Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (34 page)

“Uumbor!” he
summoned his first assistant, who was still on the Cliprig. “Bring the ships to
the mouth of the mines, and fill them with mercenaries.”

“Yes, sir,” Uumbor
replied.

As he walked into
the dark of the cave and felt his eyes dilating, Galo used his control panel to
beam his voice directly to his mercenaries. “Do whatever you have to do to find
my Vala.”

***

When Aria appeared at the hospital carrying the
Taim tray, she was stopped at the door.

“You can’t bring that in here,” the nurse in
charge barked. “We spend all day trying to get rid of the stuff.”

“Please,” Aria pleaded, “my little girl is on the
third floor with Minean Fever. I think these plants may help her get well.”

The nurse, Aria could tell, had seen a lot of
desperate people. Especially, Aria guessed, lately.

“Aw, all right. I guess it’s nothin’ we haven’t
had in here before. Just don’t take it out of her room.”

Aria smiled gratefully and made her way to Polara’s
room.

Ethan looked surprised when he saw her enter with
the tray. “What is that for?” he asked.

Aria didn’t feel like explaining. She only wanted
to see if it worked. “Help me pull this thing open,” she said, struggling
one-handed with the thick plastic cover over Polara’s bed. Ethan unzipped it
and held it open for her. The child was so still. Aria laid the tray next to
her pillow, taking a moment to arrange it so that it was solidly positioned.
She leaned down and kissed Polara, then pulled herself out of the cover and
re-closed it.

She watched, but nothing happened. Polara turned
slightly, tipping her head toward the Taim tray. Her breath stirred the Taim on
one end, setting them swaying, gently at first. As each heartbeat ticked by,
more Taim in the tray began to move. The long filaments on the tops of the
little plants spread out and swept the air in front of Polara’s porcelain face.

But that was all. Nothing else changed. The child
still lay unaware, her beautiful eyes covered in sleep.

“You can cry, honey.” Ethan said softly. She felt
her frustration flare again. He slipped an arm around her waist, but she
stiffened and stepped out of the curve of his arm. Aria had no more tears. She
had no more words, and she was afraid that even her ability to love may have
been burned out by the fever of her daughter’s illness.

She didn’t look at him, but she sensed that it
hurt him.

“You go home,” she said, trying to make her voice
soft. “Get some rest. I’ll stay here with them both.”

Ethan started to protest, but she saw that the
sting of her rejection had wounded him, and he squeezed her hand quickly, then
left without speaking.

Aria felt a sting of guilt. She didn’t want to
lose Ethan, too. She didn’t know what she would or could ever do without him.
He didn’t know what to do, either, and he was scared.

They weren’t doctors. They weren’t qualified to
face this alien illness. All their efforts ended in nothing, and their resolve
to try new things was waning. She felt foolish that she had thought plants
could solve something so terrible.

Aria picked up Rigel and held him close. He
wrapped his thick hands in her hair and laid his head against her chest. She
sat with him at Polara’s bedside, watching the Taim sway.

For the first time, Aria faced the possibility
that Polara may not wake up. The doctors had been saying it since the
beginning, but every time they had begun, Aria had mentally blocked their
words, refusing to believe that the child she had carried through the stars
would not grow up.

But the blooming bruises covered her everywhere
now, and she hadn’t awakened for days. Not only was she going, she was going
soon. Aria felt Rigel’s even breathing. He was asleep. She let the tears come,
hot and slick, down her cheeks.

Ethan left the hospital fighting hopelessness.
The Minean night was warm, and he walked along the street in the Health and
Human Services District, abandoned except for a hovercab and a couple of people
going in and out of the hospital buildings.

For days he had sat beside that bed, watching
Polara’s still form. It was agony he remembered from his early years on the
ship, when Aria had been in stasis and he’d watched her in her stasis chamber,
totally helpless.

As he watched Polara, he had willed her to move,
willed her to flutter her eyelids, to cry, to sit up. He remembered when at
three months old she had been trying so hard to learn to turn over. He
remembered how her determination was evident in her straining shoulders, her
flailing legs, her frustrated grunts. Back then, when he had wanted so much to
reach out and put a hand under her back to give her a little boost, he had
known that doing so would stop her learning how to do it, so he had sat on the
floor of the cottage, his hands clasped to keep from reaching over, and willed
her to do it. He had sent toward her his best energy.

And these days in the hospital he had done so,
his hands clasped again, so hard that now, as he walked along the darkened
street, he felt the ache in them. He found himself wishing Polara his own
strength, wishing for her whatever it was that kept him from this plague,
wishing for her simply the strength to sit up.

But still, all this time, Polara’s breath became
shallow and ever more silent, and no amount of wishing changed its fading
rhythm.

Ethan swore, low and angry. Aria had found the
gas. It was coming from the mines. It had to be stopped. If not—his mind choked
on the thought—if not to help Polara, then to stop anyone else’s child from getting
sick.

