Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

  Guardians

  Future House Publishing

  Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.

  Text © 2016 Josi Russell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 0-9966193-8-0 (paperbound)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9966193-8-7 (paperbound)

  Developmental editing by Mandi Diaz

  Substantive editing by Jenna Parmley

  Copy editing by Jenna Parmley

  Interior design by Emma Hoggan

  Join the Future House Beta Reader’s Club!

  Hello Reader,

  Thanks so much for taking the time to dive into Guardians by Josi Russell. We are thrilled that she picked Future House to publish her book.

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  Read On!

  Adam, Helena, Ami, Ryan, Mandi and the rest of

  the Future House Publishing Team

  Join the Future House Beta Reader’s Club!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Before You Go

  Discover More Remarkable Books from Future House Publishing

  Acknowledgements

  For Rick, my husband and my best friend, who walks with me the sometimes difficult path of creativity, who asks the hard questions, and takes care better than anyone I know.

  For Max, to whom the world is an adventure, a puzzle, and a quest. I love it more because I’ve seen it through his eyes.

  For Katy, whose brilliance and boldness light my way and lead me through.

  For Lisa, whose gentle encouragement has led me through every draft. Since our first stories, she has given me her expertise, her suggestions, and her encouragement in the moments my stories most needed it.

  For Jason, who helps me see things anew.

  For my nephew, Simon Russell, whose excitement for this story gave me fresh inspiration.

  For my parents-in-law, Kim and Marlene Russell, who support us, shelter us, and encourage us in every endeavor.

  For my sister, Jacqueline Latham, who dreams with me and has always believed I could reach the stars.

  For my editors, Mandi and Jenna, who have spent their days exploring Minea and making it live.

  For my dad, Jack Brewer, the hardest worker on this or any planet, who worked hard without becoming hardened.

  And for my mom, Carol Brewer, whose love—constant as the sun—has centered my life, guided me, and cheered me to the end of every journey.

  Chapter 1

  The bright disk of the planet Lucidus hung in the morning sky. Countless spires of striped karst limestone stretched away toward the horizon, standing like staggered rows of sentinels as far as Ethan could see through the low-lying morning mist.

  It was the day of the twice-yearly Lucidus festival, when the planet rose like an open flower above the settlements on Minea. It marked the changing of seasons from rainy winter to flourishing spring, and then, when it returned, from verdant summer to mellow autumn.

  To celebrate, Ethan Bryant and his family had come to the tranquil Tiger Mountain Park in the shadow of two striped towers. The park lay at the edge of the largely unexplored labyrinth of peaks known as the Karst Mountains, which stretched North and East of the city of Coriol, their home. Ethan and his wife Aria had brought their four-year-old daughter Polara and her baby brother Rigel to celebrate the coming of spring. The family’s walk through the park was made jovial by Polara’s running commentary and by Ethan’s spontaneous races with his little girl across the wide, grassy valley that lay at the foot of the peaks.

  The park was enormous, with three lakes joined by a river strung like a bracelet across its center. Crowds from Coriol surged around Ethan’s family, looking for a spot to rest and wait for the perigee of Lucidus, the highlight of the celebration. Having so many people around brought Ethan some apprehension. He had acquired telepathic abilities through his experiences on a planet called Beta Alora, and he cringed at the proximity of all these people and the swirling mix of thoughts they carried with them.

  Ethan’s telepathy hadn’t bothered him while he was in stasis on the way to Minea. In fact, it had probably made his trip less isolating because even in stasis he was connected with the minds of the nearly 4000 other sleeping passengers on his ship. But when he awoke and began his post-stasis life in the buzzing city of Coriol, he found thousands of thoughts invading his mind constantly. The fear, pain, anger, even the joy and contentment experienced by those around him had been overwhelming. Now, striding through the knee-high grass of the park, Ethan reached behind his ear to double-check the small rounded device that Kaia had created. She had been with him through the ordeal on Beta Alora and had gained similar telepathic abilities. She had invented the device—a thought blocker—to relieve the agony of having so many voices in their heads.

  The small implant consisted of two parts: one inside and one outside the skull. The device inside the skull sent electrical impulses through the brain, quieting the incessant thoughts of others. The outside part was a small, rounded button that attached with a strong magnet and activated the thought blocker. Ethan took comfort in the thought blocker’s secure attachment. He felt Aria slip her hand into his and took comfort also in how she always seemed to sense when he was feeling anxious.

  He looked around at the dusty Yynium miners and refinery workers, at the farm laborers, the colony officers, and the soldiers from Coriol Defense Headquarters. Their thoughts would be lighter on this day, with the festival in the air. On festival days, Minea almost felt like it had looked in the glossy brochures on Earth: a pristine new planet and an easy lifestyle awaiting them there.

