Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (27 page)

Marcos rode the tram in the mine, watching as the
spot of light in front of them streaked along the bare gray wall. This drift had
been rich with bright orange Yynium two years ago. Now, the hollowed vein gaped
beside the tram tracks, kilometers of it. The Yynium was running out in this mine,
and what they were getting was low quality.

He shifted uncomfortably. Theo said he had to go
into the mines once a month and mingle with his employees, as well as seeing
the operation firsthand. But he hated being underground. It was stifling and it
reminded him of the heavy years of stasis it had taken him to get here. He hadn’t
had to spend fifty years in stasis, but five years was enough—too many still—to
be asleep.

He thought, suddenly, of Serena, sleeping right
now on her way back from Untek, the planet where she’d gone to study. His
parents had paid for her trip, under pretense of generosity. Really they had
thought he would get to Minea and find someone else. Maybe they’d meant for him
to get involved with Veronika, which would, they knew, be good for the company.

But Veronika was not who he wanted. There was no
one like Serena. She was honest, sincere. She was enthusiastic about life and
about him. Marcos smiled, thinking of their long days together on Earth. They’d
met at sixteen, in the city park where he’d gone often to play danceball with
his friends. Four years they’d spent together, and when his father returned from
Minea one day and told Marcos he was being sent to take over the Coriol
operation, Marcos had thought about running away with her. In the end, he
couldn’t disappoint his parents. They offered her the chance of a lifetime: an
Interstellar Study trip to Untek, and promised him that they would send her to
him the moment she returned.

But he hadn’t known his father then. Dimitri
Saras had spent twenty years away from Earth, and back then Marcos still
believed in the father he’d imagined. Now he knew the man, and he knew that he’d
never send Serena. Dimitri may pay her off when she arrived, or he may simply
refuse to see her, but he would not waste a trip on her.

Marcos was going to have to go back and get her
himself. As he rode the open tram car deeper down into the mine, the thought of
descending back into stasis paralyzed him. He tried to focus on the tram light
ahead.

At least he and Serena had not lost too many
years. The five years he’d spent on the way were negated by her own
Interstellar Study trip, for which she’d spent a little over three years in
stasis herself. She had spent two years on Untek while he still slept, writing
him every week and scheduling some messages to be delivered while she was
traveling home. She started back to Earth about the time he got here, three
years ago. He’d been here three years of the eight they’d been apart.

There were no Real-Time Communications on Untek,
so he hadn’t been able to have a conversation with her in years. Was it even
possible that they could have anything in common anymore?

 She’d be nearly home now, and he had promised to
have an RST ship waiting to bring her here when she arrived home. How was he to
know then, eight Earth years ago, that Ship 12-22 would arrive a year before he
arrived at Minea? How was he to know then that the UEG had sold humans to the
Others of Beta Alora and that when that ship arrived, with its stories of cruel
aliens and humanity’s vulnerability, it would spin the UEG into a panic? They
had started then snatching up all the Yynium and pouring all their money into a
brand new fleet of defense ships and YEN drives to power them all. He had
thought personal RST ships would be common by now, or at least that an RST
passenger system would be established, but all that was on hold until the UEG
could better protect its colonies. And frankly, there wasn’t much demand for
passenger ships right now. In the wake of the Beta Alora scandal, people weren’t
rushing to leave Earth.

But the only holdup was Yynium. If they could
flood Earth with Yynium, then the defense fleet would have its YEN drives and
the private manufacturers of personal RST ships would scoop up the surplus. The
more Yynium he mined and the faster he got it to Earth, the sooner Serena could
come.

But until then, he felt every day that they were
growing further and further apart. Sometimes he looked around Minea for someone
as gentle and loving as Serena, and he was convinced that there was no one.

“If all you want is love, why are you leaving?”
Her words haunted him, because though he had told her it was all he wanted, he’d
known even then that it wasn’t true. He had, even before he met her, also wanted
approval and success. His father had achieved both.

Marcos wanted, especially, the approval of his
parents. But they were critics, used to finding fault. They loved nothing
completely, not even each other. Everything, even if it was good, could be
better. The attitude had built the Saras Yynium empire and had kept it growing
when it was passed on to Marcos, but it took a toll on human relationships.

The tram next to them sped up and switched
tracks, veering towards the open car Marcos rode in. He flinched, holding up a
hand toward the blinding light, but the tram missed his and disappeared down a
side shaft, their paths crossing just a meter or two away from each other. He
felt that was how his life had crossed with Serena’s—just briefly, for a moment
on their home world. And now, they were both holding their breath, waiting for
those paths to cross again.

She slept now, and she was still waiting, but he
didn’t know how long she would wait once she awakened back on Earth. Their life
together, the things that bound them—those long rides along the coastline; the
way that they felt, together, somehow complete—all those things were fading in
the light of the new sun that shone on him.

He brought her to mind and smiled, remembering
the way her hair blew around her. The last time he’d seen her they’d been at
the beach. The brilliant blue water contrasted with her white dress. Her long
dark curls blew around her face, causing her to sweep them into a handful at
her neck and hold them there. That was the image he held. He wanted her to know
that he was still the same, that he still wanted her here, no matter what
doubts had arisen for her in the light of Untek’s sun or in the long night of
her journey home.

He could have told them no. Could have stayed on
Earth or tried going on the Interstellar Study trip with her. They didn’t force
him to come. Marcos’ parents never forced him to do anything. He wished they
openly decreed things so that he could openly rebel against them. Instead, they
had looked at him his whole life as if, any moment, he would disappoint them,
and he had spent his whole life trying not to.

