Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (42 page)

It seemed they had been forever in the dark, damp
tunnel, but more likely it had only been a block or two when a shell hit the
top of the tunnel just behind them, blowing the tunnel open and flooding it
with light from Galo’s ship’s search beams and debris.

Aria saw it then, sparkling behind them in the
tunnel, caught by the sweeping light: a shining trail of tears the little
sleeping Vala in Luis’s arms was leaving behind. Could Galo be using those to
track them? However they had found them, the Asgre were coming.

“Minz!” Aria shouted toward the front of the long
line. “We need to run!”

They ran, Aria’s arms burning with Rigel’s
weight. She tried not to trip over the little Vala child in front of her.
Another shell fell behind them. They were getting closer.

Finally, Minz stopped and ascended a steep
stairway jutting from the side of the tunnel. As she watched him open the door
at the top, she felt panic, not relief. What would await them above?

They emerged in the empty lobby of the farm’s
operations building and followed Minz through the first decontamination room
and through one of the vast clean rooms, where the new plants grew healthy with
the Taim cleansing the air.

Aria mentally checked for each child as they ran
through the last empty decontamination room. As they emerged into the fields
outside, the world was dark around them. The Asgre ship was still working on
the tunnel behind them, tearing it open with projectiles down the length of it.

“Which way to the Taim field?” Minz asked
desperately.

Aria paused, turning, disoriented in the dark. She
felt Rigel’s mind reaching out and tried to meet it, but found he wasn’t
reaching for her. He was reaching, she realized for the Taim, calling out to
them in his infant need.

A ripple of light to their left drew their
attention. Aria looked up to see the forest of Taim, grown to ten meters high,
like their parents in the mountains, and dancing with flashing multicolored
lights on their crowns and trailing branches. The sweet scent of apple blossoms
and vanilla filled the night air. Instinctively, the children ran for them.
Aria could not have stopped them if she’d tried. The adults followed as the
Asgre ship, apparently noticing the Taim as well, left the tunnel and cruised
toward them.

Aria looked back to see Hannah and Polara, the
last of the group, silhouetted against the powerful beams of the ship’s
floodlights. She stopped, running back to them. Aria grabbed Polara’s little
hand and the two women lifted her between them as they ran, gunfire kicking the
dust around their heels.

Ahead of them, the first of the children entered
the Taim forest and the trees began to glow steadily, from the bottom of their
trunks to their fringed tops. Their delicate branches would offer, Aria saw, no
protection. They were not like the massive kapok and baobab. There were no
protective cavities to duck into, no thick branches to shield the humans and
Vala from the shells and the shackles of the Asgre, but there was nowhere else
to go. And Rigel continued to relay the call of the Taim: “Bring the children.”

Aria, Hannah, and the two children tumbled into
the meager shelter of the Taim forest barely ahead of the Asgre ship. Aria
pulled her children into her arms and scrambled a few trees in, huddling next
to the glowing trunk of one of the Taim. In the seconds it took for the Asgre
ship to reach the forest, something remarkable happened.

The Taim began to hum. Their fragile branches
intertwined and the light they were emitting reached a daylight brilliance. The
ship hovered overhead and Aria watched the first shell fall. To her amazement,
the shell hit the canopy of entwined branches and exploded, its fragments
bouncing high into the sky as if repelled by the Taim.

The children gasped at the light show. Aria marveled,
remembering the broken and charred Taim field in the mountains. The Taim had
experienced this before. This remarkable species must have evolved a protection
for their tender seedlings in the case of fire from above. And now they shared their
protection with humanity. Galo’s ship dropped shell after shell, but Aria and
the children, in the shelter of the Taim, felt nothing.

Rigel’s eyes were wide as he watched the
explosions. His mind was finally quiet. Aria felt again the deep calm that was
so much a part of him. He felt safe. The Taim were watching over them.

