Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

  Chapter 25

  Marcos rode the tram in the mine, watching as the spot of light in front of them streaked along the bare gray wall. This drift had been rich with bright orange Yynium two years ago. Now, the hollowed vein gaped beside the tram tracks, kilometers of it. The Yynium was running out in this mine, and what they were getting was low quality.

  He shifted uncomfortably. Theo said he had to go into the mines once a month and mingle with his employees, as well as seeing the operation firsthand. But he hated being underground. It was stifling and it reminded him of the heavy years of stasis it had taken him to get here. He hadn’t had to spend fifty years in stasis, but five years was enough—too many still—to be asleep.

  He thought, suddenly, of Serena, sleeping right now on her way back from Untek, the planet where she’d gone to study. His parents had paid for her trip, under pretense of generosity. Really they had thought he would get to Minea and find someone else. Maybe they’d meant for him to get involved with Veronika, which would, they knew, be good for the company.

  But Veronika was not who he wanted. There was no one like Serena. She was honest, sincere. She was enthusiastic about life and about him. Marcos smiled, thinking of their long days together on Earth. They’d met at sixteen, in the city park where he’d gone often to play danceball with his friends. Four years they’d spent together, and when his father returned from Minea one day and told Marcos he was being sent to take over the Coriol operation, Marcos had thought about running away with her. In the end, he couldn’t disappoint his parents. They offered her the chance of a lifetime: an Interstellar Study trip to Untek, and promised him that they would send her to him the moment she returned.

  But he hadn’t known his father then. Dimitri Saras had spent twenty years away from Earth, and back then Marcos still believed in the father he’d imagined. Now he knew the man, and he knew that he’d never send Serena. Dimitri may pay her off when she arrived, or he may simply refuse to see her, but he would not waste a trip on her.

  Marcos was going to have to go back and get her himself. As he rode the open tram car deeper down into the mine, the thought of descending back into stasis paralyzed him. He tried to focus on the tram light ahead.

  At least he and Serena had not lost too many years. The five years he’d spent on the way were negated by her own Interstellar Study trip, for which she’d spent a little over three years in stasis herself. She had spent two years on Untek while he still slept, writing him every week and scheduling some messages to be delivered while she was traveling home. She started back to Earth about the time he got here, three years ago. He’d been here three years of the eight they’d been apart.

  There were no Real-Time Communications on Untek, so he hadn’t been able to have a conversation with her in years. Was it even possible that they could have anything in common anymore?

  She’d be nearly home now, and he had promised to have an RST ship waiting to bring her here when she arrived home. How was he to know then, eight Earth years ago, that Ship 12-22 would arrive a year before he arrived at Minea? How was he to know then that the UEG had sold humans to the Others of Beta Alora and that when that ship arrived, with its stories of cruel aliens and humanity’s vulnerability, it would spin the UEG into a panic? They had started then snatching up all the Yynium and pouring all their money into a brand new fleet of defense ships and YEN drives to power them all. He had thought personal RST ships would be common by now, or at least that an RST passenger system would be established, but all that was on hold until the UEG could better protect its colonies. And frankly, there wasn’t much demand for passenger ships right now. In the wake of the Beta Alora scandal, people weren’t rushing to leave Earth.

  But the only holdup was Yynium. If they could flood Earth with Yynium, then the defense fleet would have its YEN drives and the private manufacturers of personal RST ships would scoop up the surplus. The more Yynium he mined and the faster he got it to Earth, the sooner Serena could come.

  But until then, he felt every day that they were growing further and further apart. Sometimes he looked around Minea for someone as gentle and loving as Serena, and he was convinced that there was no one.

  “If all you want is love, why are you leaving?” Her words haunted him, because though he had told her it was all he wanted, he’d known even then that it wasn’t true. He had, even before he met her, also wanted approval and success. His father had achieved both.

