by Josi Russell
“Okay, little ones,” Aria spoke gently, trying to convey more confidence than she felt, “You need to follow me, and you need to be so, so quiet.” She walked comically on her tiptoes and the children giggled and followed her. She gestured to Minz, and he took the lead. They followed him across the rubble-strewn room and down a flight of stairs just as the shells started falling again.
The tunnels he led them through were narrow and damp, the access panels in their walls leading directly to the filters the water ran through before it was sent to the treatment part of the facility. The lighting was unpredictable as well, with large, dark gaps between many of the fixtures. Aria heard Hannah’s voice rising in a soft lullaby that calmed both the humans and the Vala.
It seemed they had been forever in the dark, damp tunnel, but more likely it had only been a block or two when a shell hit the top of the tunnel just behind them, blowing the tunnel open and flooding it with light from Galo’s ship’s search beams and debris.
Aria saw it then, sparkling behind them in the tunnel, caught by the sweeping light: a shining trail of tears the little sleeping Vala in Luis’s arms was leaving behind. Could Galo be using those to track them? However they had found them, the Asgre were coming.
“Minz!” Aria shouted toward the front of the long line. “We need to run!”
They ran, Aria’s arms burning with Rigel’s weight. She tried not to trip over the little Vala child in front of her. Another shell fell behind them. They were getting closer.
Finally, Minz stopped and ascended a steep stairway jutting from the side of the tunnel. As she watched him open the door at the top, she felt panic, not relief. What would await them above?
They emerged in the empty lobby of the farm’s operations building and followed Minz through the first decontamination room and through one of the vast clean rooms, where the new plants grew healthy with the Taim cleansing the air.
Aria mentally checked for each child as they ran through the last empty decontamination room. As they emerged into the fields outside, the world was dark around them. The Asgre ship was still working on the tunnel behind them, tearing it open with projectiles down the length of it.
“Which way to the Taim field?” Minz asked desperately.
Aria paused, turning, disoriented in the dark. She felt Rigel’s mind reaching out and tried to meet it, but found he wasn’t reaching for her. He was reaching, she realized for the Taim, calling out to them in his infant need.
A ripple of light to their left drew their attention. Aria looked up to see the forest of Taim, grown to ten meters high, like their parents in the mountains, and dancing with flashing multicolored lights on their crowns and trailing branches. The sweet scent of apple blossoms and vanilla filled the night air. Instinctively, the children ran for them. Aria could not have stopped them if she’d tried. The adults followed as the Asgre ship, apparently noticing the Taim as well, left the tunnel and cruised toward them.
Aria looked back to see Hannah and Polara, the last of the group, silhouetted against the powerful beams of the ship’s floodlights. She stopped, running back to them. Aria grabbed Polara’s little hand and the two women lifted her between them as they ran, gunfire kicking the dust around their heels.
Ahead of them, the first of the children entered the Taim forest and the trees began to glow steadily, from the bottom of their trunks to their fringed tops. Their delicate branches would offer, Aria saw, no protection. They were not like the massive kapok and baobab. There were no protective cavities to duck into, no thick branches to shield the humans and Vala from the shells and the shackles of the Asgre, but there was nowhere else to go. And Rigel continued to relay the call of the Taim: “Bring the children.”
Aria, Hannah, and the two children tumbled into the meager shelter of the Taim forest barely ahead of the Asgre ship. Aria pulled her children into her arms and scrambled a few trees in, huddling next to the glowing trunk of one of the Taim. In the seconds it took for the Asgre ship to reach the forest, something remarkable happened.
The Taim began to hum. Their fragile branches intertwined and the light they were emitting reached a daylight brilliance. The ship hovered overhead and Aria watched the first shell fall. To her amazement, the shell hit the canopy of entwined branches and exploded, its fragments bouncing high into the sky as if repelled by the Taim.
The children gasped at the light show. Aria marveled, remembering the broken and charred Taim field in the mountains. The Taim had experienced this before. This remarkable species must have evolved a protection for their tender seedlings in the case of fire from above. And now they shared their protection with humanity. Galo’s ship dropped shell after shell, but Aria and the children, in the shelter of the Taim, felt nothing.
Rigel’s eyes were wide as he watched the explosions. His mind was finally quiet. Aria felt again the deep calm that was so much a part of him. He felt safe. The Taim were watching over them.
***
When Daniel swung the door to the apartment open, he heard the sound of singing. The door to the back bedroom was ajar, and inside he found Zella, surrounded by the children. The scene was so peaceful, compared to the violence he’d just witnessed, that when Zella rose and took him in her arms, Daniel laid his head on her shoulder and wept with shock and relief.
“Are they gone?” Zella asked, so softly that only he could hear.
“The ships are still fighting,” he said. “I could have stayed at the base, but I wanted to be here to—to take care of you.” He looked her in the eye, willing her to understand what he was really saying, what he meant by it.
Zella ran a hand through his hair with one hand and patted the weapon at her hip with the other. “And so I can take care of you?”
Daniel smiled as she leaned up and kissed him. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he had broken above the water and could breathe again.
