Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2)

by Josi Russell

This time, the little Vala moved, with no apparent difficulty, all eighty new ships, plus Champion, on which he stood. He entered the sleeping state, the tears flowed down his face, crystallizing and falling with soft pings.

  Ethan watched as they moved through the strange light again, ships appearing and disappearing around them. A cosmic crossroads. Where were they all going? Where were they coming from when their paths crossed with Champion’s?

  ***

  Reagan watched the sleek battleships appearing one by one around him in the vast stretch of space above Coriol.

  They surrounded Vigilant, and the Asgre ships advancing on her pulled back. The ships of the new fleet matched one for one the Asgre ships, until twenty-five of the Earthships had appeared. The Asgre ships each began to advance on the nearest Earthship. Then, one by one, fifty-five more Earthships parted space and stood at the ready. The Asgre ships paused.

  Reagan was dazzled by the suddenness of their return and by the remarkable fleet he now had at his command. He knew, too, though, that there were risks. Without working YEN drives, the ships could only retreat using their SL drives, which, if he had the Asgre figured right, would be no match for the speed with which they could move through space.

  But the Minean fleet had done their work freeing many of the Vala children and many of the cages under the ships stood empty. Now he knew that they were no faster than his SL-driven ships without their slaves. And the vast number of Earthships tipped the battle in his favor, too.

  “Surround the Asgre,” Reagan commanded. The ships moved in a ring around the Asgre ships, which looked old and clunky next to the shining new Earthships.

  The sergeant’s astonished voice came on the comms line. “Champion, are you there? Do you copy?”

  “We’re here, headquarters. We’ve been on a wild ride.”

  “Look out!” The sergeant’s voice was panicky. “There are ships warping in everywhere up there!”

  The smile was evident in Reagan’s voice when he said, “Don’t worry sergeant. They’re friendlies.”

  ***

  Galo saw them, too, on his screens: the dots that were ships appearing like a pox around his fleet. He paused raining artillery down on the strange plants. They had withstood all he had, and still the Vala children stared up at him through their shelter.

  What could he do? He spoke to his ships.

  “How many Vala do we have?”

  “One on board.”

  “Four on board.”

  “One on board.”

  “One on board.” the reports flowed in. Adding the Vala child in his cage on Galo’s Cliprig and the few straggling adults in the slave quarters, there were less than twenty. He hadn’t realized how many had been freed from under his very ships during the battle. All while he was chasing these children.

  Angrily, Galo took his ship out of the atmosphere. There, his fleet was surrounded by glistening new ships. The detritus of the old Minean fleet had been gathered and Galo saw some of the humans’ new ships descending with the rescued ships.

  These humans, with their moral superiority, were poised to destroy his business. Didn’t they understand he had deliveries to make? He hammered his fists on the console, looking up from his tirade to see the battle-scarred Champion. He had faced off with it earlier. Galo’s anger surged. He knew he was out of options. The only chance he had was to destroy Reagan, the leader of this misguided freedom fight. In a storm of fury and frustration, Galo launched his ship at it, hurling torpedoes as he advanced.

  ***

  Ethan barely had time to grab the edge of the engineering console he was standing next to and brace for the hits from Galo’s Cliprig before he realized that they were not coming. Chelus had moved them instinctively before the shells could hit. They were now behind Galo’s ship.

  “Vector quantities?” Captain Daring called as the ship began to turn.

  No one answered.

  “Engineering!” Daring shouted, shooting a look toward the engineering chief.

  Ethan’s gaze went to Kaia. She was frozen at the console, the lost look in her eyes. She had lost the words, just as she’d feared. He knew them, remembered them from the warm evening at his house when he’d reassured her that they’d be there when she needed them.

  Ethan wanted to call them out to her, felt them forming in his mouth. But Kaia’s panicked eyes found his and he saw that to do so would be to lay bare the secret she had kept so carefully. She looked as he had first seen her, so long ago, when she’d awakened to a world she didn’t understand.

  “Engineering?” The captain’s voice was a blade through the still air of the bridge.