  Marcos wanted, especially, the approval of his parents. But they were critics, used to finding fault. They loved nothing completely, not even each other. Everything, even if it was good, could be better. The attitude had built the Saras Yynium empire and had kept it growing when it was passed on to Marcos, but it took a toll on human relationships.

  The tram next to them sped up and switched tracks, veering towards the open car Marcos rode in. He flinched, holding up a hand toward the blinding light, but the tram missed his and disappeared down a side shaft, their paths crossing just a meter or two away from each other. He felt that was how his life had crossed with Serena’s—just briefly, for a moment on their home world. And now, they were both holding their breath, waiting for those paths to cross again.

  She slept now, and she was still waiting, but he didn’t know how long she would wait once she awakened back on Earth. Their life together, the things that bound them—those long rides along the coastline; the way that they felt, together, somehow complete—all those things were fading in the light of the new sun that shone on him.

  He brought her to mind and smiled, remembering the way her hair blew around her. The last time he’d seen her they’d been at the beach. The brilliant blue water contrasted with her white dress. Her long dark curls blew around her face, causing her to sweep them into a handful at her neck and hold them there. That was the image he held. He wanted her to know that he was still the same, that he still wanted her here, no matter what doubts had arisen for her in the light of Untek’s sun or in the long night of her journey home.

  He could have told them no. Could have stayed on Earth or tried going on the Interstellar Study trip with her. They didn’t force him to come. Marcos’ parents never forced him to do anything. He wished they openly decreed things so that he could openly rebel against them. Instead, they had looked at him his whole life as if, any moment, he would disappoint them, and he had spent his whole life trying not to.

  “Marcos? Marcos?” Veronika’s voice was raised over the clatter of the tram wheels. She was cutting into his thoughts as she always did when he began to get too melancholy. He wasn’t sure whether he was grateful for that or not.

  “Hmm?” he looked around.

  “Production numbers? An alien ship hovering over Coriol? Any of this making you nervous?”

  He snapped back to focus. The gaping veins caught his attention again. “We have to get the new shafts online.” Production could not be delayed one more day. He had to get Serena to Coriol to be with him. And the faster the Yynium came out of the ground, the sooner it could be processed and sent back to Earth.

  “And what about the alien ship?” Veronika asked, seemingly annoyed. She knew what he was thinking about. It irritated her when he indulged in his childish crush when he should be running the business.

  “I’d like to see it up close,” Marcos said. “Let’s take a drive after we’re done here.”

  The tram finally stopped and the two of them followed the foreman into the deepest part of the drift. Here there was some of the glassy orange Yynium left in the veins, shining along the walls. The picks of the miners rang like bells along the drift as they chipped it out. Heavy dust hung in the beams of their headlamps, and the miners’ coughs punctuated the air. Marcos adjusted his mask.

  He turned to speak to Veronika, but she’d gone further down the drift. He saw her through the dust, talking to a young miner, probably, Marcos thought, trying to get information on the foreman.

  Marcos refocused on the man, trying to ignore the blotchy pu
rple bruises on the foreman’s neck and cheeks. He knew it was impolite to stare, but they were hard to miss.

  “Probably a week left in this vein.” The foreman’s words jolted Marcos’s attention away from the marks.

  “A week? That’s all?”

  The foreman nodded. “The veins are tapering off. We’re not gettin’ a whole lot out now, and even though we’re doing our best, it’s probably a real job up at the refinery to get much useable Yynium outta the ore we’re sending them.”

  Marcos opened his mouth to reprimand him for his cavalier attitude about the sloppy ore, but a commotion up the drift drew their attention. The foreman ran towards a knot of miners who were gathered around a still figure on the ground.

  “Get her in the tram!” he barked, as Marcos approached. On the ground was a woman, her face, neck, and arms a deep plum under the coating of Yynium dust. She was still. Too still.

  Marcos looked in panic at the tram. They would have to use it to get her out. He didn’t want to ride with her, but it would take an hour to get another one down here.

