Lethia awoke at dawn with a cramp in her neck. Rubbing it, she explored the little shack, looking for food. She found a stack of canned goods in the tiny kitchen, cut them open with a knife, and ate three cans full of cold soup. She took as many as she could carry, put them in a bag, and set out into the chilly morning of the Reef.
She had walked half a mile down the narrow dirt road before it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was going. She halted and gazed across the landscape, vainly trying to remember how far it was to the nearest spaceport. She'd never been to the city's spaceport and had only the foggiest idea of where it lay. And once she found it, how would she procure a ship, and fly it? She had no money, and no idea how to operate a ship.
Suddenly swamped with despair, she sat on a rock and put her head in her hands. It was only a matter of time before the Taken found her, anyway. If the Dreadnaught reached the Reef, then there'd be a swarm of Hive coming, too.
She thought of her friends, and Sira - dead or Taken. Her only family was a sister who lived at the far end of the Reef and who Lethia hadn't spoken to in years. Lethia was alone. She used to like her solitary life, but now it seemed a crushing void. A lump grew in her throat. She'd lost everything, even her people.
As she sat there, the ghost's voice said softly, "I can help you, if you'll let me."
She glared around for him, jumping to her feet and picking up a rock. "Stay away from me. I'm warning you."
"Why do you despise me so much?" Niki said plaintively, his voice coming from nowhere. "I've found a ship nearby. But you have to let me help you."
"I need help from the Awoken," she snapped. "Not the Traveler. I won't be a slave, understand?"
Beneath her brave words, a new fear ate into her. What if the ghost told the truth? What if she had died without knowing it, and it had brought her back as one of those living dead Guardians? This fear was worse than her dread of the Taken. She might have already lost herself and didn't know it. But instead of being Taken by the Darkness, the Light had taken her first.
"Please, Lethia," the ghost said from nowhere. "Put down the rock."
"First tell me," she said, "did I die?"
"No," the ghost replied.
"Ha!" Lethia exclaimed. "Then I can't possibly be a Guardian."
"You don't have to die to be a Guardian," the ghost replied. "I bonded to you to save you from being Taken. Guardians can't be Taken unless they will it. It's the Light."
That flash of Light she had seen - the way the ghost had blasted her, and the portal had released her. She had become a Guardian in that second?
Lethia threw her rock on the ground with such force that it shattered. Tears filled her eyes. "I'm still Taken," she whispered. "Just ... not by Darkness."
"No!" the ghost exclaimed. "The Light gives. It doesn't Take."
"I'm obliged to fight for the Traveler now!" she shouted. "How is that giving? It's the same as Darkness! I'm only a puppet and you're the one pulling my strings!" She picked up more rocks and threw them in random directions, hoping to knock the ghost out of his hiding place. Then she ran down the path, holding back sobs, dashing away her tears.
She wouldn't serve the Traveler or the Darkness. She'd hide far out in the Reef somewhere, where no monster would ever find her. She'd get rid of the ghost somehow. She'd break out of this Guardian curse. There had to be a way.
Lethia turned a corner and nearly ran into a cluster of Taken.
They were wavering, wobbling humanoid figures in black, their feet burning white where they touched the ground. All of them had a blob of burning whiteness on their foreheads. They screeched and swayed toward Lethia, reaching out to grasp her.
Panicked, Lethia swung her bag of canned goods like a club. It struck the nearest Taken in its glowing forehead. It shrieked, folded in on itself, and vanished in a spiral of blackness. The others hesitated a split second, giving Lethia time to turn and run.
"That's how you treat Taken!" the invisible ghost crowed in her head. "I've got to find you some weapons."
Lethia wanted to argue, but the Taken were shooting bolts of white fire at her, and she had to concentrate on running and dodging. A fire bolt burned into her back. She swallowed her scream and kept running.
Warmth touched the wound. The pain faded. "Got it," the ghost reported. "Take the next left turn. There's a jump ship hidden nearby."
