The Terra Nova Chronicles: Book One - Chamberlain’s Folly
by
Robert Dean Hall
Published by Robert Dean Hall
The Terra Nova Chronicles: Book One - Chamberlain’s Folly
Copyright 2010 by Robert Dean Hall
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Cover design Copyright 2010 by Peter C. Fussey.
For Bethel
Prologue - The History Class
31-August-2409
The Historian took his place at the podium in the front of the auditorium.
The holographic environment generator made the auditorium appear to be an open amphitheater on a warm spring morning in ancient Greece. It was one of the Historian’s favorite recreated environments and particularly pleasing this day because the outside temperature was below freezing and there was snow a meter deep on the grounds in front of the building.
There were over one hundred holographic environments from different planets stored in the generator’s programming and they could be modified to account for temperature, humidity and time of day.
The Historian preferred to schedule the environments in his auditorium so they reflected, even if the connection was only superficial, the topics of his daily lectures. This morning, he was covering the first contact between two of the initial members of the League of Aligned Planets and he was eager to draw parallels between the home worlds of the founding races and the ancient Grecian city-states.
He looked out over the class of freshman cadets and smiled.
When he first started teaching history at the League of Aligned Planets’ Space Fleet Academy twenty years ago, the classes were filled mostly with human cadets and the usual complement of felines. This class was comprised of only about sixty-percent human races and more closely representative of the population at large than any he’d seen. There were even representatives from the saurian races of Procyon A V and Sirius A/B IX.
The Historian was happy to know, for the first time in almost a century, the cadets of this freshman class would not be needed to participate in occupations or police actions on worlds whose populations had not completely accepted the League’s governance. Sirius A/B IX and all of its colonies spread among the habitable planets and moons around that double-star system were finally united. The Terran mining colonies around Barnard’s Star, Wolf 359 and Ross 128 had become much more civilized over the last few decades, thanks to the second generation of faster-than-light spacecraft engines that made them far less isolated.
The Historian lit the screen on his tablet.
He had the day’s lecture memorized, but having the notes open would help him get back on topic should he be sidetracked by any questions. He loved questions. Questions meant the class was listening to his lecture and actually paying attention. Civil History wasn’t the most interesting subject, but it was an essential pre-requisite to the Military History class he would be teaching to this same group next term.
Of course, being ex-military, the Historian would have a bit of trouble keeping the syllabi of the two courses straight and his lectures would cross over many times. But, his ability to keep the cadets engaged and interested ensured they wouldn’t mind absorbing information they might not be tested on until the following term.
Although they would soon come to know how he earned the title Historian, the many cadets that passed through his classes first came to know him as Colonel Zheng. He was a human from Terra Nova (Alpha Centauri A IV) whose ancestors migrated to that system from Earth on the last wave of sub-light ships during the early years of the colonization period.
The Historian’s great, great, great, great grandfather, Arthur Clarke Zheng, was born on Terra Nova after his parents met and married on one of the huge colony ships. They were young and idealistic and on the way to help with the Terra Novan reconstruction. As a result his family name was among the first of many more Earth lineages to be permanently transplanted to that world.
Since that time, the human races from around the League of Aligned Planets have been interbreeding almost constantly; and the term “planet of origin” has become nothing more than part of a home address for most.
The Historian cleared his throat to speak. “I realize this is the first day of class, but have any of you bothered to read ahead in the text,” he asked.
The question elicited a hardy laugh from the cadets. They had been forewarned that if they were to have any chance of passing the class at all, they would need to have read the whole text, written by the Historian himself, before the first exam.
Other instructors used all available media in their classes. They used printed material, audio and video, holograms and holographs. The only course material the cadets got from the Historian was a copy of his text to read and a daily lecture. He gave the same exam with the identical five essay questions every second Friday of the term. The questions were not difficult, but the required length of the answers increased with each exam.
It seemed at first to be a strange method of teaching. If you answered the questions correctly on the first exam, all you had to do to pass the succeeding exams was to elaborate increasingly on the answers you had already given. But, therein lay the genius of the Historian’s teaching method. The students already knew the names and dates by the first exam. By the final exam, if they followed the lectures closely, they knew the true significance of those names and dates – mainly because the Historian was a master storyteller and he could make the historical figures he lectured on come to life for those who listened.
The Historian looked around the class for a particularly nervous-looking cadet to poke some fun at. His eyes settled on a tense male human who was uncomfortable returning his glance. The cadet had a red sash covered with silvery geometric embroidery hung around the waste of his uniform. The Historian knew the sash identified the cadet as a member of an upper caste family from Epsilon Eridani IIIa, or as it is called by the natives, Ekkida.
