The two ghosts stood guard, phased and invisible. They spoke privately to each other on the unique frequency shared by all ghosts.

"Did you really die?" Niki asked. "Or were you only unconscious?"

"I don't know," Banner replied. "It was so cold and dark. I was trying to return to the Traveler, but it was so far away. I was afraid to cross that void all alone. I just wandered, lost. Then Ferral began calling me, and that's when I felt Lethia's warmth and Light. I was so relieved to find my way back."

"I'm glad you're alive," Niki said quietly. "I only wish ..."

"Wish what?"

"That she'd share some of that warmth with me."

Banner looked at Niki. In phase, each of them appeared as a flicker of Light. Niki's was dim and sad.

"Doesn't she love you?" Banner asked.

"No," Niki said. "I've wanted a Guardian for so many years. Finding her alive was such a joy. But ... she thinks she's been Taken. By Light. She resents me for making her a Guardian."

"I'm sorry," Banner said in a low voice. "Maybe she'll warm up to you? She's still so new."

"I hope so," Niki said mournfully. "I've heard of ghosts who chose their Guardians poorly. I never knew how that could be. I mean, her spark is so beautiful. But ... she doesn't like me, Banner. It breaks my heart."

"Surely she'll improve," Banner replied. "You've been educating her about the Light, right?"

"Of course," Niki said. "I've been trying to teach her that Guardians aren't just risen corpses - resurrection isn't necromancy. But the Awoken have made something joyous into something bleak and awful. She listens, but she doesn't understand. She's watching Ferral and you very closely. You're the first Guardian and ghost she's ever seen."

"Ferral is an excellent Hunter," Banner said, his Light brightening. "I'm proud to be his ghost. We'll be an exemplary example to Lethia."

They watched over their sleeping Guardians for a while, monitoring their life signs for any hint of hypothermia. The temperature was falling rapidly as Mars's thin atmosphere lost its daytime heating. The wind picked up and whistled through the holes in the wrecked ship. Sometimes it sounded like screaming.

Niki scanned the area. The wind's noise made him think of Taken, and finding his Guardian seconds before the Darkness consumed her. So many screams. There were no enemies within range of his scan. He tried contacting the Vanguard again, but there was no reply from them, either.

"Banner," Niki said, "why do you think we can't raise that Vanguard station?"

"It could be that our signals are too weak," Banner said. "But I've transmitted signals much farther than eight miles, so I doubt that's it. More likely, they all went to fight the Dreadnaught."

"I hadn't thought of that," Niki said in relief. "That's probably it. But ... would they leave the base completely empty?"

"No," Banner said slowly. "There should at least be a skeleton crew to work the defenses."

The ghosts thought about this in nervous silence.

"If enemies have overrun the base," Niki said, "what do we do then? Our Guardians are stranded."

Banner consulted a map of Mars he carried in his memory. "Well. There's Cabal about twenty miles south of us. We could hijack one of their ships."

Niki said nothing, but his light flared with anxiety.

"I keep forgetting," Banner said kindly, "you only just found your Guardian. Things are different now. You're different now. You and Lethia may not be one hundred percent harmonized, but you're both stronger than you ever thought possible. Don't be afraid."

But Niki was afraid. Afraid of the vicious Cabal who took no prisoners.

Afraid that Lethia would despise him forever.

Afraid that even though he had found his Guardian, he was still utterly alone.

Ferral awoke from a nightmare about the ship crashing again. One moment, he was clinging to his seat as the cockpit caved in. The next, he was staring at a slice of gray sky outside their little shelter. Despite the blankets and the bundle of warmth that was Lethia at his back, his whole body felt shriveled with cold.

"Banner," he thought, "can you heal cold?"

He felt his ghost's healing beam sweep him. It felt warm for a few seconds, then the cold returned.

"Being cold isn't technically an injury," Banner replied. "Maybe get up and move around?"

Ferral got up, wrapped his cloak around himself, then added a blanket on top of that. The Martian dawn was so cold that it made his bones ache. If only he could have had a hot cup of tea. He stumbled out of the shelter, instead, stamping his feet. He had slept in his boots, but his feet were still numb.

"Any developments overnight?" he asked his ghost.

Banner appeared over his palm, just a little naked core. He shivered in the biting wind. "Nothing at all. Niki and I tried to contact the Vanguard base. No response."

"Not good," Ferral muttered through chattering teeth. "I sent them a mayday signal as we went down. If there was anybody there, the rescue craft would have been here by now."

He dismissed Banner, who phased in relief. "What's the condition of my sparrow?"

