Galactic Assassin: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

          Kauff, disguised as Flight Sergeant Luther Green, exited the public hover car and walked to the door of the run down looking building. She wasn’t kidding about the look of this place, Kauff thought to himself. The building, and the area around it, looked like a place that people wouldn’t visit in broad daylight. He walked up to the old man behind the counter and gave him the slip of paper the bar keep had given him. The man looked back and forth from the paper to Kauff a few times. He finally told Kauff to follow him. Kauff followed the man to the top floor. Then, the man led him to the third floor to the last door on the right side at the end of the hall. The man unlocked the door, handed Kauff a key card, and then went down the stairs. He never said one word to Kauff.

          Kauff slowly opened the door, keeping his weapon pointed in front of him the whole time. He turned on the lights to find the room empty. He checked all over the room, and when he was satisfied their was no danger, he put his weapon away. He then pulled a bug tracker from his duffel bag. This device would scan an area looking for any hidden bugs, such as listening devices or hidden cameras. The scan came back negative. He closed all the drapes and moved the desk away from in front of the window. Now, feeling a little bit safer, he pulled the trinoculars and his portable computer from the duffle. While the computer was booting up, he interfaced the trinoculars with it. He began downloading the data from the trinoculars. This process was time consuming, so he decided to freshen up while he waited. He stepped into the apartment’s revitalizer unit and began running water for a shower. He set up a motion sensor alarm, he had brought with him, in front of the apartments main door. If anyone tried to sneak in while he was in the shower, the audible alarm on the motion sensor would go off. The audible alarm rang out at an  ear splitting decibel level. Kauff would know right away if anyone who didn’t belong were trying to get in. He laid his weapon next to the sink and closed the door to the revitalizer.

 

Slowly, Damien began to regain consciousness. His head was throbbing worse than ever before. Not to mention how bad the pain was in his wrists from the ropes binding his hands behind his back. He was still wearing his suit and mask. The suit continuously monitored Damien’s physical health. If he became to hot or to cold, the suit would adjust his temperature to help out. The suit also monitored his blood pressure and heart rate. If either became too high or too low, the suit would compensate and fix his condition. But, most importantly, the suit was able to tell when Damien was conscious or unconscious. When Damien was unconscious, the suit would automatically engage the counter measures. If anyone or anything tried to tamper with the suit while Damien was unconscious, it would send out a powerful electroshock. If the electroshock were somehow bypassed, the suit emitted a strong knock out gas.

Damien began to scan his surroundings. He was lying face down with both hands tied together behind his back. Whoever tied him up had used some kind of vine from this planet. He appeared to be lying on the floor of a cave. There was a fire burning on the other side of the cave from where he  lay. He could faintly hear the trickle of water in the darkened part of the cave, thanks to his suits advanced audio receptors. The air filters that protected him from breathing harmful toxins reported nothing dangerous. He noticed some shadows moving on the wall nearest the mouth of the cave. Damien had hoped he would be alone long enough to make an escape attempt. He had not carried any weapons with him after leaving the ship. He didn’t expect to get blind sided on this side of the planet by anyone or anything. He didn’t think anyone knew he was here on Zeda Four. Damien tuned his audio receptors towards the mouth of the cave. He could barely make out what the people were saying. It was mostly grunts and strange noises. Damien need to get to his feet, but he noticed his ankles had also been tied together. There was a light blinking in the top right hand corner of his goggles that corresponded with the light blinking on his wrist chrono. Now he remembered what he was on his way to do when he got hit in the back of the head. There is a message waiting for him back on the Devastator from Kauff.

Damien began moving his hands and feet to try to loosen the vines. Just then, the shadows on the wall began moving his direction. The people were finally in sight. It was the primitive natives he had seen on his initial investigation of Zeda Four. There were five of them standing in front of him. The one who must have been the leader, because he wore the biggest and flashiest headdress, began pointing at Damien and making hand gestures towards the dark section of the cave. Another, with a smaller headdress, began pointing at Damien and giving hand signals to the leader. They had just noticed Damien was awake. The other three men were wearing some type of paint on their faces and were carrying spears and clubs. They must be some type of bodyguards or warriors, Damien thought to himself. The leader made a hand gesture to the three guards. Immediately, all three men walked over and picked Damien up off the ground. One guard pulled a sharp stone from his side and cut the vines around Damien’s ankles. One of the other men poked Damien in the back with his spear. When Damien turned and looked at him, the man pointed toward the dark area of the cave and began to grunt. Damien took this as a clue to start walking that direction. After a few steps he looked over his shoulder and saw all five men following him. The guard poked Damien again with the spear and grunted more stern than before. Damien kept walking forward at a slow pace. He knew his suit was still working, because he felt his heart rate automatically slow down. As the cave grew darker, his night vision goggles activated. The guard kept the spear in the center of Damien’s back so he could keep up with where Damien was. A lot further down the cave, Damien could hear some kind of chanting going on. It sounded like very many voices all chanting at the same time. There was a very faint light coming from the direction they were heading. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this, Damien thought, I’ve got to figure a way out of this situation. 

