Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (12 page)

“What are our chances of getting out the way we
came in?” Ethan knew the answer, but wanted Traore to say it so he wouldn’t
have to.

Traore simply waved his hand toward the pinprick
and shook his head.

Ethan moved back into the plane and sat heavily
in the pilot’s seat. They couldn’t go out, and the cave was dark and full of
danger around them. They’d have to stay here.

He turned to the crew.

“We should probably make ourselves comfortable.
Eat something. Try to stay warm. Get some sleep if you can.”

It seemed strange to be giving the orders. The
team probably knew better than he did what surrounded them, but none of them
seemed to want to take charge. He wished that their actual leader, Schübling,
would wake up and do the directing, but to be fair, she had a shattered leg, so
it only seemed right to let her rest. The team was weary, and there was little
conversation as they settled in on their packs and tried to sleep.

Ethan made his way back to his seat carefully,
not bumping the sleeping Schübling. He leaned back and closed his eyes,
grateful for the encompassing warmth of the coveralls. In spite of all the
unknowns, he was tired and he felt himself drift off.

***

Ethan was awakened by the whoosh and screech of
the bats above as they spiraled out of the opening through which the little
craft had fallen hours earlier.

And then he heard the scratching, like the sound
of wet wood crackling on a fire. It was a muffled, uneven sound. He sat up and
it stopped. Glancing around, he saw the rest of the crew still sleeping, except
for Collins, who was scrolling through his missive, though Ethan was sure he
hadn’t gotten any new messages down here. Ethan lay back down in his seat,
trying to shake off the uneasiness that was growing within him. As he stilled,
he heard the sound again, closer. It was immediately outside the ship, and it
was louder. He looked down through the gaping hole and saw the shiny back of a
krech—a Minean cockroach—but this one wasn’t like the ones he scuttled outside
for Aria. Those were size of a coin. This one was as big as his hand, quick and
shining. It moved through the dim light and was gone into the darkness again.

Ethan tried to put it out of his mind. Of course
there were creatures down here. It was a cave. Creepy things lived in caves.
But he’d seen much bigger monsters, and he wasn’t going to let a krech, even a
really big one, scare him.

But then he heard Collins swear and saw him jump
up, shaking his leg. Attached to it, biting through the thick leg of his
coveralls, was another huge krech. Another scuttled in through the broken
windscreen, and two more followed it. Ethan saw one crawl through the hole near
his leg and up onto his pack. With a side claw sharp as a razor, the creature
tore at the pack, shredding a three-inch slit through the tough polyweave
material. Ethan kicked it off with his foot and snatched the pack, but Carlisle’s
half-sandwich fell out and the krech was on it instantly. Three more poured
through the hole and squabbled over the morsels of bread and meat. Ethan
shouldered his pack and Schübling’s, then shook her shoulder.

“I think you’d better wake up, Captain,” he said.

Schübling opened her eyes groggily, then looked
down at the creatures on the floor. “What the—” she pulled her wounded leg away
just as the krech reached her boot in search of more food. These krech were
scavengers, and in the remains of this little ship they’d found a feast.

Around the craft, Ethan heard the screams of the
crew as the krech advanced. He slipped an arm around Schübling and supported
her as she stood. Together they hobbled into the aisle. Ethan stepped on a
krech and heard it crunch and screech. His boot was slick as he pulled it out
of the mess. The other team members were stomping them, too, holding their
packs above their heads, but the krech kept coming.

A horrified scream cut through the chaos and
Ethan looked to see Brynn throw herself across the bodies of Carlisle and
Espinoza. The men were covered in krech. A huge bug crawled onto Brynn’s
shoulder. Ethan saw it bite, saw the blood seep through her coveralls. She
screamed again and batted at it and the others, trying to clear them off the
bodies of her friends.

“Get her out of there!” Ethan barked at Collins.
More krech were pouring in, clicking excitedly, their antennae moving wildly.
They were communicating, calling more of their kind to the ship.

Their slick exoskeletons shone in the dim lights.
The sight reminded Ethan of the Others of Beta Alora, of the battle that he’d
fought in the stateroom. His heart was beating hard. He was paralyzed with a
sudden rush of memories: the crushing weight of Traxoram’s mind shackles, the
sharp edges of his armor slicing Ethan’s hands. Mixed with the memories, an image—the
delicate bones of the bat skeleton—flashed through Ethan’s mind. These bugs
were carnivorous. The image grounded him, pulled him out of his memories and
back to the moment. They would all end up that way if they didn’t get out of
here.

“Let’s go!” he yelled. “Come on!”

