Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (41 page)

Yi Zhe was speaking again. “Qi flows through
everything, like water. Block qi and you block the flow of power, ideas,
energy, everything. Water flows. Qi flows. We are out of balance. We are of the
water.” Yi Zhe almost smiled.

“What is it? Yi Zhe? What is it?” Ethan was
seeing more of their troops fall. They had to switch tactics.

Sergeant Nile was giving the order to fall back.
The weary troops retreated as Yi Zhe spoke in a high, urgent voice.

“Ethan, each of the elements has energy, and the
Asgre have strong fire energy.”

Ethan moved forward, toward the haggard group of
retreating soldiers, but Ye Zhe grasped his arm and held it.

Ethan could hear him talking over the melee in
front of them. “Fire energy. Fire energy.”

He turned to Ethan, understanding in his eyes. “Ethan,
our formations are wrong. Triangles are fire shapes. We are bringing them more
fire energy, when we must bring balance with our water energy.”

Ethan thought about stopping him, started to say
that there was no evidence of any of that, but he’d seen life energy in the
beings on Beta Alora. He knew it existed, and he admitted that he didn’t
understand it.

“Regroup!” Nile shouted, moving around the ragged
companies. As they retreated behind the ridge of stone that was all that was
left of the outside of the karst peak, the Asgre kept descending from their ships.
They did not follow the humans, instead going after the Vala who huddled
pitifully in the corners, unable to move through the flowstone walls of the
cavern. The trained troops turned, agitated, to their commander.

“We have to get back over there,” Ethan shouted.

“Wait! We’re changing the formation,” Nile
barked. “We’ll go with the flying star: Three trigons joined at one point. Come
on! Let’s hustle!”

Ethan moved to speak to Yi Zhe, but the little
man had captured Sergeant Nile by the shoulders. Ethan heard him: “No! A triple
triangle formation will increase the fire energy exponentially! If you want to
save those creatures, do not bring the Vala any more fire energy.”

Ethan knew military men. He worked with them in
the Colony Offices every day. He waited for Nile to laugh in Yi Zhe’s face, or
to shake his hands impatiently from his shoulders. As the companies made the
flying star formation, though, he saw Nile drape an arm around Yi Zhe’s
shoulders, leaning his head down to listen. They both looked up, catching Ethan’s
eye, and Nile waved him over.

“Has he told you this?” Sergeant Nile’s piercing
blue eyes held Ethan’s. Ethan felt the sweat dripping down his temples,
stinging in the cut Theo had given him earlier. He nodded.

“You’re the alien expert,” Nile challenged. “What
do you think of this?”

Ethan looked around. The medics were still
carrying people away from the first attempt. The trigon wasn’t working. He
thought about the life energies he had seen on Beta Alora, thought about the
vast realm of experience beyond what humans could see and touch and taste. He
thought about the Others of Beta Alora, and how he had to understand them in
order to defeat them.

“I think he’s a great master of balance and
harmony. I think he could be right.”

Nile’s eyes narrowed. Ethan could tell that he
was in a corner. He had a fraction of the troops he needed for this mission,
half the troops he did have were untrained, and his enemy was alien in every
sense.

“We’re going to try your formation,” he told Yi
Zhe. “We’ll pull back if it doesn’t work.”

Sergeant Nile turned to his troops and bellowed: “Listen
to Yi Zhe here! We’re not doing the triple trigon!” He gestured to Yi Zhe.

“Move like water!” Yi Zhe cried to the troops. “In
waves, together. Be aware of those next to you and stay near them. Don’t break
the curve of the wave. We must counter their fire energy with water energy.
Water destroys fire!” He walked along the troops, glancing at their uniforms
and weapons. Yi Zhe took a weapon from a soldier near him. The weapon was
covered with a thick rubber casing, to make it easy to hold and keep it from
reflecting light in stealth situations. Yi Zhe pulled it off. The weapon shone,
its polished metal reflecting the scene around it.

