Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

  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.”

  Chapter 29

  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 reac
h, 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.

  Chapter 30

  Sitting at the desk, Ethan rubbed the familiar bump of the thought blocker behind his ear and felt the sun streaming in on his face. He was healing quickly, but between being lost in the caves and the strange paralysis, he’d lost weeks of his life. Weeks of Polara’s drawings, weeks of holding sweet Rigel to his chest and singing him to sleep. Weeks of laughing with and loving Aria. Weeks of conversations with Kaia.

  He heard her voice now, downstairs. She’d come for a quick visit, but she’d have to be back at the base soon. She was the engineering chief on a battleship now, and she was spending a lot of time training. This new alien threat, while not fast-moving, was ominous. He didn’t like her being at the front of it, but he saw why the military forces needed her.

  Ethan didn’t feel like walking downstairs. His legs had the singular numb sensation that came on and off ever since his collapse. Perhaps he could simply read for a few moments until she came.

  Where was his missive? When had he had it last? He glanced at his pack, propped in the corner of the room. Reaching over, he hauled it to him and found the missive in the little protected pocket where he’d stored it. It connected to the wireless power and bloomed to life as he pulled it out.

  There, on the screen, were the photos he’d taken in the Flowstone Room, with the dazzling white flowstone covering the walls, and the delicate symbols etched into it.

  He tapped the computer console on the desk and the monitor and keyboard glowed. He pulled up his Xardn program and entered the symbols he knew, then began on the ones he didn’t.

  But Ikastn hadn’t been studied extensively, and the symbols he found in the program didn’t match these.

  What was the room filled with these symbols? Was it simply an art gallery? A map? It seemed, most likely, to be a story, based on the words he could decipher. But was it mythology? History? A tourist’s guide to the caves of Minea?

  What were the strange figures that had helped them out of the cave trying to say?

  He loved this about language study. The many ways and the many reasons that populations took the time to write down what they knew fascinated him.

  He tried harder. He thought he recognized the phrase, “Sleeping on their (or his or her) journey through the stars.”

  Perhaps it was about the humans? He continued sketching and typing, puzzling out the possible translations.

  One word, a noun, was etched above each entrance to the flowstone room. Ethan entered it into the program, and several related words came up: safety, protection, security, shelter, but none of them were quite right. He had used one very like it before. He reached into the desk drawer and extracted his journal from Ship 12-22. He thumbed to the early years on the ship, when he had written of his desire to get his family to Minea, to a place they would be safe. As he found it, the meaning came to his mind like the tune of a familiar song. He knew this word:

  It was sanctuary.

  The Flowstone Room had felt sacred because it was sacred. It was a place of safety, a sanctuary, for the creatures. But what did they need protection from? And what were all the other symbols?

  He was deeply engaged in the search for meaning when he heard Kaia’s voice behind him. He turned to see that she had brought him a small flying drone with a tray atop it. It was entirely crafted from junk.

  “You can fly this downstairs when you need a drink or a snack and Aria can just send it right up,” Kaia said brightly.

  Ethan smiled. “I hope to be getting my own snacks soon.”

  A look of concern crossed Kaia’s features, and she changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

  Ethan shrugged. He wanted to say that he was fine, but he had found long ago that it did no good to lie to Kaia. “Just feeling all the time I’ve wasted.”

  Kaia nodded. “I know that feeling. The only remedy for it is to stop wasting time.”

  Ethan laughed. She was right.

  “What are you working on here?” she asked, gesturing toward the screen.

  “It’s a room full of petroglyphs we found while we were underground.”

  Kaia’s eyes widened. “That looks like Xardn!”

  “It’s Ikastn, a branch language of Xardn. The syntax is different, and there are words I don’t recognize, but overall I’m figuring out some of it. And between you and me, I don’t like it.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something off about these. On Earth we often found in petroglyphs what we thought to be histories of various groups, or mythical stories. But these words aren’t supporting that interpretation.” With Kaia, the strongest person he knew, he felt he could voice his growing dread. “Kaia, what if cave drawings aren’t just interesting history? What if they aren’t just art or calendars or records of what a group ate and where to find the best hunting?”

  Kaia spoke guardedly, as if she didn’t want to hear the answer to her next question. “What else would they be?”

  “Warnings.”

  ***

  Ethan was pleased that Kaia had a few hours free after her training session that night. She came by to share dinner with them. Ethan looked at his family: Aria, Kaia, Polara, and Rigel, sitting snugly on Kaia’s lap. When they were all together, it felt like home.

  He felt much stronger, and to keep his recovery going they’d procured a special meal by sending out to New Alliance for steaks.

  “Man, I miss the AAU,” Ethan joked, turning the steaks on the backyard grill. The Minean summer evening was pleasant.

  Kaia smiled.

  “Why can’t we have an AAU here?” Aria asked. “It would be wonderful for the hungry Rigo children to have an on-demand food maker. I don’t know what they eat over there from day to day.”

  “It’s just not practical on a large scale,” Kaia explained. “The amount of energy it takes to reassemble atoms is massive, even when you’re only feeding a small number of people. Imagine what it would be like to power one in every home here. It’s not such a challenge on a ship, when you have an S
L drive two decks away where it can get that kind of power.”

  Ethan shrugged. “Manual labor it is, then.”

  Aria went inside to get the plates, and returned with one in each hand.

  “Ethan,” she said, “I was grabbing Luis’s plates, but the HHSD sent out those bulletins yesterday about running everything through the sanitizer before using it.” Luis’s plates didn’t fit in the sanitizer, and the one time they had forced one in, it had exploded. “Shall we just use the old plates for now? They’ve been through it already.”

  Ethan nodded. “We probably should. Just don’t mention it to Luis if he comes by.”

  “I’ll leave them proudly displayed,” she said, turning over the green-glazed dinner plate she was holding. “He makes the most beautiful things. And they grow Taim pretty well, too!” Aria went back inside.

  Ethan shot Kaia a questioning glance.

  “The little plants growing everywhere,” she explained. “She calls them—” Ethan saw that the word had flown from her memory, even though she’d just heard it.

  “Taim,” he finished for her. Kaia nodded.

  “How is your memory, now that you’re over at the base?”

  Kaia seemed relieved to discuss it. “Actually, my engineering knowledge seems to be mostly intact. I still remember useless diagrams from hundred-year-old Earthships, but my mother’s first name disappears all the time. I don’t understand it.”

  “The brain is a complex thing,” Ethan said. “Even with all we know, many of the specifics are still a mystery. It can do strange things.” He thought of the figures, wondering if he had truly seen them or if they were just the products of his strained mind. “But you’ve still got your engineering knowledge. That’s great for you and for the fleet.”

  Kaia looked at him conspiratorially. “Actually, there’s one piece of engineering terminology that I keep losing, too. I can remember it when I’m not under pressure, but I’m terrified that someday I’m going to have to remember it in an important situation and it won’t be there.”