Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped. If there was a snag in the production line or a
group of disgruntled workers, Marcos had to have someone he could trust take
care of it. His assistants and managers didn’t have a big enough picture of the
whole operation to make decisions, and his VPs had to be out in the districts
to get that big picture. Every decision had potentially disastrous consequences
and they couldn’t be made haphazardly.
    His VPs, though, were anything but haphazard.
Tall, thin Theo Talbot had been the first in charge of Saras Company on Minea.
As soon as Marcos’s father had set up the settlement, he’d returned and left Theo
to run the whole city. Theo had been here for a dozen years: four with Marcos’
father, five running the operation by himself as acting president, and three
after Marcos had come. Theo knew the operation in and out. He could tell Marcos
the names of every manager across the city—in the Food Production District, the
Market District, the Mine, or any of the other districts. He could quote
production numbers for the last ten years off the top of his head. He was
friendly and got along with people. He had an energetic manner and could talk
his way through problems. Marcos could see why his father had picked Theo to
man the operation for so many years.
    Veronika Eppes was the opposite. She was cold,
calculating, and efficient. She didn’t let emotion get in her way, and she
dealt with people like tiles in a dragonboard game. She knew where they were
best used and she placed them there. If they weren’t of use, she’d knock them
off the board. Marcos had, more than once, relied on her decisiveness. And more
than once she’d saved them from the mire of Theo’s tendency toward indecision.
    They didn’t get the long days in their lavish
offices that vice presidents got back on Earth, but Marcos tried to keep them
supplied with perks. For Veronika that was expensive imported wines, clothes,
and jewelry from Earth. She had a particular affinity for rubies. For Theo, a
custom hovercar, which he’d be driving as he finished up his rounds right now.
    The day was calm, and now Marcos could see the
darkness of the new shaft gaping through the settling blue dust. As he watched
it, he was distracted by the beeping of an incoming transmission alert from his
hovercar. He slid into the back seat and tapped a screen mounted at eye level.
The cost of this one luxury, a receiver in his hovercar for Coriol’s single Real-Time
Communicator back at Saras’s Coriol headquarters, would have built his mansion
on Yynium Hill twice over. But his parents insisted that he have it so they
could keep an eye on him—though their supervision had lessened considerably
after he’d earned the company the second bonus. He took that to mean that they
were gaining confidence in him.
    Marcos’s father, Dimitri Saras, was suddenly
looking at Marcos from the screen with the level, piercing gaze that was his
trademark. There was no greeting. RTC was expensive, and Dimitri didn’t use it
longer than necessary.
    “Are you receiving this in the hovercar? Where
are you?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you at the office?”
    Marcos chose which question to answer. “I’m
overseeing the start of a new shaft. We just blasted.”
    His father scoffed. “That’s not where the
president needs to be.”
    He said president with an emphasis Marcos
had grown used to. He knew that for his father, the word was more than a title.
It was an identity. Dimitri had made that clear in every interstellar
interaction they’d had since he left for Minea shortly after Marcos was born.
Marcos had grown up in the shadow of the word “president.” In fact, Dimitri had
sent him to Minea as soon as he walked back into Marcos’s life because he
wanted his son to be a company president, no matter the cost.
    Marcos felt his body tense. He wanted to defend himself,
tell his father that he’d been in the office every day for the last three
weeks, explain that Theo said