Free Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) by Josi Russell

like that.
    Kaia started today’s project by sorting through a
pile of old sanitizer and disposer parts, stepping over to a pile of light
fixtures and a row of broken mining tools. She made a little pile on the blue
dirt of possible pieces. In addition to a steel ball, a shiny silver plate, and
a bell-shaped copper light shade, she had found several rusty rods and a smooth
cylinder of metal. It gleamed next to a rectangle coated with flaking rust and
a bright red chip of unbreakable glass. She stepped back to consider which
pieces might make the most interesting torso, which might be good for
decoration, and which would go best with the tarnished copper cube she had
chosen for the head.
    She was holding up the cube, positioning it over
each piece, when she heard the voice of Yi Zhe.
    “Did you find what you were looking for?”
    Kaia glanced up. He was one of her passengers, a
young man whose dark hair and eyes were especially kind. His wife, Jin Feiyan,
and their little son stood behind him. Kaia hadn’t seen them for several
months, not even at the gatherings of the passengers of Ship 12-22 that she and
Ethan tried to have once in a while.
    “Yi Zhe!” She leaned in for a friendly hug. “What
are you doing here?”
    “I work here now. I could find no other work,” Yi
Zhe said, shaking his head sadly. “My skills seem to be useless here.”
    Kaia looked around the junkyard. Quiet pervaded
the pathways and piles. Similar objects were grouped together, gears over here,
ball bearings there, large rusted metal pieces and small rusted metal plates
farther down the aisle, and shining chrome pieces reflecting the overall
harmony of the place. She’d never seen a junkyard like it. It was a pleasant place.
Of course. It had Yi Zhe’s fingerprints all over it.
    “The change is remarkable.” She couldn’t help
digging a little. “Did you learn anything about the history of the place when
they hired you? I’ve heard some interesting rumors that there are some old ship
parts around here.”
    Yi Zhe looked thoughtful. “A few,” he said, “but
I think many of them were stolen early on. At first, the junkyard was unmanned,
but from what I heard, too many people started carting off Saras’s junk and a
little junk trade started. The parts weren’t being manufactured here yet. When
Saras needed something, they had to pay to get their own junk back. So, they
hired a junkyard manager. He ran the place for years, but he died a few weeks
ago and I got the job.”
    Yi Zhe glanced down, moving the robot parts on
the ground into a staggered diagonal as he spoke.
    His wife, Jin Feiyan, broke in, thrusting a
wrapped packet—Yi Zhe’s lunch—into his hand. “I told him before we left Earth
that there was no use for him here. I told him there was a mistake that he was
chosen to come to the colony. What use is there on a mining planet for a master
of balance and harmony? None.” She scoffed. “If my parents had known he was
going to end up a junkyard man, he would never have been my husband.” She kicked
at the robot parts, scattering them, before gathering her little boy’s hand and
leaving the junkyard. Kaia got the feeling that she didn’t spend any more time
here than necessary.
    “She’s worried,” Yi Zhe apologized, leaning down
and gathering the parts. “I’ve been out of work a long time. Just little jobs,
here and there. We have the cottage to live in, of course, but buying food and
paying for electricity is hard some months.”
    Kaia nodded.
    “And everything I know is unimportant here. No
one pays attention to the flow of qi or the balance of their lives.”
    Kaia thought of the dusty miners, their crowded
apartments, the shouting on payday, and the desperate look in the eyes of the
women at the market. “Your skills may be more needed than you realize.”
    “Oh, I realize how important they are,” Yi Zhe
said, “and how much Coriol needs them. But no one else does. A lot of us from
Ship 12-22 are