Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

  Marcos stood and walked around his desk to where Theo leaned against a cabinet in the corner. Marcos put his hand on the older man’s shoulder and felt the jab of bone through his jacket. “I’m not saying we strip the deposit clean. I’m saying that we blast into the center of it, where the cleanest cake is, and refine that for our grant sample. Just slice off a little. Then, we play it fair and square. If we don’t win the grant, we destroy the tunnel and tip our hats to the winner. If we do win the grant, we’re ready to start production and get the Yynium heading to Earth twice as fast as we could otherwise.”

  Marcos saw Theo’s discomfort, though he wasn’t sure if he was squirming because the plan went against his ethics or because he was jealous that his upstart boss had come up with it.

  Veronika came out from behind the desk, too. She always seemed to sense the exact moment that Theo was at a tipping point. “This way, we’re sure to win. And you, of all people, ought to want to fight for this city. You built it.”

  Marcos felt the jab of that. If it had been any other moment, he would have called her on it. His father had built this city, and Theo had only tended it those years when Marcos was growing up and traveling in the P5 from Earth with Veronika. But he saw Theo caving and knew that this was not the time.

  Theo agreed, in the end, and Marcos began the process of finding a blasting crew that could keep their mouths shut. He had at least one person in mind, someone who had done covert jobs for him before.

  ***

  Daniel Rigo held his breath as he walked from the bright Minean morning outside into the dim interior of the mine. He lined up, waiting for the next tram. He glanced at his mother, Marise. Her eyes were weary as she peered at the dark ahead of them. Daniel put a reassuring arm around her shoulders.

  “I miss your father,” Marise said, so quiet that only he could hear. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and Daniel was glad he’d grown taller than her since they’d come to Minea five years ago. It made him feel better able to protect her and his little sisters, Merelda and Nallie, who were born here on Minea and still small. He was nearly nineteen now, and there was a lot of protecting in his future.

  “I miss him too,” Daniel said. “He loved the tram ride in and out.”

  Marise chuckled. “Only time he got to sit down. I’m starting to look forward to it myself.”

  The Yynium dust wasn’t as thick up here near the mine entrance, but Daniel could already taste its lemony tang in the air. He took a quick drink from the water bottle he carried with him—not much, because he’d need it for later. The first tram left and he and Marise stepped a bit closer to the front of the line.

  Zella Panderlin, a neighbor of theirs, was standing in line in front of them. Her pale curls, tied up in a bright cloth, stood out in the dark of the mine. She turned and caught his eye, flashing him a smile.

  Daniel felt himself look down, embarrassed. He had known Zella since before they’d left Earth. Their fathers had both operated precision scoring machines in the Yynium mines back there. Thorian Rigo had been one of the best scorers in the industry. He’d signed up thinking that working in the mines on Minea would be similar to working in the mines on Earth, but that wasn’t the case. The scoring machines, designed back on Earth, couldn’t handle the volume of Yynium they were dealing with on Minea. They had burned out quickly, and parts were half a century away.

  That left the workers mining Yynium with archaic techniques, using picks and shovels and hammers and chisels. That kind of mining had wasted Thorian’s skills. And the wages were much smaller than they were in the mines of Earth, too. It wasn’t the Minea that his father was promised.

  Still, his parents had been optimistic that if they worked hard they’d catch up soon. But Thorian’s death seemed to squash the optimism from Marise. Now, Daniel felt her weary head drooping on his shoulder and glanced down. She was dozing before the long, laborious day ahead.

  Daniel had heard that the scoring machines were being redesigned at the heavy machinery plant in Oculys. But the redesign and manufacturing process would take a while, and Daniel wasn’t sure that Saras would spring for the new machines, anyway. The company had plenty of workers, for now.

