Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (20 page)

Weak
.

That was the word. Polara looked weak and
fragile. Kaia had to stop herself from going to the child. It must have been a
grueling day at school. When the teacher dismissed them, Polara gathered her
things and smiled broadly when she saw Kaia. There was some comfort in that.
And Kaia thought there was a bit more spring in her step as she walked.

Kaia took the child’s hand. She never felt so
needed and so secure in her own mind as when she was with Polara. The child’s
enthusiasm had a calming and clarifying effect on her.

She thought as they walked back to her cottage.
Polara chattered along and Kaia saw all the mothers coming to pick up their
children. It was strange, but Minea was a world without many grandparents. The
passenger ships had left the grandparents behind on Earth, stripping away an
entire generation from the families who crossed the stars. Kaia was glad that
Ethan’s children had her and the Admiral. They’d fallen into the grandparent
role so easily.

When, four years ago, she and her father had
walked into the hospital room and Ethan had brought the newborn Polara to them,
both Kaia and the Admiral had seen, in the delicate features of that baby, a
brand new start. Their sorrow, their regret, had, for the first time since Kaia
arrived, faded into the background, washed out by the hope that Polara brought.

And Polara and Rigel had kept the memories of
those hard times at bay ever since.

The survey crew used Bleak House as their base
for the next several days. Two weeks ago they’d dropped out of the sky, and
their equipment was failing steadily. As they explored the tunnels around the
dry chamber, the little group moved carefully together in the dim glow of
Ndaiye’s shoulder lights, trying to preserve their remaining Maxlights while
they could. The batteries on the final two pairs of Everwarm coveralls went out
within hours of each other.

Something about the conversation they’d shared
the first night in Bleak House stayed with them. They couldn’t stop talking
about Earth. As they settled in after several hours of exploring, Ndaiye was
cheering them with tales from his parents’ traditional culture.

“Sure,” Ndaiye said, “the spirits of people who
have died can visit you. And the spirits of people back on Earth can visit
Minea, too, when their bodies are sleeping. And you can visit them. Only you
think it’s a dream when you wake up. And so do they.”

Ethan didn’t mind that myth. Actually, he liked
it. He would like his sister to see Minea, though she’d be over eighty now. And
he would like to see her again. It was a comforting thought.

Maggie interrupted the thought, pulling him back
into the cave. “If we wanna stay warm, we’re gonna have to sleep like sardines,”
Maggie said. “So I hope nobody’s shy.”

They put Brynn and Jade in the middle, with
Maggie and Traore on either side and Ndaiye and Ethan on the ends. Ethan turned
throughout the night to warm his back and his chest alternately. He barely
slept. Finally, when he could stand it no more, he laid the packs where he had
been to hold some heat near the group and stood, shivering.

There was one direction they hadn’t gone yet. He
took a Maxlight and went that way. The triangular opening in the far wall was
easy to slip through, and Ethan found himself in a chamber that reminded him of
the Colony Offices lobby. Several passages opened out of it, which they would
need to map.

He went back into the Bleak House chamber and
eased the map, pencil, and marking rock out of his pack. He put them in the
inner pockets of his coveralls and started down the first tunnel.

After three switchbacks, it dead-ended. Ethan
exited and wrote “DEAD END” on the wall inside the tunnel with the marking
rock.

He tried the next one. It ran, curving, off down
deeper into the cave. Promising, he thought, but it eventually came to another
dead end. He was far from the Bleak House chamber, where he’d left the others
sleeping, and really alone for the first time since the crash. Ethan wanted to
try something, something he hadn’t tried in a long time. He had learned to
completely suppress most of the alterations made to him on Beta Alora, and this
was one he hadn’t used since being on that red planet.

But when he’d used it in the past, there were
consequences for those around him, and he couldn’t try it around the survey
crew unless he was sure he could control it.

Ethan stood in front of the wall, his palms in
front of him. He tapped into the hopelessness he felt being in the cave, into
the fear and anger and loss that this place had brought him. He felt his heart
beating hard and fast, adrenaline racing through him. As the energy inside him
crested, a beam of it shot out through his extended palms, striking the wall
with a deafening sound.