          Kauff stepped out of the shower and began to dry off. As he slipped his last piece of clothing on, he heard the door alarm he had set up begin to scream. He grabbed his weapon and stepped out of the revitalizer unit. Standing there with his hands over his ears was the old man from behind the desk downstairs. Kauff kept his weapon aimed at the man while he switched off the alarm.

“What are ya doing?”, Kauff yelled at the man.

There was a pile of linen lying on the floor where the old man had dropped them. He pointed at the pile then at the bed. Kauff hadn’t noticed the bed had no linen.

“Why didn’t you just leave them outside the door?”, Kauff asked. “Why didn’t you wait for me to let you in?”

The old man never said a word. He just stood there staring at Kauff.

Kauff looked hard at the man. “OK old man”, Kauff said, “Just set them on the bed and get going.” He wasn’t trying to be rude to the old man, but he had work to do. The old man set the linen on the bed, and gave Kauff an unapproving look as he left. Kauff closed and locked the door behind the old man. He set the motion sensor back in front of the door and walked over to the desk.

The computer and trinoculars had linked together and downloaded the data successfully. Kauff poured himself a refreshment and sat down to analyze the data. He searched through the data until he came to the digital images he had taken at the governor’s estate. He was able to take four images of the person moving behind the shrubs toward the estate. When he magnified the image, and cleared it up, he didn’t like what he saw. There in front of him, as plain as the nose on his face, was the Black Heart Agency insignia. The man in the image was obviously one of their assassins. There was no sword attached to the images side or back, so it couldn’t be Hilt. There was no sniper rifle in his hand or slung over his shoulder, so it couldn’t be Scope. In fact, as Kauff magnified the image more, he didn’t see any weapons at all. Only one assassin in Dark Heart is cocky enough to go around unarmed, he thought to himself, it must be Cerebrum. As Kauff continued looking at the pictures, he noticed something in the lower right hand corner of the picture he made of the front of the estate. The identification number on the luxury hover car, parked in front of the estate, matched up with a number on a Jade Eye hover car. It looks like Dark Heart Agency and Jade Eye got to Lowell Handoff before we could, Kauff thought to himself, and I’m sure they made him an irresistible offer. Kauff uploaded the images to send to Damien, and wrote an explanation of each one. He sent them to the Devastator’s main computer. The message was sent with a code nine-security encryption. The kid needs to hurry up and get back in touch with me, Kauff thought to himself, I don’t like it here, and the sooner I can leave, the better.

Damien stepped out of the dark cave into a wide-open area. There were several of the natives standing against one wall of the area. The echo of the voices made it sound like more people, Damien thought to himself. There was a fire burning in each of the four corners of the area. The fires gave off enough light to see the area very well. The goggles on Damien’s suit changed back to normal vision. The natives were standing along the edge of the large walls making up the area. The area was almost perfectly circular in shape, and the walls were at least a hundred feet tall. The very top of the area was open to the sky. The circular floor of the area had to be at least a hundred feet in diameter. There were two small circles drawn on the floor. The guard with the spear kept poking Damien until he was standing in one of the circles. The leader of the natives went and stood before his people with both arms raised over his head. All the people standing against the wall suddenly became quiet. The three guards went and stood with the rest of the crowd. The man with the smaller headdress went and lit two torches in the nearest fire. He brought the torches over to where Damien was standing. He stood facing Damien holding both torches. The leader began shouting so everyone in the crowd could hear him. The native language was very broken up. The leader made a lot of grunts and hand gestures when words seemed to fail him. The crowd stood there quiet and motionless as they listened to their leader speak. Damien tried to understand as much of what the leader was saying as possible. He was telling the people that Damien was a stranger sent to this planet by the enemy of a god the natives worship. The leader told the crowd that Damien had been sent to kill and destroy their god and all who worship it. The crowd grew angry and began grunting and throwing small rocks in Damien’s direction. He was far enough away from the crowd that the rocks hit the ground before getting to him. Damien now figured out that the man with the large headdress was a high priest. And the man standing in front of him holding two torches was a priest also, just not a high priest. The priest in front of him looked at Damien with a cold hard stare. The high priest raised his arms again and the crowd grew quiet once more. Damien wanted to protest the accusations the high priest was making. But he knew it would do no good. If he spoke out, the priest in front of him was likely to attack him with the torches. Trying to burn Damien would not work, because the suit would protect him from the flame. When the crowd and the high priest would see that the flame had no effect on injuring him, there suspicions and accusations would only be more reinforced. The high priest began shouting at the crowd. It sounds like he is blaming one of the natives for my presence here, Damien thought. He was having trouble understanding the language because of the shouting. The priest stopped shouting and pointed into the crowd. The three guards had silently moved through the crowd until they were surrounding a middle age looking man. The man seemed to be in pretty good shape, but his resistance was useless against the three guards. Two of the guards each grabbed an arm while the third guard grabbed the mans feet. The man was fighting the guards grip and screaming, but it was no use. They dropped the man into the circle, and stood around him with their spears pointed at him.

