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

on communal speaker, Lieutenant.”
“You’re on, Sir,” came the response a second later.
The Captain leaned towards his console and the microphone built within it, “All vessels, on my mark, shift to the next planetfall co-ordinates.” The people in the room seemed to hold their breath as they either looked at their controls and monitors or over at the Captain – those on the flight decks of ships around them would be doing likewise. Looking over at his staff who, each in turn, gave him a slight nod of assertion that they were ready for his command he said clearly, “Collector vessels and escorts….mark!”
In the blink of an eye sixty ships winked out of the orbits of several dozen worlds leaving this system on the long journey to the next. It would take them two more standard cycles to get to their next pick-up planets, and there they would be loading on a different cargo from these manufacturing worlds - there the manifest would include live blues and greens to feed the frontline troops fresh meat. Their next stop was the Teldar system.


Seven

“After we got our breath back, and felt sure they were really gone, we went over to where the big blue’d been,” Jacob spoke to a hushed gathering of the farmers in the co-operative. “We found the pitchfork I’d thrown. It must’ve fallen from the animal as it leaped away. The tines were covered in a clearish, sticky liquid. It must be its blood.”
When Blake and Jacob had returned home the first light of dawn was already showing over the horizon. Tired as they were, they chose not to sleep, but to gather everyone together and discuss what they had experienced. They had sent their children out to inform the others to come as quickly as possible to meet at Jacobs feed barn. By the time the sun was clearing the mountains and daylight was washing away residual fears, Jacob and Blake were telling their story, the pitchfork still sticky with gore to assuage any doubts; though none of those assembled seemed to have any.
The crowd was silent, not quite sure what to say or ask next. A creature that didn’t apparently have a mouth and that they’d not known existed on their world was now killing their animals and risking their children’s lives because the Token might not be met. Something obviously had to be done, but no one seemed to have any ideas. Finally, Jacob spoke.
“We could go to the mountains and kill them.” It was spoken quietly and without too much assurance of getting any support. He was sitting on a bale of feed with his elbows planted on his knees, chin resting on his clenched fists. He felt exhausted both physically and emotionally and just wanted to put this nightmare to rest.
The people before him seemed to go into a kind of shock at his words. He knew all too well why.
“Jacob, please!” a burly farmer said in amazement. “You know very well that goes against our very beliefs. We’re non-techs! That doesn’t just mean we can’t use advanced technology; it also means we don’t fight. That’s why we’ve the agreement with the Suppliers. We stay here as non-techs in safety as long as we continue to provide them their Token.” The crowd nodded and mumbled their assent. They all seemed to feel the same way.
“In fact what you did last night was already a breach,” another man said.
“What would you have me do? Nothing?” Jacob went on in his own defense. ”Do you want me to just stand by and watch the Collectors take our children away to war in two cycles time?” He stood, energized by his own anger, and began pacing in front of his peers looking into each man’s eyes.
“Most of you have sons and daughters, what do you wish for them? To die old with their loved ones or young on some alien battlefield alone and bleeding? Again, why don’t we go and kill them? They’re obviously strong, but it’s clear they can be injured. That means we can kill them, too. There has to be a way.” He sat down on a bale of feed and waited for someone to respond. He drew in a deep breath of the musty, rich smell inside the barn trying to calm himself; he realized that arguing wouldn’t help his cause.
Blake stood in front of the group and spoke, “Jacob, I was with you last night and saw those...things. I want them gone too and would even be willing to bend our beliefs a little to make it happen, but I just don’t think we’d be capable. You saw how the one you hit was still able to leap higher than this barn. Knocked the pitchfork from its leg in the process.” His head sank and his voice began to trail off in apparent defeat. “We have no stronger weapons. We have no training. We must wait for the Collectors to arrive and they’ll know what to do.”
Jacob looked in turn at each man sitting around him before speaking angrily; he couldn’t help himself. “You all know what that means! We have no way to elicit outside contact; we have no radios or other signaling devices to alert them to our troubles. When the Collectors get here of course they’ll get help from the Suppliers for us, but we’ll still be held to our Token regardless! We’ll lose our children and we can’t let that happen!”
Everyone fell into another shocked silence, this time not from outrage, but frightened agreement. Jacob could read them and knew their thoughts. They knew he was right, but they were stumped on what to do next. Going after the creatures sounded like the only thing to do, but they each knew that, even as a group, they weren’t up to it. They’d probably die in the attempt, if Jacob’s experiences last night were anything to go on. Now it wasn’t their non-tech beliefs they were worried about, but their very lives and those of their children. He knew that they felt overwhelmed.
