethan swung the light around the room, streaking
it across the barren walls. He had felt the breeze so strongly in the tiny
tunnel. It had to be coming from this room. He ran the light across the
ceiling, fearing a tiny impassable hole like they’d found in the crystal room,
but saw nothing. The popcorn caught his attention again and he moved the beam
along its sparkling surface, then down where it grew on the backs of the
columns.

The backs of the columns. Why didn’t the popcorn
formations grow uniformly around the column? Could it be like moss on the trees
in the forest outside the cottage? The mosses liked the shadiest side of a
tree, often the North side, but always the side where evaporation was the
slowest.

But here, in the cave, it stood to reason that if
the popcorn was growing on one side and not the other, there had to be some
difference in the rate of evaporation. The popcorn would grow where the
evaporation was quicker. The side where wind dried the stone more quickly. He
carefully stepped between the stalagmites and slipped to the back wall of the
chamber, where a jagged crack gaped open in the wall behind a huge column. It
was easily a meter and a half wide. Ethan flicked the light up. The crevice ran
about three meters up, but it grew more narrow as it ran, and at the top looked
no wider than a hand’s width.

The cool breeze blew out of it onto Ethan’s face.
He hadn’t realized exactly how hot the sauna room was. He shone his light down
the corridor, trying to determine if it closed off in a dead end or constricted
into another tight squeeze. It appeared to be a uniformly wide crack, and
though he couldn’t see the end, he felt the breeze distinctly. There must be an
outlet. He walked back to the group and told them about it.