Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (26 page)

Kaia stood beside her father in front of the Lumina
Defense Headquarters, watching as the alien ship moved slowly, methodically,
over the circular city, from one side to the other. It cruised, darkening the
buildings and people below with its shadow. Kaia felt a surge of apprehension
as the Others of Beta Alora flashed through her mind.

But there had, so far, been no aggression other
than the disabling of the orbital defenses, and her father said they weren’t
sure if that was even intentional. The ship just cruised.

Lumina’s two company ships were airborne, flying
a grid pattern high above the alien ship in case of trouble. Kaia watched the
late afternoon sun glancing off them and wondered how much good they would do
against the massive alien vessel. She wondered what chance any of their
defenses had. Reagan had all the ground troops on alert in all of Minea’s
settlements, and the battleships stood ready to come to Lumina if needed, but
what kind of weapons these aliens had was still mostly a mystery.

Reagan interrupted her thoughts, “What did you do
to defend against the Others?”

Kaia thought for a long moment. “We were mostly
on the offensive,” she said, “trying to make it to the statehouse. But the few
times we came up against them face-to-face, I think Ethan mostly tried to
strike first. That was the only moment he had an advantage.”

Reagan nodded, his eyes clouded with thought. One
of the Orbital Defense officers approached.

“Sir, some more information.” The man handed
Reagan a handheld screen and Kaia saw her father’s jaw set.

“What is it?”

Reagan flipped the screen around for her to see.
Above their planet, waiting in orbit, were eight more of alien ships. Kaia saw
the pieces began to come together in Reagan’s mind. He spoke aloud. “This
scouting ship, the fleet waiting for an order to move in, this has all the
earmarks of an invasion.” He straightened his shoulders. The admiral was not
about to let that happen.

A chill ran through Kaia. “Why don’t we bring all
the battleships here?” she asked, wanting as much firepower as possible.

Reagan glanced at the soldiers milling around and
gestured her inside the headquarters building. They walked the long hallway to
his temporary office. Inside, a screen on his desk was showing the same feed
the OD officer had shown him. On it the alien ships hung like spiders against
the blackness of space.

Kaia saw her father run a hand across his
forehead. He always did that when he was agitated.

“If this is an invasion, and I’m not saying it
is, this ship may be a decoy to lure all our defenses down here to the farthest
corner of the settlements.” He paced, and Kaia pictured the eight settlements,
laid out almost like an X across plains and mountains. Reagan continued, “We
need battleships in each settlement, in case the other ships make a move.
Reagan looked into her eyes.

“We’re going to need to revise our defense plan,”
he said.

***

The two small ships that had risen from the base
continued to standby for the next several hours as Galo scanned the city. He
scanned as close as he dared to, afraid of pushing the defense ships to
aggression. But the Vala were not here and had not been here. Though the
realization was bitter in his mind, he felt they must be somewhere in these
settlements and was eager to move on and attempt to locate them in the next
one.

He pulled the Cliprig up and away from the
circular city and set a course for the next settlement on his map. Halfway
there the translator came online and told him the name of the next city was
Oculys. It lay nestled in the foot of the massive folded mountains he saw in
the distance, and he watched them grow larger and larger as he approached. At
the city’s edge, he engaged the translator and opened a communications
frequency.

“Humans of—” What was this city’s strange name
again? He looked at his screen. “Humans of Oculys,” he said, using his most
convincing voice, “I am Galo of the Asgre, and I have come to retrieve my
property.”

Galo waited, but no answer came on his comms
lines. He was disappointed. He had been looking forward to conversing with them
and learning what they knew of his slaves. He wondered if they were just
impolitely ignoring him or if they were afraid to respond. Nevertheless, he
began his scans of this city, and then of the surrounding mountains. He found
nothing, but there were six more settlements, and Galo would visit each one
until he found the Vala.

Ethan’s spinning head was filled with the sounds
of the survey crew’s cheering. He joined them, hearing his own hoarse voice
falling out into the warm night air. Perching in single file on the ridge, the
little group sat watching their first glimpse of the outdoors in weeks. Even
Brynn’s announcement that her shoulder light, one of two that remained, was
dead, didn’t dampen their spirits. They still had Ndaiye’s shoulder light, and
they were almost out of the cave.