"I haven't checked." Banner worked a transmat beam to teleport the vehicle out of its storage space on the ship. It arrived in pieces.

Ferral gazed at his broken bike in chagrin. "Can't we ever catch a break?"

"Doesn't look like it."

Ferral knelt and examined the damage, fingering the spots where the frame had snapped. "I think I could fix it. Just a patch job that would get us to the base. The electronics are only damaged here and here, and I know how to fix that."

"I'll help," Banner said, cheering up.

As the sun rose and the temperature climbed, Ferral mended his sparrow. It gave him an excuse to not worry about the silent Vanguard base, and who might have received his mayday signal instead. It also kept him from wondering what to do about Lethia, who seemed to hate him, yet had revived his ghost. She was nothing but contradictions, and he couldn't make her out.

He mentally took stock of their situation as he worked. Banner was alive, but lacked a shell for protection. Lethia was a brand new Guardian with zero training. They had a little food and water, and they had landed near a Vanguard base that hadn't responded to their transmissions.

"Banner, what's the next closest Vanguard base?"

"Meridian Bay," the ghost replied. "About eight hundred miles northwest of here."

Ferral grunted in disgust. "We can't get there without a ship."

"There's a small Cabal base about twenty miles to the south," Banner said. "We could hijack a ship there."

"It'd be better than walking," Ferral said. "Can you fly a Cabal ship? I don't know their tech."

"Yes," Banner assured him. "I downloaded the Vanguard records on their ships when it first came in several years ago. It never hurts to be prepared."

Ferral grinned. "You're the best, Ban."

A warm surge of contentment touched his spark from Banner's. For some reason, it reminded Ferral of the blank emptiness he'd experienced when Banner had died. Tears sprang to his eyes, blurring his view of his sparrow. He wiped them away, pretending the wind was bothering him.

He'd reassembled half the sparrow when Lethia approached, also wrapped in an extra blanket. She stood watching him in silence, inscrutable. Her hair was swept to one side by the wind, framing her face in a way that Ferral found annoyingly attractive. He disliked her so much, her looks seemed an extra affront. The longer she stood there without speaking, the more he was certain she was judging him. Finally, he looked up. "What?"

"I didn't know you had a sparrow," she said.

"Yes, well, the landing trashed it."

"And you're fixing it."

He glared at her over his shoulder. "Got a problem with that?"

She shook her head and continued to stand there, watching.

Ferral tightened a bolt. "This might go faster if you helped."

"Tell me what to do." She knelt beside him.

"Hold this bar in place."

Lethia followed his instructions without comment. Ferral's repairs went much faster with the extra pair of hands, and this annoyed him, too. He wanted her to pick a fight so he could vent his frustration on her. Her silent compliance with his instructions meant he had to treat her with civility, which wasn't what he wanted. He didn't know what he wanted.

"So," he said to break the silence, "that Vanguard base hasn't responded. We're going to investigate it anyway. If it's abandoned, we're heading south to a Cabal base to steal a ship."

Lethia nodded.

"No objections?" Ferral said, glaring. "No arguments about Guardians and Light knows what else?"

Lethia fixed her blue-green eyes on him. "We're stranded on Mars with almost no supplies. I don't even know how to use a gun. If you've got a plan to save our lives, I'm fine with it."

This response caught Ferral off-balance. Not only was she willing to work with him, but she didn't know how to use firearms? Guns were so deeply ingrained in all Guardian training that Ferral took them for granted.

"Burning Light," he muttered. "I'd better teach you basic gun safety before we leave. I have a rifle, a sidearm, and the grenade launcher. You already used that."

"It wasn't hard," Lethia said. "Except for the kickback."

"Right," Ferral said. "I don't have a lot of extra ammo, so we'll have to dry fire for practice."

Lethia nodded and held the sparrow's handlebars in place. As Ferral fiddled with a pair of snapped wires, she said, "You're remarkably good with machines."

"I had years of training," Ferral said, then caught himself. "Before I died. My hands just ... know what to do."

"That's right," she said. "You're a Dasa, you said?"

"That's right." Ferral made a face, as if he'd tasted a green pomefig.

Lethia studied his face. "You're one of the sons, aren't you? The one who died years ago."

Ferral nodded. "How do you know?"

"The Dasa clan are always in the gossip magazines. They run everything in Reefedge City, and there were a couple of high-profile marriages to Dreaming City money. Were you married?"

"No, thank the Traveler," Ferral said. "I was covert intelligence under Uldren."

