Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (29 page)

Reagan had gathered the whole UEG fleet—all six
battleships and the smaller company ships—to Coriol. The time to watch and wait
was over. He was leaving the company ships to watch Galo’s ship above the city
and taking his battleships into orbit to assess the rest of the alien fleet. He
wanted to see these orbiting ships for himself, and show them that the best of
Minea’s defenses were not afraid to engage. Perhaps just knowing they were
willing to fight would scare the aliens away.

The aliens had never responded directly to their
hails. Though they had announced their presence and stated their supposed
purpose in each city, they had not complied with requests and had not
communicated over the hailing frequency the humans opened for the purpose.

Reagan walked beside his daughter onto
Champion’
s
bridge with a strange sense of calm. Though he did not know what was coming and
he did not know his enemy, he knew these ships and he knew his troops.

The commander’s chair stood empty, waiting for
him. He gestured Kaia to a seat near the comms table and noted her buckling in
before he hailed the six other ships preparing to launch. Images of their
captains appeared like playing cards on his comms screen.

“We’re taking these birds up as a unit. I don’t
know what the Asgre will do, but we don’t want them picking us off one by one.
We move together until we’re in orbit, then, if there’s not an immediate
threat, we’ll group and move to defensive positions. If, as I suspect, we’ve
got an Asgre welcoming party up there, then warp to your safety coordinates and
we’ll try to come in behind them. We’ll rendezvous at 2600.”

“How many ships are we facing, commander?” asked
Nieman, the relatively new captain of
Vigilant
.

Reagan shook his head. “At last count, fifteen.
But they’re appearing all over up there. I don’t know how many there will be by
the time this is over.”

The other, more experienced captains kept their
mouths shut. They had trained for this, and he felt from them an almost
impatient anxiousness to get it started, whatever was going to happen.

Six ships. Nearly fifty times that many lives. He
glanced at Kaia. Perhaps bringing her along had been a bad idea. Reagan
dismissed that thought and ordered the launch.

Reagan saw them through the observation windows
surrounding him as each ship lifted from its secure place on the ground. Five
sleek ships around him, rising like steam from the liftstrip. He smiled wryly
as he noticed the difference in the captains evident in their ships’ ascents.
Unity
,
captained by veteran Halo Moscovy, shot straight up, unwavering and putting all
she had into the launch. Moscovy didn’t wait around for anything, barely even
orders.

Tenacious
went up a couple hundred swift meters at a time, pausing briefly as its
captain, Brus Travers, checked the situation before proceeding.

Nieman’s ship brought up the rear, cautious if
not scared. “Easy
Vigilant
,” Reagan said into his communicator, “don’t
get panicky.”

As they cleared the atmosphere, Reagan saw at
least twenty ships, probably more, spread like stars across space outside the
atmosphere.

“Insta-Warp us to safety coordinates,” Reagan ordered.
He didn’t know if the Asgre ships would fire, but he wasn’t sticking around to
find out. He watched his little fleet as they disappeared, then reappeared at
the safety coordinates in the shadow on the other side of Minea.

But only five ships, including
Champion
,
arrived. Reagan swore as he realized that
Vigilant
was not with them. He
heard the buzz of the “shots fired” alarm and punched
Vigilant’s
call
sign into his locater. The locater screen showed, to his horror, that she was
surrounded by four Asgre ships. Nieman was panicking—it wasn’t the Asgre, it
was
Vigilant
that was firing.

Into his communicator, Reagan barked, “
Vigilant
,
cease fire! Repeat, cease fire!” Then, to Captain Daring, his pilot, he hissed,
“Get me back over there!”

They warped in above the knot of ships just in
time to see the Asgre return fire on
Vigilant
. Reagan whirled in his
chair, trying to get a better look at the situation, but their angle was wrong.

“Take us parallel!” he called. As the ship began
to move down and behind one of the Asgre’s bowl-like vessels, he felt a hit
rock
Champion.

“We’re taking fire, sir!” the weapons chief
cried, readying the weapons.

“Hold your fire, Brinks! We don’t need any more
shells flying around out here!” Reagan commanded. Then, “Evasive maneuvers,
Daring! Now!”

He felt the ship shift under him and heard the
hum of the engines as she warped swiftly around the circle of enemy ships.

He could see
Vigilant
now, as she took
volley after volley of explosive projectiles. Though half her armor plating was
hanging askew, leaving the delicate engine room circuitry exposed, Nieman wasn’t
warping out of there. He continued to stream his own missiles at the Asgre
ships haphazardly, using up, Reagan could see, his supplies much too quickly.

He tried hailing
Vigilant
. “Vigilant, do
you copy?” but all he heard on the comms was the ragged breath of the terrified
new captain. He switched tactics. “Nieman, Nieman! Disengage and get out of
here!”

All he heard was a shriek and another explosion.

Reagan shook his head. This would be over in
minutes, one way or another. “How long to get the electroion magnetic links
online?” he asked the engineering chief to his left.

The man looked at him with terrified eyes. “The-the
e-links, sir?”

Reagan could see that the chief didn’t want to go
in there. Neither did he, but there wasn’t another choice. “How long?” he
demanded.

“Five minutes, sir.”

“No good. We have to get in there now.”

“There’s just not enough power, sir.”

Kaia spoke up from her seat at the far side of
the room. “Pull the power from the comms reservoir.”

Reagan saw the chagrin pass over the engineering
chief’s face and knew the man had thought of it, too, but didn’t want to do it.

“Pull it,” he barked.

The engineering chief punched a series of keys. “E-links
on line, sir,” he said grudgingly.