He was half-dragging Schübling as he charged out
the door, slipping on the shiny backs of the krech as he went, struggling
against what he now saw was a horrific tide of them pouring down the walls and
across the guano field. He ran for the shark’s mouth tunnel, stopping only to
kick the krech from Schübling’s leg, where they swarmed, trying to get to her
wound. Ethan glanced back and saw the survey team scrambling across the field
behind him.

He led them to the tunnel and wove in between the
stalagmites. He didn’t have a light and didn’t want to stop to dig one from the
pack, but the utter darkness of the passage soon had him crashing into the rock
formations and both he and Schübling were tripping over the smaller ones. He
stopped.

The rest of the crew came up behind him. Collins,
dragging a weeping Brynn, had a Maxlight. Ethan took it from him and swung the
beam back toward the mouth of the tunnel. Only a few of the krech had strayed
to follow them, and Jade crushed them under her boot one by one. Ethan wondered
briefly if that would attract more krech.

Schübling must have been thinking the same thing.
“Let’s get farther away,” she said, obvious pain making her voice waver.

Ethan nodded and led the group farther down the
tunnel. The solid stalagmites and stalactites around them were oddly comforting
after the shifting, living floor they’d crossed. The smooth rounded sides of
the stones, marbled from eons of the dripping water that had formed them,
caught the light and cast it back to the little group. Just as Ethan was
getting used to the cozy tunnel, the stalactites disappeared from the ceiling.
When he shone the light up, he saw the high, arching stone of another cavern.

***

Aria flinched as she
saw a little krech scuttle across the bathroom floor. She squashed it and felt
a ripple of frustration. It was past dark, and Ethan wasn’t home yet. She tried
calling his missive. No answer.

 She was anxious to tell him about Rigel, and
about the blight. He’d raise an eyebrow that she had used his badge, but he
trusted her, and he wasn’t the type to judge. Five years alone had given him
perspective. It was a wonderful quality in a husband.

She thought of the moment, earlier that
afternoon, when she first saw the shoots of her wheat peeking through the dark
soil, and grew more impatient for his return. She had so much to tell him.

But late that night, when Ethan’s dinner had been
put away on one of Luis’s beautiful hand-thrown pottery plates, when Aria had
checked the new, growing wheat again, and when the children had been bathed and
rocked off to sleep, Ethan still wasn’t home, and a knock came on her door.

Theo Talbot stood on her doorstep, the porch light
casting shadows around his hollow eyes. He told her the shuttle Ethan was in
had disappeared in the Karst Mountains without a trace. No signal remained, no
trail. They would send out a search party tomorrow, but there was no indication
of what had happened to that ship. He was sorry. He had liked Ethan very much.
Saras would compensate.

Ethan felt the vast darkness expanding around him
as the shark’s mouth tunnel opened into the middle of the massive cavern. All
along the sides, as far as Ethan could see with the Maxlight, stalagmites were standing
like silent people watching the little group as they entered. The center was a
wide, smooth plain of bare rock.

Schübling let out a gasp of pain. Even though the
Emedic treatment sped up her healing considerably, and the splint’s special
material took the weight and gave her mobility, she was still badly wounded,
and she’d been on her feet too long, Ethan realized.

“We need to take a minute to get organized,” he
said, running the beam behind them onto the floor of the tunnel. No krech. They
should be safe here for a while, anyway. He led them to the middle of the room,
and helped Schübling lower herself to the ground. Brynn’s weeping had stopped,
but her sniffles gave the group a somber feeling.

Collins sat with his arm around her, and Traore
sat on her other side, digging in his pack. Everyone but Brynn had made it out
with their packs. That was lucky, Ethan thought, because he doubted they’d go
back to get any. Though it seemed the krech spent their days up on the walls
and it would probably be safe enough to go back in a few hours, the way they
had swarmed made him think there wouldn’t be much left anyway.

Jade pulled out her vest. “We oughta put these
on. It was hard to see back there at the back.” She was zipping up the bright
red vest over her coveralls. She tapped the round lights on the front of the
vest. A pale white light immediately glowed from her shoulders and illuminated
the stone directly in front of her. As the others put theirs on, their faces
were lost to Ethan in the glare of their shoulder lights, but the cumulative
effect was cheery.

Ndaiye spoke up. “And we’ve got the Maxlights,
too.” He switched on his big flashlight, setting it up on the stone floor in
front of him while he used the Emedic to administer another treatment for the
gashes on his face.

Ethan dug in his pack and pulled out his own Maxlight,
handing the other one back to Collins, who was helping Brynn with her vest.

“We should conserve the lights.” Schübling said
gruffly, struggling with the zipper on her vest. She seemed a bit more like
herself. “The shoulder ones will last a long time, but the big ones will run
outta juice. Jade, Traore, take one Maxlight and do a sweep of the room for any
of those bugs, then turn it off. We can’t waste the batteries.”

