2.5.1

Endra Endangered

With each step toward the Sanctuary, she grew increasingly aware of the weapon at her hip. The weight of it, her armor, and her gear.

“I’ll let you take point if you’d like,” Anders offered when they drew closer.

“No. I can do most the talking, but you should still be the lead. They need to learn some Statics can be trusted, too.”

He nodded and lengthened his stride.

They fell into silence, and Astrid remained transfixed on the point ahead. The vestibule and lobby that served as the Sanctuary’s entrance.

Behind the glass panes, white armor jolted alert the moment Anders groped for the doors.

Astrid watched how hands leapt to firearms. “They’re armed. That’s new.”

“They’re jumpy,” Tenya noted while they entered the first antechamber.

“After what happened, I don’t blame them,” Anders reasoned.

At the second set of doors, the Guardians, a male and female, greeted them, guns raised. Astrid covered a wince.

“State your business,” the man demanded.

Astrid blinked away surprise that he didn’t recognize her. She raised her hands to show her palms.

“Cole, it’s me.”

The young man narrowed his eyes a moment, suspicious, before recognition dawned. “Astrid?”

Slowly, so as to not spook the pair, Astrid hooked the chain of her necklace under her thumb to dangle her crystal for him to see.

“It’s me,” she assured him again.

The woman reacted first. In a wave of relief, the guns fell away. “Thank the goddamned stars.”

The crisis averted, Astrid dropped her hands.

“Suza, right?” she asked of the second Guardian.

The woman nodded, then looked to the other soldiers in the passage.

“This is Lieutenant-Commander Reeves, and Chief Thompson, of the Aldebaran,” Astrid introduced. “We’re here on invitation of the Keeper. To help.”

“We’ll have to escort you,” Cole insisted. “We’d prefer it if you’d check your weapons here.”

“Cole, we’re here to help. Keeper Alethea knows we’re Military. If it’s an appropriate time for you to be carrying, it is for us, too.”

“Keeper Alethea spends most her time in the medical ward with the wounded,” Suza diverted. “We’ll need to retrieve her to meet you. No outsiders are permitted within.”

“Outsiders?” Astrid tried to not let the word sting.

“It’s not personal, Astrid,” Cole told her. “But many are fighting infection and would be endangered by off-world pathogens.”

“Makes sense,” Anders eased from the Channeler’s side.

“Okay… then may we speak with some of the others while we wait? We need to understand what happened here.”

Cole and Suza looked to one another, before finally, Cole nodded.

“I’ll relay your arrival to the Keeper. Suza will take you to the ‘yard. Perhaps some of the older students would be willing to discuss it with you.”

Slowly, the Guardians backed away so the trio could enter. Cole bowed out to head toward a wing where they were not permitted to follow.

“This way,” Suza directed brusquely. She kept her rifle cradled in her arms, however. The Aldebaran crew exchanged uncertain glances but fell into step.

“Maybe you can tell us what you know about what happened?” Anders inquired while Suza led them down the hall through the heart of Administration. “From your perspective?”

Astrid saw the facility with new eyes. Walls that now looked more like a hospital ward to her than a home. But she never noticed before, just how devoid of all character, decoration, and culture the facility seemed.

“A couple weeks ago, an unmarked ship arrived without announcement. We weren’t expecting them. And they didn’t use the front door…”

Suza looked ahead as she led them on, and the others filed behind.

“They deployed armed men right into the courtyard at the center of everything, in about a dozen mechanized pods from a dropship. They couldn’t have held more than few people each, but they dropped in two waves.

“They came equipped with pulsar sticks and took control over the population quickly. Some of our Guardians away from the landing zone retreated to the armory to mount a defense, Cole and myself included.

“But the Sanctuary is deeply compartmentalized even under normal circumstances, purposefully easy to control and manage. The insurgents already had weapons, they came in with a plan, and by the time we were able to react, they’d already isolated the kids, the teens, and the instructors.”

“What did they want?” Anders asked.

“I missed that part,” Suza’s voice darkened. “Whatever it was, those within resisted heavily. We returned to an all-out fight.”

“We lost eleven Guardians before we pushed them out, including my sister, Kelli.”