  Daniel hoped that the new scoring machines would be completed soon. His mother didn’t. She said they’d put everyone out of a job. Still, the comfort of removing Yynium from inside a scoring machine seemed a good alternative to this: hundreds of workers prying and scraping it from the rock every day. Scorers were small units, and two or three could fit in a section of the drift—the horizontal mine tunnels that followed the Yynium veins—at a time. They had precision ore-removal attachments that scored through the Yynium vein and neatly popped out chunks of it into tram cars that hauled it up and out. Scorers had climate controlled cabs with air filters. Back on Earth, his father had never come home with Yynium dust clouding his jacket. Or his lungs.

  Daniel didn’t know what the displaced workers would do, but there had to be something better than this. The dry cough of dustlung punctuated the air around him, and though most of the miners wore Saras Company–issued masks, they still came home with the sharp taste of Yynium in their mouths and the thick feel of it in their breath.

  And now, another strange sickness was plaguing people in Coriol. It started with fatigue, and moved to a fever followed by purple bruises that appeared on peoples’ stomachs, arms, necks, and faces, spreading rapidly until they were covered with the plum-colored patches. Daniel hadn’t seen any of the sufferers up close, but he’d passed them in the street, and they looked miserable.

  Daniel watched Zella step onto the tram, and he and his mother boarded a few cars behind her, flipping the pivoting seats down as they entered. Under his boots, Daniel felt the grit from the ore the car hauled when it wasn’t hauling people. He wouldn’t mind designing ore trams. He’d make the seats contoured, so people were more comfortable sitting in them.

  As the tram began to move, he put an arm around his mother, tucking her head into him, so the wind didn’t sting her eyes. He hunched over her, squinting against the wind as the tram picked up speed, and tried not to think of it plummeting down the slope, deeper and deeper under the ground.

  He’d put windscreens on the cars, too. But that got him thinking of the design problem that posed. The tram cars carried people into and out of the mine, at the shift changes. When a tram emptied its cargo of people, it went to be filled with Yynium ore that it would carry back up to the surface. The cars had to be able to carry people and then be ready to carry ore. A windscreen, even a metal one that could withstand being banged by chunks of ore, would get in the miners’ way as they threw the ore into the cars. And strong metal screens on each car would add too much weight to the tram as a whole. Daniel enjoyed the puzzle of it as he rode. If he ever got the chance, he’d design trams.

  Or even better, hovercars. There were only a few in Coriol, besides the round-backed hovercabs, and he loved to watch them skim by. Theo Talbot’s was the most beautiful machine he’d ever seen.

  A pang of regret filled Daniel. Last year, when Talbot’s hovercar had come to building G, where his family lived, he’d been outside, waiting for his father to come home and for his own shift in the mine to start. He remembered watching Talbot unfold himself from the car and stretch before going into the building.

  Daniel and Zella and a couple other friends, Pete and Hadib, had gone to check out the car. He remembered walking around it, looking in at the Earthleather seats. He remembered how Zella had taken his hand and pulled him over to see the glowing dashboard and the multiple drop-down screens inside. He remembered the thrill of her hand in his, and the feeling that someday maybe he could design something like this. Even though they had a night shift to work, that cool evening the whole world had stretched before them like an endless sea of opportunities.

  Until Talbot strode back to the car and scattered them with the words, “Rigo, you’d better go in. Your mother needs you.”

  And that had bee
n it. His father wasn’t coming home. His mother had to come to work in the mines because his father’s contract still needed filling and they still needed to eat. His little sisters were immediately sent to school for the duration of his mother’s shifts, and the sea of opportunities rose into a sea of debt that was slowly drowning them all.

  ***

  A sol train ride after Ethan’s visit with Kaia he was at the office. He faced his first task of the day: recording the next in a series of tutorials on how to read Xardn. The Colony Offices valued his expertise, and since the trouble with the Others on Beta Alora, there was a new interest in his work with the dead alien language they had spoken.

  Several things had changed in the colonization efforts after the Earth Government had sold the 4000 passengers on Ethan’s ship to the Others. A new fear of aliens was driving most of the spending back on Earth, and the defense budget had skyrocketed.

