Chamberlain's Folly (The Terra Nova Chronicles)

by Robert Dean Hall

  “Those of Calf Stealer’s sort will be useful in organizing the resistance,” Morning Grass thought as she sized up the situation. “They will also prove to be of value later for negotiations.”

  If Morning Grass had anything to say about it, the felines would make any occupation by the apes costly and tiresome.

  Through her phase rifle scope, Morning Grass swept as much of the battlefield as she could without standing fully erect and giving herself away. She eventually caught sight of Teacher hiding outside the apes’ left flank, waiting for them to pass so he could surprise the left-most vehicle from behind. A fully successful mission would net a vehicle or two and some of the apes’ more powerful pulse weaponry for the resistance.

  Teacher told Morning Grass to remain well back and use her phase rifle to disable as many vehicles as she could if Teacher and the rest failed to capture one. When she went to take her rifle out of safety mode upon securing a good sniping position, she found it had jammed.

  By that time, Teacher was too far away to signal, so she abandoned the position and dropped back another one hundred meters, trying to find a fallen feline she could collect a fully functional rifle from. It was no use. Calf Stealer’s soldiers had taken anything that could be salvaged during their retreat.

  Morning Grass was upset Teacher had ordered her to remain hidden while he led the assault on the apes. She wondered if his fondness for her was clouding his judgment in this situation. She had much more battle experience than any of the foot soldiers he took with him.

  Morning Grass was fond of Teacher, also. They had spent many weekend passes together in the drinking establishments scattered among the settlements, pursuing the ‘prams’ that frequented any place where soldiers could be found. The pair’s sexual prowess was legendary, but as yet, none of the ‘prams’ had given them any cubs. She suddenly felt cold and empty as she realized her opportunity to breed with Teacher may have passed forever.

  She watched through the scope as Teacher stalked the vehicle and its occupants from behind. Just as he was ready to pounce, something that reminded Morning Grass of a blue-gray bolt of lightning hit him in the middle of the chest from somewhere to his right. His face became expressionless and he collapsed. The apes quickly threw a police net over him and tossed him into the back of the vehicle he had tried to commandeer.

  “We should have known,” she exclaimed. “These apes’ night-vision goggles are better than those of the creators.”

  Morning Grass cursed their luck as one by one, the rest of the platoon made attempts to pounce on the hairless apes in the vehicles and, one by one, the apes stunned and captured them.

  She knelt lower in the wheat, almost in a panic. She realized if the apes were not surprised by Teacher and the others, they had probably seen her, also. She stayed as low to the ground as possible and silently made her way toward the closest clump of trees.

  “Why had the apes suddenly started taking prisoners instead of using deadly force,” Morning Grass asked herself in the middle of formulating her plan of escape.

  Morning Grass fought hard to keep from falling further into panic. She couldn’t explain it, but to her the thought of being captured by the apes was much more frightening than dying on the battlefield. She only knew she distrusted and hated all humans; the creators especially.

  The creators looked exactly like those humans the felines were fighting now. The felines didn’t know where the creators originally came from because that information wasn’t in the archives they captured during their war for independence. They assumed these humans were also from the home world because they had been warned by the great Black Bear that more would eventually come. The felines knew this information was still contained in the computers of the Ark, but at present there was no way for them to gain an uplink and the few drop shuttles remaining were still under the control of the human remnant on New Australia.

  The creators had always maintained they were socially and economically oppressed by the leadership of the home planet and left it to start a new life on Terra Nova, but, how much of the tale was truthful, the felines couldn’t say. The only thing the felines knew for certain was the creators were arrogant and deceitful beings who thought nothing of splicing the genes of various other species with their own to create moderately intelligent and trainable hybrids to perform tasks considered either too menial or too dangerous for the creators to perform themselves.

  They had created the felines to do the dirty work of exterminating Terra Nova’s original inhabitants, with whom the felines now shared a precarious truce. However, things had not gone according to the creators’ plans.

  The information the felines found in the archives stated the creators intended the felines to be nothing more than brutish foot soldiers; engineered with just enough intelligence to be trainable for combat. The eldest generations of felines had been conceived via in vitro fertilization and bred inside incubation tanks. Natural gestation was impossible. The creators gave the females ovaries, but turned off the gene that caused them to develop wombs in order to control the feline population.

  It wasn’t until the creators were forced by the newly independent felines to genetically engineer and clone ‘the surrogates’; who were a second set of female felines, with ovaries and wombs, but essentially sterile; the hybrids were finally able to reproduce without technological assistance.