Although lower caste Ekkidans were found everywhere in the League, upper caste Ekkidans almost never left the home planet. Even then, they were rarely found in places other than banks, government offices or courtrooms, where bloated bureaucracies flourished.
Ekkidan aristocrats cared little about other cultures and didn’t generally concern themselves with anything that didn’t directly affect their well-being, social status or bank accounts. Somehow though, the Historian didn’t feel a particularly snooty presence from this cadet.
“What can you tell me about the general state of most of the aligned worlds around the time of Earth’s early colonization period, Cadet Aro...?”
“Cadet Aro Simas Non, Colonel, Sir,” came the reply from the cadet. The Historian knew he was aro by the color of his sash, but the surname came as a shock.
Non stood, saluted and proceeded to answer the question in a predictable tone and manner.
“Colonel, Sir. I know nothing of that period in history except what enterprises my ancestors were engaged in at the time, and what I have learned about the rest of the aligned worlds from your fascinating text book, Sir.”
He sounded as if he had memorized the response as part of a litany. He saluted the Historian once more and sat back down.
“Would you care to elabor
ate, Cadet Non,” the Historian asked with an amused look on his face.
Non stood back up and saluted again.
“Begging the Colonel’s pardon, Sir, but I’m not sure why that would be necessary,” he bellowed with a look on his face that showed no sign of confusion. “You already know what is in the text, Colonel, Sir. And, the endeavors of my family during that period would not be pertinent to the lesson.”
The rest of the cadets laughed out loud. Non seemed not to notice.
The Historian thought carefully about his reply to the young Ekkidan aro standing resolutely before him. “I meant for you to elaborate on - for the edification of the class - what you read in the text,” he said.
The Historian knew full well this wouldn’t be the last time he would have to explain a question to Non. Not because Non misunderstood him or didn’t speak the shared language of the Aligned Planets fluently, but because Non knew the language too well.
The rules on extra credit for answers given during lectures were posted in the class syllabus, and were quite plain. Even so, the Historian would have to explicitly state from then on, unless he specifically said otherwise, the answers he was seeking were to come from his text and they must be limited to the subject of the day’s lecture as identified in the syllabus.
Use of colloquialisms or metaphors that could be misinterpreted would have disastrous results. He could ill-afford to make the mistake of being drawn into any casual contracts with Non, at least in front of any of his classmates.
Ekkidan aros were experts at using your words against you, and the Historian knew this cadet, by his upbringing, was already a master of obfuscation and quite capable of exploiting any type of perceived or explicit declarations of obligation made during informal conversation.
Non’s ancestors were notorious for being the representatives of Epsilon Eridani IIIa when the charter of the League of Aligned Planets was originally penned. Aro Meqqar Non and his team of negotiators secured, for Ekkida, virtual control over all commerce in the early days of the League.
Meqqar Non won Ekkida the license to mint the League’s hard currency as well as the franchise to produce and manage the computers necessary to record all electronic financial transactions.
After seeing what the Ekkidans had done to them, the other races quickly established their own schools to teach politicians and businesspeople the highly refined art of negotiation. Of course, the Ekkidans, or more specifically the upper caste Ekkidans, were quite happy to enter into negotiations to supply the various schools with instructors, and even offered to devise the curriculum.
The Historian looked expectantly at Cadet Non.
Non was not going to be able to refuse to answer the Historian any longer. He had employed the gambit of precisely defining the crux of the negotiation early and not allowing the Historian to assume what the difficulty was, but the Historian snubbed the invitation to throw options on the table and engage.
Non was disappointed he would not be allowed to show his true mastery of the subject and was irritated he had not managed to secure any extra credit for the answer he was about to give.
Just as Non opened his mouth to answer, the Historian waved him off.
Non gave the Historian an appreciative smile, saluted again and sat down.
The Historian decided it might not be a good thing to allow Non to be seen as losing a negotiation in front of the class. Even though he ascertained by the almost unanimous blank looks nobody but Non and he knew what had actually transpired during their exchange.
The Historian looked back down at his tablet. He again cleared his throat and addressed the class.
“Actually, I believe what the Ekkidans were up to at that time has a great deal to do with what we will be covering today, but that is for a later lesson,” he said, looking once again at Non and smiling.
“Please open your text books to page thirty-seven…”
Part I - Morning Grass
Chapter 1
8-November-2209
She Who Stalks the Yearling Fawn While the Dew is on the Morning Grass bobbled the charge core of her jammed phase rifle. It was the dead of night and the only illumination she had to work by came from the periodic sweeps of the search lamps on the small, agile, unarmored ground vehicles the hairless apes were using to surround and cut off the remaining feline soldiers.
