Ariston_Star Guardians

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  As you should not, my friend, he thought, feeling almost sad as he gazed back at her. Maybe she couldn’t trust him in all matters, but she could trust him in this. “You have my word that I’ll protect them if trouble comes,” he said, meeting her eyes.

  About that, there was no need to lie.

  “All right,” Mick said after holding his gaze for several seconds. She mirrored the shrug he’d offered. “If you’ll stand guard, anyone who wants to go out to take samples in the dark and cold is welcome to.”

  “Excellent.” Dev smiled, her eyes gleaming.

  The others looked far less enthused.

  Ariston thought Dev might go alone, in which case he could possibly get all manner of information out of her, but Lee said, “I’ll get my kit” and headed for his cabin. “We’ll see if these people left anything for us,” he added.

  Ariston lifted his chin at what had sounded like an admission of guilt to him, a promise of looting. But Mick was looking at him again, so he did his best to mask his thoughts.

  As the scientists departed to get their gear, Ariston started toward his armor, but paused when soft beeps came through the open cockpit door. He turned and strode to check on it.

  Mick must have heard the beeps, too, because she jogged past him to jump in first. It was her ship, he reminded himself.

  “The sensors are showing activity outside,” she said.

  “Another ship?” Ariston caught himself leaning close to peer over her shoulder and backed off a couple of feet. He could see fine without looming over her.

  “No… Some kind of energy. It’s already gone, but—oh, there it is again. Someone’s firing weapons out in the ruins and around the pyramid. Your captors?” She arched an eyebrow and looked over her shoulder as she said that last word.

  He studied the sensor display, keeping his face neutral. He hadn’t thought his small flub would be that noticeable or even indicative of a lie, but she’d clearly noticed something that set off her mental alarms. Maybe it wasn’t too soon to retire, after all.

  “Your sensors show the Pleasant Journey still in orbit,” he said. “None of its shuttles have come back down. It can only be the men we left alive out there.”

  We. He meant he. He should have gone out and rounded them all up, then thought up a different way to lure a shuttle back down. He didn’t like having armed men out there where they could make trouble. Too bad he’d just volunteered to babysit instead of finding them.

  “Shooting at… each other?” Mick asked.

  “Or their imaginations.”

  She scowled at him, and he remembered she’d fired at something that hadn’t been there earlier. He was a little surprised he hadn’t been seeing phenomena out there, given what he’d heard about the planet. Though he did find his headache and weariness uncharacteristic for him.

  “If they’re seeing things, the way I did earlier, that could explain it,” Mick said.

  “Have you seen anything since coming back aboard?” he asked, though figuring out an explanation for the planet’s strange reputation was low on his priority list at the moment.

  She gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I don’t think so. I’ve just been tired. Weirdly so, I think.”

  “I’ve been tired too. I haven’t slept, but some of your people mentioned bad dreams. And you had a nightmare, too, right?”

  Her expression shuttered. “Yeah, but that’s not a symptom of anything. I’ve had them before.”

  “Recently?”

  She hesitated. “No.”

  He thought it odd that everyone was experiencing nightmare-plagued sleep at the same time.

  “I had it a lot after… the thing that happened happened,” she admitted vaguely.

  He was tempted to ask for more details but figured she would have told him if she’d wanted him to know.

  “But that’s been more than four years now. I haven’t dreamed about it for a while. I guess seeing people get killed out there—I get why it would come back.” She swallowed and looked away, blinking a few times.

  No tears fell, but the lighting was such that he could see the moisture filming her eyes.

  Ariston lifted his hand, tempted to rest it on her shoulder, but lowered it again. He wasn’t her confidant, and he doubted she would mistake him for that. If he were smart, he would lock his feelings down and keep himself from thinking of her as anything other than a ride off this planet—and someone he might have to arrest when the dust settled.

  Yet his hand drifted up again, as if it had a mind of its own, and rested on her back. She didn’t reject the gesture. She closed her eyes, and her chin drooped to her chest. She looked like she wouldn’t mind a back rub.

  The sensors lit up again, more weapons firing outside.

  Mick took a deep breath and straightened in the chair. Ariston withdrew his hand, sensing the moment had passed.

  “As odd as it seems,” she said, seeming to shake off her memories, “this may be a good time for Dev to take her soil samples. They’re distracted by something out there.”

  Ariston nodded. “I’ll put my armor on.”

  “I’ll keep Woodruff inside and help him with the repairs.”

  “A good plan. It would be preferable to be as ready to leave as possible, save for that converter. If we’re able to get up to the Pleasant Journey to get it, we’ll probably be fleeing for our asses on the way back down, with the captain firing after us the whole way. I don’t have any delusions about two people—” he included Mick in his calculations but left off all the scientists, doubting any of them would be useful in a combat incursion, “—taking over the salvage ship. He’s got a crew of fifty.”

  Mick quirked her eyebrows. “Really? No delusions at all?”

  “No practical ones.”

  “You’re not allowed to have impractical delusions?”

  “Engineers aren’t into that.”

  “So repressed.” She smiled at him.

