Puddle Jumpers 1, 2 and 3 lifted up. They would rise to an altitude of ten thousand feet. From there they would tilt the nose up and climb until they were in outer space.
In addition to teams A, B, and C forty of the English speaking ex-slaves were there as well as the five Romanian pilots. They had only been out of surgery for eight days but they felt they were ready to fly the transport ships out of the first mother ship which was penetrated.
They had no idea which mother ship they would be infiltrating. It did not matter at this point. They had a plan with the experience from their first attack on a mother ship. With continuing luck and the skill they had developed they all felt confident the plan would work.
Jonathan had been thinking about the plan as the puddle jumpers rose into the atmosphere. All of a sudden they were in outer space and suddenly a mother ship was in sight.
Sam and Navin had been at the speakers the whole night but nothing new was learned. Seems the commanders did little commanding, trusting to the Peed underlings.
They had tested the locator beacon and it was not broadcasting. Jonathan hoped the communications center wouldn’t notice the beacon was off and there was a very good chance of that. Considering the fifteen puddle jumpers they encountered on the first mother ship it was assumed that the mother ship commander had many colonies being developed.
Bob Ferguson kept puddle jumper 1 headed for the nose of the mother ship. Once they were near it he would swing around toward the mid-ship and check if the other puddle jumpers were in place. They would try the walkie talkies just to see if they would work.
As they neared the mother ship which took a long time considering how soon they had spotted it Bob lined up along side amid-ship. Puddle Jumper 2 and then 3 took their places. Bob went in the van and led them to the docking bay. They tried the walkie talkies and they could communicate when in close proximity. They ended the successful link up with admonishment to remain in radio silence as a precaution.
They entered the docking bay and found a berth about halfway down the flight. Puddle Jumpers 2 and 3 docked farther from the entrance to the mother ship but side by side. It was considered an advantage to be able to deploy teams in protecting the pilots.
Five former slaves were left behind to protect Bob, Terry and Tony and the five ex-slave pilots.
Only nine transport ships were docked. No slaver or slave was in the docking bay. They checked each transport ship. From the ramps of puddle jumper 2 and 3 they brought out hand trucks loaded with bags of sand. Ten hand trunks carrying fifteen bags. It took three men to push and pull these heavy hand trunks.
C team broke off on the third deck with the 7th Xers; the ex-slaves had been assigned to eight five man teams – 1st through the 8th Xers. It was here the arsenal of ray guns was kept. C team and the 7th were to secure the arsenal so no slaver or slave could arm themselves.
A and B teams ran shotgun for the thirty ex-slaves pushing and pulling the hand trunks. They had an uneventful trip up the elevator to the deck the communications center was on. They placed the hand trunks in the hall alongside the wall and waited as if they were still enslaved. With one exception. One ray gun was hooked to their belt but another was hidden behind their backs for easy and quick access.
A and B team got into position. One of the ex-slaves pulled the door to the lounge open and both teams went in side by side. The first two in would cover the center; team A on the right would cover that part of the lounge. B team on the left would cover the other section. They went through quickly but not hurriedly. Once all the team members were in the lounge they opened fire and blasted the seven slavers who were in the room. It didn’t even take thirty seconds.
The ex-slave holding the door motioned for the hand trucks to be brought into the lounge. Both teams repeated the performance with the com room with the exception that Jonathan went directly to the commander’s room. The communications room was not as heavily manned as on the first mother ship and it hardly took more than a half minute for all those in the communications center to lie dead. Jonathan killed the commander as he was in the act of drinking. The commander knew what hit him but Jonathan couldn’t decide what the look on his face suggested or what his last thought might have been. Confusion certainly. Disbelief he would think and maybe hostility but not anger.
1st and 2nd Xers went out the commander’s bedroom door and back down the other lift to back up C team and the 7th. The other ex-slaves began stacking the sand bags at the lounge door. It didn’t take them too long to completely cover the door three bags thick and eight feet high.
Sasha went to work. His first chore was to figure out how to shut down the communications center so the slaves in the ship couldn’t be activated against them. They used the walkie talkies now and Jonathan talked to Tim of the C team.
Tim told Jonathan that the slaves had started to move toward them then halted abruptly. The break in the communications had worked. Jonathan told Tim to tell the 1st and 2nd to start rounding up the slaves for transport off the mother ship. As the lift could only hold twenty five two full lifts would equal one full puddle jumper. Tim was asked to try and find out what languages these slaves spoke.
Jonathan had considered adding ‘and kill any slaver on sight’ but he thought that was probably unnecessary. He wondered if the slavers could not communicate with the other mother ships would it be not wise to take one or two for questioning.
Jonathan was informed voices could be heard on the other side of the barricaded lounge door. The voices were indistinct and the language remained unknown.
Tim talked to Jonathan on the walkie talkie and Tim told him there must have been a second cache of weapons as they were coming under fire. Jonathan told him to hold on and he’d send the B team with the 3rd and 4th to assist. Jonathan had Sam round up the three teams and went out the back door which was being guarded by the 5th squad. The A team were in the lounge under cover with the 6th Xers should their barricade be breached.