  When Ethan’s tutorial was finished, he had just enough time to grab a bowl of warm, clear sweetbean soup before his meeting with the Coriol Defense Committee. His official title was “Alien Consultant.” He wasn’t sure if that meant he consulted about aliens or that he was an alien who consulted. Sometimes he certainly felt like the latter. When the Offices wanted a simple answer, it was often hard to sum up the complexity of his experience with aliens, good and bad, into a single, always-true maxim. Sometimes he thought he’d be a better consultant if he had never met any aliens personally.

  A Real-Time Communications session was already going when he got there. RTC was one of the things that amazed Ethan. The screen showed a group of people back on Earth, broadcast almost instantaneously through the vast void of space that had taken him half a lifetime to cross. They could never have RTC without Yynium. Even so, it was only available at the Colony Offices and Company Headquarters in each settlement, and at the military base. It wasn’t used frivolously.

  Marcos Saras was in on the link, too, from his office across Coriol. Hovering beside him, the skeletal Theo Talbot and Veronika Eppes, as always.

  Ethan liked to think that he and the other governors were in these meetings to protect the people of Coriol from Saras, but he suspected they were actually there to protect the Yynium and the interests of the UEG. The Colony Offices were present in every settlement and were owned by the United Earth Government.

  The president of the United Earth Government was on the screen now, with her Defense Chair and the head of the Earth Security force.

  “Though our meetings are often routine,” she was saying, “I’m pleased today that I can report to you, as I have to the other settlement defense committees, that construction on the Minean defense fleet is completed.” The screen switched to images of the most intimidating ships Ethan had ever seen. Armored and armed, they reminded him of sleek stingrays, with wide, blunt wings and a tapered tailfin.

  There were appreciative murmurs around the room, but the president was obviously disappointed by the lack of outright cheering. The committee in Coriol knew that however beautiful the ships, they were still a long way from their destination. The SL-driven ships had taken fifty-three years to bring members of the committee from Earth to Minea, while Saras and his cronies had made the trip in five.

  The president went on. “Your fleet is ready, but we don’t have enough Yynium to send them. We need more of it than ever before. If our interactions with the Others of Beta Alora have taught us anything, it is that we need defenses.”

  The president went on. “I have another important piece of information reported by your defensive forces which you need to be aware of.” There was a breathless pause. “An alien ship has been spotted orbiting your planet.”

  Ethan stood and walked quickly across the back of the room, his heart pounding. The spot that had crossed Lucidus. He had known it was not the orbital defenses. He breathed deeply, trying to focus on what the president was saying.

  “Though no aggressive action has yet been observed, you need defenses out there. I want you to know we are working hard to get them to you. But it’s vital that you maintain your city defenses until your fleet arrives.”

  Saras spoke up. “Madam President, if I may?”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Saras.”

  “Perhaps you are aware that a rich new deposit of Yynium has been discovered here on Minea?” In the face of aliens, Saras was still thinking about Yynium.

  “I’m aware.”

  Saras’s voice had a tone of forced confidence. “I was informed yesterday that permission to mine that deposit—which my surveyors discovered, by the way, and reported faithfully to the Colony Offices, as the protocol directs—”

  Ethan scoffed, glancing at his Colony Office colleagues, who showed their disgust by rolling their eyes. Saras would have been more accurate to replace “reported faithfully to the Colony Offices” with “admitted to finding it only after their survey was leaked to the Colony Offices.”

  “—will be given as a bonus based on production over the next seven weeks.”

  The president nodded. “That’s right.”

  “That might not be the most prudent choice, given the time constraints and the UEG’s desire to get as much Yynium to Earth as quickly as possible.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “I have the equipment and manpower to begin work on that deposit within the week, Madam President, and a track record of timely delivery and—” Did Ethan hear a slight hesitation in Saras’s voice? “And clean Yynium. If you would simply grant the land to Saras Company now, you’d have your Yynium much more quickly.”