Ethan turned his steps toward Yynium Hill and
walked faster. The HHSD gave way to the manicured lawns of Coriol’s elite.
Fragrant casien trees blossomed above him, and soft grass grew in the manicured
lawns behind tall fences along the road. There were few estates here, but they
were expansive. He passed Veronika’s estate, Theo’s, Governor Elias’s estate,
and the new one Governor Meck had bought when he’d moved out of the cottages a
few weeks ago. And on top he came to the Saras mansion, built by Dimitri Saras
before he left Minea and inhabited now by his greedy, grasping son. Ethan shook
on the gate and a wary guard stepped out of the little stone guardhouse.

“Where’s Marcos Saras?”

The guard glanced at the door of Saras’s big
house, ten meters away, up the driveway, and Ethan knew the President was home.
The guard laid a hand on his holster. “Who’s there?”

“Governor Bryant! I need to talk to him!”

At that, the guard looked unsure. “Okay. I’ll
page him and let him know you’re here.”

Ethan was surprised when the guard opened the
gate and gestured him up to the mansion. He stood outside the door and a
cautious Saras appeared on an intercom screen.

“How can I help you, Mr. Bryant?”

“I know about the gas, Saras. I know it’s coming
from your mines. Shut them down.”

Saras’s eyes darted nervously to the side. “Mr.
Bryant, this sounds like business. Perhaps you could come to the office
tomorrow?”

“It’s not business, Saras.” Ethan felt the heat
growing in his chest. He could get in, if he wanted to, could blast the door
and drag Saras out. “It’s my family. My little girl is—” He thought
dying
,
but he couldn’t bring the word out. He stopped.

Saras’s voice was quieter than usual. “I’m sorry,
Ethan.”

“Don’t be sorry. Stop it.”

There was silence for a long moment. Saras seemed
to be weighing something. Ethan saw the moment that Yynium came back into Saras’s
eyes, though. Saw the moment his humanity was lost to his greed. The screen
went black.

Ethan pounded on the door until two of Saras’s
guards dragged him outside the gates and put him on the sidewalk, where he felt
the hot tears sliding down his cheeks and turned away, shuffling, broken, down
Yynium hill.

***

Marcos switched off the screen. Bryant’s child
was sick. He heard the man pounding on the door and waited a moment until he
heard the scuffle of the guards taking him away.

Saras double-checked the bolt on his door and
undressed, wrapping a robe around him to cover the bruising on his belly and
chest. He couldn’t admit it. They would close the mines. As he lay on his
couch, aching for Serena, he closed his eyes against the pain.

She would be landing on Earth any day, expecting
to step aboard an RST ship and come to him. But he had failed her. The personal
RST ships weren’t available, little Yynium had arrived on Earth, and she would
not be here for a long, long time. He knew that may mean never. He spoke,
calling the screen up in front of him.

“Messages,” Marcos said, “from Serena.”

“Messages from Serena,” repeated the smarthouse.
Her messages appeared on the screen, her words flowing around the pictures she’d
sent. He didn’t open any single one, just looked at them all en masse and
curled into a ball around the pain in his chest. A coughing fit shook him.

Marcos missed Serena with a depth of emptiness he
had never known, not even with the hole his father had left when he’d gone off
to Minea.

“Show me the camera on the P5,” Marcos mumbled,
feeling the heat of fever pressing on his temples. The little ship shone dully
on the screen in the darkened garage. Its engine compartment still gaped open,
the drive removed and laying on a table nearby. If the P5 was operational, he’d
leave tomorrow to reach her.

Marcos didn’t hear the door unlock or the
footsteps. He didn’t know how long he’d lain there when he noticed Veronika
standing above him.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “Get dressed.”

She turned to leave, but stopped, her eyes on the
screen. “What is that?”

“It’s the P5,” Marcos heard how his voice slurred
and he tried to correct it. “Only it’s broken.”

Veronika froze. “What do you mean it’s broken?”
Her voice sounded explosively loud to Marcos.

“Shhh,” he scolded, then waved her closer. Part
of him was screaming to stop talking, but the fever was blurring his thoughts.
He was tired and if he told her maybe she’d go away. “It’s broken because I
tried to go home and the dirty Yynium clogged up the drive. Cayle will fix it.”
He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

Veronika was suddenly in his face, her strong
hands grasping the front of his robe and hauling him into a sitting position.
He hadn’t known she was so strong.

“Dirty Yynium? When? When did this happen?”

“Some months ago.” Marcos scrunched up his face,
trying to remember.

“Before or after the last shipment, Marcos?” She
shook him just when he tried to close his eyes again. “Think Marcos. When?”

“Before. When we got the new filters in the
refinery that I guess didn’t work so well.”

“Did you know this when we shipped?” she
demanded.

Marcos nodded. He was beginning to pull out of
the haze, and the screaming voice in his head telling him to stop talking was
growing louder.

Veronika stared at him for a long, horrible
moment. She slipped off the couch and knelt on the floor, running a hand
through her long black hair.

“Marcos, this is bad.”

