The Token by Kevin Bird (the little red hen ebook .TXT) 📖

the animals.” He hugged his mumbling daughter who grabbed a morsel of meat from his plate and ran from the house. He smiled at her youthful exuberance and quickly finished his food. He kissed Bella and went into the brightening, and deceivingly peaceful morning.
As he walked he keyed the radio as he’d been instructed. Before long he had a crick in his neck from continuously looking upwards trying to catch a glimpse of what he hoped would be the help they so desperately needed. By the time he’d reached the center of his meadow he’d keyed the radio four times and just as he was about to key it for the fifth he was startled by a sharp crackling noise and then a voice. “Jacob, we have a visual on someone standing in a large field. Go ahead and wave your arms.” Jacob did so. “OK, that’s you. We’ll be there in about four minutes so move to the edge of the grassy area.”
Jacob still couldn’t see anything above him, but as he turned this way and that he saw movement ahead of him and realized it was Blake and Santor. They were sweating as they ran up to their friend.
“What’s going on? Bettine said something about our help being here. Where are they?” Blake was trying to catch his breath as he scanned the meadow.
Before Jacob could reply, Santor pointed over Jacob’s shoulder. “There they are!”
They all stared up at the sky as a large black ship broke through the clouds and shot towards them. Instinctively, they all threw themselves to the ground as a roar of wind passed over their heads and the tall grass around them whipped from side to side.
They raised their heads and watched as the ship landed with surprising ease onto the ground. It had four legs with wide bases that sank into the soft earth as the ship settled from flight. There was a last blast of some kind of gas escaping under pressure from the belly of the ship then all went quiet. So sudden was the silence that it came as much of a shock to the cowering men as had the ship’s sudden and deafening approach. The non-tech within each of them was overwhelmed by their proximity to such a vast amount of technology. Whenever the Collectors arrived, many of the farmers would leave their Token of animals out in a fenced area far enough away from their own homes so they would not have to deal with the very thing towering above the three men right now.
As they finally struggled to unsteady feet, Jacob ahead of his friends, brushing blown dirt from their tunics, they heard quiet laughter. Ahead of them a group of three men were walking down a ramp that had silently slid down from the belly of the craft. Jacob eyed them warily as they closed the distance between them. They were all large men who looked very confident in themselves and each was wearing, or carrying, some kind of weapon. The farmers were overwhelmed for a moment and then Jacob found his voice and greeted the newcomers.
“Welcome. We’d like to thank you for offering to help us.”
“You must be Jacob,” said one of the men. “Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. We didn’t offer to help. The father of one of the women on this smelly planet is paying us very well.”
He and his men wrinkled their noses and Jacob realized that the pervasive odor that came from the thousands of blues and greens was all but imperceptible to him and the other farmers but would be very noticeable to these newcomers.
“We’re here to do a job, get paid and then leave.” The two men at his side grunted and nodded their agreement.
He may have been trying to be direct and professional, but to the ears of the three men in front of him he was just rude and full of himself.
Keeping the image of Bettine in his mind enabled Jacob to keep his temper from boiling over. He’d had dealings with people like this before. These people were here to help them and it didn’t matter if they were likable or not. “We’ll be happy to do anything within our power to help you.”
“Very well. I’m Captain Drake. This is my second-in-command, Taren and this is my chief of security, Cale. Tell us a little about what’s been going on around here.” Before Jacob could respond Drake had turned to the men with him, “Get back inside and start everyone unpacking. I want to be organized within an hour. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary. What a smell!” He looked over his nose at Jacob as if giving him silent permission to begin his story.
As the two men walked away, Jacob noticed the one named Cale had a pronounced limp. Some old battle wound perhaps. Who could tell with these people, they looked like the pirates he’d heard of in the past. He took a closer look at the man who captained this ship and stood arrogantly before him, hands on his hips. As Drake had turned to order his men away, Jacob had noticed red, angry skin all down the left side of his face. He guessed it was a burn of some kind. Strange how even with a scarred face and an unpleasant attitude, Drake was still able to exude a confidence and attraction that Jacob knew would work well in commerce and with women. He was a tall, well-built man with short almost cropped hair the same color as his eyes, nearly golden. A man with looks and charisma, one not to be ignored or forgotten.
