by Josi Russell
Chapter 33
Ethan left the hospital fighting hopelessness. The Minean night was warm, and he walked along the street in the Health and Human Services District, abandoned except for a hovercab and a couple of people going in and out of the hospital buildings.
For days he had sat beside that bed, watching Polara’s still form. It was agony he remembered from his early years on the ship, when Aria had been in stasis and he’d watched her in her stasis chamber, totally helpless.
As he watched Polara, he had willed her to move, willed her to flutter her eyelids, to cry, to sit up. He remembered when at three months old she had been trying so hard to learn to turn over. He remembered how her determination was evident in her straining shoulders, her flailing legs, her frustrated grunts. Back then, when he had wanted so much to reach out and put a hand under her back to give her a little boost, he had known that doing so would stop her learning how to do it, so he had sat on the floor of the cottage, his hands clasped to keep from reaching over, and willed her to do it. He had sent toward her his best energy.
And these days in the hospital he had done so, his hands clasped again, so hard that now, as he walked along the darkened street, he felt the ache in them. He found himself wishing Polara his own strength, wishing for her whatever it was that kept him from this plague, wishing for her simply the strength to sit up.
But still, all this time, Polara’s breath became shallow and ever more silent, and no amount of wishing changed its fading rhythm.
Ethan swore, low and angry. Aria had found the gas. It was coming from the mines. It had to be stopped. If not—his mind choked on the thought—if not to help Polara, then to stop anyone else’s child from getting sick.
Ethan turned his steps toward Yynium Hill and walked faster. The HHSD gave way to the manicured lawns of Coriol’s elite. Fragrant casien trees blossomed above him, and soft grass grew in the manicured lawns behind tall fences along the road. There were few estates here, but they were expansive. He passed Veronika’s estate, Theo’s, Governor Elias’s estate, and the new one Governor Meck had bought when he’d moved out of the cottages a few weeks ago. And on top he came to the Saras mansion, built by Dimitri Saras before he left Minea and inhabited now by his greedy, grasping son. Ethan shook on the gate and a wary guard stepped out of the little stone guardhouse.
“Where’s Marcos Saras?”
The guard glanced at the door of Saras’s big house, ten meters away, up the driveway, and Ethan knew the President was home. The guard laid a hand on his holster. “Who’s there?”
“Governor Bryant! I need to talk to him!”
At that, the guard looked unsure. “Okay. I’ll page him and let him know you’re here.”
Ethan was surprised when the guard opened the gate and gestured him up to the mansion. He stood outside the door and a cautious Saras appeared on an intercom screen.
“How can I help you, Mr. Bryant?”
“I know about the gas, Saras. I know it’s coming from your mines. Shut them down.”
Saras’s eyes darted nervously to the side. “Mr. Bryant, this sounds like business. Perhaps you could come to the office tomorrow?”
“It’s not business, Saras.” Ethan felt the heat growing in his chest. He could get in, if he wanted to, could blast the door and drag Saras out. “It’s my family. My little girl is—” He thought dying, but he couldn’t bring the word out. He stopped.
Saras’s voice was quieter than usual. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”
“Don’t be sorry. Stop it.”
There was silence for a long moment. Saras seemed to be weighing something. Ethan saw the moment that Yynium came back into Saras’s eyes, though. Saw the moment his humanity was lost to his greed. The screen went black.
Ethan pounded on the door until two of Saras’s guards dragged him outside the gates and put him on the sidewalk, where he felt the hot tears sliding down his cheeks and turned away, shuffling, broken, down Yynium hill.
***
Marcos switched off the screen. Bryant’s child was sick. He heard the man pounding on the door and waited a moment until he heard the scuffle of the guards taking him away.
Saras double-checked the bolt on his door and undressed, wrapping a robe around him to cover the bruising on his belly and chest. He couldn’t admit it. They would close the mines. As he lay on his couch, aching for Serena, he closed his eyes against the pain.
