Demeter

by Dr. Alan D. Hansen

  “The Pervs invented the rafts. I’m trying to remember who it was that took the design back to Earth, Rockefeller? Edison? Maybe it was Carnegie. Anyway, one of those early crackpots that decided Earth was a better place to retire. Bah!”

  “Remember that young Gates fellow? He was always so polite?” Margaret reminisced.

  “He and his buddy, what was his name? Works or something like that. They were always tearing my computers apart, trying to figure out what made them tick. I remember they never came back after their second tour. Useless gadflies if you ask me. I suspect they came to no good end,” Hondo said.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “when the Slicks took Demeter back, it wasn’t pretty. It was like an ongoing Civil War inside Demeter for decades. The remnants of the Perv forces holed up here in the canyons for over a hundred years. Anyway, the Slicks stole the design from the Pervs, and the Terrans stole it from the Slicks. We do that a lot.” Hondo laughed. “The rafts were the primary means of transportation between locations within Demeter for centuries before we arrived, and for several years after Maggie and I got here, but then some Johnny-come-lately decided that they weren’t fast enough, so they devised the hopper technology. Frankly, I’m not sure why the dang hurry. The place is only so big.”

  “That’s one of the reasons we know the caverns so well,” Maggie interjected. “It used to be part of standard training sixty years ago to help understand the Perv culture. When we were young—”

  “Younger,” Hondo interjected.

  “When we were younger,” Margaret continued, “we went through dozens of the old Perv Rebel caverns. Their last bastion was below the falls, and there are hundreds of interconnected caverns through the area. There are some who think there are passageways all the way to the surface.”

  “Bah! That’s a myth,” Hondo spat. I fought and lost friends in the caverns when I was young. Those Pervs sure could fight.” He looked away. “But in any case, those catacombs will be the undoing of your Cryellian friends. If they’d bothered to ask, I could have told them all about the network of passageways, but they were trying to be a little too”—Hondo paused, then got a big smile on his face—“trying to be a little too Slick.” He chuckled.

  Athena simply said, “That’s a dumb joke.”

  Hondo scowled and didn’t say anything for most of the next hour until they reached Juu’Juu Falls.

  Ryder reflected on the options and decisions ahead. Hondo told them that Steerman and his friends most likely had the girls at one of the two caverns he had described earlier.

  “They make a fantastic hideout. In fact, they did for the last hundred years that the Pervs were here. Steerman and his thugs probably read some of the histories of Demeter to figure that one out. But they didn’t bother with details. At least that’s my guess. And they didn’t bother to ask someone who knew about them. I can get you in and out of those caverns from a dozen entry points, and there is no way they’ve had time to explore enough to realize what they really have there.”

  Before leaving Shimmer’s Head, Ryder led a planning meeting that lasted less than an hour. They came up with three strategies and abandoned all of them. Ryder considered the first plan the best. They would leave Randy, Joel, and Athena at the lodge. Ryder would accompany Hondo and Margaret to the caverns, and they would slip in from any of several entrances that Hondo and Maggie knew about and look for an opportunity to get the girls out, preferably with no bloodshed. Randy, Joel, and Athena had vetoed that idea outright. Interestingly enough, Athena was the most vehement about going. “You will not leave this poor, wimpy girl”—she emphasized the words “wimpy girl”—“behind, or have big strong Randy and Joel stay behind to protect her.”

  “It’s not that. We need someone who can call in the marines if this doesn’t work,” Ryder defended, even though she was partially correct. Ryder did not consider Athena a wimp. He suspected that if it came down to a brawl, she could take him. But she’d been emotional to the point of irrational too many times in the last few hours. The die was cast when neither Randy nor Joel were willing to stay behind. Regardless of his feelings about the matter, he had no intention of leaving Athena alone at the lodge.

  Athena had suggested that they leave Ryder behind. She reiterated the obvious value he provided to the kidnappers. He was likely a target himself. He was also the least fit of the entire group, including the senior citizens. This would have devolved into an arm wrestle with Athena, but Ryder managed to avoid further entanglements on this notion by saying, “We don’t have time for this.”

