He looked to his right. He squinted and craned his neck. That was another mother ship. Sonovabitch. Right there. He groaned.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bob. Bob had turned his head to look at Jonathan and he could see the other slaver ship. Big John followed their gaze. He groaned as well.
“Damn. The slavers will get out of our mother ship and fly over to that one,” said Jonathan.
“I don’t think so.”
“John, why not?”
“I disabled a bunch of the transport ships.”
Jonathan looked at him with renewed respect, “really? What’d you do?”
“Well it was kinda boring waiting for you guys and I had these two ray guns so I went down the farthest ship on the deck and shot holes in it. Not too easy let me tell you. This here,” and Big John hit his balled up hand against the metal structure, “is some tough shit. Pretty time consuming. So after the second one I just went inside and blew up the control panel.”
Jonathan gave Big John a big pat on the shoulder, “Nice going.”
“Good thing it took me a while and I started at the farthest one. I had no idea you’d be bringing guests. All of the ones on the other side of this transport…”
“It’s called a puddle jumper now. We’re in puddle jumper 1.” Jonathan shrugged, “it’s from…”
“Yeah, yeah I saw that show. Anyway, there aren’t too many of these puddle jumpers left in working order. How many slavers did your girl say were on these, ah, mother ships?”
Jonathan looked at Big John oddly. He had not thought of Kookli as his girl. “Well, if I remember right she told me there were several hundred slavers though she didn’t know the exact number. She wasn’t really allowed to go to that area of the ship. She did say that there were five thousand slaves or at least that many pods for the slaves.”
“Hang on guys. I’m starting our descent. I’m going to make it slow and easy. These ships are tough and it can handle slow I’m sure. Don’t want those following us to get lost.”
Jonathan roughly counted how many slaves were in the puddle jumpers. “I guess somewhat over three hundred in all. Not many considering…” He left that thought dangling. Once again he felt horrible. The moment of contentment and happiness was over. He had a war to fight and he was going to make sure none of those motherfuckin’ assholes would live through it. How dare they force him into decisions where innocent lives are snuffed out.
Big John placed his big hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. He started to say something but just squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder instead. Jonathan began to plan the next foray into a mother ship. Some things will be the same and some things will be different.
PART IV
CHAPTER ONE
The crowd in Mosquito Creek Park stood in awe as Jonathan came out of the side hatch. He immediately went back to the rear of the transport ship as the back was lowering to become a ramp. Jonathan had forgotten there were already a score of slaves and un-slaved Romanians when Sasha put in the fifty no-longer-connected-older-slaves in the main cabin. Jonathan had also forgotten he had counted fifty-five as he thought at the last minute fifty was too conservative. But for some reason fifty stuck in his head.
The people were packed in tight and though they had undergone some banging around most had weathered the ride quite well. It had actually been packed too tightly for anyone to fall. They had hung on to the overhead straps and had been literally sardines in a can without the oil.
Big John came back to help Jonathan as Bob went over to Tony Schollander who was walking up with the police representative. Bob told them Jonathan had destroyed the mother ship by sending it down into earth’s atmosphere. If it didn’t burn up on the way down, which it probably wouldn’t, it surely would explode on impact. Bob had thought it would hit somewhere in the northern Pacific Ocean.
Word got around and three cheers for Jonathan were yelled by the three hundred people in the park. Jonathan blushed and lightly waved as he strode up to Bob, Tony and Captain Healy.
Thomas Catkins came striding up purposely with too much pomp for Jonathan’s taste. He took both his hands and shook Jonathan’s. He did the same procedure with Bob’s hand.
“I thought we’d get an extra transport but to bring us six more…” Catkins was beaming with a huge smile on his face.
“They’re not yours,” said Jonathan loud enough for most people in the immediate vicinity to hear. He didn’t want any misunderstanding.
“What? Now see here…”
“I’m not going to spend much time talking to you about it. These transport ships belong to the people who found them and that’s the Earthland Security Force. Do you want to join the force?”
“But…you can’t…”
“Yes I can. Ask the police who actually owns these pudd…transport ships.”
Catkins turned to Healy and raised his brows significantly and Jonathan thought arrogantly.
“Dr. Prezlee is correct. These…vehicles rightly belong to them.”
“But, you can impound them or something. Can’t you?”
“That would be against the law. I’m here to uphold the law.”
Catkins stood silent then strode off. While still in conversational range Jonathan told Healy, “I give you two of these transport ships Captain Healy. Do you have a pilot we can train to fly it?”
Captain Healy’s face creased into a big smile but he restrained himself admirably from laughing out loud. He nodded, “yes. I’ll send you several, pilot and co-pilot.”
“Captain Healy, I would ask a favor. There are a lot of slaves still connected but most are not. Or at least it doesn’t appear they are. We destroyed the communications link yet I do not know how effective or lasting it will be. We need to have them put into some kind of quarantine. They will have their implants removed but it will take awhile I should guess.”