She would be landing on Earth any day, expecting to step aboard an RST ship and come to him. But he had failed her. The personal RST ships weren’t available, little Yynium had arrived on Earth, and she would not be here for a long, long time. He knew that may mean never. He spoke, calling the screen up in front of him.
“Messages,” Marcos said, “from Serena.”
“Messages from Serena,” repeated the smarthouse. Her messages appeared on the screen, her words flowing around the pictures she’d sent. He didn’t open any single one, just looked at them all en masse and curled into a ball around the pain in his chest. A coughing fit shook him.
Marcos missed Serena with a depth of emptiness he had never known, not even with the hole his father had left when he’d gone off to Minea.
“Show me the camera on the P5,” Marcos mumbled, feeling the heat of fever pressing on his temples. The little ship shone dully on the screen in the darkened garage. Its engine compartment still gaped open, the drive removed and laying on a table nearby. If the P5 was operational, he’d leave tomorrow to reach her.
Marcos didn’t hear the door unlock or the footsteps. He didn’t know how long he’d lain there when he noticed Veronika standing above him.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “Get dressed.”
She turned to leave, but stopped, her eyes on the screen. “What is that?”
“It’s the P5,” Marcos heard how his voice slurred and he tried to correct it. “Only it’s broken.”
Veronika froze. “What do you mean it’s broken?” Her voice sounded explosively loud to Marcos.
“Shhh,” he scolded, then waved her closer. Part of him was screaming to stop talking, but the fever was blurring his thoughts. He was tired and if he told her maybe she’d go away. “It’s broken because I tried to go home and the dirty Yynium clogged up the drive. Cayle will fix it.” He laid his head back and closed his eyes.
Veronika was suddenly in his face, her strong hands grasping the front of his robe and hauling him into a sitting position. He hadn’t known she was so strong.
“Dirty Yynium? When? When did this happen?”
“Some months ago.” Marcos scrunched up his face, trying to remember.
“Before or after the last shipment, Marcos?” She shook him just when he tried to close his eyes again. “Think Marcos. When?”
“Before. When we got the new filters in the refinery that I guess didn’t work so well.”
“Did you know this when we shipped?” she demanded.
Marcos nodded. He was beginning to pull out of the haze, and the screaming voice in his head telling him to stop talking was growing louder.
Veronika stared at him for a long, horrible moment. She slipped off the couch and knelt on the floor, running a hand through her long black hair.
“Marcos, this is bad.”
Marcos felt the sharp sting of regret sneak in around the edges of the haze. He put his head in his hands.
“I know.”
Veronika’s head snapped up. “You are an idiot. Why would you hide this?”
Marcos shook his head. His voice sounded more like his own when he said, “We have to keep running the mine to get new Yynium. We have to keep getting paid if we want to buy better equipment. We have to keep shipping.”
“Not dirty Yynium. What do you think is going to happen when that stuff arrives and they put it in the YEN drives?”
“Same thing that happened to the P5? The drives gum up?”
“Maybe,” her voice was sharp, “or maybe they overheat and explode and maybe people die Mar
cos.” He didn’t think that would happen and he could tell she knew he didn’t.
“And if it’s the ship Serena’s on?” Her words drove a knife into his gut, then she twisted it. “And she’s the one that gets burnt and hurled into space?”
“Stop it.” He stood. The room swayed slightly, but he was regaining control. His anger was overcoming the fever. “It’s one shipload. When we get the new vein, we’ll have all the clean Yynium we need.”
Veronika walked to the window. He knew she was calculating. “I’m sure you faked our report, but how did you get around the Colony Offices purity check?”
Marcos looked her in the eye and Veronika swore softly. “You paid someone off? And you expect them not to talk? Who was it?”
Marcos knew this conversation, knew where it ended. He kept his mouth shut. She started naming governors.
“Elias? Bryant? Mujib? Patten? Meck?” He tightened his mouth to keep from giving it away, but realized his mistake too late.
“Meck then,” she said decisively. “I knew something was fishy about that new house.” Then, turning from the window, “Does Theo know about this?”