  They had considered calling in Mr. Small, but Ryder was still unsure of whether or not he could trust him. And if he couldn’t trust the head of the DDF security team, could he trust any of them? Plus, Ryder liked the idea of creeping into the cavern and pulling the girls out without anyone getting hurt.

  An interesting fight ensued between Hondo and Margaret. Until this time, Ryder had always noticed their fights had seemed in jest. But Hondo was with Ryder on this, indicating that he wouldn’t trust the DDF security team any further than he could throw them. Ryder suspected Hondo could throw them quite a distance, but decided not to share that thought. Margaret was insistent that the security team was the safest way to get the girls back. The fight ended in an apparent draw.

  They had finally decided that everyone would come. Athena did agree that she would stand watch once the rest of the group entered the cavern and call in DDF security if Ryder’s team didn’t return in a set amount of time, depending on where they finally landed.

  The next problem was how to overpower six armed kidnappers if they came to a confrontation. Ryder had never fired a weapon, not even a BB Gun. Randy and Joel both had been training in the robot units, but they had no robot units to work with, and the computerized systems of those units gave them no preparation for using a hand weapon. Joel suggested they take swords from Hondo’s collection. Hondo scoffed. “You might as well throw rocks. You don’t know how to use them.” Nevertheless, he pulled down a scabbard holding a short, curved, thick blade, pulled the blade out, and swished it back and forth a few times, showing a menacing smile as he did so.

  The final disposition of weapons was an odd mixture. Margaret and Hondo each carried pistols. Hondo’s pistol was a Colt .45. It looked natural and appropriate in his hand. “You should see those bullets fly in this lower gravity,” he almost gushed. Hondo also wore his scabbard that he carried his saber in. He looked more like a pirate than a cowboy with the combination.

  Margaret pulled out an elegant handgun and turned toward Hondo. It was compact, and as Margaret explained, “Semi-automatic and more bullets than in that piece of iron you haul around.” By then Hondo was strapping a gun belt filled with two dozen extra bullets.

  Margaret outfitted Ryder and Joel with something that looked like a tuning fork.

  “What are we supposed to do with this?” Ryder looked incredulous.

  “Oh, right, you probably don’t have these back on Earth yet. Slow decade for technology thieves,” Hondo responded.

  “You’ve not heard of these on Earth, but they’re called Tasers,” Margaret volunteered. “Just point at your target and press the handle here,” She pointed at a safety-covered button. “You slide the safety up like this, and then you can press the button, aiming the prongs at your target. It’s not fatal, but it sends an electrical charge that totally disables your opponent.”

  “Shoots about eighty thousand volts,” Hondo added.

  “What’s wrong?” Margaret looked at the grins on Ryder and Joel’s faces.

  “We’ve had Tasers on Earth for several years. The police use them all the time instead of guns.”

  Hondo scowled. “Yup, danged techno thieves. We got to stop letting those Terran pups come up here.”

  Ryder apologetically added, “They’re not nearly as cool as these are though.”

  Margaret warned, “Be sure of what you’re shooting at. You only get one shot with that. We’ll take you out back
to try it before we go. You can recharge them while we’re flying.”

  Hondo looked long and hard at Randy. “You know those computer simulations with those robot units make killing seem easy and even fun sometimes. I don’t have any robot units, but if you think you can actually kill someone with one of these”—he pulled down a long, sharp knife with a curved edge along with a case that could slide onto a belt—“I’ll let you take Uncle Bowie. Be warned, killing somebody with a knife is not easy, and it is not fun. You think you have the stomach for it?”

  Randy swallowed hard. “I really don’t know. But I’d still like to bring it just in case. If we’re desperate, maybe I can.”

  “So be it.” Hondo gave Randy a hard smile, but Margaret looked unsettled.