  Suddenly, he felt Veronika’s firm hand on his arm. She pulled him toward the tram and into a car as the miners lifted the woman in behind them. He kept his eyes on the light ahead as the tram began its ascent.

  ***

  Hours later, Marcos and Veronika rode silently in Marcos’s hovercar. He had known the woman wouldn’t make it, and by the time they reached the mine entrance, they’d called the coroner instead of the ambulance. Marcos had gone home and showered, but he still felt the grit of the Yynium dust in his eyes and teeth.

  They reached the edge of the city, where the ship hovered, silent and brooding. It looked more ominous through the tinted windows of the hovercar, but Marcos didn’t want to roll them down to see it better. Since the food shortage, the workers were growing more hostile. Last week a miner had thrown a rock at Marcos’s hovercar. Their unrest was beginning to be a problem.

  He pulled out his missive to give Nasani over at the Food Production Division a piece of his mind, but an assistant answered.

  “Let me speak to Nasani,” he barked at the assistant.

  “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t.”

  “What?” his voice trembled with rage. No one told Marcos he couldn’t do something, not in his own city.

  The line was silent for a moment, then he heard Theo’s voice. “Marc, don’t yell at the assistants. You can’t talk to Nasani because he’s dead. Minean fever. I’m out here reorganizing and getting someone new to run the farms,” Marcos heard him scoff, “although there’s not much use in it. The plants are all dying out here, too.”

  Marcos turned to Veronika. “Minean fever is out of hand. We need to address it.”

  She nodded and he spoke to the driver. “Change of plans. Take us to the HHSD main hospital building.”

  ***

  At the moment the alien ship had risen and begun to move away from Lumina, Reagan had felt hope. But now, with reports flooding in that the ship had traveled to Oculys and then on to Minville, he saw that it was not leaving his planet yet.

  The little situation room in the Lumina Operations Center was thrumming with activity. Reagan was surrounded by comms officers, platoon leaders, and equipment technicians, all focused on their tasks.

  Kaia stood across the room, working on a rough schematic of the alien ship. She had already given them several insights into its weapons and speed capabilities. Having her there was comforting on multiple levels. Her expertise was useful, and knowing she was safe there with him allowed him to focus on what was happening in the other settlements without worrying about what was happening to her.

  Reagan punched a button on the wide console in the center of the room, replaying footage from Oculys hours ago when the ship had descended there. On the recording, Reagan heard a loud click and the air was filled with the sounds of alien voices. They stilled and a single wheedling voice cut through.

  “Humans of Oculys,” the voice said, “I am Galo of the Asgre, and I have come to retrieve my property.”

  Property. What property? Was there something this race had left on the planet? Reagan had aides searching the Minean Treaty documents for any mention of the Asgre, any claim they might have had to the planet before humanity got here.

  He didn’t remember ever having heard the name before. He stopped the recording and tapped another sequence of keys to listen in on the message the communications center was broadcasting to the ship.

  “Galo of the Asgre, you are in restricted airspace. You are requested to relocate to,” here the message rattled off a string of coordinates, “where you will find a Special Operations Airspace. Please remain there until communications are established.”

  Reagan thought the communications officers had done a good job with the message. It was not too aggressive, but commanding enough to encourage compliance. They had received no response, however. Though there was no way to be sure if he was receiving them, all indications were that this Galo seemed to be ignoring their hails. That alone made Reagan nervous. If the aliens were, as they said, searching for something, why didn’t they move to the SOA and allow the humans to work with them peacefully instead of continuing to glide ominously over every city?

  Reagan reached for his mug of hot, gray sweetbean drink. Its bittersweet flavor filled his mouth and cleared his mind as he pulled up the live feed from Minville and saw that the big Asgre ship was leaving. It was headed, he knew, to the next settlement.

  ***

  It took Galo many sun cycles to search the next four settlements. He had great trepidation as he left the settlement which the translator called “New Alliance” and moved across the Eastern plains to the only city he hadn’t inspected: “Coriol.”