The two didn’t seem to mind rising and walking
together into the dark. The familiarity of taking orders from their boss seemed
to calm them. Ethan watched them as they circled the huge room in a spot of
light. From where he was, he couldn’t see any krech on the walls. It was just
smooth, pale stone all around them.

Next to the stalactites, the people looked small.
Here and there they went behind a column, where the stalactites from the
ceiling had joined with the stalagmites on the floor, and lit it up from behind
with their flashlight. The stone spikes they passed looked like spectators,
ready to watch the little group of people who’d been thrust onto the stage in
the middle of the room. Apparently Ethan wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“This reminds me of the stadium Traore and I used
to go to back on Earth to watch soccer,” Ndaiye said. “Our families would spend
a whole Saturday there, watching. Just like these guys are watching us.” He
gestured to the spikes. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled, “GOOOOAL!”
The place was so big that it took a heartbeat for the echo to bounce back.

“GOOOOAL!” Traore’s thin voice answered his
cousin from the far side of the room.

Ndaiye’s bright smile glowed in the half-light.

Brynn spoke, her voice muffled in Collins’s
shoulder. “They don’t look scary, though.” Ethan could see just her eyes over
the shoulder lights. She was peering past Collins at the spikes nearest them.

“No,” Collins agreed. “They remind me of
soldiers. Just, I don’t know, standing guard and protecting this place.”

“And us,” Brynn said.

“And us,” Collins assured her.

Schübling gestured to Ethan. “Give me my pack.
Thanks for carrying it.” She looked him in the eye. “And me.”

Ethan nodded. Rough as she was, he liked Schübling.
She was sincere, unpretentious. You always knew where you stood with her, and
she wasn’t going to pretend. After a little getting used to, it was refreshing.
He suspected she was one of the few people whose thoughts really matched their
words.

Ethan began to feel cold seeping into his legs
and hands, through his coveralls and gloves, wherever his body was in contact
with the stone. He stood and walked around the group. “We’re going to have to
be careful not to get too chilled,” he said.

Brynn looked up from Collins’ shoulder has he
came by. “Did you turn on your Everwarms?”

“Turn them on?”

“There’s a control inside the zipper on your
chest. They’re heated coveralls.” She tapped just beside her shoulder light.

Ethan located the zipper and the control. He
clicked the button up and immediately felt soothing warmth encompass him. He
let out an involuntary sigh.

Ndaiye and Brynn laughed.

“I remember my first pair of Everwarms. I got
them on a survey job a couple years ago in the Rainy Outback. We were soaked
for three days, then a supply drop delivered a pair for each of us. It was like
being wrapped in my mama’s arms!”

Brynn fiddled with her necklace as she spoke up. “I
got mine last winter. That’s one thing I like about working for Saras. They
have the best gear.”

“Unless you work in the mines,” Collins said.

“Or the refinery,” Ndaiye agreed solemnly.

Ethan heard long experience in the voices of the
men. He’d heard about the backbreaking labor and the long days in Saras’s
Yynium operation.

“You spent some time there?” Ethan questioned.

“Five years,” Collins said, “in the Saras mine
just outside of Coriol.” Brynn sat up and Collins shifted away, leaning back
and looking up at the ceiling. “Hardest work of my life. Worst part was, they
didn’t pay you enough to make it so you could go anywhere else. And there wasn’t
time for management training or anything, with twelve- or fourteen-hour
workdays. It’s a real dead-end job.”

“How did you get on this survey crew?” Ethan
asked.

“Same as everyone,” Collins answered, gesturing
to Schübling. “The Captain requested me.”

Ethan, surprised, turned his attention to Schübling.
“Really?”

“I came here with a survey crew early on. When
Coriol was all laid out, they didn’t have work for us, so we went to work in
the mines,” Schübling answered. “Worked there for eleven years without
complaining.” She shot a meaningful look at her crew, obviously disapproving of
their dislike for the work. “When Saras started expanding the mines, they
called the surveyors back out. I’d seen Carlisle and Baker working their tails
off at the refinery. Espinoza ran the accounts at the mine and I needed
somebody good with numbers. I’d worked with Collins and Jade and Traore. And
Traore told me about his fantastic cousin who worked at the refinery.” She
scoffed, shooting an annoyed look in Ndaiye’s direction, and he laughed. “I got
to pick a team, and for some reason I picked this bunch.” The warmth in her
voice revealed her affection for them, though Ethan was sure she wouldn’t have
admitted it.