Morning Grass cursed the retractable claws on her genetically engineered hands as she continued to fumble with the dismantled weapon. The claws made felines almost impossible to defeat in hand-to-hand combat, but tended to make any tasks requiring manual dexterity difficult.
The felines were not blunt instruments, however.
It was true they had been bred to be physically intimidating and were twenty percent larger than the average human, but they were highly intelligent and their senses were heightened. It was actually a misnomer to call them feline. They were humans with the desired animal characteristics genetically spliced in, as most of the creators’ other hybrids had been.
The felines had perfectly proportioned human physiques and Morning Grass was particularly striking. She was powerfully built, but her musculature was not enough to keep her from appearing willowy. She had muted feline facial features and a flowing white mane that mixed in with blue-black hair that grew on her scalp and flowed down her neck to between her shoulder blades. Her feline ears were set high and looked small in proportion to her head. Her face had the subtle suggestion of a feline muzzle but was essentially human.
Morning Grass pocketed the charge core and lifted the rifle to get a look at the advancing apes through the scope. She was a skilled sniper and her feline eyes were able to detect the slightest movements from hundreds of meters away, even on nights as dark as this. But, to ply her trade effectively she needed a functional weapon.
She was sweeping the area looking for a downed feline she could take a weapon from when a high-pitched squeal she didn’t readily recognize caught her attention. Her hearing was more sensitive than that of a pure human and the range of frequencies she could detect was about twenty percent wider. She assumed that the hairless apes were causing the sound somehow, but couldn’t hear it themselves.
Morning Grass noticed the squeal came from behind her. She spun around and crouched low in the wheat that grew wild around the settlements and tried to determine what the sound was. She looked up and saw a bright object at about sixty degrees elevation descending rapidly on her location from behind.
“That can’t be good,” she thought to herself.
She pulled the charge core from her pocket and after what seemed to be a lifetime managed to correctly re-insert it into the phase inductor. It went in, but didn’t move freely.
“Damn it to Hell. It’s warped,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Why now?”
Morning Grass weighed her options. Even if her luck was perfect, she would only get one more shot from the rifle. The warped core would most likely stick in the discharge position when she fired and jam the rifle again.
If she was not so fortunate and the warped core had become unstable; it would vaporize during the next discharge of the rifle. The transverse shock wave created by the un-dampened discharge of the phase coil would gelatinize her entire body and burst every organ and blood vessel of any hairless apes found within a three meter radius.
“At least I’d take some of the monkeys with me,” Morning Grass told herself.
There was one more possibility available for her consideration. Surrender.
Of course, to a feline soldier, surrender only meant allowing one’s self to be temporarily apprehended. It was a last resort if capture seemed imminent.
These apes used police nets on dangerous prisoners that electronically induced partial paralysis. Morning Grass was familiar with the nets because they were similar to those used by the creators. The effects were temporary and mild, but they lasted long enough to transfer the affected individual to a holding cell.
If the apes had to transport
her far, she’d almost certainly have a chance to escape. It would only be a slight chance, but she’d rather be killed escaping than end up as a prisoner of war. She’d never allow herself to be imprisoned by hairless apes.
She looked through the rifle scope once more. The apes were still two hundred meters away but steadily advancing on her position. The squeal from the craft coming in behind her was getting louder. She dropped down into the wheat once more and cursed her worsening luck.
All communication with Morning Grass’ command had been lost at dusk. By that time it was clear the felines were losing. The last order that came through before the blackout was a command to ransack all dwellings for anything that could be used to equip an insurgency and fall back to the mountains south of the settlements. The only hope of preserving their right of self-determination was to abandon open warfare for now and form a guerilla army to resist the occupation.
Morning Grass and her sergeant, He Who Teaches the Cubs to Hunt the Large Game, along with a half a dozen foot soldiers, had volunteered to stay behind to slow the apes down so their captain, He Who Steals the Calves from the Bison Herds in the Middle of the Night, could fall back with the rest of the platoon and find the remnants of any other units with which they could reorganize. Morning Grass was more than happy to allow Calf Stealer to retreat leaving Teacher and her behind to fight.
She had been mentored by Calf Stealer and she respected his social skills. He was the consummate politician and bureaucrat, and his powers of persuasion had brought him much success in the war councils. But, Morning Grass was of the opinion he was out of his element on the battlefield. Not that he was a bad officer. He was likable and fair, and his courage was never in doubt. He had a tendency, however, to over think all of his command decisions.
The felines were outnumbered five to one and faced superior weapons. There was no time to analyze options or consider alternative strategies. An indecisive wonk like Calf Stealer would only be in the way. In Morning Grass’ opinion, he was more useful away from the front lines.
Chamberlain's Folly (The Terra Nova Chronicles) Page 1