Lethia nodded slowly. "That makes sense. Nobody talked about you much. What did they do when you came back as a Guardian?"

Ferral's smile was more of a grimace. "They refused to have anything to do with me. Said I'm dead to them. Some servants explained that since I'm the eldest, my presence threatens my brothers's holdings. It's better for everyone if I just ... go away."

He looked up to find Lethia studying him closely. "What? Never seen an undead celebrity before?"

"You look like a Dasa," she said. "The structure of your face. But you're ... not like them." She looked away and bit her lip.

Ferral savagely bolted two bars together. "Disinherited? Disowned?"

"You have feelings," Lethia said. "The Dasa clan are known for being emotionless blocks of ice. When Lady Dasa died, the funeral was immediately followed by a business meeting where her husband dispersed her shares. Nobody mourned - at least, not where anybody saw."

Ferral rocked back on his heels and stared at Lethia a long moment. Then he sat in the sand and gazed at the horizon.

Lethia realized her mistake far too late. She covered her mouth. "I'm so sorry! She was your mother."

Ferral said nothing for a long moment. He opened both hands and looked at them. "I don't remember her. But I should. And nobody mourned her." He pressed a fist to his forehead. "I never should have gone back. I was better off not knowing anything."

Lethia stood there, awkwardly supporting the bike, the wind whipping the blanket around her like a robe. "I'm sorry." A moment later, she added, "But you see what I mean. You're far nicer than any of your family. Maybe it's being a Guardian. I saw how you care for your ghost."

Ferral forced a grin. "You're saying that coming back to life as an immortal warrior had turned me soft?"

Lethia actually laughed. "Is that what it is? I thought maybe the Light did it."

She made a good point, he thought. Maybe the Light did have an influence on the personality of the people it chose. Banner had been a constant, positive influence since Ferral's resurrection decades ago.

"Maybe so," Ferral said. "Has it had any effect on you?"

Lethia's smile faded. Her attention seemed to turn inward. "Maybe. I don't know."

"You're not as ... uptight ... as you were yesterday."

Lethia smiled a little. "I hadn't been in a ship crash, then. And I'd never met a Guardian before. All I knew were the stories."

Ferral climbed back to his knees and resumed working on the wiring. "Well, were they true?"

He glanced up to find her studying him. "I don't know yet," she said. "You're much more ... alive than I expected. Your ghost, too. I didn't think it was possible to become attached to a robot."

"It's important to care for your ghost," Ferral said. "He's all that stands between you and a second death. Plus ... ghosts are adorable."

Lethia looked away.

Ferral moved on to fixing another set of wires. Her silence regarding her ghost bothered him. Didn't she understand how important he was? Maybe they weren't getting along. Sometimes it took a while for a pair to adjust to each other.

Maybe her attitude this whole time had been less about Ferral and more about her ghost. It made her hurtful remarks the day before feel less personal.

Ferral clamped the last two bars together and stood up, tossing his tools back in their box. "Let's see if she'll hold together." He mounted the sparrow and worked the starter. The engine coughed, then purred to life. The battery sat at full charge, and the solar panel on the back would top it off while stopped.

Ferral bounced up and down, testing the repairs he'd made to the frame. The sparrow creaked, but stayed in one piece.

"Get on, I need more weight."

Lethia hesitated, then climbed on the seat behind him. The sparrow sagged a little, but the repairs held. Ferral opened the throttle and drove in a wide semicircle around the wreck, swerving to avoid boulders. Lethia hung on to his belt and said nothing.

As he coasted back to the wreck, Lethia jumped off. "I kept waiting for it to fall apart."

"So far, so good," Ferral said. "I'm going to tighten up the splints. Start packing our supplies. We'll see if she holds up to a full load."

As it turned out, the sparrow did, although not without a lot of ominous creaking. The two Guardians set out a little before noon and followed the foot of the mountain range westward. Ferral refused to look back at his wrecked ship. He'd probably return with a salvage barge later, anyway.

They covered the eight miles to the Vanguard base in less than an hour. As they rounded the base of a hill, they first saw the communications tower on the roof of a low concrete building. It was intact, but the radar dish wasn't rotating. There were no ships on the airstrip.

The base was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The front gate stood open. No guards. Nothing moved inside.

"Not good," Ferral muttered. He turned the sparrow to sit with its nose aimed outward before dismounting.

"About that gun safety training," Lethia said. "We didn't do it." She stepped off the sparrow and picked up a rock.

"I'll go first, then." Ferral lifted his rifle from its strap across his back and cautiously stepped through the open gate. Lethia followed close behind.