Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (13 page)

There the water passed through and the Yynium
dust moved on through the dryers, huge furnaces that blew the damp dust dry on
the screens, and into the finishing room.

The workers at the next station removed the
screens, caked with the dried dust from the conveyor, and twisted them over the
gaping chasm of the finishing drum. On the other side of the open-topped drum,
workers gathered the baskets with the picked Yynium and dumped it in as well.

The Yynium was churned and crushed in the bottom
of the hopper, coming out a uniform, fine powder, which sifted into molds on a
moving conveyor below. The molds went through a heater to meld the powder
together, then through a press from which the bricks of Yynium, proudly stamped
with the Saras triangle, finally emerged as a useful product.

All in all, a third of the population of Coriol
worked in this building. The rest worked in the Saras manufacturing factories
nearby, or the Saras farms to the north or the Saras construction company or
the Saras markets or the Saras Mines or the Saras hospitals.

Marcos continued down the walkway, half-listening
to Nolan, the floor manager, citing the day’s production statistics. Marcos had
been right: the workers were slow today. Production was down about three
percent below normal. He felt the familiar anxiety creep up on him. Whenever
anything threatened Yynium production, it threatened the possibility of getting
Serena here. A hard knot twisted in his chest. He reprimanded Nolan and
reminded him that he could be replaced.

“But, Mr. Saras,” Nolan’s eyes were wide, “it’s
not my fault. And it’s not really their fault. A lot of them are sick.”

“Then why am I paying all these doctors? Get the
workers to them.”

“They’ve been. The doctors don’t know what is
causing it.”

Marcos glanced at Veronika. “We’ll have to see if
we can encourage them to figure it out.”

Aria was at the Saras liftstrip as morning broke.
She felt hollow. She argued with a guard until Theo pulled up to the gate in
his fancy hovercar.

“Aria,” he said kindly, “what are you doing here?”

She and Ethan had known Theo since they arrived
on Minea. He had been in charge of Saras Company then, until Marcos Saras had
arrived and taken over.

She heard the pleading in her own voice as she
said, “You said there would be a search party going out this morning. I want to
go along.”

Theo seemed to consider for a moment, then waved
her into the car. She shot a smug look at the guard as she slid in on the
Earthleather seats. She had seen a few examples of the rougher, almost pebbly
Minean leather, made from the large herbivores here on the planet, but she’d
only seen it in Flynn, Minea’s capitol city, which had been established longer
and had a lot that Coriol didn’t have. These seats were smooth and supple, cool
to the touch on this already sticky morning. She leaned her head back on the refreshing
surface gratefully. She quizzed Theo as he drove her directly onto the
liftstrip.

“I know it was a survey trip. Where were they?”

“Well, we’re not sure. They were supposed to be
pretty deep in the Karst Mountains, and our last transmission from them was
from the survey site, but we sent out some preliminary fly-over searches last
night and didn’t see any trace of them there. We also didn’t pick up any of
their beacons, which is highly unusual.” He glanced at her with an apologetic
half-smile.

“Where will the search parties be going today?”

“They’re ground crews, so they’ll be going over
the survey site.”

“Where did the crash happen?” The questions had
been running through her mind all night, and now they poured out, one after
another.

Theo grimaced slightly and hesitated. Was he
keeping something from her or was he just trying to speak delicately?

“To be honest, we’re not sure. We know where they
were supposed to be traveling, but we’re not finding them there.”

“Didn’t they have a tracker on the ship?”

“No. It was a shuttle craft, not meant for long
hauls. There’s a signal beacon that is activated in event of an emergency, but
not a continuous signal. There’s no sign of the signal beacon.”

They were sitting on the liftstrip now, and Aria
could see the search team loading the last of their gear from the ground into
the search ship. She imagined Ethan, stepping onto just such a craft, this time
yesterday.

“Will they search the whole route?”

Theo looked at her. “Honestly, Aria, I don’t
know. The search crew chief seems pretty sure after his passes last night that
they aren’t out there. We know their planned route, but we don’t know at what
point they diverged from it, or even if they did.”

“What do you mean, if they did? If they didn’t,
we would see them, or evidence of them, somewhere along that route, right?”

Theo’s eyebrows drew together. Aria could tell
that he wasn’t used to delivering unpleasant news. “They disappeared so
completely, Aria, it’s almost like they were snatched right out of the air. We’re
not sure they’re out there. They could have been—” he squirmed, “taken.”