  Approaching, Galo saw the blue soil piled at the mouth of the mining tunnels and the bright orange veins of the humans’ sought-after mineral peeking through the bare dirt. He saw wide, flat farms at the top edge of the city and the towering spaceport on the far side. This was the last city. If there were no signs here, his efforts had been in vain. If there were no signs here, he would have to consider seriously the possibility that he would not retrieve the lost Vala. His business would be decimated and he would have to begin rebuilding as best he could.

  He settled into the now-familiar scanning pattern over the city. This one was rectangular, with the mine, the industrial buildings, the spaceport, and the jagged peaks of the strange mountains at the four corners. The rest of the city was made up of tall buildings and small blue dwellings just as he had seen in the other settlements.

  Galo heard the scanner ping, once and fleetingly. He rushed to his readouts. It was the slightest of positive scans, but it was more than he’d had yet and his hope soared. No doubt the Vala had been here, perhaps were still here. Galo was disappointed to see that the scanners could not pinpoint the exact location of the trail from this altitude. He thought about descending further, but that was likely to make the humans nervous enough to become hostile, and he couldn’t risk that, not when he was this close.

  He walked around the bridge, once, twice. A pile of loose garbage overflowing the bin in the corner caught his eye. It was a mess in here. He’d have to get the old Vala in here to clean it up. The jumble made him think of a mess one of his skybarges had made a few cycles before the Vala trouble started. They had accidentally jettisoned a load of cargo. To find it all, Galo had used remote sensors. Perhaps he could send those out and gain a more precise idea of where to search.

  His fourth hand trembled with excitement as he extended it to engage the translator. “Humans of Coriol,” Galo tried the name, “I have come to retrieve my property.”

  He waited for a response as he passed over the city. As usual, none came. Galo felt jumpy with irritation and fear. He knew conclusively that the Vala had been here. The humans’ silence could suggest that they were hiding the slaves.

  Galo contacted his remaining ships, instructing them to join the eight in orbit. He was close. Wh
en he found the Vala, he had to have sufficient backup to ensure he could reclaim them. He tensed as he saw the ships begin to appear above the planet. He hated pulling them out of the shipping lanes. Every day here was costing him hundreds of thousands of rhu.

  “Uumbor,” he barked, and his assistant scuttled to his side. “How many remote sensors do we have on board?”

  “Sixteen, sir.”

  “Can you calibrate them to detect the Vala trail?”

  Uumbor considered, then nodded slowly. “Using the settings from the onboard sensors, I should be able to.”

  “Get to work on them. Let me know when you are finished and we can deploy them.”

  ***

  When Marcos walked into Dr. Zuma’s office, her nervous eyes told him she knew exactly what it was about.

  “It’s time your people got this thing stopped, Dr. Zuma,” Marcos said. Especially with the educated, it helped to be aggressive.

  “We’re trying, Mr. Saras. This is a complex illness that we haven’t seen before. We’re on an alien planet, you know, it’s pretty impressive that we can even—”

  “I’m not impressed,” Marcos cut her off. “Have you seen the people? It’s starting to look like a horror movie out there.”

  Zuma seemed to harden. “I’ve seen them up close, Mr. Saras. It’s even more like a horror movie on the inside.”

  “What do you mean? What is this thing, Zuma?”

  “It seems to be related to anemia. For one reason or another, their bodies aren’t absorbing iron correctly, in addition to many other nutrients. We’ve also observed a breakdown in the walls of the capillaries. We’re not sure what’s causing it, but it is the reason for the bruising.”

  “Is it a virus? Can a vaccine be made?”

  Zuma actually rolled her eyes at him. “Everyone always wants a quick and easy shot to solve every problem,” she said, “and honestly, I wish we had one. But we haven’t been able to identify it as a virus yet. That doesn’t mean it isn’t one, just that we don’t know how to detect it.”