Marcos felt the sharp sting of regret sneak in
around the edges of the haze. He put his head in his hands.

“I know.”

Veronika’s head snapped up. “You are an idiot.
Why would you hide this?”

Marcos shook his head. His voice sounded more
like his own when he said, “We have to keep running the mine to get new Yynium.
We have to keep getting paid if we want to buy better equipment. We have to
keep shipping.”

“Not dirty Yynium. What do you think is going to
happen when that stuff arrives and they put it in the YEN drives?”

“Same thing that happened to the P5? The drives
gum up?”

“Maybe,” her voice was sharp, “or maybe they
overheat and explode and maybe people
die
Marcos.” He didn’t think that
would happen and he could tell she knew he didn’t.

“And if it’s the ship Serena’s on?” Her words
drove a knife into his gut, then she twisted it. “And she’s the one that gets
burnt and hurled into space?”

“Stop it.” He stood. The room swayed slightly,
but he was regaining control. His anger was overcoming the fever. “It’s one
shipload. When we get the new vein, we’ll have all the clean Yynium we need.”

Veronika walked to the window. He knew she was
calculating. “I’m sure you faked our report, but how did you get around the
Colony Offices purity check?”

Marcos looked her in the eye and Veronika swore
softly. “You paid someone off? And you expect them not to talk? Who was it?”

Marcos knew this conversation, knew where it
ended. He kept his mouth shut. She started naming governors.

“Elias? Bryant? Mujib? Patten? Meck?” He
tightened his mouth to keep from giving it away, but realized his mistake too
late.

“Meck then,” she said decisively. “I knew
something was fishy about that new house.” Then, turning from the window, “Does
Theo know about this?”

Marcos shook his head and saw her nod, once,
satisfied. At least he wasn’t always hopeless at lying. She walked a few steps
toward him.

“We’ve got another problem.”

“What kind of problem?” he asked.

“We’ve got an alien problem,” she said coldly.

“We’ve had an alien problem for a while,” he
said, grimacing as he thought about the black-suited Asgre lurking through the
streets on their mysterious hunt.

“But now they’re in the mines,” Veronika said.
She spoke to the house and pulled up the screen with a diagram of the Yynium
mines. Four shafts each bore a large red x. His mines. They had already shut
down four shafts?

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know, but in these four they have detonated
charges, as if they are trying to get further back into the rock. But they’re
not doing it well. They’re moving too fast, and they’re sloppy. They’ve
basically destroyed all four shafts.”

Four shafts and all the work that it took to
build them. Four shafts and the potential for Yynium harvest that they held.
Four shafts represented nearly a year’s work, and every shaft destroyed set
them back months. Marcos’s mind was clear now, and fury welled within him. He
strode to the wall and punched the communicator. Within moments, Phillip Reagan
was before him on the screen.

“Get these creatures out of my mines, Reagan,” he
snapped. “I’ve given you the manpower. You’ve got all the Coriol Defense
Troops. What are you waiting for?”

“You don’t just charge in and start firing at
aliens, Saras. They don’t care how much scrip you have. You’d better be sure
you know what they can do before you start pushing them around.”

“Well, what can they do?”

Reagan’s voice was a growl. “Plenty, from the
looks of it. I’ve got analysts figuring out just what kind of weaponry they’ve
got. I should know exactly how we match up soon, but you’d better know I’ve got
people
to think of before mines.”

“You’d better think of my mines, Reagan, or there
won’t be any people here to think about.”

“We’ve made a deal, and they’ve got two days left
to get out of here. It’ll be better for everyone if we don’t engage them before
that.”

Marcos scoffed. “Made another deal with the
aliens, huh Reagan?” Marcos smiled as he saw Reagan’s face register the blow. “You’ve
got a good track record with those. Just know that if it comes down to it, I’m
not afraid to use my troops.”

Reagan started to say something, probably a
threat, but Marcos cut the call, his head still pulsing.

Veronika glared at him. “You think it’s smart to
make the Admiral mad?” She scoffed, then snapped, “I said
get dressed
.
We need to get Theo and get this thing figured out.” She went back to staring
out the window.

As Marcos pulled on his slacks and buttoned his
shirt, he looked past her, where he saw the lights of Coriol stretched beneath
them, glimmering white all the way to the blue lights of the spaceport on the
opposite side of the city. He saw her watching him in the reflection of the
glass, and he saw her mouth open in shock as she turned slowly to stare at the
bruises covering his torso.

Marcos tried to pull his shirt closed, but it was
too late.

“We’re going to the hospital,” Veronika said
sharply. “Right now.”

***

When Aria opened her eyes in the pale morning
light, Rigel was stirring in her arms. Her neck was stiff from sleeping in the
chair.

“Mama,” Polara’s sweet voice called, muffled by
the thick cover over her bed, “the plants are dancing.”

Aria drew in her breath sharply. Polara was
sitting up, running a gentle finger over the plants. Aria blinked. The plants
were twice the size they were last night. And Polara was awake.