Aria heard the panic in her own voice. “Taken?”

“It happened before, with the Others from Beta
Alora. They took people right from Minea without any trace. Did Ethan tell you
that there is a ship orbiting the planet?”

Aria nodded. They had seen the spot on Lucidus at
the festival, and he had told her when he came home from the defense committee
meeting what it was.

“It’s definitely alien. The defense forces have
hailed it, but it hasn’t responded. It is just hanging out there in space, and
we don’t know what the aliens want, or why they’re here, or what they’re
capable of.”

“You think aliens took this ship?” Aria was
incredulous, “but why? What would they want with a survey crew?”

Theo shrugged, and Aria noticed the weariness in
his face for the first time, “We just don’t know. You need to understand, Aria,
that they just disappeared, and there’s not a lot of hope that we’ll find them.”
Theo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Especially if there’s nothing out
there today.”

Aria grasped his arm. “What do you mean? Why ‘especially’?”

Theo ducked his head and untangled his arm. “This
is the only rescue mission, Aria. Unless there’s some encouraging evidence,
they won’t go out again.”

Anger flooded Aria, and with it a bitter taste
filled her mouth. She opened the door, stepping quickly onto the liftstrip. “Then
I’ll look for him myself.” She slammed the hovercar door as hard as she could, sealing
Theo in his comfortable insulated world, and turned to board the ship.

The search team followed the route that the ship
had been scheduled to take in and out of the mountains and touched down in a
pristine valley. They spread out, giving Aria a sketch of the terrain. She
hiked the places that the surveyors were supposed to map, wondering if Ethan had
gone with them or stayed near the ship. She looked behind every boulder and
climbed as high as she could on the peaks, expecting any moment to see a ship’s
wing or a broken tree that would point her to him.

When the search team gathered back at the ship
that evening, she heard them radio back to Saras Company Headquarters that
there was no evidence of the craft or the crew.

As the sun dropped to the horizon, Aria stood on
the edge of the meadow where the picture, maybe the last picture, of Ethan was
taken. She looked at the meadow, at the rising peaks around her, and called his
name.

***

That night, when Saras sent the box of scrip that
was supposed to be “compensation” for the loss of her husband, Aria knew they
really weren’t going to look for him. She sat at the table and sketched out a
plan. She would start with the survey site and she would search until she knew
what happened to him. But Ethan had been deep in the mountains, and she couldn’t
get there without a ship. So she called Kaia, who called Admiral Reagan, who
got her one.

***

Ethan was sore and aching when he rose from the
hard ground. They had slept, on and off, the whole day and some of the night.
Now, only the light of Brynn’s shoulder lights illuminated his sleeping
companions, and he felt again the great loneliness that had found him when he
was Caretaker. He knew he would carry it with him all his life, that it would always
find him again in moments like this.

The only time he had been without it was when he
was with his family in their little cottage or exploring with them. He tapped
his shoulder lights on and wandered around the cavern. The thought struck him
that this would have been a great adventure if they’d embarked on it
intentionally.

The stalagmites stood in uneven rows around the
edge of the room. As he walked, he felt the floor rising under him. Behind the
stalagmites, he saw an opening.

Walking to the tunnel, Ethan noticed, with
renewed hope, that it rose at a sharp incline. That seemed a good plan. If they
could get up closer to the surface, the Suremap devices might have a chance of
working. It was even possible that they may find a diagonal shaft that could
lead them straight out. He returned to the group and waited with increasing
impatience for them to awaken.

When Maggie awoke, he told her about the tunnel.

“Seems like as good a plan as any,” she said,
with her usual lack of enthusiasm. But Ethan didn’t let it discourage him. He
wanted out of this dungeon.

Maggie didn’t wait around for her crew to wake
up. Her bold voice rang through the cavern. “Up and at ‘em, team,” she called. “Time
to get out of here.”

The cousins complained the loudest, but even they
rose and shouldered into their packs.

***

They followed the tunnel for hours, with only one
short break where they each ate a nutrition bar and started eagerly off again. After
the initial incline, the way evened out and was relatively flat and smooth.
Now, for the last fifty meters or more, the tunnel had been climbing steadily.
It felt like they were rising out of the nightmare. The group buzzed with
anticipation, and Ethan even heard a couple of jokes behind him as he helped
Maggie up the slope.