“Marcos? Marcos?” Veronika’s voice was raised
over the clatter of the tram wheels. She was cutting into his thoughts as she
always did when he began to get too melancholy. He wasn’t sure whether he was
grateful for that or not.

“Hmm?” he looked around.

“Production numbers? An alien ship hovering over
Coriol? Any of this making you nervous?”

He snapped back to focus. The gaping veins caught
his attention again. “We have to get the new shafts online.” Production could
not be delayed one more day. He had to get Serena to Coriol to be with him. And
the faster the Yynium came out of the ground, the sooner it could be processed
and sent back to Earth.

“And what about the alien ship?” Veronika asked,
seemingly annoyed. She knew what he was thinking about. It irritated her when
he indulged in his childish crush when he should be running the business.

“I’d like to see it up close,” Marcos said. “Let’s
take a drive after we’re done here.”

The tram finally stopped and the two of them
followed the foreman into the deepest part of the drift. Here there was some of
the glassy orange Yynium left in the veins, shining along the walls. The picks
of the miners rang like bells along the drift as they chipped it out. Heavy
dust hung in the beams of their headlamps, and the miners’ coughs punctuated
the air. Marcos adjusted his mask.

He turned to speak to Veronika, but she’d gone
further down the drift. He saw her through the dust, talking to a young miner,
probably, Marcos thought, trying to get information on the foreman.

Marcos refocused on the man, trying to ignore the
blotchy purple bruises on the foreman’s neck and cheeks. He knew it was
impolite to stare, but they were hard to miss.

“Probably a week left in this vein.” The foreman’s
words jolted Marcos’s attention away from the marks.

“A week? That’s all?”

The foreman nodded. “The veins are tapering off.
We’re not gettin’ a whole lot out now, and even though we’re doing our best, it’s
probably a real job up at the refinery to get much useable Yynium outta the ore
we’re sending them.”

Marcos opened his mouth to reprimand him for his
cavalier attitude about the sloppy ore, but a commotion up the drift drew their
attention. The foreman ran towards a knot of miners who were gathered around a
still figure on the ground.

“Get her in the tram!” he barked, as Marcos
approached. On the ground was a woman, her face, neck, and arms a deep plum
under the coating of Yynium dust. She was still. Too still.

Marcos looked in panic at the tram. They would
have to use it to get her out. He didn’t want to ride with her, but it would
take an hour to get another one down here.

Suddenly, he felt Veronika’s firm hand on his
arm. She pulled him toward the tram and into a car as the miners lifted the
woman in behind them. He kept his eyes on the light ahead as the tram began its
ascent.

***

Hours later, Marcos and Veronika rode silently in
Marcos’s hovercar. He had known the woman wouldn’t make it, and by the time
they reached the mine entrance, they’d called the coroner instead of the
ambulance. Marcos had gone home and showered, but he still felt the grit of the
Yynium dust in his eyes and teeth.

They reached the edge of the city, where the ship
hovered, silent and brooding. It looked more ominous through the tinted windows
of the hovercar, but Marcos didn’t want to roll them down to see it better.
Since the food shortage, the workers were growing more hostile. Last week a
miner had thrown a rock at Marcos’s hovercar. Their unrest was beginning to be
a problem.

He pulled out his missive to give Nasani over at
the Food Production Division a piece of his mind, but an assistant answered.

“Let me speak to Nasani,” he barked at the
assistant.

“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t.”

“What?” his voice trembled with rage. No one told
Marcos he couldn’t do something, not in his own city.

The line was silent for a moment, then he heard
Theo’s voice. “Marc, don’t yell at the assistants. You can’t talk to Nasani
because he’s dead. Minean fever. I’m out here reorganizing and getting someone
new to run the farms,” Marcos heard him scoff, “although there’s not much use
in it. The plants are all dying out here, too.”

Marcos turned to Veronika. “Minean fever is out
of hand. We need to address it.”

She nodded and he spoke to the driver. “Change of
plans. Take us to the HHSD main hospital building.”

***

At the moment
the alien ship had risen and begun to move away from Lumina, Reagan had felt
hope. But now, with reports flooding in that the ship had traveled to Oculys
and then on to Minville, he saw that it was not leaving his planet yet.

The little situation room in the Lumina
Operations Center was thrumming with activity. Reagan was surrounded by comms
officers, platoon leaders, and equipment technicians, all focused on their
tasks.

Kaia stood across the room, working on a rough
schematic of the alien ship. She had already given them several insights into
its weapons and speed capabilities. Having her there was comforting on multiple
levels. Her expertise was useful, and knowing she was safe there with him
allowed him to focus on what was happening in the other settlements without
worrying about what was happening to her.

Reagan punched a button on the wide console in
the center of the room, replaying footage from Oculys hours ago when the ship
had descended there. On the recording, Reagan heard a loud click and the air
was filled with the sounds of alien voices. They stilled and a single wheedling
voice cut through.

“Humans of Oculys,” the voice said, “I am Galo of
the Asgre, and I have come to retrieve my property.”

Property. What property? Was there something this
race had left on the planet? Reagan had aides searching the Minean Treaty
documents for any mention of the Asgre, any claim they might have had to the
planet before humanity got here.

He didn’t remember ever having heard the name
before. He stopped the recording and tapped another sequence of keys to listen
in on the message the communications center was broadcasting to the ship.

“Galo of the Asgre, you are in restricted
airspace. You are requested to relocate to,” here the message rattled off a
string of coordinates, “where you will find a Special Operations Airspace.
Please remain there until communications are established.”