He turned to the Sergeant. “We should also have
them remove the weapon covers,” Yi Zhe said urgently. “Reflective surfaces
strengthen the water energy.”

The Sergeant looked at Ethan, and Ethan nodded.
As he saw the changes in the battalion, standing shoulder to shoulder, a
confidence was growing in him. Yi Zhe was a master of things unknown to most
humans, and aliens were certainly unknown.

“Take them off,” Nile ordered. The soldiers
stripped the weapons, tossing the covers on the ground.

When they reentered the open chamber, Ethan was
sickened to see the cages behind the Asgre front lines being filled with Vala.

“Move in!” Nile cried. “And take them down!” The
humans peppered the mass of Asgre in front of them with a volley of shells,
which bounced off their suits almost harmlessly. The troops rushed in waves to
meet the Asgre mass. This time, instead of the fragmented formations, the
humans, like a living tide, advanced forward almost as one, their weapons
flashing in the light from the hovering ships overhead.

Ethan felt the wave of humanity crest against the
Asgre front line. He was pressed from in front and behind, tripping over the
boots of the soldier in front of him as the back waves of humans moved forward.

There was a long, breathless moment, and then the
Asgre began to fall.

Ethan crashed into an Asgre as the tide of
soldiers pushed him forward. He fired his weapon, but the alien’s suit blocked
the shell. He threw a blow at the skeletal face, felt its bones, sharp and
lancing, crunch beneath the mask. The Asgre raked him with razor-like hand
blades, and he felt the pressure across his torso, but the body armor of Ethan’s
uniform held. The creature used two of its arms to reach out and restrain Ethan’s
two arms, and then the other two grasped his head.

Ethan knew what was coming. The mercenary would
snap his neck.

But the creature suddenly began to blink and turn
his head, as if agitated. Ethan saw a beam of light dancing directly across the
creature’s eye slits in the mask. The creature released his head to shield its
eyes, and Ethan glanced to the side to see Traore catching the light from the
ship above with his shining weapon and bouncing the light into the Asgre’s
eyes. Ethan quickly landed a hard kick to its abdomen, and the creature let go,
staggering back and knocking down two other Asgre.

All around him, the Asgre were falling as the
human troops, their weapons flashing, poured forward. They washed through the
front line and Ethan angled for the cages. An Asgre mercenary grabbed him from
behind. Reaching behind him over his shoulder, Ethan grasped at the thin mask
covering the Asgre’s face and pulled. The Asgre grabbed his arm with an extra
hand and wrenched it, but Ethan didn’t let go and the mask tore away. The gas
from the creature’s suit hissed out, and Ethan felt a tremor shake him. He
stopped breathing, trying to turn from the gas. Grappling with the many arms,
Ethan ducked and spun, flipping the mercenary over hard onto the ground. The
creature lay gasping on the cavern floor.

Ethan glanced up to see Jin Feiyan, Yi Zhe’s
wife. She was fast, and she had moved quickly to the first Vala cage. She stood
almost reverently amidst the chaos, staying close to the human soldiers on
either side of her. She reached up and swung wide the gate. The Vala streamed
out around her. She had freed them. She looked up, toward her husband, with an
expression of newfound admiration.

Ethan gestured to the Vala, wishing he had not
left his translator in the cottage. “Run! He said in Ikastn, pointing to the
lights of the transport ships behind the troops. “Safety!”

As they liberated the Vala one cage at a time,
the Asgre began to retreat. Many of them lay on the ground, littering the
flowstone room with their bodies.

Three cages remained, each containing a few Vala.
The Asgre began to raise the remaining cages, and Ethan broke from the group,
leaping and scrambling up the flowstone, trying to reach the last few sad-eyed
Vala who they’d been unable to save.

As the cage-draped Asgre ships left the
atmosphere, Ethan slid down the flowstone, hunching on the rough, shining
floor.

Around him were the remnants of battle—fallen
Asgre and fallen humans lay across the room. Red stains seeped into the white
flowstone, dull in the weak evening light.