***

When Daniel swung
the door to the apartment open, he heard the sound of singing. The door to the
back bedroom was ajar, and inside he found Zella, surrounded by the children.
The scene was so peaceful, compared to the violence he’d just witnessed, that
when Zella rose and took him in her arms, Daniel laid his head on her shoulder
and wept with shock and relief.

“Are they gone?”
Zella asked, so softly that only he could hear.

“The ships are still
fighting,” he said. “I could have stayed at the base, but I wanted to be here
to—to take care of you.” He looked her in the eye, willing her to understand
what he was really saying, what he meant by it.

Zella ran a hand
through his hair with one hand and patted the weapon at her hip with the other.
“And so I can take care of you?”

Daniel smiled as she
leaned up and kissed him. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he
had broken above the water and could breathe again.

Ethan stood in the Coriol Defense Headquarters
and looked at the engagement board. The transports had returned them here and
the Vala were being made comfortable in the barracks. In the situation room
with Ethan were Sergeant Nile, several company troop leaders, and the
Governors. Saras and Veronika were there, as well, though Ethan suspected that
they had come more to be protected in the Headquarters than to help with
strategy.

Ethan looked at the red dome on the engagement
board which marked the Taim grove where Aria and the children huddled under the
Taim’s protective shield while Galo’s ship rained fire above them. He didn’t
know how long it would last, and he was wild to go after the Asgre ship
himself, but there were no ships to spare.

The Asgre, with their blunt, cruel ships, were
wrecking the Minean fleet. Reagan’s
Champion
was disabled in the safety
zone, called so because it was far from danger, not because it was particularly
well defended against it. The rest of the fleet hung in orbit above Minea, many
drifting from critical damage. Only three battleships and two colony fleet
ships were left to fight more than thirty Asgre ships. They had no chance
against this enemy. Ethan saw it as he listened to Reagan on the comms link and
the others in the room discussing strategies and moving the little model ships
around on the engagement board. They even advised the remaining battleships to
employ the principles Yi Zhe had taught them, which had worked so well on the
ground. But the sheer number of Asgre ships compared to the number of Minean
ships made success unlikely.

 Reagan swore across the comms link. “If only we
had the fleet,” he said. Ethan could tell the Admiral was growing desperate.
Reagan didn’t waste time wishing.

A calm voice spoke from the back of the room.
They turned to see Ahmasa, one of the Vala mothers whom Ethan had come to know,
entering through the door. With her was Chelus, her small son.

She looked at Ethan. “Will you speak for me?”

He nodded, wishing again that he had his
translator. “I’ll try.” He translated the best he could as she spoke.

“We can help you retrieve your fleet,” Ahmasa
said. “If you will protect us and save the Vala on the ships.”

Ethan looked around the room. It was obvious that
the Sergeant saw no way that such gentle-looking creatures, who had huddled
vulnerably in the flowstone battle, could help in this conflict. Even Reagan
was silent on the comms line, but Ethan knew him well enough to know he would
give them a chance.

Ethan stepped in, speaking. “You have a way to
help us? Help us get our fleet? From Earth?” Even in Ikastn, it sounded
implausible when he said it out loud.

Ahmasa launched into a description of her plan,
but the words and concepts were so unfamiliar that he was lost a little way in.
She stopped, frustrated, and Ethan felt her desperation as well. How could they
understand what she was trying to say? He knew from his previous attempts at
telepathic communication with the Vala that removing his thought blocker would
only add to the confusion. There was no time for miscommunication.

“Maybe you could show us?” he said, stringing
together some of the simple Ikastn words he knew he would not get wrong. As she
considered, Ethan thought about the simplicity of their communications, forced
by the language barrier. As a linguist, he loved language and the complexity
that came with translating a being’s inner thoughts and worldview into
something others could grasp—but the longer he knew the Vala, the more
convinced he was becoming that speaking precisely and plainly had its
advantages.

“Yes,” Ahmasa said, “come here.” She held out her
hand. So did her little son. The Sergeant scoffed and walked a few feet away,
turning his back on her outstretched hand. Ethan walked over and took Chelus’s
hand. Saras’s eyes showed that he didn’t trust them enough to approach. Ahmasa
shrugged, then she picked up the model of
Champion
, the jewel of the
fleet, and showed it to Chelus, who closed his eyes.

