Free Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) by Josi Russell Page B

stretched as she stood on the platform,
holding her bag of robot parts. Her aches were getting worse.
    When Kaia rounded the edge of the building, she
was shocked to see a line of dejected people that stretched around the edge of
the Employment Office building. She walked past them and into the reception
area. It was filled with people. The three rows of chairs were full, and the
rest of the room was choked with people standing up. In the front was a counter
with a desk behind it. At the desk, she saw a young man with an unruly shock of
jet black hair. He glanced up at her, his feelings indiscernible behind a pair
of dark glasses.
    “You’ll need to fill out a job request and get in
line, ma’am,” he said.
    Just as Kaia was about to answer, three men in
dusty red jumpsuits came in the front door. One of them was carrying a stack of
coveralls. Another stepped past Kaia and laid a sheet of paper on the desk in
front of the kid. He looked it over and then stood up, tapping a microphone.
    “Good news, folks. We’ve got six mining spots
available. Disability restricted, health restricted, age restricted.” Several
people scrambled forward and formed an impatient line at the desk. Kaia stood
aside and watched as the kid reviewed each paper.
    “I said age restricted,” he said to a man whose
hand shook slightly as he reached to take the paper back from the kid, who
spoke over his microphone again.
    “Age restricted, people, means that nobody over fifty-five
is fit for these jobs.” Kaia watched the shaky man walk back to where he’d been
standing against the wall.
    Kaia glanced up to see her reflection in the long
glass window. There was a woman unfit for a mining job. She looked around the
room. Several people her age and younger sat in dejected silence. She wondered
how often they came here, how many days they sat and listened to the list of
restrictions edging them out of their chance to earn a little scrip.
    The press of people barely moved to let the three
miners and the six new miners out the propped-open door. As they passed, Kaia
caught sight of someone waving at her from just inside the door. It was Chip,
one of her passengers, and she had walked right past him. She crossed the room
to hug him.
    “Chip! How are you?” She regretted the formulaic
question the moment it left her lips. She could see how he was: gaunt, weary,
hemmed in by the press of the line.
    He looked away briefly. “This could be the day,”
he said with forced cheer. “I was here early, and I’ve made it in the door.”
    Kaia shook her head. “What’s going on? Why are
all these people here? Don’t they all,” she corrected herself, “ mostly all have jobs?”
    Chip looked around him, catching the eyes of the
others in line sympathetically. “They do, but from what they tell me, a lot of
their jobs are at a standstill because of these little plants that the city is
infested with.”
    “They’re that bad?”
    “Some places. The water plant and the mill have
whole stations full of them. Usually I come here and pick up a day’s work at a
time, but the last few days, with so many of the stations down, it’s tough to
get anything.”
      “I’m here to see what I can do
about that,” she said, patting his arm reassuringly.
    But when Kaia left the office an hour later, she
had changed nothing. Saras’s employment specialist was insistent that only “skilled”
workers would be utilized. When she listed the skills of her passengers, the
man had the audacity to laugh.
    “Lady,” the specialist had said, “your friends
are on the wrong planet.”

Chapter 5  
    Ethan walked onto the short liftstrip outside the
Saras Company’s Coriol Headquarters the next morning. He saw the little airship
that would fly them over the forest and deep into the Karst Mountains to do the
survey the UEG had requested. Saras’s survey crew was standing on the strip,
waiting for the airship door to open. They were dressed in red jackets marked