  ***

  Hondo was flying high, near the top of the canyon, and slowed considerably, quieting the near silent engine. “We’ll creep near the ridge from here. I’m not sure which cavern they chose, and we may be able to get some hints before we descend. If we choose wrong, it will be a long search before getting to the right section.

  Everyone was watching for some sign of life, or even disturbance below. Ryder was suffering from dizziness as he peered over the side of the raft and realized there was nothing else keeping him from falling several hundred feet to rocks below. They were passing over their first area of interest, when Athena, looking out from near the rear of the raft, asked them to go back. “I think I saw something.”

  Turning around and dropping a hundred feet, and now nearly dead still, Randy whispered from the front, “I see it.” Joel and Athena shifted too rapidly to get a look, and the raft started to wobble back and forth.

  “Would you stop that!” Ryder called out, hanging firmly onto a security rope laced around the interior of the raft.

  Hondo handed Randy his ancient-looking binoculars. “I see something. Looks like a backpack on top of that rock.”

  It took Randy several tries to get the binoculars to hone in on the bag.

  “That is definitely a backpack. Athena, can you ease up here and take a look?”

  Athena moved to the front and took the binoculars. “That is Becky’s backpack.”

  “Are you sure?” Margaret asked.

  “Absolutely!”

  Hondo looked pensive. “Seems like an awful waste to go to all the trouble to hide in the canyons then leave big flags everywhere saying, ‘Here I am, come and get me.’”

  Athena added, “I see more stuff. In fact, back that way, on top of that rock, I can see Cynthia’s hairbrush.”

  “Where?” Ryder asked, taking a sudden interest. Leaning forward, he almost lost his balance, and his interest. “Never mind, I believe you.”

  Hondo started to move the rudder back, and the raft began to rise. “Well we know where they are, but I still can’t figure out why they would have left such a clear sign. Might be a trap.”

  As they approached the area where Hondo wanted to land the raft, Margaret called out, “You might want to move it over to that next rock cropping.”

  “Margaret, I’m an old man. I don’t want to walk an extra half mile in this terrain,” Hondo complained.

  “But I’d like this thing to be here when we get back,” Maggie scoffed. “About fifty yards beyond the entrance is one of those new rafts I was telling you about, and a flyer. They’re concealed pretty well for a cursory search, but pretty easy to pick out from here if you have a trained eye.”

  Hondo relented and moved the raft to the far side of the rock cropping Margaret had preferred. “We better rethink this,” Hondo exclaimed.

  “Do you think they found the entrance?” Athena asked.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so, but we’ll know when we get there. What I’m concerned about is leaving you alone when we know they’re parked right over the ridge.”

  Randy stepped forward. “I think we have the right plan, at least if we can’t trust Mr. Small. I doubt I’m going to be much help in a firefight. I’ll stay here with Athena. If a knife can come in handy, I imagine it would be here.”

  “Not so sure about that,” Hondo said, “but it makes sense. Worst case scenario, you could distract them long enough to be sure that Athena got the message off.”

  Half an hour later, with a lot of huffing and puffing over the rocky terrain, they arrived at the entrance to the cavern. Hondo laughed. “Idiot younglings! I can see where they went down over the edge, repelling. Joel, come here and lend a hand.” Together they shifted a rock that half hid an entrance into a tunnel. “I prefer an easier path.”

  Margaret passed out some light sticks at the mouth of the small opening.

  Hondo asked everyone to wait as he walked back to the edge of the cliff. He sliced partway through each of the three dangling ropes. “They’re in for a surprise if they try to get back out this way.” He chuckled. He returned and led the party into the darkness of the tunnel.

  Ryder hadn’t experienced absolute black all the time he had been on Demeter, even during the rains in the early morning. But in the caves, even with the light sticks. he could feel the darkness trying to choke him. He was not alone. Joel seemed to react in a similar fashion. For the first several minutes, they jumped at the muffled echoes of their own footsteps. The floor was worn smooth, which reminded Ryder that the Pervs had fought from these caverns for over a hundred years. They must have walked up and down these paths thousands of times to actually polish the rock.