  But Ethan knew that most days, for most of the colonists, life was far from easy. He had heard thei
r discouragement, their despair, and those were thoughts he would never forget.

  “Hey! Caretaker!” Ethan heard the deep voice of Gil Walters, another passenger from his ship. Gil’s four children capered around him as he waded through the grass toward Ethan and Aria.

  Gil was dressed in the red coveralls of the Saras Company. Judging by the dust on his face and clothes, he was coming from the mine or the refinery. Ethan grinned.

  “Did you find some work with Saras?” he tried to keep the excitement out of his voice.

  Coriol was a true company town, where the farms, the water plant, the power plant, the hospitals, and the schools were all set up and run by the Saras Company. They owned everything in Coriol except for the spaceport and the Colony Offices. If you wanted to work, you worked for Saras. Gil ducked his head and Ethan was sorry he had asked.

  “Not permanent work. Rose is out there doing a day shift now. They need some help hauling explosives out to a new shaft.” He laughed. “It isn’t that different from waiting tables. The boss calls an order, I get the boxes from the truck and take them to the blasters, then I do it again.” Gil had been a professional waiter back on Earth, at one of the finest restaurants in the capitol.

  Aria spoke. “I’ll bet you did a great job,” she said encouragingly, but Ethan saw her eyes linger for a moment on Gil’s scraped hands and arms.

  “I was glad to go. The crew boss picked me up at the Saras Employment Office yesterday.” Gil skimmed his fingers across his scrapes absentmindedly. “I stand there just about every day, and there are a lot of days I go home without having worked a single hour.” He shook his head, then looked Ethan in the eye. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished that I had gotten into mining back on Earth? I made good money waiting tables back home, but every day at the Employment Office here I stand and listen to them call for blasters and pickmen and tram operators and all I can think about is the years I wasted carrying soup to people.”

  There was bitterness in his voice, made sharper by the fact that Ethan knew Gil had loved waiting tables. He was a true server, attentive to people’s needs, joyous when he could anticipate and fill those needs.

  “Waiting tables was important work, too.” Ethan tried to fill his voice with reassurance, and Gil shot him a grateful look.

  The two families were at the edge of the first lake, and they stopped to look over its wide surface. It was the lowest of the three lakes, and there was a wide swath of marsh at one end. The smell of fish and thick aquatic vegetation made Polara wrinkle her nose and protest, which set off a chorus of exclamations from the Walters kids, too. Ethan gestured up the park, toward the next lake, and the group went on.

  Gil had fallen into a thoughtful silence. Finally, he spoke again. “Don’t get me wrong. I know why Yynium production is so important.”

  Ethan nodded and mentally counted the children, who had skipped ahead of them through the crowd.

  Aria spoke up, and her voice was a bit wistful. “Rapid Space Travel for everyone would be an amazing thing. Can you imagine making the trip from Earth in five years instead of fifty?”

  Ethan squeezed her hand, glancing down to catch her green eyes. “It’s hard to imagine going that fast. The Super-Luminal drives just can’t compare to the YEN drives.”

  “And you’ve got to have Yynium to have YEN drives,” Gil said, his voice weary.

  The Minean morning was warming considerably, and Ethan felt sticky in his jacket. He stopped to take it off.

  “Hold up, kids!” Ethan called, and the children swung around and trotted back toward their parents.

  Removing the jacket was a process, because first Ethan had to slip out of the backpack where Rigel was riding. Aria held it, kissing the baby loudly. Ethan stretched his shoulders, inhaling the sweet scent of aurelia flowers. He traded Aria the jacket for the baby and they started out again. As they waded through the deep grass, Ethan thought about YEN drives. He’d been in meetings at the Colony Offices last week where they had discussed the obstacles still impeding the completion of the RST ships. The main one was the lack of refined Yynium back on Earth.

  “Did you see any of the loads going out, Gil? How much Yynium are they pulling out of those mines?” Ethan hadn’t been to the mines for a while.

  “I don’t know. I know they’ve got three shifts going every day. It’s hard work down there, and at the refinery, too. This planet is full of Yynium, but getting it out is a big job.”

  “Especially without all the new equipment they’ve developed back on Earth,” Ethan said. “In my meetings, I’ve seen some of the machines they’ve got, and they save a lot of time.”

  “No good to us there, though, are they?” Gil laughed. “How is it, talking to people back on Earth in those meetings?”