  Ethan knew what he had to do. He gritted his teeth. The agony that was coming welled up before him as he reached quickly, the movement of his hand concealed from the others on the bridge by Kaia’s shoulder, and slipped her thought blocker off. At the same moment he used his other hand to slip off his own.

  The wave of thoughts engulfed him. Nearly everyone on the ship surged with fear, even though their outward demeanor didn’t reveal it. The anger and adrenaline of Daring and Reagan spiked through his mind, and the agony of the wounded in the sickbay below wrung his consciousness from him for a moment.

  Kaia’s knuckles, white on the console, revealed that she was feeling it, too. Ethan moved a hand to her shoulder. At the contact, the swirling thoughts around him faded and her calm, blank consciousness smoothed the pain from his mind.

  As he had so often longed to do, when she had lost his name or the date of her birth, he gave her the words. He laid them, like pearls, in her mind and he heard her speak them. For a moment, Ethan’s strength was hers, his youth, hers again.

  “Angular velocity,” she reported, and a string of numbers she’d found on her instruments followed.

  “Good work, engineering,” Daring called, making adjustments on his panel. Kaia turned her head, looking up at Ethan with gratitude.

  They were pulled out of the moment as the big ship maneuvered into position and Reagan ordered a strike. Shells sprayed from Champion’s forward battery, striking Galo’s ship across the rear thrusters. He rolled to evade, and Reagan saw the perfect moment to launch a missile at Galo’s engine room as the big ship breached.

  The explosion was spectacular. Ethan saw the cage beneath Galo’s ship tear in half, and the little Vala inside floated free for a second before disappearing.

  It reappeared on the bridge next to Ahmasa, who knelt and embraced what must have been another of her children. When the debris from the engine room cleared, Galo’s trembling voice came across the hailing frequency.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Reagan, it’s time we discussed a compromise.”

  “There will be no compromise. The Vala will be released,” Reagan said. Ethan could hear victory in his voice.

  “I could, perhaps, keep a few?” Galo sounded penitent.

  Reagan was firm, and Ethan saw in him redemption. “Not a single one. They will be brought safely, old and young, to the Coriol Defense Headquarters immediately.”

  The line was quiet a long time. Ethan saw the screens showing that Reagan was keeping his weapons ready.

  Galo’s voice was bitter when he finally spoke. “We will comply.”

  One by one, the cages below the remaining ships opened. As the Vala children floated free, Ethan saw them stretch like newborn babies and disappear.

  Reagan punched some keys and a video feed from Coriol Defense Headquarters appeared. On the screen, Ethan saw the Vala standing on the liftstrip, welcoming the children as they arrived. Ethan watched as families which had been split for several of his lifetimes were reunited.

  Ahmasa was watching the screen closely, as well. She crossed to Reagan and spoke quietly to him.

  “Galo,” he said, “that means the Vala in your slave hold as well.”

  Galo began to protest.

  “This is non-negotiable.”

  A piece of the plating slid back from the side of Galo’s listing ship and a large me
tal door opened. Ethan saw the Vala as they stepped out into space, one by one. Some of them were very, very old.

  “Is that everyone?” Reagan asked Ahmasa. She nodded.

  “We will take them to the base,” Ahmasa said, entwining her long fingers around her children’s and disappearing. Ethan saw the little group of freed Vala also disappear. They were soon on the liftstrip with their families.

  Reagan spoke again to Galo. “I expect you’ll leave Minea and her solar system for good.”

  Galo’s voice was broken. “We have no wish to stay. But it will take some time. Without the Vala, my ships are considerably slower.”

  “You’d better get going then,” Reagan said. There was satisfaction in his voice as he watched the Asgre gather their ships and move off into space.

  Kaia smiled at Ethan. He smiled back. “Admiral,” he said, “can you show us the Taim field? Are the children safe?”

  Reagan punched some buttons and the glowing dome of the Taim field appeared. Ethan saw his family inside, their faces bathed in the light of the Taim.