Chapter 44
Ethan stood in the Coriol Defense Headquarters and looked at the engagement board. The transports had returned them here and the Vala were being made comfortable in the barracks. In the situation room with Ethan were Sergeant Nile, several company troop leaders, and the Governors. Saras and Veronika were there, as well, though Ethan suspected that they had come more to be protected in the Headquarters than to help with strategy.
Ethan looked at the red dome on the engagement board which marked the Taim grove where Aria and the children huddled under the Taim’s protective shield while Galo’s ship rained fire above them. He didn’t know how long it would last, and he was wild to go after the Asgre ship himself, but there were no ships to spare.
The Asgre, with their blunt, cruel ships, were wrecking the Minean fleet. Reagan’s Champion was disabled in the safety zone, called so because it was far from danger, not because it was particularly well defended against it. The rest of the fleet hung in orbit above Minea, many drifting from critical damage. Only three battleships and two colony fleet ships were left to fight more than thirty Asgre ships. They had no chance against this enemy. Ethan saw it as he listened to Reagan on the comms link and the others in the room discussing strategies and moving the little model ships around on the engagement board. They even advised the remaining battleships to employ the principles Yi Zhe had taught them, which had worked so well on the ground. But the sheer number of Asgre ships compared to the number of Minean ships made success unlikely.
Reagan swore across the comms link. “If only we had the fleet,” he said. Ethan could tell the Admiral was growing desperate. Reagan didn’t waste time wishing.
A calm voice spoke from the back of the room. They turned to see Ahmasa, one of the Vala mothers whom Ethan had come to know, entering through the door. With her was Chelus, her small son.
She looked at Ethan. “Will you speak for me?”
He nodded, wishing again that he had his translator. “I’ll try.” He translated the best he could as she spoke.
“We can help you retrieve your fleet,” Ahmasa said. “If
you will protect us and save the Vala on the ships.”
Ethan looked around the room. It was obvious that the Sergeant saw no way that such gentle-looking creatures, who had huddled vulnerably in the flowstone battle, could help in this conflict. Even Reagan was silent on the comms line, but Ethan knew him well enough to know he would give them a chance.
Ethan stepped in, speaking. “You have a way to help us? Help us get our fleet? From Earth?” Even in Ikastn, it sounded implausible when he said it out loud.
Ahmasa launched into a description of her plan, but the words and concepts were so unfamiliar that he was lost a little way in. She stopped, frustrated, and Ethan felt her desperation as well. How could they understand what she was trying to say? He knew from his previous attempts at telepathic communication with the Vala that removing his thought blocker would only add to the confusion. There was no time for miscommunication.
“Maybe you could show us?” he said, stringing together some of the simple Ikastn words he knew he would not get wrong. As she considered, Ethan thought about the simplicity of their communications, forced by the language barrier. As a linguist, he loved language and the complexity that came with translating a being’s inner thoughts and worldview into something others could grasp—but the longer he knew the Vala, the more convinced he was becoming that speaking precisely and plainly had its advantages.
“Yes,” Ahmasa said, “come here.” She held out her hand. So did her little son. The Sergeant scoffed and walked a few feet away, turning his back on her outstretched hand. Ethan walked over and took Chelus’s hand. Saras’s eyes showed that he didn’t trust them enough to approach. Ahmasa shrugged, then she picked up the model of Champion, the jewel of the fleet, and showed it to Chelus, who closed his eyes.
Ethan didn’t have time to take a breath. It was as if he’d been slammed in the chest by a sol train. His eyes closed as his head snapped back. When he opened them, he was looking at the shocked face of Phillip Reagan.
Ethan gasped for breath. He was on the bridge of Champion—but that was impossible.
He heard, over the comms, a stir in the room he had just left.
“Where did they go?”
“They disappeared!”
“What is happening?”
Ethan was impressed with Reagan’s calmness as he spoke. “They’re on my ship.”
Shocked silence filled the comms line.
Finally, Saras snapped, “Are they trying to infiltrate our defenses? They could be trying to take over our fleet.”
Ethan was annoyed by Saras’s paranoia, but given what he’d been through lately with Theo, it was understandable.
“They picked the wrong ship for that,” Reagan said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“We can help you, if you will help us.” Ahmasa said, keeping her words simple so that Ethan could translate. Her wide, watchful eyes roamed constantly over everything on the ship, looking for danger.
“What do we do?” Ethan asked Ahmasa.
“Go to your home world,” came her reply.
Ethan shook his head. “The ship is broken, and even if it wasn’t, Earth is—” he held up five spread fingers and tried to think of the Ikastn word for what would be the equivalent of Earth’s “years.” Even with the YEN drive, by the time they made the round trip the Asgre would have wiped out the humans and taken the Vala by force.
Ahmasa shook her head impatiently. “Set your course,” she said, “for Earth.” Her pronunciation of the planet’s name was close enough to be understood, but her accent gave the word a holy sound.
Ethan glanced at Reagan, who shrugged. “It’s not going to hurt anything. We might as well do what she says.”
The captain of Champion, Captain Andrew Daring, kept a watchful eye on the strange visitors as he entered the coordinates for Earth. To Ethan’s surprise, the ship began to move at a cruising speed, the engines silent as they moved through the vacuum of space with ease. Ethan had never traveled by RST before, but he had heard that ships shuddered violently as they moved into RST, so when he felt it, he knew what was happening, but he didn’t know how.