But as he looked past the battlefield, Ethan saw
the safe Vala, peering out of the transport. Their fragile, shimmering forms
caught what little light there was and cast it out from them, giving them the
ethereal glow he remembered from the cave.

They had saved him, had saved the whole crew. And
now, he had been able to take part in saving them. He felt, in his soul, a
balance, a harmony.

The troops were reassembling. Ethan stood and
worked his way through them. He sought out Yi Zhe. Searching for the right
words, he found none. Instead, he placed his hands together and dropped his forehead
to the master in a sign of respect. All the troops followed his lead. Yi Zhe
placed his hands together and returned the gesture.

When Reagan cleared his immediate vicinity, he
looked up to see that
Unity
was down, drifting like an empty sumna fruit
shell across the battlefield. He opened his mouth to speak an order to go get
them, but Asgre ships had moved in around him again and his attention was drawn
to dealing with them.

There were, Reagan realized, just too many. The
Minean fleet was too badly outnumbered, and even the advantage of their
superior weaponry and maneuverability was not enough to defeat these odds.

A transmission from the ground forces came. “Galo’s
ship is readying weapons! We need backup!”

“Daring!” Reagan remembered the enormous
batteries of guns on Galo’s ship.
Champion
was the only battleship they
had that had hope of matching them. “Turn us around. We need to get down to Coriol!”

“
Wisdom
, give us some cover,” Reagan
called, but it was too late. Six Asgre cruisers, apparently recognizing that
Champion
was making a move, warped in, surrounding them in every direction.

The flash of the weapons nearly blinded Reagan as
the Asgre opened fire simultaneously.

Reagan had time for a single command before the
volley hit. “Warp us out of here!”

Champion
shuddered as the shells found their target, nearly simultaneously. The weapons
chief returned fire, and
Wisdom
sprayed two of the ships with fire from
behind.

Reagan braced himself for the warp, but
Champion
stayed where she was. “Insta-Warp us to safety coordinates, Daring.” Reagan
repeated the order, but Kaia’s voice caught his attention.

“The YEN drive is off-line, Admiral. We’re not
going anywhere.”

Time seemed to slow for Reagan in that moment, as
the endless barrage of shells pummeled the ship and the flashing of the
YEN-drive warning light lit the bridge with an eerie red glow. The faces of the
children in Coriol, including the two he thought of as his grandchildren,
flashed before him as he frantically tried to think of a way out of this.

And then, suddenly, he felt a rumbling. Snapping
back, he glanced at his screens and saw it:
Vigilant
had warped in above
them and engaged e-links.

Reagan felt the ship shift as it warped and
watched the Asgre ships around him blur and disappear.

The last few shells landed, having warped with
them, as he looked out at the tranquility of the safety coordinates.

Vigilant
disengaged the e-links and warped away. “I’ll be back for you, sir,” Nieman
said.

“Good work, Captain.” Reagan called into the
comms after him.

Reagan soon found that being on the outside of
the action was worse. Sitting in the dark, watching the battle rage on their
screens, the crew sunk into a tense and somber silence.

Wisdom
continued to fight, and
Vigilant
engaged the first ship she met when she
warped back.

“Team up!” Reagan barked into his comms. “One
behind, one in front. Use your company ships, Captains!”

Advocate
went down, and then
Tenacious
. Reagan saw how this was going to end.

“Evade,” he said into the comms. “Run evasive
maneuvers and try to save yourselves.”

***

Aria and the Vala Svetal had taken the children
to the empty school playground, just to give them a little outing. It would
have been a glorious time if not for the suddenly descending Asgre ship.

Aria tried to get them in the school, but it was
locked. Looking frantically around, she saw Reverend Hardy’s little church two
blocks away. She took the children there.

The reverend welcomed them in, and she saw they
were not alone. Minz was there, and Hannah, and a few straggling adults who
were too old or too infirm to be standing ready to fight the Asgre ground
troops hand to hand.