He had a moment to see the damage—a table-sized
depression in the solid rock—before the tunnel began caving in. Ethan turned
and ran back up the tunnel as the rocks fell behind him and the dust and air
rushed past him. Tripping, he flipped over, expecting to be crushed by the
collapsing tunnel, but it had fallen and was settling into a wall of rubble.

Ethan lay back on the stone floor. His fear about
his power was confirmed. It was useless here. This environment was too
unpredictable. Unless he could guarantee the stability of the rock above, he
couldn’t risk blasting.

He walked back to the lobby outside Bleak House.
The avalanche hadn’t woken the others, so he jotted a note and left it on the
packs.
Looking for our next move. –Ethan
.

Slipping out the triangle exit and glancing
toward the now rubble-filled tunnel, Ethan stopped to mark “DEAD END AND
FALLING ROCK. DO NOT ENTER!” on the map over the passage he had blasted before
starting off down a third passage.

Gray and bland like the rest of this area of the
cave, this passage was long and snaking. Tunnels opened up on either side and
soon he began seeing flowstone formations jutting from the walls. He glanced
up. Strange slabs of suspended rock jig-sawed the ceiling of the passage.
Walking on, he lost track of time as he studied the formations’ intricacy.

As the formations ended, the passage widened
slightly and stopped abruptly. Another dead end. What if they were all dead
ends? He shook his head, dreading the trip back up that rock field. And then
where would they go? Any of the hundred passages they’d passed could lead them
outside or to another dead end like this. Ethan leaned against the wall, trying
to think what he’d tell the team when he got back to them. Switching off his
light, he laid his head against the cold stone for a moment. Suddenly, an
unfamiliar sensation skimmed his face. He swept his hand up instinctively to
brush it away, but it remained: a constant, gentle caress. Ethan’s heart beat
faster. It was air, moving through the cave. Somewhere in this room was an
opening for wind to get through. And wind led outside. He switched the light
back on and turned his cheek toward the breeze. Shining the light in that
direction, he crossed the stony cave floor and followed the breeze around some
of the bigger boulders. He felt a breath of relief escape him as he saw it. At
the bottom of the far wall gaped a crevice about the size of a bathtub. He
knelt beside it and felt the air rushing past him. It felt fresh and bracing.

Ethan took out the marking rock and scratched his
initials above the passage. He lay on his belly and crawled into the crevice.
It was roomy, roughly squarish, and smoothed by water that had once flowed
here. He rolled onto his back and pulled off his gloves, feeling the surface
all around with his fingertips. It was dry.

Crawling farther into the gap, he found it
tapering slightly to an oblong passageway. As he crawled he was suddenly
reminded of exploring the ship’s shafts with Kaia. That was a lifetime ago.

He missed her company now. She would have a
thousand ideas about how to get these people out of here. She may have even
been able to repair the ship so they could have flown out. As the memory of the
survey craft returned to him, though, he realized that was wishful thinking.
Its twisted wings and the ragged gashes through its sides would have been beyond
even her capacity to repair. If there was a way out, this was much more likely to
be it.

Ethan felt the thud of rock on his shoulder and
realized that the opening had narrowed considerably. Pausing, he shined his
light ahead, down along the smooth passage as far as he could see. It grew
smaller ahead. Ethan stopped to breathe. Though the last few days had forced
him to move past his fear of enclosed spaces, this was extreme. He didn’t know
if he could force himself to go further into the little passage. He wasn’t
going to be able to crawl on his hands and knees, and holding the flashlight
was going to be tricky.

His breath quickened as he looked down the
passageway, shining the light around to reveal a cylinder of smooth gray stone.
The breeze flowed past his face, seemingly warmer here. There was a real
possibility that this lead somewhere, that getting through it got them closer
to getting out. It had to be investigated.

Ethan was no stranger to facing his fears. He
held the faces of the crew in his mind for a moment, then he slid the Maxlight
into his pocket and tapped the one working shoulder light, telling himself not
to panic as he registered how much more shadowy the way was without the
flashlight.

He dropped to his belly and slid farther in.
After the first few minutes, he found himself fighting the urge to go back. The
breath of the cave told him that this passage went somewhere, and if he didn’t
find out where, he and the surveyors would be at a dead end. If there was any
way he could get them out of here, he had to try.