  Ariston had been on his way out of the cockpit, but the curve of her lips startled him, and he paused to grip the jamb. He hadn’t seen her smile before and hadn’t quite realized the tough warrior woman had a sense of humor.

  He reminded himself that he’d decided to withdraw his emotions, to not grow attached.

  “It’s a flaw,” Ariston replied, giving her a quick return smile before hurrying away.

  9

  Mick fought yawns and alternated driving screws and tossing chocolate-covered coffee beans in her mouth. She didn’t want to sleep again, not on this crummy nightmare-inducing planet.

  At least she was almost done. Or as done as she could be. This was the last of the parts they had a replacement for.

  A clank came from the other side of her small engineering compartment. Dr. Woodruff was trying to hammer out the crater-sized dent in the hull, one that impinged upon the space the shield generator occupied. And space was at a premium back here. The Viper wasn’t exactly claustrophobic, especially when compared to the NASA shuttles Earth had launched into orbit, but parts of her ship did remind her of the one and only trip she’d taken in a camper van.

  “I didn’t know I’d need replacement parts for everything,” Mick said, leaning back and rubbing her neck. Her entire body was tense and achy. She’d kill for a massage—and a spa-like place to enjoy it. “I thought I was being overly prudent when I spent as much as I did on outfitting the ship.”

  “You couldn’t have anticipated rogue salvage ships with the attitudes of imperial Star Destroyers.” Woodruff set down his mallet and shook out his hand.

  “Isn’t there a high-tech science-fiction-y tool in my box that can do that?” Mick waved at the mallet.

  “Not in a way that allows me to take out my frustrations, aggressions, and worries.” He stood up and went to one of the storage cabinets.

  “Worries that we won’t get off the planet?”

  “Yes, and also that your hulking friend will do something inimical to De—our scientists. Maybe we should check in on them.
It’s been a while since they commed us, hasn’t it?”

  “It’s been ten minutes.”

  “That long?” His eyes widened.

  Mick almost laughed, but she realized he wasn’t joking. “Let’s give them five more minutes. If we haven’t heard from them then, we’ll check.”

  Woodruff grimaced and stuck his head in the cabinet. The clanks coming from inside almost drowned out his grumbles of discontent.

  “Ariston needs to get off the planet too,” Mick said. “I don’t trust him or what he’s up to, but I trust that he doesn’t want to be stranded here.”

  “You know he’s strong enough, especially with that armor, that he could knock us all out—or kill us—and take this ship once we’ve got it nice and fixed up. I think he’s just using us for now.”

  “Well, we’re using him, so I guess that’s fair.”

  Woodruff frowned around the cabinet door at her.

  “I don’t think he’s a killer at heart,” Mick said, wondering if she was being naive. “He went out of his way to knock those men out, rather than killing them.”

  “That just shows us that he doesn’t want to kill them. Maybe he’s not so escaped as he claimed. Maybe this is all part of some elaborate ruse. Though admittedly, I can’t imagine to what end. Why are these people even here? The scouting reports that Umbra paid for said that nobody ever came to this planet or this system. It’s why they made it their number one pick for potential colonization.”

  “About that…” Mick said, realizing Woodruff might know more than she did. “Did they get any kind of permission or ask anyone in the Confederation if this planet was available to colonize?”

  “Ask permission? Mick, there are billions of stars in the galaxy, and who knows how many planets around them. Nobody can lay claim to all that.”

  “So that’s a no?”

  “I’m not sure. I was invited to join the team, not brought on as an advisor. The CEO may have talked to the Confederation, but who knows? It’s not like that’s a quick phone call that can be made. So far, the Confederation has reached out to us and opened lines of communication, but they haven’t officially invited Earth to join, and I don’t have to tell you how rare it is for ships to come by. If your sister hadn’t ended up with galactic connections and come to get you, you never could have gotten out of our system to somewhere that you could obtain a ship, right?”

  “Right.” Mick had told them all that story early in their voyage. “Which is presumably why Umbra reached out to me. I was basically the only person around with a ship who had ties to Earth.”

  Woodruff pulled new hull panels out of the cabinet and set them on the deck. “You have a magtorch in that box? I think I’m going to volunteer you to do the exterior panel replacements. That’s about all that’s left.”

  “I gave you chocolate-covered coffee beans earlier, and now you’re volunteering me for grueling work?”

  “I’d do it if I had armor like yours. I think those other three are nuts for going out there among aggressive murderers with guns when they’re wearing neon-yellow hazmat suits.”

  “Bolt bows, not guns.”

  “I don’t care if they’re photon torpedoes. They’re deadly.”

  Mick remembered Dr. Garcia flying to the ground with his back half blown open. “You don’t have to tell me,” she murmured.

  “Sorry.”

  She pushed herself to her feet. “All right, let me put my armor on. It’ll give me an excuse to check on our people.”

  “Make sure Dev isn’t wandering away from safety to look at interesting soil, please.”

  Mick thought about pointing out that it wasn’t logical for him to consider Ariston untrustworthy and dangerous and call him “safety” at the same time. Woodruff had that worried expression on his face again, and she didn’t want to tease him.

  “I’ll make sure.”

  “And don’t let her blather about our business to that guy, either,” Woodruff said. “She’s a little too enthusiastic and open for her own good.”