She settled the children on the benches just as
Luis burst in the door. He came to Aria, and his presence was strong and
reassuring.

Reverend Hardy slid his missive in his pocket. “I’ve
talked to Coriol Defense Headquarters,” he said. “They’ll send help if they
can, but we can’t stay here. We must go. Now.” His big voice rang in the little
church. “The Asgre will be upon us. We must get the children to the safety of
the base!”

Aria herded the children, human and Vala, through
the bare streets as the last fingers of light began to disappear from Coriol.
She carried Rigel and held Polara’s hand as they moved.

She had to get them to the base. All of them. It
was the only place that could withstand an Asgre attack. But it lay across the
city, and the Asgre would be monitoring every sol train line. The Vala parents
had left these children in Aria’s care.

Aria moved with the children down the street.
They were nearly to the water plant, halfway to the base, and they were moving
quickly.

The reverberation of Galo’s engines above echoed
off the buildings around them. Aria glanced up to see the big ship moving over
the city.

As his ship drew nearer, Galo’s voice, amplified
by the communication system, rattled the windowpanes in the buildings around
them. “Deliver us the Vala children and your own will be saved.”

She heard a commotion behind her. She turned to
see a limping man dragging a Vala child from the group, striding toward the
sound of Galo’s voice. Aria raced toward him, leaving Polara near the other
children and shifting Rigel. She moved faster than she thought she could.

“Stop!” she grabbed the man’s arm with her free
hand.

He tried to shake her off. “Lemme be! Let ‘em
take their slaves and leave us in peace!”

Luis was suddenly beside her, scooping the Vala
child into his powerful arms and knocking the man backwards onto the street. “You’ve
never been a slave,” he said threateningly. “Or you wouldn’t be so eager!”

“Well, then, I’m not staying with you,” the man
said from the ground. “I hope they catch you all.” He scrambled to his feet and
limped off down the street.

As Luis strode back to the group, Aria got a look
at the Vala child’s face. So terrified before, its wrinkled face was now
relaxed in sleep, and tears were rolling down its cheeks. That was it. When
frightened, their safety mechanism was to go dormant. And it was then that they
were, somehow, useful to the Asgre. That was why the monsters kept the children
scared. The cruelty of it brought a wave of anger.

Galo began a countdown, every number like a blow
on their ears.

Aria clawed at Luis’s arm. “We’re not going to
make it to the base! We need to get them inside! Now!” She gestured to the
hulking mass of the water plant a block away. Luis nodded and the group began
to run. Minz was the quickest, and he got several of the children into the water
plant just ahead of the Reverend, who was helping an old woman and speaking softly
to several Vala children, who seemed to derive serenity from his words, though
Aria knew they couldn’t understand him.

Aria waited for Svetal to enter, then herded the
last of the children into the water plant just as the Asgre started strafing
the streets outside.

Aria watched from a window, cradling Rigel in her
arms. The Asgre lead ship, maneuvered, she knew, by Galo, was heading straight
for the water plant. How had he found them? How had he done it so quickly?

Their shelter shook under the barrage of the
Asgre’s shells. Suddenly, Rigel’s small hands were pawing her face. She pushed
them aside, trying to think.

“No, no, Ri. Mommy has to think.” What could she
do? How could she get them out of here?

Rigel grabbed at her ear. She felt the old
frustration. It was so hard to concentrate with a toddler demanding attention. “No,
Ri!”

And then the child laid his small hands gently on
her cheeks. His eyes searched her face. She looked down at him. As their eyes
met, Ri clumsily pushed forward and laid his forehead against hers. Aria gasped
as Rigel’s frantic thoughts flooded into her mind. She saw the new Taim field,
the Taim swaying wildly. They were speaking to Ri again and he had to convey
their message.

Through a sequence of colors and pictures, Aria
felt the call of the Taim. They wanted the children to come to them. Ri showed
her the children, human and Vala, running to the Taim. He grunted urgently.

She shook her head. “No, honey. We have to go to
the soldiers.” She tried to send him a picture of Grandpa Reagan in his
uniform.