  As the group walked down the tunnel, Ryder realized that it was not natural, or at least not totally natural. In the shadowy light, he could tell the cavern had been cut in many places to maintain a ceiling of sorts of ten to twelve feet high. As they walked, and they sidled back and forth, he estimated that the tunnel was consistently six to eight feet wide. At first they were descending at a manageable, but steep, angle. Then the floor leveled out. At one point the path switched back. Periodically, Ryder caught the reflection of green, glassy rock embedded in the archways. When they came to the first fork in the tunnel, he saw a lot more of the glassy material. “What’s that?” Ryder asked, pointing at the translucent rock.

  “Depends on how you look at it,” Hondo spoke in a muffled voice. “If you look at it as an archeologist, you might consider it Perv script. If you were an adventurer, you might see a bunch of valuable jade and emeralds, which the Pervs like to use in their writing. With their version of light sticks, it also would provide guidance from a greater distance—sort of like navigation beacons.”

  The variance of sharp descent followed by perhaps a hundred yards of level ground before another descent started to form a pattern. In the flat sections, Ryder often noticed numerous openings along the side. At one point, Margaret seeing his interest, volunteered, “Housing complex. This would be where the Pervs had their apartments, supply depots, planning rooms. They even had a large recreation center somewhere around here, where as best we can figure they held dances.”

  A little less than an hour after they had started, Hondo called them to a stop. “Time to get careful.”

  Chapter 23: Backstab

  After rappelling down a two hundred foot sheer escarpment, Steerman and Aster still had to weave their way along an irregular rocky path. “Are you sure about this?” Aster asked.

  “That was the message,” Steerman responded. “I could strangle those three. What were they thinking?” Steerman, being the better rock climber, led the way down the slope. At one point he started to lose his footing in the gravel, but adroitly skidded down the rubble like a downhill skier.

  Aster followed more cautiously. He intentionally slid into a rock wall about ten feet down the path then veered, bouncing against another rock extrusion. He sat and slid the last thirty feet to catch up with Steerman. “So what do you want to do?”

  “End this, of course,” Steerman spoke definitively.

  They proceeded silently, except for occasional grunts and the continuing sound of gravel beds slipping with them as they descended.

  *** />
  Becky remained in the jagged circle of rocks about twenty yards from an overhang that rose above her. She had considered the shelter of the overhang and thought it might make a suitable place to spend the night. But for now, she figured that it was too obvious a hiding place. She had almost dozed off when she heard someone scuffling in the area. She heard a voice calling her name. It was Miss Li.

  “Becky! Becky! Come on out! This isn’t going to work. Think about it. If we leave the area tomorrow, you’ll be stranded here. What then? No one comes down this way. You don’t have any food. This is useless. Come on out. I’ll make sure no harm comes to you. You can trust me. I’m here to protect you.”

  Becky was tempted. What could she achieve now that she hadn’t already done? How long could she survive? She was just about to stand up when she heard Miss Li’s voice echoing the same message a little further up the trail. She decided she could wait it out at least overnight.

  ***

  As they approached the mouth of the cavern, Steerman and Aster grew more cautious. They each drew a small hand weapon, proceeded into the tunnel, then finally into the cavern. They were greeted by Winger and Shooter.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Steerman began. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

  “Trouble? That’s what we’re trying to get out of,” Shooter responded.

  “Yeah, get out of trouble,” Winger echoed.

  “You have the DDF all over this. Sooner or later they’ll track you down. Where are the girls?”

  “They’re unharmed,” Shooter responded. He pointed to the cell on the far side of the cavern.

  Steerman marched toward the cell and stopped short after seeing Cynthia and Debbie, who glared at him. “You!” they both shouted.

  Steerman turned. “Where’s the other one? The quiet one?”

  “That’s why we called you in now,” Shooter said. “She got away, and Yara and Newbold are out looking for her. We need reinforcements.”

  “Reinforcements? Are you nuts! Let them go! Now!”