A clamor drew their attention. They saw hundreds
of the big, bat-like creatures spiraling around the opening, dappling the night
sky. One of them landed atop the ridge near the group. Before Ethan could stop
her, Brynn reached out towards it. She quickly pulled her hand back, though, as
spines rose out of the little animal’s fur. “It’s a porcubat!” Brynn cried. It
hissed viciously and launched itself off the edge into the night sky.

Ndaiye was giggling. “A porcubat? I’ve never
heard of that before.”

Brynn laughed a little herself. “You know,
because it’s half bat and half porcupine?”

“I picked up on that. Maybe you should be a
zoologist instead of a surveyor.”

The path dropped down and around in front of
them. Ethan hoped it led outside. They didn’t know if they would be able to see
the stars once they descended, though, and they stayed atop the ridge clinging
to the sight of them for a long time.

Ndaiye led when they finally started down, the
others keeping their eyes on his feeble light. As they progressed, though,
Ethan saw they weren’t in total darkness. Short, blunt, fluorescing rock
formations glowed along the edges of the trail and along the cliff wall, like
light posts leading them down the ridge.

He wasn’t sure if it was the fluorescing
formations or the sight of the outdoors, but something made them bold and they
hurried along the knife’s edge of the ridge, barely noticing the chasm that
fell away beside them. Hope made them giddy. This was the way home. They were
nearly out. Ethan felt the sheer exhilaration of being up so high and tasting,
for the first time in so long, the fresh outdoor air.

The small ridge sloped down sharply, and they
slowed a bit to better navigate it. Ahead of him, without warning, Ethan heard
the sickening cry of Ndaiye’s fall. Anger washed over him as he scrambled
behind Maggie to get to the edge from which his friend had fallen.

The ridge dropped suddenly away, and Ethan leaned
over, peering into the darkness below. Ethan sucked in his breath with relief
to see his friend only a few meters below, sitting in the glow of their last
remaining light. Ethan could see that Ndaiye was holding his arm.

“Everyone be careful. It’s a bit of a drop.”
Ndaiye said, his usually jocular voice strained.

Ethan lay on his belly, wriggling backwards over
the edge. He hung his feet over and stretched his arms above him as he lowered
himself down. When he dropped the last meter or so, he knew about how far to
expect to fall in the darkness before he found the ground again. Once he was
down, he helped Maggie, Brynn, and finally Traore as they dropped down one by
one. He checked Ndaiye’s arm. Though they had little light to diagnose it by,
it was assuredly broken.

They dismantled the stretcher from the pack and
used the handles as a temporary splint. Ndaiye didn’t howl with the pain it
must have caused him, but he did hum vigorously.

Brynn’s concerned voice cut through the dark. “I
can’t tell for sure,” she said, “but I think this is a dead end.”

Impossible
,
Ethan thought,
we saw the outside
.
We can go home
. He walked over
to Brynn, trying to see in the feeble light.

In front of her was a very high wall. Running his
hands along the rough stone, Ethan walked in a slow circle and found that Brynn
was right. Like so many paths in the cave, following Knife’s Edge ridge had led
them to a dead end. They were in a pit, shaped like a bowl, probably carved by
a long-gone waterfall. Ethan looked backward, up the ridge. It would be hard to
get back up to the place they’d dropped down.

Just then, Ndaiye’s shoulder light went out,
plunging them into total cave darkness.

Ethan swore. “Sit down everyone. Sit down. We can’t
move around. We won’t be able to see where we’re going. There could be vertical
shafts or drop-offs.” He put his head in his hands. There was no way out
without light.

It had happened. The dark of the cave had closed
around him. He wondered how long a death in this environment would take.

As their eyes adjusted, Ethan saw glowing around
the pit a few of the blunt fluorescing formations, like the ones that had lit
their way on the Knife’s Edge above. Perhaps they could be removed from the
wall and used to light their way.

But light their way where? The sides of the pit
were smooth and high. There would be no getting out of this one.

Ethan sat heavily on the ground, the cold sinking
into his bones. It was over, then. They were out of food and water, and now
they were out of light.

Brynn began to cry. “But
I
didn’t want to
die,” she said in the dark.

Hearing her piteous sobs made Ethan’s weary soul
ache. He stood and slowly moved to kneel beside one of the blunt fluorescent
formations. He took out his useless flashlight.