Ri patted her cheeks angrily and wriggled,
sending her the picture of the Taim again. She felt that the Taim wanted to
protect them, that they wanted to protect her child as she had protected them.
It seemed crazy. A wide, open Taim field? What protection could they offer? She
tried to send the question back, but she couldn’t know if Rigel even understood
it, much less if he could transfer it to the Taim.

Aria choked on the thick, dusty air. She looked
around at the little group she was trying to save. She believed the message was
coming from the Taim, through Rigel. She believed that he believed there was
safety with them. But how could the Taim, even at their remarkable new height,
protect them?

Another barrage of artillery fell on the roof
above. The sound of the exploding shells was deafening. Chips of concrete fell,
raining down in a light shower. The building was strong, but it would not stand
up to much more of this. Many of the Vala children were huddled together, and
the human children were wailing. Luis encircled several of them, human and
Vala, in his short, strong arms. Hannah was singing to a group of them, and she
saw the Reverend’s head bowed in prayer. She had to make a decision. If she
didn’t get them out of here, the Asgre would be upon them any moment. The
question flashed again in her mind: how could the Taim possibly protect them?

As the image of the tall, swaying trees entered
her mind, a peace settled over her. Aria knew plants. She had seen, back on
Earth, the majestic kapok tree. Its trunk, ten feet in diameter, sheltered
animals and other plants, and humans, sometimes. On another continent, she had
stood inside the protective trunk of a huge baobab as a pack of lions circled
outside. Plants had been sheltering humans for eons. Though she didn’t see how
they would do it, Aria trusted them.

“We have to send the children to the Taim,” Aria
said, as boldly as she could.

“What?” Hannah shouted over the noise.

“Ri says—the Taim say—to bring them the children.”
She reached her free hand out and laid it on Luis’ shoulder. “I think they want
to protect them.”

There was a moment of confusion among the adults.

“To the Taim?” Hannah’s face was doubtful.

Aria felt the shells as they impacted. She
thought of the distance they’d have to cover if they tried to get to the
defense headquarters, thought about covering it with these small, frightened
children in tow. The desperation of the situation made the decision for her. They
wouldn’t make it to the base.

Aria spoke again. She heard the commanding tone
in her voice. “This is not up for debate. We are going to the Taim.” She looked
around at them. “What I need from you is a plan.
How
are we going to get
there?”

Another shell rocked the building, the percussion
throwing them to the ground. This time, large chunks of concrete fell, narrowly
missing them. Aria scrambled to her feet.

“How do we get out of here?” Aria cried. “They’re
directly above. If we go into the streets we’ll be spotted immediately. But we’ve
got to get to the farm!”

The shelling stopped briefly, leaving behind an
eerie silence punctuated by her last few words and the clatter of falling
rubble around them.

Minz walked close to her and spoke up, his soft
voice surprisingly bold in the silence. “After Ethan talked to Saras, I got a
job cleaning the filters in this plant a few weeks ago,” he said. “I worked in
the maintenance tunnels underneath. They sent me from here through the tunnels
to the farm to scrub the filters in the clean rooms. The tunnels lead to the
farm. I think we could make it if we went through there.”

Aria reached out and hugged him spontaneously.
The little man looked embarrassed. She felt a surge of hope as she turned to
the children.

“Okay, little ones,” Aria spoke gently, trying to
convey more confidence than she felt, “You need to follow me, and you need to
be so, so quiet.” She walked comically on her tiptoes and the children giggled
and followed her. She gestured to Minz, and he took the lead. They followed him
across the rubble-strewn room and down a flight of stairs just as the shells
started falling again.

The tunnels he led them through were narrow and
damp, the access panels in their walls leading directly to the filters the
water ran through before it was sent to the treatment part of the facility. The
lighting was unpredictable as well, with large, dark gaps between many of the
fixtures. Aria heard Hannah’s voice rising in a soft lullaby that calmed both
the humans and the Vala.