Ethan didn’t have time to take a breath. It was
as if he’d been slammed in the chest by a sol train. His eyes closed as his
head snapped back. When he opened them, he was looking at the shocked face of
Phillip Reagan.

Ethan gasped for breath. He was on the bridge of
Champion
—but
that was impossible.

He heard, over the comms, a stir in the room he
had just left.

“Where did they go?”

“They disappeared!”

“What is happening?”

Ethan was impressed with Reagan’s calmness as he
spoke. “They’re on my ship.”

Shocked silence filled the comms line.

Finally, Saras snapped, “Are they trying to
infiltrate our defenses? They could be trying to take over our fleet.”

Ethan was annoyed by Saras’s paranoia, but given
what he’d been through lately with Theo, it was understandable.

“They picked the wrong ship for that,” Reagan
said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“We can help you, if you will help us.” Ahmasa
said, keeping her words simple so that Ethan could translate. Her wide,
watchful eyes roamed constantly over everything on the ship, looking for
danger.

“What do we do?” Ethan asked Ahmasa.

“Go to your home world,” came her reply.

Ethan shook his head. “The ship is broken, and
even if it wasn’t, Earth is—” he held up five spread fingers and tried to think
of the Ikastn word for what would be the equivalent of Earth’s “years.” Even
with the YEN drive, by the time they made the round trip the Asgre would have
wiped out the humans and taken the Vala by force.

Ahmasa shook her head impatiently. “Set your
course,” she said, “for Earth.” Her pronunciation of the planet’s name was
close enough to be understood, but her accent gave the word a holy sound.

Ethan glanced at Reagan, who shrugged. “It’s not
going to hurt anything. We might as well do what she says.”

The captain of
Champion
, Captain Andrew
Daring, kept a watchful eye on the strange visitors as he entered the
coordinates for Earth. To Ethan’s surprise, the ship began to move at a
cruising speed, the engines silent as they moved through the vacuum of space
with ease. Ethan had never traveled by RST before, but he had heard that ships
shuddered violently as they moved into RST, so when he felt it, he knew what
was happening, but he didn’t know how.

He glanced at the Vala. They stood calm and
poised, still holding hands. But the child’s eyes had closed, and he appeared
to be asleep standing up. Something shone crystalline on his cheeks. As Ethan
looked more closely, he saw them: tears. Just like the sleeping Vala he had
seen in the Cavern of Sleepers, they coursed down his cheeks as he slept. As
they left his face and fell, they crystallized and fell to the floor of the
ship in solid, glassy drops that made a tiny chime when they landed.

At the moment he saw them, a flash outside the
window caught his eye. Turning, he gasped and grabbed for the edge of the
console in front of him.

An explosion of colored flames licked the outside
of the ship, obscuring the viewing screen with vibrant Chroma. Ethan felt his
eyes narrow at the brightness of it. Suddenly, ahead, he saw a ship appear and
then disappear, above and to the left of them, another. Like points of light
flaring and then fading, he saw five, ten ships appear around them and then
they were gone.

And suddenly, there it was—glowing blue and white
and beautiful, brighter than Lucidus: Earth.

Ethan felt his breath coming fast and shallow.
Home.

A cheer went up from the crew of the ship. Ethan
turned to the Vala in wonder. The child’s eyes were open now.

“How?” he asked in Ikastn, softly.

The little Vala’s skin wrinkled in a smile. “Alosha.”
My gift
.

His mother beamed as well. “We can move your
fleet as quickly back. If we will be allies, as you promised before.” A cloud
crossed her face suddenly. Ethan recognized it. It was the moment a parent saw
a danger to their child. “You will not enslave us to use this gift,” she said forcefully.

Ethan shook his head quickly. “No.” He hoped
slavery was behind humanity forever.