Jonathan and Sasha had the com room to themselves and worked to learn how to pilot the ship. The relief by the B team with the 3rd and 4th squads hit the grouped slavers from the rear. The slavers found themselves under fire from three directions; the known arsenal, the lift and their rear. After a number of slavers were killed a white flag went up.
Tim ordered all the Earthland security to cease fire and called out to the slavers. Who responded in English!
Tim called Jonathan on the walkie talkie and reprised him of what had occurred. They found few stasis pods occupied which meant most of the slavers from this mother ship were already on earth. The slavers were ordered to surrender which after some heated debate among them surrendered with the condition they would not be killed. This was granted.
Jonathan told Tim to place them all in stasis pods and guard them. Do a head count and the number of pods left unoccupied. Tim and C team went about this with the 7th continuing to guard the arsenal. The 1st and 2nd assisted the disconnected slaves to the docking bay for transport off the mother ship.
Jonathan fleetingly considered asking the slavers to help in learning about the mother ship but nixed the idea immediately. Slavers were not to be trusted. Jonathan assumed there were slavers unaccounted for and probably in hiding so he told the Earthland force to remain vigilant. Terry and Bob came up from the docking bay to look over the controls with Sasha.
The second arsenal was found and the ray guns taken out and put in one of the puddle jumpers for transport to earth. Within two hours six puddle jumpers, number 3 and five new transports, had left the mother ship with the disconnected and now ex-slaves. The docking bay was guarded by the, 1st, 2nd and 7th squads. The slaver’s pods were guarded by the 3rd and 4th squads and the enslaved still in the pods were guarded by the 5th squad.
A, B and C teams were in the com room and lounge. They had found out there were two hundred pods for the slavers and ten thousand slave pods. They counted only fifteen slavers in their pods. With twenty
dead slavers which included the commander and only five hundred slave pods were occupied the amount of this mother ship’s assault on Earth was extraordinary.
They had shipped out three hundred slaves on the puddle jumpers and several had died in the com room. That left over nine thousand slaves and over one hundred fifty slavers roaming around some English speaking area on earth.
They also found out that the slavers and slaves spoke French and Spanish in addition to English. These were not the slavers of which Kookli’s father belonged to.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Bob, you and Terry think you could figure out how the pilot this thing?” asked Jonathan.
Bob and Terry had been working in the commander’s room. It was the center for navigation and flight. Sasha remained with the communications and was working on how to talk to the other ships. they didn’t know the original language of the slavers and it was doubtful if more than one other had learned English but if they wanted to communicate the opportunity might yield insight into their enemy.
“Yep. I think we will have it down pretty soon,” Bob said. “It’s laziness not necessity that’s the mother of invention.”
“Huh?”
“Well, these slavers are so lazy they designed their equipment to be easy to use. The puddle jumpers hardly have more than a few necessary controls. A small airplane has more controls,” continued Bob.
“It’s not too different than a helicopter,” added Terry.
“The one oddity is why bother to have the puddle jumpers with space flight capability also when they must had intended to land the mother ships,” Bob said. “However, I don’t think it ever occurred to them to manufacture the puddle jumpers without space flight. They use the same propulsion as the mother ship so they went ahead in a linear but concrete fashion.”
Jonathan nodded. He understood about the laziness factor. Lazy people want to waste as little time and effort as possible so they seek ways to make things easier. He knew the propulsion used for space flight by earthmen was vastly different than that used by the Peeds. And earth had different fuels for planetary travel and for space travel. He assumed the difference for the earth built space vehicles versus those built by the Peeds was more than different types of fuels. He guessed that electromagnetism was involved.
He became interested in electromagnetism in a round about way when he learned that no vehicle that went into outer space from earth stayed on the intended flight path. The flight plan always included the prearranged destination locked into the computers. The flight path computed by the scientists was always wrong. If it wasn’t for self-correcting computers no space ship or probe from earth would ever get near the target. Jonathan suspected the reason was these scientists did not allow for electromagnetism; only for gravity.
“So, when do you think you’ll be able to take control and bring us down?”
“We’re pretty close to taking it for a spin,” Bob said. “Once we feel comfortable that we have mastered the controls we’ll be ready to bring this bird to North Vancouver.”
McNeill looked wistful, “won’t that be a sight.”
He added, “we don’t know yet how to employ the landing gear. Since we’re pretty sure they intended to use the puddle jumpers after landing the mother ship there must be an allowable margin for the PJ’s to exit the ship. That means there must be some type of struts for the ship to settle down on.”
Terry looked at Jonathan, “don’t worry Jonathan. We’ll figure it out and let you know.”
Jonathan left the commander’s room and wandered into the com room. Sasha was so focused Jonathon had to tap him on the shoulder before he became aware of him.
“How’s it going Sasha?”
“Goodt. I haff wound a way to wake up slaves from dis center.”