The tunnel constricted more as he crawled. A
closing silver fist around him, it was now just inches wider in circumference
than he was. His heart began to beat in his throat and he crawled faster. The
sides of the narrow passage cut in further, pinning his elbows, forcing him to
reach ahead of him to pull himself along. He tried to steady himself with a
deep breath, but the breeze he’d felt before had become a rushing wind,
catching in his mouth and pulling the air from his lungs.

Gasping, he felt the press of solid rock above
and below him and felt his body fill with urgency for oxygen and space and
light. He knew the rock’s cold indifference, felt its permanence encircling
him. He felt heat growing in his chest and tried desperately to control it. An
energy pulse now would give him a second of relief but would also bury him
under tons of rubble. He had to calm down. He fought for breath, gasping again
and again, clawing ahead and feeling the suffocating weight of the cave and the
dark closing around him.

And then his hands reached forward and found
nothing. The passage opened out. Ethan crawled desperately forward. His dim
shoulder light showed him that the tunnel ended in a smooth, white, narrow band
of rock, cutting in and ringing the passage. He clawed until his head was
through, then felt panic rising as his shoulders caught in the narrow opening.
He shifted his shoulders sideways. His chest was still burning for oxygen, so
it took every bit of his resolve to push all the air from his lungs and roll
his shoulders in so he could wriggle out of the passage.

The expanse of space around him as he emerged
into the chamber made him dizzy. He filled his lungs with convulsive breaths as
he rolled onto his back. Throwing his arms wide, he lay on the floor, drinking
in the feeling of freedom and the taste of the air.

His body was stiff and cold from being in such
close contact with the stone for so long, and the effort of the last few meters
had him sweating, so he soon found himself shivering. He got up from the floor
carefully and flipped on the Maxlight. A burst of color reflecting back at him
from the walls shocked his eyes. A huge drapery formation, cascading across the
closest wall, glowed vibrant red in the beam of the flashlight. As he ran the
light across it, he saw variation in the color and translucence of the stone.
In some places it was white, in others almost purple, in others lovely
translucent pink. And radiating from it was midsummer warmth.

Ethan pulled off his glove, then reached up and
laid a hand against the curtain. It was warm. He moved to the edge and touched
the stone cave wall behind it, then pulled his hand away quickly. In some
places it was hot. His cold bones pulled the heat in and he sank to the floor,
stretching out on the warm ground. He felt himself relax against the stone,
letting his mind wander to Aria and the kids. He wondered if they had searched
for him, if they were still searching, or if she had given herself to the
inevitability of his death and was starting the long road of processing her
grief. He switched off the light and indulged in his thoughts of them for a
moment.

The warmth made him sleepy, and against his will
he drifted off. It felt like days since he had slept.

***

When Ethan awoke, he was comfortable and warm. He
imagined for a moment that he was back home in the blue cottage, but the
reality hit him and he sat up anxiously, wondering how long he had slept. He
pulled out the map, shuddering as he looked back over the last few days laid
out on the page. He sketched the chamber where the rest were waiting for him. “Bleak
House” Brynn had called it. He wrote the words above it. He pulled the lines up
from it, showing the little incline and the two dead-ends he’d taken, then the
ballooning antechamber where he’d found the opening to the tiny tunnel. What to
call it? Tunnel of Terror seemed fitting, but a little dark. He thought of the
crushing sensation, the constriction of rock around his chest, and scribbled, “Python
Pass.”

Re-energized, he headed back for the tunnel. He
had to get the others here. It was not only their best way out, but a warm,
safe place for them to rest. He wanted them warm. He wanted them to have the
kind of sleep he’d just had.

The tightest section of the passage was still
grueling for Ethan, but knowing that the tunnel opened up and that there was an
escape from it calmed the worst of his fears and he made it out the other side.
He navigated back through the cave, checking his marks at every intersection,
even if he thought he knew the way. As he approached Bleak House, the chamber
where he’d left them, he was surprisingly relieved to see the triangle of faint
light shining through the entrance. Slipping through the opening, he came face
to face with Brynn, who was peering anxiously out the opening. She beamed a
smile at him.

“I thought you were gone for good!”

Ethan smiled back, then peered around her. “How’s
Maggie?”

“I’m fine,” the team leader called gruffly from
the dim edge of the cavern. “Except they keep making me get up and hobble
around.”