Astrid remembered the Guardian that subtly threatened her for her closeness with Opal. It seemed honorable, and even a tragedy, that Guardians such as Kelli still dutifully defended Endra, unto death.

“Only two of our instructors survived,” Suza continued. Those words slowed Astrid’s steps, but she found herself afraid to ask their names when she knew them all. She repressed the pain as quickly as she could, to deal with later. Then she hurried to catch up. “The teachers resisted the hardest for their charges. But they hadn’t our armor. We also lost four Channeler adults from our support staff. Half a dozen teenagers, and one child, were also killed in the ensuing chaos.”

Again, Astrid’s legs lost their will to move. She wanted to pause. To feel, to let it sink in. But back in Endra, the practices of her indoctrination returned. She compartmentalized to stay on task. If barely.

“They used their transport pods to rocket right back out and onto their vessel. In the pandemonium, everyone scattered. We weren’t trained for this kind of assault. The shock complicated processing the dead and triaging the wounded. We’ve sedated most the survivors for now. We don’t have the manpower or supplies to manage the emotional disruptions and discharges its caused. Classes have been suspended, and those left behind are sequestered to their dorms for the time being. We’ve asked that they not gather, so should these animals return, we can better protect them.

“Still, in the aftermath, it took days for us to realize how many were unaccounted for.”

“How?” Astrid blurted. Suza shot a frown over her shoulder until Astrid rephrased. “How many, I mean. When did you notice?”

“The Keeper has a list. But at least twenty are missing. Enough that there would be something left if they’d simply been slain. There’s just as many in the infirmary now.”

The troupe came to the doors on the other side of the building, and beyond, Astrid eyed the open air of the main courtyard.

“Out there? That’s where it happened?”

Suza nodded. “We’ve kept it clear since. It’s a good place for your meeting. Maybe it’ll help our people remember details that might help you.”

“Isn’t that a little…?” Tenya started.

“Insensitive?” Astrid finished. “To interview them so close to where it happened?”

“As opposed to where? They’ve had nothing to do for weeks but think about it, and they haven’t been further than three hundred meters from the site since it happened. They’re medicated. You’ll be safe.”

“It’s not us we’re worried about,” Anders corrected. “Your people are traumatized. We don’t want to make this harder than it has to be.”

“It may help you. It can hardly be worse than the event itself. And we cannot permit you entry into the last quarters untouched by outsiders. It’s the only sanctuary our wards have left.”

“Then I must insist on volunteers only,” Anders stipulated. “We won’t force anyone to talk to us. Especially under these conditions.”

Suza propped open the door for them to enter the courtyard.

“Also,” he added, “we would like to talk to any of the Guardians that were here.”

“We’ll see to it.”

Astrid and the team exited into the quad in which a second set of Guardians reigned over the empty square.

The guards watched the soldiers, and Astrid took care to nod to each while Suza crossed to the domestic building.

Astrid rotated in place. The classrooms across the way stood shuttered, the doors locked, with yet more Guardians posted nearby.

Dour, the white-garbed sentinels felt more unknown to her than ever before. The relationship between Channelers and Guardians never seemed particularly friendly, but neither had they been cold.

It seemed things changed with the nature of their immediate world.

In the air, in the concrete, in the plants and fountains, residual pain and terror lingered like the scent of chemicals used to scour the surfaces of evidence.

“Thank you,” Astrid muttered to Anders, appreciative of his consideration for those left behind. She couldn’t imagine being asked to return to the scene of such a crime. Even now, Astrid’s boots carried her to where Captain London picked her out of the yard and changed her life. Anders and Tenya allowed her space to do so.

But score marks and smoke stains tinged the burnished walls and planters. Ferns and broad leaves lay torn and ripped, and black and brown sullied the stone.

The staff clearly cleaned, but Astrid memorized every inch of the yard in her adolescence. She knew which blemishes were new. Where crimson droplets tinted the waterlines in the fountains.

Where it pooled on the ground. Faint, now, but fear still reeked from the shadowy blots. They left marks as faintly dark in her heart as they did in the rock.

“Astrid.”

She turned to the sound of her name, to find an old umber-haired friend.