  “But you like her anyway, right?” Maybe she would tease him a bit, after all.

  On Woodruff’s freckled face, blushes were easy to see. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll have everything stacked by the airlock for you when you’re ready.”

  Mick picked up the magtorch, gave him a salute with it, and went to get her armor.

  “Safin?” she called, vaguely directing her voice toward the cabins and the small dining/recreation area between the airlock and the cockpit. “You’re still in here somewhere, right?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the meteorologist called, surprisingly from the cockpit.

  She found him up there, poking around with the sensor controls to display atmospheric conditions rather than the location of ships, energy sources, and life forms. His coffee mug sat alarmingly close to her flight stick.

  “There’s not much I could do in the ruins in the middle of the night,” he added as she walked in, “so I thought I’d see if I could predict the weather here.”

  “Can you?”

  He offered a lopsided smile. “Once we commit to colonizing the planet and put some satellites into orbit, I’ll be excellent at predicting the weather.”

  “That’s a no then?” She pushed his mug well to the side, though she was tempted to move it all the way to the dining table.

  “The ship’s sensors have some ability to analyze conditions within a couple hundred miles.”

  “Good to know. Look, I’m going outside to replace some panels. Will you keep an eye on the comm as long as you’re up here? If the ship in orbit has another chat with the men on the planet, I want to know about it.”

  “I can do that.”

  Mick turned back toward the airlock and her cabin.

  “Captain?” Safin said. “I think there’s a storm coming.”

  “Metaphorical or physical?”

  “Meteorologists don’t predict the metaphorical, though both are certainly possible.” Safin waved toward the view screen, toward clouds blotting out the stars over a distant mountain range. “You might want to make those repairs quickly. And let the rest of the team know they shouldn’t linger in the ruins.”

  “I don’t think any of us should be lingering anywhere on this planet.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want to be in the first wave of colonists?”

  “You got that right. Even if there weren’t thugs here murdering people, the ruins creep me out.”

  “I have some thoughts on that. I wish Dr. Garcia were here. His specialty might have come in handy.”

  “Neurology?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mick thought about asking for him to elaborate, but those storm clouds in the distance looked ominous. She waved and left the cockpit, doubly eager to get the repairs finished before dawn now.

  • • • • •

  Ariston crouched atop a wide wall, surveying the ruins and the pyramid in the distance and also watching the three scientists who had come out with him. They were puttering around in an open area underneath him, what might have once been a public square or courtyard. Clad in their hazmat suits, the yellow bright even in the thick of the night, they worked by the light of lamps they’d brought out.

  Ariston had thought it a bad idea to illuminate the area, since that could lead Eryx's men to them if they were still awake. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen any weapons fire since coming out. And the scientists were otherwise being quiet and circumspect, keeping hoods on their lanterns so they didn’t brighten more than their immediate surroundings.

  Scientists or relic raiders? Or both?

  Ariston still wasn’t sure. He’d been listening for clues when they spoke, but they all seemed to have different interests, and they hadn’t conversed with each other much yet. He hadn’t approached the woman, Dev, because Lee was never far away from her. He was looking at walls and poking in rubble heaps while she used a prong-like tool to extract soil samples. A third man, Weiss, had some kind of sc
anner out, and Ariston had heard him mumbling about wells and water levels.

  A part of him wondered if the Gaians had sent an archaeological team out simply to explore the histories of humans that had been taken from their planet long ago. Maybe they had no interest in treasures or looting. But if that were the case, why wouldn’t they have gotten permission, or at least asked for information, from the Confederation? Permission for studying the ruins might have been granted, if there hadn’t been an intention to take anything.

  Voices drifted to Ariston’s ears, and he looked into the courtyard, thinking the scientists were done and ready to return to the ship. But he realized those voices were coming from a different direction at the same time as he realized they were speaking in Dethocolean rather than Gaian. Eryx’s men.

  Ariston, staying low so his outline wouldn’t be visible from the ground, called up a sensor map on his helmet’s faceplate. He didn’t expect to see anything, since most of the men down here were in armor, which registered similarly to all the cool rock of the ruins, but two bright life-form blips appeared. They were a quarter of a kilometer and a few buildings away.

  The voices grew quiet, but soft scrapes came from that direction. Digging?

  “Gaians,” he whispered, knowing that Dr. Lee had a comm unit in his helmet—he was tied into Mick’s ship’s comm, and Ariston had also gotten on that channel before coming out.

  “Is that us?” Lee grumbled, glancing in his direction.

  “Shh, yes. Enemies only two hundred meters away. I’m going to check on them. Stay here, but if you hear anything, comm me immediately. I’ll come right back.” Ariston felt uneasy at the idea of leaving them—it was possible those two men had been chosen as a diversion—but he could cross two hundred meters in seconds in his armor.

  “Fine.” Lee went back to whatever he was studying.

  Ariston walked along the top of the wall toward the men’s voices, choosing his steps carefully. The roof of the building he followed had long ago crumbled inward, leaving a floor full of rubble. He considered dropping to the ground to ensure he wouldn’t accidentally knock a rock free, but he might be able to spy more effectively from above.