  ***

  It wasn’t until the Asgre ships left Minea and passed Candidus, the Minean moon, that the Taim sensed their charges were safe and lifted the shield they had created.

  Ethan was waiting beside it when it shimmered into oblivion and he pulled Aria and his children into his arms.

  Chapter 45

  The battle was weeks behind them, and Kaia was losing more words. She felt it, opening her mental filing cabinets to find more empty drawers every day. But her engineering knowledge remained intact. It seemed, in some ways, sharper.

  Ethan had teased her when she told him. “Maybe without my name cluttering up your memory, you have room for more important things.” And they had laughed.

  She was letting go of the shame of losing things, accepting their loss and embracing more fully what remained. Perhaps acceptance was part of the gift of aging. Yi Zhe said that every experience held good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, and the balance was integral to life.

  Using her heightened engineering abilities, she had been at work with the Vala and a team of engineers, mechanics, theorists, and anyone else who wanted to help on a new drive that combined the qualities of Yynium and the unique properties of the Vala secretions. If they could get it to work, the Vala would be the wildly wealthy. The UEG was poised to pay them well for their Yynium extraction services and for the crystalline teardrops that held the key to their unique ability. It was promising, but something was still missing, and Kaia could not yet see it.

  It was a week after the battle when Kaia visited the junkyard. She was surprised to see Yi Zhe walk out of the blue cottage at the edge of the yard.

  “I thought you’d be back to consulting,” she said worriedly. “Coriol can certainly attest to your skills now.”

  Yi Zhe nodded, smiling broadly. “I have many consults scheduled. But we have decided to keep this job, as well.” He waved a hand expansively. “Fire, earth, wood, water, metal—here we are surrounded by all the elements. We can achieve a powerful balance here.”

  Kaia bowed slightly. He was happy. That’s what she wanted for all her passengers.

  “Are you back to building robots?” Yi Zhe asked, a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve saved you some particularly nice pieces.” He waved her along with him as he walked toward a careful arrangement near a corner of the cottage. He had saved beautiful parts. There were rich wooden gears, shining steel rods, and a knob that shone copper under a decoration of lacy green oxidation. Kaia gathered them and saw beneath them a part familiar only from the manuals. Nearly dropping the others, she snatched it up, spinning to face Yi Zhe.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “I uncovered the center of the old junkman’s pile,” he said. “Buried there were many of those. I liked the shape of it and thought it might be of use to you in your creations.”

  “There are more?”

  Yi Zhe nodded. “Many.”

  “Show me!”

  Yi Zhe took her to the center of the junkyard. He was obviously still in the process of excavating it, but there, in the center, were discarded pieces from the first ships that had come to Minea. And among them, reflecting the sun back at her from their gently curved front plates, were the Octagon drives that had brought humanity to Minea for the first time.

  ***

  When, an hour later, she dumped them onto the table in the Colony Offices boardroom, the team gave her quizzical looks.

  She saw the Vala rocking their heads back and forth in assent as they ran their long fingers over the drives.

  “These are the earliest Super-Luminal drives,” she said. “They brought the first colonists to this planet.”

  The engineers were also nodding. Cayle, a young mechanic who’d been working for Saras before this, spoke up, “and they were extremely inefficient.”

  “Right,” Kaia said, “but they had more potential than YEN drives, we just couldn’t unlock it. But now we have Vala chips.” She held up a crystalline teardrop.

  “I think that combining the Octagon drives, Yynium, and the unique properties of the Vala chips may just work.” Kaia gestured toward a young, untrained, but very talented designer, a friend of Aria’s. “Daniel, I’d like you to get started sketching some concepts for a housing that would hold the critical components of the YEN drive, the core from one of these Super-Luminals, and a Vala chip, all in close proximity.”

  The boy beamed, and she saw him immediately begin sketching. He was eager and optimistic, a real asset to the team.

  She spent an hour explaining her theory. The Vala made slight corrections as she spoke.

  “I think we could have a drive ready pretty quickly,” she said. “The tricky part is going to be getting our hands on a test ship.”