She had fared all right at the beginning, but the
climb began to take a toll. A hundred meters later she was really struggling.
And she wasn’t the only one. The angle of the slope had increased, and the
stone was smooth and slick under their boots. They climbed for nearly an hour
and their enthusiasm waned in direct proportion to the slope of the tunnel.

Suddenly, Ethan saw a change in the darkness in
front of them. Involuntarily, he quickened his steps toward what looked like
the top of the slope. It definitely looked lighter ahead.

But as he crested the slope, he realized that the
light was his own, the Maxlight’s beam reflected back to them from the blank
wall of a dead end. For a moment, he didn’t know what to think. His mind
refused to register that the climb had been for nothing.

Maggie swore, then called back to the others, “Don’t
bother. We’ve hit a wall.”

Their disappointment echoed through the tunnel.
The full reality of the cave began to sink in. There was no way to know for
sure if they were going the right way, no way to tell what was at the end of
any tunnel they chose. The time they’d spent on this one was a complete waste.

They headed back to the stadium in subdued
silence.

If going up was difficult for Maggie on her
broken leg, going back down was much worse. Ethan felt her tense against every
impact.

“We can stop, Maggie, and give you some rest,” he
said.

“It’s not gonna help. It’ll hurt if I go down
now, it’ll hurt if I go down later.” She gripped his arm hard as he tried to
brace her against the decline.

Ethan opened his mouth to argue, but just then
she pitched sideways and fell hard on the stone, sliding several feet in front
of him on the slick floor before scrambling to a stop, bracing with her good
leg against the side of the sloping tunnel.

An involuntary cry of pain escaped her. It
seemed, to Ethan, so much worse coming from someone who was unused to making
them. He clambered down to her, pulling the bright light out of his pack and
inspecting her covered wound through the clear Sprayshield. It had been healing
well, but now it was seeping blood, turning the transparent dressing an opaque
ruby color.

Traore and Ndaiye scrambled up beside them. “It’s
no good, Captain. You’re gonna have to stay off of that.” Ndaiye’s voice was
commanding, a change from his usual jocularity.

“I don’t see how that’s gonna work,” Maggie
argued. “You can’t carry me, and you’re not gonna leave me down here to be
krech food.” Her voice was stubborn, but Ethan sensed a real fear behind it.

“We won’t leave you, Cap,” Traore said
soothingly. “Just give us a minute to see if we can figure out a way to get you
through here easier. Promise that you’ll wait here while we check the medical
pack.”

When they’d convinced her, the two of them
disappeared into the darkness, leaving Ethan and Maggie sitting silent on the
smooth rock.

“They’ll be back soon.” Ethan said, trying to be
reassuring.

“Maybe,” she said gruffly. “It’s hard to tell how
long things take down here.”

Ethan thought a moment. “That’s true. It’s weird
to be in the dark all the time. Like now, it’s midmorning out there, and I feel
like it’s the dead of night.”

“It’s always the dead of night here.”

Ethan nodded.

“Gonna lose that tan pretty fast,” Maggie said, “now
that we’re mole-people.”

Ethan blinked, looking down at the backs of his
hands, sticking out of the sleeves of the Everwarms. He was tanned, he
supposed, from spending every possible moment out in the forest meadows behind
the cottage. It seemed strange that he would be, after all those years on Ship
12-22.

“I’m used to that. When I was Caretaker, I spent
five years under artificial lights. I got pale as stone.”

Maggie grunted. “If that happens again, you’ll
fit right in down here.”

Ethan looked around. The Maxlight lit up a small
portion of the tunnel: a smooth circle of stone encompassing them. “We’re not
going to be down here that long. We’ll get out.”

Maggie didn’t turn toward him, but he heard the
desperation in her voice. “I hope you’re right, Caretaker.”

The last word hung in the still cave air. Ethan
switched off the Maxlight to conserve its battery and listened for the sounds
of their crewmen returning, but he heard nothing. Unlike the forests, where a
distant bird cry or the scurrying of a small creature was always audible, here
only a great silence pressed down on them. They sat waiting.

***

Ethan was nearly panicking when the cousins
returned. The time they’d been gone was unbearable in the quiet. Ndaiye used
the Emedic to re-splint Maggie’s leg. They also pulled a foldable stretcher
from the medical pack, which they quickly assembled amid Maggie’s protests.