She didn't want to follow his instructions, didn't want him talking to her. But, blast it all, she wanted to escape from certain death. If that meant leaving the Reef, so be it. She turned left.
The path led them into a little glade of trees with their branches twisted into pretty shapes by the wind. Lethia hid among them and watched the path for pursuit.
"A little further," said the ghost in her head. "Don't let the Taken track you in."
Lethia hurried deeper into the glade. After a few minutes, she came to an open meadow among the trees. An Earth-made jump ship filled most of it - a craft like a jet with wheel-like hover engines under the wings. An Awoken man worked on one of the engines, his tools clattering inside the metal fuselage. Lethia's stomach clenched - it was the Guardian in the cloak who had bought tea the day before. Same white-streaked hair, same V-shaped birthmark on his forehead.
He saw her and jumped, whipping out a sidearm. "Who are you?"
"Lethia Mar," she said. " From the cafe. The Taken are following me. Does your ship fly?"
"In a manner of speaking," he said stiffly, holstering his weapon. "Assuming I can get this part fixed. I'm headed for Earth. One way. You won't like it."
He didn't seem dead, Lethia thought. He acted very much alive.
"I don't care where you're going," she replied. "Just get me out of here."
The ghost phased into being beside her. "Please, Ferral, she's a new Guardian. She doesn't know anything yet."
"Huh," Ferral grunted. "Can't turn down a fellow Guardian. Get aboard. Unless you know anything about fixing engines?"
"I'm a cook," she said haughtily. "But this ghost might help you." She climbed the steps into the ship, leaving her ghost and Ferral gazing after her, nonplussed.
The ship's interior was small and narrow. Lethia had to duck her head to avoid the low ceiling. There were no seats aside from the pilot and copilot seats in the cockpit. She went to the copilot seat and halted.
A folded cloth filled most of the seat, and nestled into it was another ghost. A badly damaged ghost, its shell piled around its core in pieces. The core was patched together with electrical tape, but trickles of blue Light escaped around the edges and vanished into the air. The ghost's blue eye blinked up at her. "Who are you?" it said weakly.
"Lethia," she said, watching a bead of Light form around a corner of the tape. "What happened to you?"
"The Taken got me," the ghost replied, as if that explained everything. "You ... you're a Guardian, too."
She sat in the pilot seat and folded her arms. "Yes. But I wasn't asked. A ghost just turned me into one. It's not fair. I wasn't dead yet."
"You ... you weren't?" the injured ghost said. "That's very rare. You and your ghost are lucky."
"No!" she exclaimed. "Not lucky! I'm enslaved to the Traveler like the rest of them! Like - like how you enslaved Ferral! He was dead, wasn't he? And you raised him to be the Traveler's undead slave."
"How ... dare ... you," the ghost whispered, its eye flashing red. "You ignorant Awoken and the lies you tell each other. Ferral is the best thing in my life, and he's the farthest thing from a slave you can imagine."
"You're in pieces, and you're going to argue with me?" Lethia snapped. "I could kill you."
"You wouldn't want to see Ferral's reaction, if you did," the ghost replied. "He would hunt you across the planets for the rest of your short life."
Lethia bared her teeth. "Like it or not, I'm a Guardian now. Guardians don't die."
The ghost looked at her a moment in silence, more Light leaking from its wounds. "I think the Traveler made a mistake."
"Yes," Lethia snapped. "It did. Or that ghost did."
Footsteps clanged on the steps. Ferral swung into the ship and advanced to the cockpit, stooped to avoid the ceiling as if it was the easiest thing in the world. He gestured for Lethia to clear out of the pilot seat. "The engine might start now. Just a minute."
As Lethia climbed out of the chair and squeezed past him, she caught Ferral studying his ghost, the corner of his lip between his teeth. He actually cared about the rude little thing. She glanced around for her ghost, but didn't see it.
Ferral slid into the seat and worked the controls. Outside, the port engine coughed and sputtered to life. "Yes!" Ferral exclaimed. He jumped out of his seat and hurried outside to do a preflight check. When he returned, he slammed and locked the outer door, then went to the cockpit and very gently lifted the ghost and its cloth off the copilot's seat. "Strap in," he told Lethia.