The ringing of metal on stone filled the cavern
and stirred up several porcubats that had settled on the sheer faces of the
rock. Finally, the formation chipped off and Ethan walked carefully back to the
middle of the pit. It was heavy and smooth in his hands.

He set it down, and the five scooted around it
miserably. At least it cast a feeble light so they could make out the shapes of
each other and know they were not alone.

It seemed particularly unfair that they’d come
close enough to breathe the night air only to die this close to the outside.

“Don’t cry, Brynn,” Ethan said softly.

Ethan glanced up in the direction of the Knife’s Edge.
He saw the fluorescing formations reaching up and away towards the high point
where they had seen the stars. If he was going to die, he would rather die
there, with the wind in his face and the sight of the night sky, than here in
this dank pit.

Ethan drew in a sharp breath.

There, on the edge of the pit, on the ridge that
lead to the Knife’s Edge, stood one of the figures he’d been seeing. But this
time it didn’t disappear.

From what he could tell, it was about the size of
a person, covered with white wrinkly skin that glowed pale in the dark cavern.
It had large eyes and it reached a long-fingered hand out to Ethan.

“Look at the ridge,” he said quietly to the crew,
“but don’t panic.”

He kept his eyes on the figure. He heard the
gasps the moment they saw it, too. They sat still.

At his periphery Ethan saw another, much closer,
figure. It was in the pit with them, and when he looked at it, another emerged
from the solid rock behind it. Both were carrying blocks which they laid down
near the back wall of the pit as more of the figures materialized.

“Dontcrybrynn, dontcrybrynn,” they echoed Ethan’s
words in soft, harmonious voices. “Dontcrybrynn.”

More appeared, and more, until the circle of
surveyors in the middle was surrounded by the strange white creatures, moving
in and out of the rock face, busy stacking the blocks they carried. Startled by
their sudden appearance, it took a long time for Ethan to recognize that they
were creating a staircase.

As it grew ever higher, so did Ethan’s mood. They
may get out of here after all.

When the staircase reached up and far out of
sight, five of the creatures came forward and took the hands of the humans.

As the long fingers slipped under Ethan’s hand,
he felt the soft, cool skin of the creature. It raised his hand to its forehead
in what Ethan recognized to be a greeting, then, walking carefully, it led him
up the blocks. Ethan glanced down as he stepped. He could see from the glassy
surface that they were walking on blocks of pure Yynium.

As they climbed with their guides, Ethan watched
his steps carefully. The walls of the gap narrowed a bit as they climbed, but
the other wall of stone was still plenty far away. It was close enough to see
in the pale light of the luminescent formations, but much too far to leap for
if he slipped. His guide climbed easily, though, and Ethan saw that these
beings weren’t as afraid of a fall, and the sudden stop at the bottom, as he
was.

Near the middle of the long climb, Ethan felt his
strength begin to ebb. He was relieved when, above him several meters, Traore
sat down heavily on the staircase to rest. They were all tired, dehydrated, and
hungry. Their bodies were at the end of their energy. Carefully, Ethan turned
around on the narrow staircase and sat on the slick Yynium blocks, gazing out
over the dark chasm.

As he looked, Ethan felt his breath come quickly.
Across the abyss was a hanging cavern—a glowing pocket in the stone wall. The
inside of the chamber was lit strangely with the luminescent green formations,
and around the edges, in shadowy serenity, were the ghosts. Against the walls,
small versions of the figures hung sleeping in stretchy, upright cocoons. Their
faces were uncovered and serene. Tears streaked out of their closed eyes. Below
each one he saw a strange formation that he’d seen nowhere else in the caverns:
a loose pile of crystallized droplets, glittering in the feeble light.

Seeing them in vulnerable slumber, his fear of
them was erased. He was taken back to Ship 12-22, where he’d watched over his
own sleeping loved ones. In their alien faces he saw Aria. He saw the children.
He saw, in this strange group of creatures, his family, and he knew he could
not give up. Not willingly. He would not sit there in the dark and die. He
stood, feeling new strength in his legs. If he fell to his death, if the
porcubats lanced him, if the krech overtook him, then he would die knowing that
he did not stop. Knowing that they took him down still fighting to get home.