Jacob swallowed the bitter taste this man caused, and went over the recent events in as much detail as he could. To his credit the captain actually did pay attention and even asked some questions that showed he was going to do his best to get the job done properly and for that Jacob was relieved.
Once Jacob had clearly finished Drake took control again and began issuing orders. “Since these creatures come out at night we’ll begin our efforts today after dark. We’ll spend the rest of today preparing our equipment so we’ll need some food. There are twenty of us in total.”
Jacob turned to Santor spoke a few quiet words and Santor walked briskly off the meadow towards the buildings below them.
“How many farms are there in total?” Drake was all business apparently.
“We have twelve separate farms and each has about five fenced off areas.” Blake spoke for the first time. “My name is, Blake. I’m in n charge of this collective for the rest of this cycle.”
“Well, Blake, I don’t much care which of you is in charge just so long as you all help me finish what I came here to do. That would seem to be saving your rear ends!”
He had raised his voice as if trying to cow Jacob and his friends, but it didn’t have the same effect it might have done had they been his crewmen. Jacob could see in the man’s face that he was thinking something like, ‘Damn uppity backwoods farmers!’ It made him feel good that they’d not fitted into this pirate’s, for that’s now what he felt sure they were, expectations.
He went on, “From what you’re telling me these beasts only come at night. Where do they go during the day?” He looked at both men for an answer.
Jacob was the first to respond, “We don’t really know. The only thing that we can tell you is that when they leave after a kill they head straight up the mountain that all our farms surround. I know there are caves up there so I assume they hide in them by day.”
“Why haven’t you gone up to find them?”
“Because we are__”
“Non-techs and you don’t believe in weapons, fighting, or technology! I remember now that Marshall had told me that. He didn’t seem too pleased that his daughter was married to one of you. Oh well, I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find them and finish them off once and for all.”
He was silent for a moment while he was obviously doing some careful thinking. Jacob and Blake stayed dutifully silent, too. “Tonight we’ll have some of my men stationed at each of the farms you feel are most likely to be the next targets, and we’ll take care of your little problem. Then we’ll be on our way which will suit all of us I’m sure. Have a man from each farm here at mid-day and we’ll begin.” He turned away without waiting for a reply and started to walk back towards his ship.
Jacob heard a distant shout, words indistinct. Turning, he saw two men running across the meadow heading straight for him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Drake had come back to stand to one side, clearly as interested as Jacob was in what was going on. Jacob recognized the figures to be those of Santor and another farmer, Kai. As they closed on Jacob, Drake moved in to listen.
Santor was almost out of breath but managed to say, “Jacob, when I got through telling Bella about the food I started to go back home when Kai showed up looking for you. Tell him Kai.” He turned to the shorter man who looked even more exhausted than Santor. Through sentences broken by gasps for air he told his story.
“Those things came again. Near dawn. My farm and five others. Three of them hadn’t expected to be attacked and were unguarded. They never found out till they went to feed their stock.” He put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and then went on. “The rest of us had guards out though it made no difference. The only benefit was that we all saw what happened.”
Kai had his breath back and carried on with his story almost tripping over his words trying to get them out so fast. Jacob asked him to slow down a couple of times, but Kai promptly sped up as his excitement at re-living the recent adventure once again roused him.
“We were almost ready to go back to our homes. We never expected them to come so close to daylight. We were all tired and cold and all we could think of was getting home for some hot breakfast. Without any warning my blues started going berserk.” His eyes danced wildly as he remembered the sight and they seemed to mirror the actions of his animals. “For a few seconds we couldn’t figure out what was going on as it was still dark enough, and the animals were running around so much that it was hard to focus.” He stopped to take another breath.
Jacob noticed the farmer’s eyes suddenly stop and focus on something, he’d seen Drake. Then his eyes went large with amazement, as he seemed to notice Drake’s ship. “What’s that doing here? Are the Collectors early?” He’d forgotten his story for the moment in fear for his son, Jacob knew how the man felt. There was more than one farmer whose Token wasn’t ready yet.
“Kai, this is Captain Drake and he’s been sent here by Carlee’s father to help us.” He was impatient to hear the rest of the story. “Please, Kai, let me tell you this later. For now get on with telling us what happened.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Well, within a few seconds of all hell breaking loose around us we realized that several of those black devils were in the