He glanced at the Vala. They stood calm and poised, still holding hands. But the child’s eyes had closed, and he appeared to be asleep standing up. Something shone crystalline on his cheeks. As Ethan looked more closely, he saw them: tears. Just like the sleeping Vala he had seen in the Cavern of Sleepers, they coursed down his cheeks as he slept. As they left his face and fell, they crystallized and fell to the floor of the ship in solid, glassy drops that made a tiny chime when they landed.
At the moment he saw them, a flash outside the window caught his eye. Turning, he gasped and grabbed for the edge of the console in front of him.
An explosion of colored flames licked the outside of the ship, obscuring the viewing screen with vibrant Chroma. Ethan felt his eyes narrow at the brightness of it. Suddenly, ahead, he saw a ship appear and then disappear, above and to the left of them, another. Like points of light flaring and then fading, he saw five, ten ships appear around them and then they were gone.
And suddenly, there it was—glowing blue and white and beautiful, brighter than Lucidus: Earth.
Ethan felt his breath coming fast and shallow. Home.
A cheer went up from the crew of the ship. Ethan turned to the Vala in wonder. The child’s eyes were open now.
“How?” he asked in Ikastn, softly.
The little Vala’s skin wrinkled in a smile. “Alosha.” My gift.
His mother beamed as well. “We can move your fleet as quickly back. If we will be allies, as you promised before.” A cloud crossed her face suddenly. Ethan recognized it. It was the moment a parent saw a danger to their child. “You will not enslave us to use this gift,” she said forcefully.
Ethan shook his head quickly. “No.” He hoped slavery was behind humanity forever.
She shook her head impatiently. “You will have no need,” she said. “We can help you understand. Perhaps you, too, can travel in this way.”
That was almost too much to hope. Ethan exchanged a glance with Reagan, but before they could speak they were interrupted by a forceful hail from Earth’s defense headquarters. A communications officer appeared on the screen and there was wariness in his tone. Ethan saw that he had his finger on a red button that would likely trip the orbital defenses into attack mode.
“Ship, identify yourself.”
Captain Daring hit the communicator. “We are the ship Champion, of the Minean Fleet.”
The line was quiet a long time, then the voice came back on. “Please hold for the president.”
She appeared on the screen in her street clothes, obviously not ready for a meeting. “What is going on?”
Reagan spoke up. “We’ve come for our ships, Madam President.”
For once, Ethan saw her speechless.
“You’re cleared for landing,” the defense administrator said hurriedly.
As Champion moved down through Earth’s atmosphere, Ethan felt a wave of emotion wash over him. He was home, but without Aria and the children, even Earth felt foreign. His home was wherever they were, and he wanted to get back to them.
***
Ethan held the President’s eye as he stepped off the ship.
“Is that—the Caretaker?” she asked her aide. “H-How?” she stopped there.
“Madam President, we’ve made some new friends.” Ethan gestured to the extended stairway behind him, where Ahmasa and Chelus stood shyly. The president’s eyes widened, but she quickly composed herself and stepped forward, extending her hand.
Ahmasa took it and raised it to her own forehead, then to Chelus’s. When she was finished, the president pulled it back awkwardly.
“You brought this ship here?” she asked, and Ethan translated.
Ahmasa nodded. “My son did.”
Ethan gave the president Ahmasa’s words, then spoke up for himself. “And they say they can help us modify the YEN drives to travel this way without them.”
“Is that possible?” The president was skeptical.
Kaia spoke up. “I think so. These—” she held up a flat palm, filled with the child’s diamond tears, “have some very unique properties.”
Ethan wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that. “I don’t think we should build our fleet on children’s tears.”
Ahmasa laid a gentle hand on his arm and gave him a questioning look. He repeated what they had said.
She smiled. “They are not only tears. They are also sleeping secretions. When our children enter into a state of sleeping, the drops fall naturally.”
“Then why the cages?” Ethan asked.
“The Asgre forced the children to navigate through shocking them. They wanted the secretions on demand. The cages shocked the children into a sleeping state and forced them to navigate the ships to coordinates implanted in their thoughts.”
“It is,” Ahmasa thought for a moment, “a defense mechanism. The children can navigate at will to any point in the universe. We lose it when we pass the time of becoming. We can still travel through space, but we must have our children present to help us.”
That was a switch, Ethan thought, parents dependent on children for their well-being. But then he thought of the way Polara’s arrival had made everything new. He thought of Rigel’s communications with the Taim, and he realized humans weren’t so different. The Vala just embraced the truth of their dependency more completely.
***
With Minea under siege, every moment counted. Still, when the fleet had been gathered and its crews had said their goodbyes and reported for duty, Champion lingered, its passengers gazing at the planet of their birth.
“It’s time to go back, sir,” Daring said. “We’ve had a transmission from Minea that the Asgre ships are moving in on Vigilant. She’s the last one left, sir.”
Ethan saw Reagan turn from the blue orb in front of them to the Vala. “Take us home, please?”