As she obeyed, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. Ferral sat in the pilot's seat, harnessed in, then nestled the injured ghost securely in his lap, tucking the cloth around it like a mother with a baby.
Lethia's ghost said in her head, "Poor Banner. He's going to die if he doesn't get help soon."
Lethia didn't want to care about this undead Guardian and his light spawn. But Ferral's anxiety and tenderness showed in his every movement. In spite of herself, it made Lethia care, too, just a little.
Ferral ignited the other engine and put on his headset. Lethia put on the copilot's headset, as the engine noise became too loud for conversation. Ferral lifted off the ground and took off at a steep angle, climbing rapidly. The trees fell away. Mountains dropped below them. There was nothing above them but blue sky and white clouds. Within minutes, they'd climbed above those, too. The blue sky began to darken as they rose above the Reef's thin layer of atmosphere.
"Fuel tank is low," his ghost said over the radio. "Consider switching to auxiliary tank."
"Switching in five," Ferral said. "Lethia, watch the radar for bogies." He pointed to a green and black screen that currently showed nothing but them.
"Do the Taken fly spacecraft?" Lethia asked.
"The Hive do," Ferral replied grimly. "The Dreadnaught is only three AU from the Reef, close enough for their tombships to get here. We can't fight one of those."
"Doesn't this ship have a jump drive?"
"Yes," Ferral said with exaggerated patience. "But we have to be out of the Reef's gravity well before the computer can make the calculations. Otherwise the backwash might shatter the planetoid. Or us."
The sky was entirely black, now. Out the window, the Reef's great stony arch lay below, the atmosphere like a misty blue sea surrounding it.
Lethia watched the radar as Ferral piloted the ship. Several times he spoke into the radio, trying to contact air traffic control at the space ports. Nobody answered.
"The Taken overran Reefedge City," Lethia said. "I only made it out because of that ghost."
Ferral glanced at her, taking in her rumpled, dirty clothes, the way her hair hung in her eyes. "I was out here to visit f-friends. Got the call that every spare Guardian was to meet up and attack the Dreadnaught. But my ship broke down and I couldn't make the rendezvous. That was out near the Tangled Shore. I thought I had it fixed, made it this far, cursed thing broke down again. I'm praying it'll hold up long enough to use the jump drive."
Lethia nodded. Inwardly, she thought, Guardians have friends? She'd been told all her life that Guardians were mindless killing machines.
"Are you Reefborn?" she asked.
Ferral smiled, a little sadly, she thought. "Maybe. My ghost resurrected me on Earth, but my birthmark matches the mark of the Dasa clan out here in the Reef. Guardians aren't allowed to try to find out their own past history, but, uh ... would you mind not mentioning it to anyone?" He blushed a little, causing the Light under his skin to swirl a little faster.
She nodded and smiled. Ferral was cute when he was embarrassed, even if he was an undead monster.
"How about you?" he said. "Where'd your ghost find you?"
"I ... " Lethia hesitated. Her loathing of Guardians would probably offend this man, and she needed him and his ship to escape the Darkness invading the Reef. She tried to speak lightly. "I never died. The ghost found me just before a black portal could Take me."
Ferral whistled through his teeth. "Close one! Ghosts can't usually detect a spark unless the person is dead. Too much interference. I wonder how your ghost pulled it off?"
She shrugged. To her surprise, her ghost spoke over the radio. "Her spark is very strong. I detected it a mile away, but with all the portals opening, it took a while to catch her. I was terrified she'd be Taken before I could reach her."
The ghost had been scared for her?
"You never mentioned that," she said.
"Well," the ghost said, "you haven't been in much condition for conversation."
That was putting it charitably. Lethia thought of the way she had treated the ghost and felt vaguely ashamed. What was its name? Niki? It couldn't help being light spawn. And it had been extremely kind to her, even though it had enslaved her to the Traveler. She could at least be courteous.