Captain Healy responded, “We took your advice and kept the ones you brought in earlier and the ones Captain Schollander brought to us with static playing the whole time. Seems they need little guarding under these circumstances. We can handle the ones you brought.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem and you’re right I think. Once they’re no longer connected they’ll be great allies.”
Dr. Bond walked up to the group as Captain Healy walked over to where several of his men were.
Jonathan had all the former and would-be slaves formed up according to who they were and what language they spoke. Sasha was in charge of the ones which spoke Romanian.
By now the entire A Team had joined Jonathan, Bob and Tony. The C team and the B team were helping with the unloading and grouping of the former slaves. Guarding them as well. None really knew enough of the slaver’s implant technology to be incautious.
“Jonathan.” Dr. Bond hailed him.
“How’s Kookli?” Turk blurted out. “Did you take out the implant?”
“Well, actually, no.”
“No. No! Whadda ya mean no?”
“She’s fine ay,” Dr. Bond said to Turk. “Just relax.” He turned to Jonathan.
“We cannot take out the implant…”
“Why not? You’ve got to help her.” Turk’s hands were balled into fists.
“Turk. Just relax and let me finish.” Dr. Bond shook his head.
To all of them he said, “full implant removal appears much too tricky to try. It’s just not safe to remove the whole device. We don’t really understand how the mechanism is embedded. To try to remove the device could do more harm than good.” Turk let out an audible groan though was able to refrain from saying anything. Jonathan thought Turk might crack a knuckle if he squeezed his fists any tighter.
“However, we removed the chip which operates the implant. She is no longer connected. She’s resting comfortably. She and the others we’ve done so far will have to remain in observation and bed rest for awhile but once the skin is healed I foresee no problem.”
“That’s good news Jim. Hate to tell you
this but you have over three hundred more to do. The sooner they are fit the sooner we can swell the ranks of our small force. I’m pretty sure many of the former slaves will want to help us.”
“You’re right there. The ones we’ve already removed the chip from that speak English, and that’s all the ones you guys brought in earlier, have an overwhelming desire to help.”
“The worst for them,” Dr. Bond continued, “is that they remember everything they were told to do.” Jonathan was going to add the usual platitude ‘I think I can understand how they might feel’ but he caught himself in time.
Kookli had told them although the slaves had to spend a certain amount of time out of the pods they were never socialized as she had been. Jonathan had thought of tabula rasa but then amended this. It wasn’t completely a clean slate. There would be forms of grief the former slaves could not even begin to understand since they hadn’t learned normal human, at least normal earth human, behavior from parents. They never really had parents.
Kookli had told them that the implants could not be placed into the brain stem at too early an age so they had to have spent some time with their mothers. But they were taken from them at an early age, ala Sparta or Plato’s Republic thought Jonathan, and an important part of humanness would never develop prior to their full enslavement.
“At this point,” Dr. Bond turned to Jonathan, “I’d like her to have only one visitor. She asked for you Jonathan.”
Jonathan looked a little confused. “Oh. Ah…sure. When can I see her?”
Jonathan didn’t really like this, being a focal point, he ruminated as he walked back to the infirmary with Dr. Bond. What went wrong? How did I become leader?
When he had hit on the idea of a guerrilla force he thought of the framework in terms of Camp Ma. A democratic organization with a loose and fluid set of rules and hierarchy. He had seen it achieved with wonderful results by his friends. He liked how it worked. A lot. It fit his personality for one thing. And it fit his philosophy for another.
When he thought of a force to combat the slavers he could think of no different expression than a guerrilla force. Not a real military force with strict rules and a rigid chain of command. By definition a guerrilla force was small and mobile. It was supposed to be flexible and adaptable. Much like his style of playing basketball had been.
He didn’t mind that many in the Busland community wanted to join. It was adventurous at the very least and it was doing something to help humanity at the most. Why await these Peeds to enslave or kill the survivors. The younger ones seemed to know there was no hiding from them. Better begin immediately to challenge the slavers. Jonathan was serious about fighting the slavers but not serious about the type of organization to put in place to accomplish this.
When Jonathan came up with the name of Earthland Security he was satirizing America’s Homeland Security developed by the right-wing ideologues and the corporatists. He understood the reason the Reaganites and Friedmanites wanted to give the government more power over its citizens.
Since the Reaganites and especially the ultra-right big business interests gained every year in power and control over both the economy and the political process it would eventually need an arm to ensure the status quo. Some people aren’t going to like being marginalized with reduction in opportunities and standard of living.
Dissent will have to be dealt with at some point. It could be argued that this was paranoia but his ex-girlfriend had many historical antecedents ready to show one after another atrocious aspect of the inhumanity of man.
Corporatist ideology had only changed in one aspect since Mussolini developed the concept. No big labor would be a part of the system in the U.S.A. The merger solely of government and big business was the design of the modern neo-con.
Interestingly, the agenda is really a continuation of the imperialistic ideology developed by economist Brooks Adams, J. P. Morgan and the other industrialists from the 1890’s. It was there the attempt, successful attempt, to allow big business to gain greater access and control over the government began to be successful. The idea was simplicity itself. Did it matter it was inherently if not blatantly anti-American?