Marcos shook his head and saw her nod, once, satisfied. At least he wasn’t always hopeless at lying. She walked a few steps toward him.
“We’ve got another problem.”
“What kind of problem?” he asked.
“We’ve got an alien problem,” she said coldly.
“We’ve had an alien problem for a while,” he said, grimacing as he thought about the black-suited Asgre lurking through the streets on their mysterious hunt.
“But now they’re in the mines,” Veronika said. She spoke to the house and pulled up the screen with a diagram of the Yynium mines. Four shafts each bore a large red x. His mines. They had already shut down four shafts?
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know, but in these four they have detonated charges, as if they are trying to get further back into the rock. But they’re not doing it well. They’re moving too fast, and they’re sloppy. They’ve basically destroyed all four shafts.”
Four shafts and all the work that it took to build them. Four shafts and the potential for Yynium harvest that they held. Four shafts represented nearly a year’s work, and every shaft destroyed set them back months. Marcos’s mind was clear now, and fury welled within him. He strode to the wall and punched the communicator. Within moments, Phillip Reagan was before him on the screen.
“Get these creatures out of my mines, Reagan,” he snapped. “I’ve given you the manpower. You’ve got all the Coriol Defense Troops. What are you waiting for?”
“You don’t just charge in and start firing at aliens, Saras. They don’t care how much scrip you have. You’d better be sure you know what they can do before you start pushing them around.”
“Well, what can they do?”
Reagan’s voice was a growl. “Plenty, from the looks of it. I’ve got analysts figuring out just what kind of weaponry they’ve got. I should know exactly how we match up soon, but you’d better know I’ve got people to think of before mines.”
“You’d better think of my mines, Reagan, or there won’t be any people here to think about.”
“We’ve made a deal, and they’ve got two days left to get out of here. It’ll be better for everyone if we don’t engage them before that.”
Marcos scoffed. “Made another deal with the aliens, huh Reagan?” Marcos smiled as he saw Reagan’s face register the blow. “You’ve got a good track record with those. Just know that if it comes down to it, I’m not afraid to use my troops.”
Reagan started to say something, probably a threat, but Marcos cut the call, his head still pulsing.
Veronika glared at him. “You think it’s smart to make the Admiral mad?” She scoffed, then snapped, “I said get dressed. We need to get Theo and get this thing figured out.” She went back to staring out the window.
As Marcos pulled on his slacks and buttoned his shirt, he looked past her, where he saw the lights of Coriol stretched beneath them, glimmering white all the way to the blue lights of the spaceport on the opposite side of the city. He saw her watching him in the reflection of the glass, and he saw her mouth open in shock as she turned slowly to stare at the bruises covering his torso.
Marcos tried to pull his shirt closed, but it was too late.
“We’re going to the hospital,” Veronika said sharply. “Right now.”
***
When Aria opened her eyes in the pale morning light, Rigel was stirring in her arms. Her neck was stiff from sleeping in the chair.
“Mama,” Polara’s sweet voice called, muffled by the thick cover over her bed, “the plants are dancing.”
Aria drew in her breath sharply. Polara was sitting up, running a gentle finger over the plants. Aria blinked. The plants were twice the size they were last night. And Polara was awake.
Aria’s heart beat hard as she jingled Ethan on the missive. When he answered, she saw that he had not gone home. He was in the street near the hospital, unshaven, wrinkled.
“Is she still—with us?” his voice trembled with the question. Aria couldn’t speak, just turned the missive towards their little daughter and heard Ethan’s cry of surprise as he saw the child looking back at him.
“Go home, Ethan, and bring all the Taim trays you can find. They’re in the kitchen and the work room.” Aria balanced Rigel on her hip as she slid a hand into the tent with Polara. The touch of her daughter’s hand sent joy washing over her.