“Wonderful. Keep at it.” Jonathan felt like a fool for saying it. He wandered into the lounge where the rest of the A team was.
Keoni and Hawk looked up as Jonathan walked in. “How’s it brah?”
“Oh, good I guess. Not much to do though. I wish I could talk to some space engineers?”
“Why’s dat brah?”
“I’d like to have some weapons to attack the other mother ships. I wonder if we could program a puddle jumper…”
“We call dem PJ’s now.”
“Right. Well, there are no offensive weapons on the mother ship or the PJ’s. If we could rig something up the other mother ships would be vulnerable. We’d be able to kick their ass before they could do anything about it.”
“That’s good thinking Jonathon. Come up with anything yet?” asked Hawk.
“No. Nothing that seems feasible. One problem is what would we use for a weapon. I suppose we could locate an army base and find some weapons though I’m not sure how feasible that would be either.” Jonathan sighed and found a seat.
“I just know we don’t have much time to eliminate the slavers before they go underground and into hiding. The way the world is now it would take years to ferret them out. And that’s assuming we’d have help.”
“At least we can find the implants. That should give us an advantage,” said Hawk.
Jonathan nodded. Something was nagging at the corner of his mind but he couldn’t think…
“There be must have a science lab and all, right?”
Both Keoni and Hawk shrugged.
“Jonathan,” Sasha called out. “I tink I figured how to listen to earth.”
Jonathan went over the console Sasha was working on. Sasha pointed to a screen.
“That’s earth right?”
“Da. And we above northern hemesphwere. Listen.”
Sasha turned on the switch. A jumble of noise came out. Sasha had it turned down but Jonathan realized it wasn’t noise. It was many people talking. Though how would that do us any good Jonathon didn’t know.
“I am work to making listen to one woice. You go away now.”
Jonathan walked back into the lounge. He was confident the intricacies of the control room and the fight controls would be learned. Sasha and maybe other techs will be able to narrow down what they want to listen to. What a gold mine!
“Jonathan, Tim here. Do you copy?”
Jonathan picked up the walkie talkie, “Jonathan here. What’s up Tim?”
“A PJ came in with three slavers. We killed two but the third is our prisoner. What do you want us to do with him?”
Jonathan was close to saying ‘just kill him.’ He couldn’t. Though he was tired and obviously his mind was not at full capacity he couldn’t change his character. He briefly wondered how the slaver would respond to pain then chided himself. He wasn’t a George Bush, a Cheney, a Hitler. Torture was out of the question.
“How ‘bout you place him in a pod. A slave pod. Be interesting to see what would happen if anything.”
“Okay. Over and out.”
Jonathan wondered what the differences were between the pods. They were physically different. Maybe they would have other dissimilarities. Maybe something they could take an advantage of.
Jonathan assumed with the communications out the slavers on earth must have wondered what was up. Maybe a few more would ‘go up’ to take a look.
Come to me you bastards. Come to me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jonathan was thinking of Kookli as he ate some of the commander’s food. He had no idea what it was but it was pretty tasty. Whatever the commander had been drinking was gone but it made him wonder if the drink was what Kookli intimated was the fountain of youth. Jonathan found it a little hard to believe but then again who would believe aliens would destroy the cultures and civilizations of his Earth.
Who would believe he would end up with a girlfriend who was an alien?
It had been a pretty uneventful ten days. The slaves and the slavers remained in their pods. The Earthland security force had blocked up the slavers pod dormitories with the sand bags and only a very modest teams was needed to guard them.
They didn’t worry too
much about the slaves though. Jonathan thought it would have been nice to start extracting the chips in the implants so they could start socializing the former slaves.
They had wandered around the ship and though large was not difficult to navigate from one side to the other or from one floor, deck, Jonathan reminded himself, to another. They found the medical and science labs but were not knowledgeable enough to utilize them. They found the food storage and the plant rooms and did what they could to keep the plants alive. They might have need or use for them. Some had flowers with colors that didn’t exist on earth. At least in this period of earth’s history.
They even found some of the programs from English speaking countries and patched a few of the favorites into the slave pod. The ones they didn’t like they sent to the slavers unconsciousness. They found the ones Kookli must have watched to gain sexual knowledge.
Some programs were very popular and the security force viewed them. One of the most popular was the BBC mystery series ‘Lovejoy.’ Jonathan was the only one to have read the books and though he preferred the books enjoyed the show immensely. None of the survivors had seen any visual entertainment for two years.
‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ on the other hand was given to the Peeds. Outside of a few of the shows they shunned the medium of TV and movies. They had more pressing things on their minds and even though they were somewhat stuck on the alien mother ship they preferred to chat, learn and discuss what the next move should be and what the other slavers might do as a reaction. Then finally…
“Jonathan. Hey Jonathan.” Jonathan came out of the lounge with Keoni and Hawk and went into the com room. Bob was there with Terry and Sasha.
“Bob what’s up?” asked Jonathan.
“We have good news. We are ready to take this bird and set her down on terra firma.”
The three newcomers clapped and shook everybody’s hands, probably several times.