What they were able to achieve was to legalize, formalize and institutionalize big business having a way to finance those politicians looking for campaign funding. They were able to pass legislation which gave big business the same rights (but not the responsibilities or consequences) of individual citizens.
This was clearly against the wishes of our Founding Fathers. Especially Thomas Jefferson who argued the importance for the small farm and small business as a bulwark in maintaining our freedom and liberty and our democracy. The imperialist idea extended to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice Holmes agreed the buying of politicians and control of the body, Congress, which makes laws would be a good thing for America.
From that point on big business has had control of the economy to some extent. With the christening of the non-governmental agency known as the Federal Reserve Bank the accumulation of control has had only one set back. The Great Depression which put FDR in the White House and bringing in John Maynard Keynes his economic guru. Keynes economic philosophy eventually created the greatest standard of living the world had ever known. It was during the 60’s and 70’s that the earning power of the working and middle class was at an all time high.
With the emergence of the Reagon revolution and Friedman economic practices the far right and big business gained immense control over the economy which allowed them to gain control over the American society. Correspondingly, the working and middle class has seen an immense erosion of their standard of living from the halcyon days of the 60’s and 70’s. Could Jonathan poke fun at this? The guerrilla force if successful would be remembered throughout the ages.
Yet, the idea of satire backfired. For Jonathan it was a bitter pill. Ironically people liked the name and rallied around it. He hated it but it was now too late to do anything about it.
What was worse was his elevation to the head of the guerrilla force. Being around Keoni and Hawk he thought he would be a strong voice, one of many. He thought Turk McNeill and Turk would protect diversity and shun the idea of anyone being raised to an lofty status. And yet Terry and Turk to some degree had lobbied for his leadership. This made no sense to Jonathan.
“Jonathan,” said Dr. Bond, “you’ve been daydreaming. We have to go up the steps to reach the infirmary.” Jonathan nodded. He liked to daydream so it was never a negative to him.
The steps went pretty far up the hillside. And it was an impressive hill. It may be even tall enough to be called a mountain. He started climbing thinking it would be a long climb.
However, it was not. Hardly more than two flights. “Can’t be moving the patients up and down and it’s safer for them here,” Dr. Bond explained.
They walked into a huge dug out area which was buttressed with concrete. The floor was tiled and there were rooms off the main corridor. No dirt was seen anywhere though in a few areas walls had a plastic covering.
Jonathan was impressed. He could see the Canadian know-how and can-do attitude maintained a surprising healthy medical environment and he assumed the operating rooms would be sterile and up to date.
The quality of the transformation of these survivors made Jonathan forgot to wonder why Kookli wanted to see him.
CHAPTER TWO
Kookli was in a bed lying on her side. He saw a large bandage on the back of her neck and realized lying supine would be painful. She looked up and brightened. Yes, she brightened; her skin seemed to glow. Her eyes smiled as her mouth widened. She looked surprisingly attractive for someone who came out of surgery the day before.
“Hello Jonathan.” She tried to push off her elbow to raise herself up.
Jonathan was at her bedside quickly so she could avoid that movement. “Just relax Kookli. It always takes a while to recover from any surgery.”
“You look good Jonathan. But you need a shave.”
&
nbsp; “Ahm, you look…wonderful…”
“I feel wonderful. I feel free. Oh Jonathan it feels so good. I just wish,” tears started to roll down her cheeks, “that my mother could have felt this way.”
Jonathan sat on the side of her bed and held her hand. It was the least he could do. He certainly could not hug her in her condition to show his support and he wanted to be supportive. He felt she probably should cry. It would be cathartic. Not too surprising she would have the need to cry after what she had been through. Dr. Bond left the room.
She pulled his hand under her cheek, “get closer Jonathan. Get com –fort –able.” It took him a second to realize she was saying comphtible. She said it phonetically. He enjoyed the way she spoke English.
Her voice was neither too high nor too low. It had a slight cadence or lilt which was perfect for the pitch of her voice. Her wonderfully natural red semi-full lips seemed to pout just a little in the cutest way when she pronounced the words.
He said nothing as she wept, her tears falling on his hand. His other hand was idle and he had no place for it so he just let it lay on his lap. She stopped crying slowly and rubbed her cheek against his hand. She looked up at him.
“Jonathan, you look so good.” And she reached up to rub the stubble on his face. She smiled as she dropped her hand back to his.
“How did it go up there?”
“It went well. We saved hundreds of slaves and were able to destroy the ship. We’re pretty sure the slavers on that ship did not get away to warn the other ship.”
“The other ship?” and she looked worried.
“Yes, the one we went into had Romanian speakers, Romania is a part of Europe, so it seems one ship was for the English speakers here and one was for Eastern Europe.”
“Then it’s not over.”
“No.” Jonathan looked down.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m going to the other ship. I can’t promise that I can save your father. I’m sorry.”
“I understand. You have to save your people, your civilization.”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “You will be careful.”
“Well sure,” he laughed. “I’m definitely planning on coming back. My goal is to live to one hundred and twenty.”