When Reagan looked back at
Vigilant
, he
saw a gaping hole where the engine room used to be. She was blackened and
battered and taking more hits every second. On his comms link, Nieman was
wailing.

“Get us in there, Daring.”

Before Reagan could turn to see if Daring was
complying, he felt his head spin with the intense movement of a short-space
warp.

They were immediately below
Vigilant.

“E-links!” he shouted, punching the buttons in
front of him to bring the topside cameras online. There he saw the glow as the
e-links fired up and he felt the rocking thud as
Champion
became one
with
Vigilant
.

“Warp to safety coordinates!” he shouted, feeling
the maneuver start before he finished speaking.

His last look at the Asgre ships surrounding them
was oddly reassuring. He saw spots of atmosphere venting out of the ships into
the void of space. Where
Vigilant
’s erratic shots had made contact, they
had scuffed and pierced the plating of the ships.

Perhaps the humans were only outnumbered, not
outgunned.

***

When they were safely back in Coriol, Reagan set
the
Vigilant
on the landing strip and ordered the e-links shut down.
Daring maneuvered his ship sideways and set down beside it. Reagan watched the
medical personnel flood onto Vigilant and turned to his engineering chief. “I’ll
have your dismissal ready by the end of the day. Collect your pay at the
office.”

The man saluted and left the ship. The next time
he looked up, Reagan saw Kaia sitting in the Engineering Chief’s seat, dialing
some knobs and punching some numbers.

“What are you doing?” he asked, forgetting to erase
the commanding edge in his voice.

“He didn’t shut the YEN drive down, sir,” she
said, looking her father in the eye. “I was taking it off line so it didn’t
overheat and fracture its frame. YEN drive frames are plentiful on Earth, but
mighty hard to find out here.”

Though Reagan was weary and the sight of those
ships had sunk into his soul, he smiled slightly. His daughter had always had a
way of surprising him.

“Looks like
Champion’
s got a new
engineering chief,” he said.

Kaia shook her head, “I don’t know,” she put a
hand to her temple. “I—forget things sometimes. What if I freeze during a
critical moment?”

Reagan looked at her. He had always been fiercely
proud that she was his daughter. Even now, seeing her lined face and the
insecurity in her eyes, he was in awe of her.

“I’m different,” she said, “and it scares me.”

“Sure you’re different.” He had crossed to stand
beside her, and he leaned against the console, locking her eyes with his. Kaia
searched his face as he went on. “I know that some of your memories are fading.
But I’ve seen you studying those manuals. I’ve seen you building. I think that
your engineering knowledge is sharper than it’s ever been, even if other things
aren’t.” He paused. “I’ve heard you talk about technology that’s a hundred
years old as if you worked with it yesterday. I trust your engineering
abilities. Don’t abandon everything about yourself just because some things are
changing. Of course you’re different, Kaia. Aging makes us all different—but it
doesn’t make us less.”

***

This planet was beginning to anger Galo. The
humans were defensive and standoffish, carrying on mining the orange mineral
and ignoring his attempts to communicate with them. They seemed completely
ignorant of common courtesies vital to intergalactic peace, like responding to
hails.

This morning they had entered space and fired on
his ships, two of which were still filled with cargo. If those shipments got
damaged, his reputation would slide even further than the
delays
had
caused it to already.

He had forgotten how infuriating it was to deal
with young civilizations unused to interacting with other species. Their first
response was either total delight or complete fear. This species fell into the
second category.

He would have to get more aggressive with the
humans. If they wouldn’t tell him where the Vala were, he would get out and
find them himself.

“Ready the away suits,” he barked at Kal and
Uumbor. “And get me a team of mercenaries. I’m going out.”

On the third day of Ethan’s illness, Aria brought
in her new guitar, crafted by one of their passengers. She sat down next to
Ethan’s bed, tightening a string here and there, feeling uncharacteristically
self-conscious as she began to strum and sing a song that was popular back on
Earth before they left, a lifetime ago.

“From
the dark

To
the light,

You’ve
always made

Ev’rything
all right.

Now
you’re three planets away,

Out
of reach, out of sight,

And
no matter how hard I try,

It’s
not all right, tonight.

I’m
watchin’ for you,

Comin’
through the blue—

Come
back and then,

My
love, never,

Never,

Never
leave again.”

 And, like flowers blooming, Ethan’s eyes opened.

Aria dropped the guitar and found herself on her
knees beside the bed, Ethan’s face in her hands.

“Ethan,” she said, as softly as she could, “can
you hear me?”

Ethan blinked. She felt a sob welling up and
quickly reached down to kiss his forehead.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in a
whispered rush, “just weeks. I can’t imagine how it was for you—” her voice
caught, “all those years.”

The muscles around his mouth twitched, just
slightly. She could see he was trying to smile. He was coming back to her, and
even as she watched, he was gaining strength. She saw it in his eyes.

Aria had only seen him heal once, when he was
slicing apples and the blade scored his index finger. Then, it had been so fast
she’d almost missed it. The blood had been flowing onto the wooden cutting
board, and her eyes found the split in his skin. She had reached for it,
instinctively, and watched as it knit itself, one side to the other, paling to
scar tissue before her eyes. Ethan had hastily wiped the blood off, and she had
taken his hand in hers, running a finger over the smooth wound.

They had not talked about it. It had simply become
a part of who he was.

Now, though, she saw his struggle. She saw that
his body was healing, but not fast enough for his mind. She saw, in his
desperate eyes, him willing his body to mend. His eyes flicked around the room,
as if he were trying to orient himself.

Aria drew herself away from him and pulled a
corner of the blanket down from the window. The room brightened slightly, and
she watched Ethan. He didn’t flinch, just laid still with his eyes resting on
her.