She shook her head impatiently. “You will have no
need,” she said. “We can help you understand. Perhaps you, too, can travel in
this way.”

That was almost too much to hope. Ethan exchanged
a glance with Reagan, but before they could speak they were interrupted by a
forceful hail from Earth’s defense headquarters. A communications officer
appeared on the screen and there was wariness in his tone. Ethan saw that he had
his finger on a red button that would likely trip the orbital defenses into
attack mode.

“Ship, identify yourself.”

Captain Daring hit the communicator. “We are the
ship
Champion
, of the Minean Fleet.”

The line was quiet a long time, then the voice
came back on. “Please hold for the president.”

She appeared on the screen in her street clothes,
obviously not ready for a meeting. “What is going on?”

Reagan spoke up. “We’ve come for our ships, Madam
President.”

For once, Ethan saw her speechless.

“You’re cleared for landing,” the defense
administrator said hurriedly.

As
Champion
moved down through Earth’s
atmosphere, Ethan felt a wave of emotion wash over him. He was home, but
without Aria and the children, even Earth felt foreign. His home was wherever
they were, and he wanted to get back to them.

***

Ethan held the President’s eye as he stepped off
the ship.

“Is that—the Caretaker?” she asked her aide. “H-How?”
she stopped there.

“Madam President, we’ve made some new friends.”
Ethan gestured to the extended stairway behind him, where Ahmasa and Chelus
stood shyly. The president’s eyes widened, but she quickly composed herself and
stepped forward, extending her hand.

Ahmasa took it and raised it to her own forehead,
then to Chelus’s. When she was finished, the president pulled it back
awkwardly.

“You brought this ship here?” she asked, and Ethan
translated.

Ahmasa nodded. “My son did.”

Ethan gave the president Ahmasa’s words, then
spoke up for himself. “And they say they can help us modify the YEN drives to
travel this way without them.”

“Is that possible?” The president was skeptical.

Kaia spoke up. “I think so. These—” she held up a
flat palm, filled with the child’s diamond tears, “have some very unique
properties.”

Ethan wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that. “I
don’t think we should build our fleet on children’s tears.”

Ahmasa laid a gentle hand on his arm and gave him
a questioning look. He repeated what they had said.

She smiled. “They are not only tears. They are
also sleeping secretions. When our children enter into a state of sleeping, the
drops fall naturally.”

“Then why the cages?” Ethan asked.

“The Asgre forced the children to navigate
through shocking them. They wanted the secretions on demand. The cages shocked
the children into a sleeping state and forced them to navigate the ships to
coordinates implanted in their thoughts.”

“It is,” Ahmasa thought for a moment, “a defense
mechanism. The children can navigate at will to any point in the universe. We
lose it when we pass the time of becoming. We can still travel through space,
but we must have our children present to help us.”

That was a switch, Ethan thought, parents
dependent on children for their well-being. But then he thought of the way Polara’s
arrival had made everything new. He thought of Rigel’s communications with the
Taim, and he realized humans weren’t so different. The Vala just embraced the
truth of their dependency more completely.

***

With Minea under siege, every moment counted.
Still, when the fleet had been gathered and its crews had said their goodbyes
and reported for duty,
Champion
lingered, its passengers gazing at the
planet of their birth.

“It’s time to go back, sir,” Daring said. “We’ve
had a transmission from Minea that the Asgre ships are moving in on
Vigilant
.
She’s the last one left, sir.”

Ethan saw Reagan turn from the blue orb in front
of them to the Vala. “Take us home, please?”

This time, the little Vala moved, with no
apparent difficulty, all eighty new ships, plus
Champion,
on which he
stood. He entered the sleeping state, the tears flowed down his face,
crystallizing and falling with soft pings.

Ethan watched as they moved through the strange
light again, ships appearing and disappearing around them. A cosmic crossroads.
Where were they all going? Where were they coming from when their paths crossed
with
Champion’s
?

***

Reagan watched the sleek battleships appearing
one by one around him in the vast stretch of space above Coriol.