  “You’ve got connections,” one of the engineers teased. “Let’s try it out on Champion.”

  Kaia laughed. As fond as her father was of her, there was no way he’d let her test it on his favorite battleship, especially not since it had just been repaired and was back in the sky.

  “I don’t think so. Anyway, we need a smaller ship to start with.” She turned to the Vala. “Perhaps we could impose on you to take us to Earth to bring back a small RST ship?” They had not asked the Vala to do this since the battle, though every human on Minea was anxious to return to Earth, at least for a visit.

  “No need.” Cayle spoke up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got a ship we can use.”

  That seemed unlikely to Kaia. “Oh?”

  Cayle nodded, rubbing a bit of grease from his knuckle. “A P5.”

  ***

  Though it took months, the new drive was in the P5 and ready to test just days before the autumn Lucidus festival. Saras had been more than accommodating, donating the P5 for the project, requesting only that he be allowed on the test flight.

  The shining P5 awaited them as Kaia, Ahmasa, Reagan, and Marcos Saras arrived at the liftstrip. Marcos was dressed well for the test flight, in a smart tuxedo with a pale aurelia flower in his lapel. Kaia shot Reagan a smile. You never knew what to expect with Saras.

  The ship had been refitted, the five stasis chambers removed and replaced with five comfortable Earthleather chairs, taken, Kaia had heard, from Theo Talbot’s hovercar. The ship rose smoothly into the atmosphere, and she felt the anticipation as the drive hummed to life behind them. Though all their tests had been smooth, there came the moment that existed before all new endeavors when Kaia felt the weight of possible failure and the desire to turn back. She gripped the arm of her chair and breathed deeply through that moment.

  The ship shuddered and the colored flames bloomed around them and then, again, they were home.

  ***

  Kaia watched Marcos Saras exit the ship and pull a dark-haired girl into his arms. Suddenly, his willingness to help with the project made sense. And his tuxedo made sense when he asked the girl to marry him there on the liftstrip
.

  But Kaia couldn’t stop thinking about the drive. The test had been successful. The drive worked. It would allow for blindingly fast travel. Humans now had infinite choices. They could go home again. They could also, if they chose, move even farther beyond this delicate planet that was their birthplace.

  Chapter 46

  Ethan walked through the cooling evening, following Polara as she darted in and out of the colorful booths in the new Coriol marketplace. The Vala were out, too, enjoying the evening alongside the humans. Brightly colored UEG money changed hands around them, and Ethan didn’t miss the heavy scrip chain he’d carried for so long. The UEG had banned company scrip across the planet.

  Saras was paying in UEG money now. Paying the miners and refinery workers who now spent their days in bright, clean plants, building ships and the new drives that would power them. When the UEG decreed that the Karst Mountain Range would not go to any company, but to the Vala, Ethan expected Saras to pout. But Saras, with the Vala Yynium contract, the new ship factories, the plants where his workers made the new drives, and his fiancée Serena beside him, was a new man. He had simply congratulated Aemon in awkward Ikastn.

  Saras Company still owned the town, but it was finding new sources of revenue in addition to the ship factories and drive plants. Saras was leasing to small businesses, and several of Ethan’s passengers had pooled their money and opened a shop made up of Hannah’s dolls, Winn’s carvings, and Luis’s pottery. The people of Coriol, starved so long for beauty, kept the store busy.

  There was also a new live theatre, where Angela and Manuel, as well as several others, performed every weekend. Ethan had even talked Ndaiye into singing with them, and he heard his friend’s rich voice rising above the marketplace as they neared the theatre at the other end. Ethan and his family were on their way there now, to watch the new play his friends had written for the autumn Lucidus festival.

  Polara’s delighted voice broke through the buzz of the crowd.

  “Look at the butterflies, Daddy! Look!” she called. He followed her pointing finger up to see the ellisa sunara on their annual autumn migration. Their golden wings caught the last of the light and splashed it on Polara’s face and hands as she danced below them. Chelus and a few Vala children joined her, reaching their long fingers toward the frolicking butterflies.