  The president took a moment to craft her response. “Mr. Saras, I see your point. It could be more beneficial in terms of time to do that. But no new deposits have simply been given to any of the companies, and I’m sure you can see the kind of precedent that might set.”

  Saras began to speak, but she cut him off. “In addition, Mr. Saras, we are talking about a few weeks to determine the best company to award this deposit to. Though Yynium delivery is certainly time-sensitive, we must be sure that the quality of the Yynium is superior, as well. We want to know that when we place this new deposit into someone’s hands, it will arrive to us as pure as possible. Contaminated Yynium from careless mining or hasty milling is at best a waste of time, and at worst a danger. The seven-week period will give all companies the chance to produce for testing the cleanest Yynium possible, ensuring that we grant the deposit to the company which will refine it best. The UEG doesn’t need sloppy production and dirty Yynium. We need it as pure as possible.”

  A look crossed Saras’s face. Ethan wasn’t sure whether it was anger or fear, but it was gone quickly and he marveled that he had witnessed a rare occurrence: Marcos Saras did not get his way.

  At Saras’s silence, Veronika stepped in. “You can be assured,” she said, “that we will win the grant.”

  “Best of luck in that endeavor.” The president moved on. “Now, while I have you here, I do want to commission your survey teams, Mr. Saras, to provide for us a more extensive survey of the topography above the deposit. We need to know what we are getting into in terms of terrain. Can we count on you to provide for us surveys of at least the first few kilometers above the deposit?”

  Saras was still pouting. He was such a powerful man that Ethan sometimes forgot his youth. Barely twenty-eight, he occasionally showed the willfulness of the spoiled child he was. This time it was Theo that stepped in. “That will take our survey crew off more directly profitable exploration, Madam President. If we don’t win this grant,” at this Veronika shot him a scalding look, “we’re going to need to find ourselves more Yynium to mine.”

  “We’ll pay you well for three crews.”

  Saras countered quickly, as if glad to strike back at her. “We’ll give you one.”

  The president, undisturbed, considered for a moment. “We’ll work with that for now. But—” here her voice took on a warning note, “as you have a vested interest in this project, I’d like a Colony Offices Governor to ride along with the surve
y team and make sure that the correct area is surveyed. Governor Elias, can your Office handle that?”

  Though Saras was a private corporation and could say yes or no as they pleased, when the President of the UEG made a request to the Colony Office, the Office said yes.

  After the signoffs, the committee relayed the president’s request to the head of scheduling at the Office. Ethan had a sneaking suspicion that as the only Governor without a pressing docket of must-dos, he would be the one sent with the survey crew. Actually, he welcomed a break from the office, so when they asked him, he accepted the assignment.

  Chapter 4

  Aria stood on Polara’s bed so she could reach up near the ceiling. She swiped at the wall and peered at the cloth as she pulled it back. Little fuzzy green plants coated it. They had been growing all over Coriol the past couple of weeks. She folded it and swiped again. As a botanist and crop geneticist, Aria loved plants and hated to eradicate even these, but they were everywhere and were beginning to become a nuisance.

  They seemed to grow on any slightly damp surface, and spring on Minea was nothing if not damp. Everywhere was damp, and Aria was finding the little plants on the counters in the kitchen, in the bathtub, and even on the walls in the bedrooms. Was it a mold?

  She climbed down from the bed and took the cloth into the bright living room, where golden sunshine streamed in through the windows and bathed her children, playing on the floor.

  Polara was crawling around, roaring, much to the delight of her stationary, silent brother, Rigel. He watched her happily, and Aria felt the old pang of worry that he wasn’t more mobile and verbal himself.

  She shook the thought from her mind and held the cloth in the brightest stream of light. Peering at it, she breathed a sigh of relief. Instead of rhizomes and sporangiophores, she saw the familiar curves of miniscule roots and hypocotyls. Even, here and there, a tiny set of cotyledons on the biggest of the plants. At least it wasn’t a mold.