Chapter 34
Daniel huddled in the back of the drift with three women and seven men. He hoped that wherever Zella was, she was safe. They switched off their headlights. The aliens that had been combing the city were in the mines now, and their time to find their slaves was up today. In their desperation, they had begun threatening the people in the mines, insisting that their slaves were somewhere below the surface of Coriol and demanding that the miners tell them where. But the Asgre had to leave soon. They were on their way back to the surface now, he’d heard. If the miners could hold out, they might be able to slip out of the mines or wait until the aliens left.
“Don’t make a sound,” Mullin commanded.
The voices of the Asgre echoed in the dark, muffled by the masks they wore and unintelligible in their rough alien language. They were growing closer on their way out of the mine.
Daniel heard his own breathing and tried to exhale more quietly. He heard the click of a belt against the stone wall and the shush of Illie’s uniform against the stone as she tried to ease into a better position for a long-term wait. His own back and legs were burning, and he knew that he’d have to shift soon, too.
He felt bad. Bad that he’d helped Theo and Veronika steal gas samples from the mine. Bad that he’d sold the extra one to Gaynes. His mother would have been ashamed, even if it did earn him almost a thousand extra scrip.
And now Gaynes thought he had cheated him and was threatening his little sisters. Who would be there to protect them from Gaynes if Daniel was killed by aliens today in the mine?
He hadn’t cheated Gaynes, but he was far from innocent. He had stolen the samples. He thought a repentant prayer and asked his mother’s forgiveness for his foolishness.
Daniel wondered if he should whisper a reminder to the others about the huge blast lights stored back here. They were known for tipping over on their tripod bases even when they were just standing in the drift.
Daniel was amazed at the number of sounds that humans could make when they were as silent as they could possibly be. Tarell’s stomach growled loudly, sounding like a great groan in the depths of the mine. Mary’s joints cracked as she shifted positions. Carter’s labored breathing echoed off the stone around them, even though he held it for as long as he could before inhaling forcefully.
The alien voices drew nearer. Light played on the wall. They’d been lucky twice. If they could avoid this group, they could slip out of the mine and head back to the s
afety of Coriol.
Daniel’s mind went to his sisters. With his mother gone, they needed him more than ever. There was no one, no one on this planet, to whom they could turn if their big brother didn’t come home.
Daniel felt, rather than saw, the lamp falling. The rush of air that brushed his cheek preceded a great rattling crash. Splinters of glass grazed his forearm, flying up from the rock floor of the drift.
The voices in front of them quieted and the lights swung out of the main shaft and came towards them. Carter snapped, shouting, “Run!” even though they all realized that there was nowhere to run.
Backed against the end of the drift, Carter ran the only direction he could: toward the coming Asgre mercenary team. He barreled into the first one, knocking them both over and grappling with the alien for a moment, pulling off its mask. A sharp hiss filled the cavern and the creature screeched, clawing at its throat before it grasped the mask and pulled it back on. The light from the helmet had clattered down the drift, where it spun and threw a beam of light up behind the approaching aliens, backlighting them and casting their shadows onto the cowering group of humans at the end of the tunnel.
Daniel saw Carter half-rise as the Asgre raised its weapon and shot him. The older miner sunk to the floor and lay still. The Asgre raised their lights in the direction he had come from.
The beams caught Daniel and the others frozen in terror. The aliens shouted commands that they didn’t understand. Switching on a translator, one of them said, “We are here for the Vala. You will lead us to them.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mary pleaded. “What’s a Vala? We mine Yynium here!” The creature waited, listening to the translation, and then barked, “Then you are not of any use to us.” He raised his weapon.
Daniel closed his eyes, preparing for the shot. Before he felt it, though, a gentle white light penetrated his eyelids. He opened them to see, standing between the miners and the Asgre, a half-circle of very different alien creatures.
They reminded him, somehow, of bipedal caterpillars with wrinkly pearl skin. They turned enormous eyes toward the miners, assessing, Daniel guessed, to see if they were all right. Their wide eyes made it possible for them to see where others couldn’t and, he guessed, to see what others couldn’t.