“I have an idea,” a man sitting next to Jacob said in a timid voice. All eyes turned to him.
Leaning forward eagerly, Jacob spoke quickly. “What do you have in mind, Dale?” Suddenly he felt an invisible weight removed from his shoulders at this ray of hope.
Dale was much shorter than Jacob but was equally well built from years of hard work in the fields on various farming planets in his past. He and his wife were relative newcomers to this world, but all had been pleased with the choice to allow them both in, as Dale was a hard worker. His wife had not gone out of her way to mix and few new anything about her. The man looked nervous under everyone’s scrutiny and clearly hesitated before going on.
“As you know, Carlee is not originally one of us,” he spoke in a faltering voice that was hard to hear and he continued quietly. “But she accepted our non-tech ways when we married. After being shipped to this planet we got on well, and she seemed to fit in comfortably with our lifestyle here. However, it turns out she’d had some serious doubts about leaving everything behind when she accepted my proposal and knew she was to move here.”
Jacob knew that Dale had met his future wife, Carlee, on a manufacturing planet while he was transferring to the Teldar system. They had quickly fallen in love as so often happens during war years, and she had accepted his proposal of marriage. Initially she seemed to have no problem with his transfer to the farming planet. Her family had warned her of the enormous differences between the world she had been raised in and that of a non-tech one, but it was her opinion that, so long as she was with the man she loved, anywhere would be perfect. It also hadn’t hurt that she was somewhat rebellious and her family’s stance only solidified her own.
Once her non-tech status had been approved (through their marriage) they had moved to their new home. All had been fine for a couple of cycles but soon her ‘love is blind’ attitude changed. She’d complained to Dale about many different things: she was sick of the smell of animals everywhere, she didn’t have a vid-phone with which to speak to her mother, there was no such thing as a ground car to go for a drive on a nice day, and even if she had somewhere nice to go, there was nowhere to buy pretty clothes. Everything here was simple, practical, boring!
On the manufacturing planet she was from, her family had done well because of the war. They had received a contract from the Suppliers many years earlier to provide a new kind of armor plating for ground assault vehicles. From there they had expanded and were now one of the main suppliers for a wide range of protective equipment.
They were well paid, and had all the amenities money could buy. Most importantly they had contacts with a group of pirates who could provide, for a price, the things you weren’t supposed to have. As in all times of shortage there is always a burgeoning black market for those with the lack of scruples and excess of cash to take advantage of it. The next time the Collector ship had left with its cargo of blues and greens, one of the crewmen who was actually a pirate plant, was carrying a note from Carlee to her father.
Dale had not noticed anything unusual for some time, but he eventually found out what she had done. One day he came in from the fields earlier than normal and couldn’t find her. After spending some time looking he finally heard laughter from one of the barns and followed the sound. Carlee was sitting in the rafters high above the floor where Dale stored winter bedding for his animals. She was laughing out loud, watching a vid-screen. It was broadcasting some funny show from the ‘real world’, as she put it when confronted by him.
Her father had sent back a small radio transmitter/receiver with a crewman he could bribe on the next Collector ship. Through it she managed to get in contact with the pirates and set up the time and place they would deliver her vid-screen. Her father had paid handsomely for the radio to be smuggled to her on board a small pirate ship he had sometimes hired for various ‘under the table’ deals. The small ship had no difficulties getting on and off the farming planet unseen. A non-tech world such as this had no such thing as radar or satellite coverage to cause problems, due to their non-tech status. The vid-screen itself was only the size of a water bucket when opened up, so she’d had no problem in keeping it hidden.
Dale’s anger at his wife had only been tempered by his fear that others in the co-operative would discover her frailty, and possibly have her removed from the planet. It now seemed that she might be open to it, but he wasn’t willing to give up on her and their relationship so quickly. He’d kept it a secret and allowed her to keep the vid-screen under the agreement that she didn’t let anyone know about it and had no more secret shipments. He’d confiscated the radio and made sure that she wasn’t anywhere near the crewmen whenever the Collectors were on planet for their Token. He didn’t want anymore notes getting to her father.
“I know I did wrong by keeping it a secret from you all, but at the time I thought it best just to keep it quiet. It seemed