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Category: Sub Category: Short Stories |
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HIPPIES (part two)
He boarded the ship, which was little more than a planet shuttle with a souped up quazimotive drive. But it could navigate wormholes like nothing else. He keyed in the destination and coordinate data including a short cut he remembered from the old days. After take off Sardo went to the little galley for a hot cup of coffee with something special added. There would be nothing for him to do for the next two days but eat and sleep, shit and drink "coffee".
He drank the coffee slow and crawled in the sack.
Back on the rim of the crater, Bortant was trying to read numbers on the infrared detector in his hand, but the rocks in the canyon were still too hot to get an accurate reading. The sun had set and now there was only starlight to see by. He would need to wait a while longer before he could detect any possible life forms with the hand-held device. He was skeptical of there being any living thing in this place but him.
"Come on". Bort said. Banging on the detector with his gloved fist. He had the ship programmed to take off in another hour. But not back to the base. He had saved a day each way with the short cut and planned to spend the extra two days hanging out with those little Kraten whores on Varnee. They were the best in the galaxy, so he was in a hurry.
Ja Sandecker knew something was wrong even before he climbed the steps to the control in the hugh space hollowed out under the center of the crater. He was a Cherokee Indian like all the others that lived in the crater, and in the twenty-five years of his life, he had learned many of the secret and mystical things his ancestors had known. That extra sense told him something was wrong. The remote cameras showed that a ship had landed about five hundred yards from the canyon on the desert floor.
Ja pushed a button on the board to send out a silent alarm to all sections of the complex, which encased most of the cavern below the bowl of the crater. Within a minute his father and uncle appeared in the rooms dim light.
Ja's uncle was an engineer who designed, with the help of his father and about twenty others, this underground complex. An underground river ran through the cavern. Openings had been cut in the roof to allow in sunlight. These openings could be regulated to suit the needs of the gardens covering the cavern floor.
Ja's people had discovered the unmanned probes sent to monitor the planet many months ago. There were several hundred of them at that time. With his father and uncle they hid twenty others in the mountains and watch as the soldiers loaded the tribe on ships. After the soldiers left they raided deserted military bases to get the equipment that now protected their complex. In the last six months they had started to pump water out to the shaded side of the canyon. There they planted grass. Now there were goats and sheep grazing on the fresh new grass. The livestock was herded underground anytime a probe alert was sounded. A few days ago a lamb had been born and wandered off during the night. This was what the probe had spotted. That was what brought Sardo Bortant two days from his desk.
Ja left the two men in the control room and went to a locker where he strapped on a pistol. He then grabbed a bow with a quiver of five arrows mounted on it from a hook on the wall. He hurried down the steps to the main tunnel. Turning left he followed the tunnel for five hundred yards or so. In a dark area he found the exit he was looking for, a smaller tunnel leading to the outside of the crater.
Standing in the dark, on the edge of the crater rim, Sardo noticed a slight movement to his right. He spun around and saw the form of a half-naked, longhaired man step out of the shadow into the moonlight. As the thought "Damn Hippie!" formed in his mind, he was struck in the center of the chest with an intensely sharp and paralyzing pain. Blackness flooded his mind as he looked down to see the feathered shaft of wood protruding from his sternum. Darkness overwhelmed him as he fell to the ground. He was in space again.
THE END
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