The high priest walked to  the fire burning in the far corner. When he started walking back toward the crowd, he was leading a timid little animal with a rope tied around his neck. He stopped in front of the crowd. One of the guards went over to the high priest and took the rope from him. The high priest began shouting phrases that Damien couldn’t understand. The crowd began a low chant of the same phrase over and over. The small animal began crying out in fear. The high priest put one hand under the animals chin pulling its head up. With the other hand he pulled a small blade from his belt and quickly cut the animal’s throat. The small animal immediately got quiet and fell over dead. The crowd got quiet. They watched the high priest intently. The high priest knelt beside the animal and collected some of the blood into a small wooden bowl. Two of the guards restrained the native man standing in front of Damien. The high priest began applying the animal’s blood to the natives face and bare chest. Occasionally he would lift his arms up while chanting certain sayings in a low soft voice. When he was finished, the guards released the native. He stood there in a trance staring at Damien. The three guards went and blocked the entrance to the area. It was the only way in or out. The only other option was straight up the high walls of the area.

Damien had finally pieced together everything that was going on. The high priest had publicly accused Damien of being sent to kill the native’s god. He had also blamed this native man as the one responsible for Damien coming here. The animal was sacrificed to the native’s god. The animal’s blood was put on the native man as a sign. No doubt, Damien and this native would be expected to fight to the death. If the native were to kill Damien, then that would mean their god had forgiven the native man as well as the whole tribe. It would also mean there god had accepted the small animal as a sacrifice. But, if Damien were to kill the native man, it would mean there god was angry with the tribe and did not accept the sacrifice. In which case the three guards would probably end up killing Damien. Damien wasn’t at all happy with how things were turning out. He certainly didn’t want to kill this native. In either situation Damien should wind up dead in the end. But how could he escape without harming anyone, or being harmed in the process?

The high priest went and Stood in front of the crowd facing Damien’s direction. The other priest handed the native man a torch. When he tried to hand Damien the other torch. Damien refused. The priest grunted and became more persistent, but Damien still refused. The high priest made a gesture to the guards. Damien soon felt the tip of a spear pushing hard into his back. Damien stood his ground and still refused to take the torch. The guard poked Damien harder, and the priest slapped Damien across the face. Luckily, because of his suit, he didn’t feel the slap. The priest and the guard both looked to the high priest. Damien had figured that other space travelers who had come to this planet had been put in the same situation. He also figured that none of the accused enemies had refused to fight. The reaction of the priest and the guard let him know he was right about both.

In the brief moment of shock from the guard and the priest, Damien made his move. He ducked down low and spun around on one foot with his other leg extended. As he dropped, he grabbed the torch from the priest. When he began to spin, he knocked the priest off balance. The priest fell into the native and both men tumbled to the ground. Damien kept spinning until his leg made contact with the guard. Being knocked off balance, the guard began to fall. As the guard was falling, Damien began to stand up. He grabbed the guard’s spear on his way up. The guard turned out to be very agile. Feeling himself begin to fall, the guard almost completely rolled up into a ball. He hit the ground, rolled once, and came back up on his feet. He was very surprised when he realized Damien had taken his spear. Damien held the torch in front of him in one hand, and the spear over his head with the other hand. The crowd began to scream and run around in a panic. Chaos was on the verge of breaking out. The native man with the torch held it in front of him like a sword. The other two guards ran over to where the other was standing. The regular priest was almost cowering behind the native man. The high priest had both hands over his head, and was yelling for silence. Suddenly there came a thunderous boom from above. The crowd immediately became still and got quiet. Everyone was looking to the opening above the area, except for Damien and the high priest. The two staired intently at each other. Apparently this high priest knows some kind of magic, Damien thought. The crowd, the other priest, the native man, and the three guards all dropped to the ground and began mumbling some kind of prayer. The high priest began telling everyone that the stranger had angered their god. Everyone in the area stood and looked directly at Damien. The high priest walked over and stood in front of everyone. All eyes were focused on Damien. The next thing the high priest said was easily understandable. The only way to get forgiveness, and make their god happy again, was to kill the stranger. The entire crowd of people began screaming and shaking their fist. Some bent down to pick up rocks, while others pulled sharp stones from pouches around their waist. The high priest lifted his bloodstained blade over his head, yelled out a native saying, and then pointed the blade at Damien. The whole crowd, at once, began yelling and running at Damien.