“And just to have it out in the open,” Brynn
said, “she got stuck with me because my father is a friend of Mr. Saras.” Ethan
could tell Brynn wanted Schübling to toss her a compliment, maybe about how
glad she was to have her or how it had worked out fine, but Schübling didn’t
work that way.

“Saras doesn’t have any friends,” Schübling said
instead. There was a long, awkward silence.

“Well, I’m glad to have you on the team,” Collins
said after a moment.

“I’m getting some sleep,” Schübling cranked up
her coveralls and laid down on her pack. Ethan glanced over in time to see
Brynn shoot a scalding look at her boss.

Ethan watched the group get comfortable. He
waited until Jade and Traore got back and reported that there was nothing but
rock in the cavern before he stretched out on the smooth floor and looked up at
the tall stone sentinels.

The new morning would be breaking over Coriol.
Aria would know, now, that something was wrong. The Colony office may have
called her. There would be people searching. But he faced the fact that Traore
was right: it would be next to impossible for anyone to guess where they’d
gone.

He heard the even breathing of the crew around
him and felt a little wave of apprehension at being, again, the only one awake.
Until he heard Schübling’s voice, low and calm. “I want to get these people out
of here, Bryant, and I’m gonna need your help to do it.”

Again, her directness surprised him. He fumbled
for words, on the brink of telling her that he knew how she felt, that he’d
been Caretaker of 4000 sleeping people once, and that getting them to safety
had been the best accomplishment of his life. Although Minea felt a bit less
safe now, since the shadow had crossed Lucidus.

“Well?” Schübling’s voice scratched across the
rock to him. “Are you gonna help me or not?”

“I’ll help you, Captain.”

“I’m not your Captain. My name’s Maggie.”

Ethan smiled in the darkness, but tried not to
let the sound of it creep into his voice. “I’ll help you, Maggie.”

***

On his way to the mill, Marcos read the morning security
report with little interest. As expected, the orbital defenses were up and
running, and there should be no problem keeping out the orbiting ship.

Along with basic orbital defense system, the UEG
maintained an air-and-ground force in the city of Flynn, several hundred
kilometers from Coriol. In addition, each company was required to keep city
defenses and a private security force in their cities. Saras was no exception,
and their security force could be seen practicing maneuvers and sighting in their
weapons at the defense complex past the power plant.

It was probably overkill, Marcos thought as they
drove past the complex. The likelihood of these aliens wanting anything on Minea
was small, especially after the extensive negotiations humans had undergone to
take possession of the planet.

Marcos was pleased about the outcome of his
meeting with Veronika and Theo. He was not as pleased about the outcome of the
defense committee meeting.

Why could there be no whole victories in life? It
was always a victory and a defeat, paired, or two defeats and a victory. Never
a simple, pure victory.

The hovercar stopped at the mill and Marcos
gathered his things. He glanced at Veronika as she got out of the car. She’d been
distant lately, and he felt that there was something he was missing. Something
that she wanted him to do that he wasn’t doing. He tried to think it through as
they walked into the mill.

Dusty workers passed him on either side, their
narrowed eyes a giveaway that they had something to say to him. He was startled
to see how many of them had developed the mysterious purple bruising, and he
stepped a little more quickly past them, pulling his elbows in to his sides so he
didn’t brush against the workers.

Veronika handed him a mask as she opened the door
to the main refining floor. They walked out on a catwalk, peering down at the
heart of Coriol’s economy.

The loads of gray-blue stone streaked with bright
orange Yynium came in a steady stream on the conveyors at one end of the room.
They were coming from the sorting room, and before that, the loading docks.
They reached the first workers, who stood ready with a resonating chisel and
tapped each chunk along its Yynium fracture, leaving the small silver chisel
embedded in the rock, which continued down the belt. By the time the chunks
reached the third station, the chisels had cracked them wide, leaving the vein
of Yynium bare and exposed on either side of the split.

Workers at the third station rotated up to grab a
chunk of rock and step to a picking station, where the thickest of the Yynium
was scraped and picked out of the stone, then dropped onto fine mesh baskets on
another conveyor, which carried the Yynium to the finishing room. The chunks
went back on the original conveyor and down to the crushers.

Marcos saw the crusher feeders, powder-covered
men and women, tossing chunks of rock into the chewing jaws of the crusher. He
saw them strain, saw their hands and arms dangerously close to the first
blades, and thought only that they were going awfully slow today. From where he
was he could see the purple bruising on their faces and necks. He tightened his
mask.

The crusher churned the powdered rock out into a
huge, swirling tank of water, where the heavy Yynium dust fell through grates
at the bottom and the rock settled atop it like a layered cake. A scraper
pulled continually back and forth across the Yynium layer, mixing it into the
water and allowing it to flow out over the cascading tangerine waterfall
through the straining conveyor.