  Ethan thought about that. Because he had been voted into a Governor position in the Colony Offices of Coriol after he’d arrived, Real-Time Communications meetings were a pretty standard part of his life, but most people on Minea would never be in on one. They weren’t exciting meetings, mostly for reviewing Saras’ activities and coordinating Coriol’s interests with the United Earth Government back home.

  “It’s . . . surreal, sometimes, when I think that these guys in the meeting who are about my age now were actually born almost half a century after me.”

  Gil shook his head. “That is surreal. Do they think they’ll get those machines out here soon?”

  “Not soon, but they’re working on it. It’s just the old trouble that the Yynium is here and the drives are on Earth. Get the two together, and we can start moving things much more quickly. We have all this Yynium here, but not enough RST ships to transport it all back to Earth so more RST ships can be built.”

  “I think they should create a YEN drive plant here on Minea,” Gil said.

  “That’s in the plans, too. Kaia says the drives are pretty complicated, and pretty delicate, so the plant has to be pretty sophisticated. We’re just not quite ready out here on the frontier.”

  “Is our ship refitted yet?” Aria asked. The empty passenger ships were being rebuilt with the YEN drives that they’d brought along, and a few were even en route with loads of Yynium, but they were still a long way from their destination.

  “Almost,” Ethan said. A shadow of uneasiness flitted through his mind when he remembered the long years they’d spent on Ship 12-22, and he was glad its return trip would be much quicker. “They have the SL drive replaced with the YEN drive, and they’re just finishing remaking the passenger holds into cargo holds.”

  “Seems like Yynium’s the key to everything,” Gil said. “I can see why Saras is so crazy about getting it out of the ground.”

  Ethan felt his jaw tighten. His theory was that Saras was so crazy about Yynium because Yynium meant money. Seven companies, including Saras, did the bulk of the mining on this planet. Each of them had sponsored a settlement, paying to set up city infrastructures and housing, and paying the passengers’ fare from Earth on the stasis ships in exchange for their work on Minea.

  This was not the Minea that those passengers were promised. Many of them signed their debt papers back on Earth, confident that if they got their free houses, as Saras promised, they would be able to earn enough to pay off their debt to him for their passage quickly. They didn’t know how few scrip a day’s work in Coriol would pay, or how much the electricity, water, and food would cost. They didn’t know that Saras planned to make his scrip back and then some for every passage.

  They were almost to the second lake, and Ethan watched Gil’s tired steps as he trudged through the grass.

  Aria must have noticed, too. “Maybe we’ll stop up here,” she said.

  Gil shot them a grateful look. “Sounds good to me. I just got off from the graveyard shift and thought I’d bring the kids out for the festival. But I’m beat, and I have swing shift later, after Rose gets back.”

  Ethan cringed, thinking of all the Saras workers who didn’t get paid vacation like the Colony Officers did.
Taking a day off from the Saras Company meant missing a day’s pay, and that wasn’t something most of them could afford.

  Calling the children back, Ethan and Aria settled a few yards from the edge of the middle lake. Gil waved apologetically as his kids grabbed his hands and pulled him further up the park.

  “Happy Lucidus Day!” he said as he looked back.

  “You too,” Ethan said, hoping the kids would give his friend a chance to rest.

  Aria wrapped up some of their picnic lunch and ran lightly after the Walters’, tucking the little bundle under Gil’s arm with a smile.

  Ethan spread a blanket and set Rigel atop it, then he and Polara dug out the rest of the food from the basket. Ethan and Aria had packed all the children’s favorite foods: dark bread made from smooth-ground veam grain, sliced green lapin fruit, sweetbean cheese and chocolate, chei fruit candies that Aria made herself, and the special-occasion olona juice that stained their mouths blue.

  Ethan handed Rigel a piece of the sweet, firm bread to gnaw on and made a sandwich for himself, slipping a few thin slices of lapin on to add sweetness for contrast with the savory bean cheese.

  Polara guzzled her juice, then turned with a smile to her father. “Can we skip rocks, Dada?”

  Aria was a few yards away, eating a chunk of chocolate absentmindedly and peering at the leaves on a bush.

  “We’re going down near the water,” he called, and she glanced up and smiled.

  Ethan stood and took Polara’s hand. She pulled him to the water’s edge and they began to hunt skipping stones. He liked the rounded, flat-bottomed pebbles the best, and he picked over the rocky shoreline carefully for the best ones. Polara’s priority was size. She grabbed the biggest rocks she could find and lobbed them into the water. She’d thrown five before he skipped his first one.

  It was a good throw, though, and his stone sailed across the calm surface, bouncing and leaving behind widening circles wherever it hit. All in all, six skips. Not bad.