  Chapter 2

  Morning Grass watched as the orbital shuttle dropped to the ground behind her. A door opened in the tail section and five more wheeled vehicles rapidly emerged and spread out along the southern edge of the settlement. Her escape to the mountains was now certainly delayed if not cut off completely. She heard an ape shouting over voice amplification equipment. The language was almost identical to the creators’, but of a dialect Morning Grass had not heard before the arrival of this new human military force.

  After the ape shouted, a metallic sounding artificially-generated voice came through the same system. It was an order for her to lay down her weapon and give up. It was electronically translated into the felines’ dialect of the creators’ own language.

  “That’s going to be damned annoying,” Morning Grass told herself as she wondered if the human was going to make her listen to everything he had to say twice.

  “We do not wish to cause you any harm,” the artificial voice continued in perfect feline after the human spoke in his unfamiliar but mostly intelligible dialect. “Your high command has entered into a cease fire agreement with us and they order you to surrender so you may be rejoined to your unit. You will not be harmed.”

  “Surrender to hairless apes? I think not. The high command may have surrendered to these deceitful humans, but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow them to take me alive.”

  Morning Grass kept moving swiftly to the west. She was almost out of the wheat.

  There would be almost ten meters of open space between the edge of the wheat and the trees she was making for. There was a small stream beyond the trees and once she was past that, there was a light forest the creators had planted that stretched for at least three kilometers toward the south. She could use that cover to get to the mountains and join with Calf Stealer and the rest of her unit. She would have to leave it up to Teacher and the rest to shake off the effects of the stun, get out of the nets and make their own escape.

  Morning Grass waited for the right opportunity to cross the open area between the wheat and the trees.

  One of the ground vehicles to her north was less than thirty meters away and had a clear view of the open space. Even though there were no search lights currently shining in her direction, the apes would see her break for it from that distance. She would have to run fast and get across the stream quickly.

  She would also not be able to make her way directly south. She would have to first move in a direction that would enable her to rapidly put as much distance as possible between her and the humans before attempting to head for the mountains.

  As she made her
break, the humans closest to Morning Grass pursued her on foot into the trees. She ran in a north-westerly direction after clearing the stream. She reasoned her natural ability to see in low light should enable her to maneuver through the trees much more easily than the humans, even with artificial night vision equipment. That advantage was soon lost, however.

  The humans launched observation drones that took up regular positions above the forest. Once in position, the drones hovered and emitted bright white light that illuminated everything below to almost daytime brilliance. Morning Grass looked around for the thickest undergrowth she could find. She dove in and lay still.

  A group of five humans passed her slowly. They stayed almost shoulder to shoulder with each other. They were in closed formation and rotated in a tight circle as they moved. The formation gave them almost three-hundred and sixty degrees of vision at any one time. Morning Grass waited on them to pass and did not engage. Over the course of an hour, three more groups walked past her hiding place.

  In the bright light from the drones she could see, just as in the creators, there was a great racial diversity in these humans. There were many more shades of coloring in their skin and hair than there were in the native Terra Novans, who tended to be mostly olive-skinned with light brown to black hair.

  After the last group of humans walked slowly by, Morning Grass heard a short siren blast and listened carefully as their communicators crackled. She could make out some of what was being said, but not all. She was certain, though, the patrol was being asked for a report. They replied they found nothing.

  Morning Grass silently rejoiced when the order was given to pull out and the patrol made its way slowly and cautiously back toward the settlements.

  After about ten minutes, the drones hovering over the forest dispersed and their lights were extinguished. Morning Grass lay still with her eyes closed for a while to help get them re-accustomed to the darkness.

  Once she could see clearly, she carefully moved from her hiding place to the base of the tallest tree she could find. She reasoned as close as she was to the edge of the settlements, she should be able to obtain some valuable reconnaissance before deciding whether to head due south or find a more indirect, but safer route to the encampments being set up in the hills.

  She tested the sturdiness of the lowest branches before climbing slowly and quietly up the tree. It was called a ‘sugar maple’ and was part of the flora the creators brought with them from the home world.

  Morning Grass was about twelve meters off the ground when she started her visual scan of the activity going on in the settlements. The humans were setting up camp and most of the vehicles were being corralled into small groups. Troops were scurrying back and forth from the transport at the southern edge of the settlements to the center carrying supplies and what looked like electronic equipment.

  Morning Grass reached around her back to grab her phase rifle so she could get a closer look at the electronics through the scope. She could not readily identify what she saw and decided a better use of her time would be to try and find where Teacher and the others were being held. Daylight was coming soon and she must get out of the tree and farther into the forest before it arrived.

  She slowly scanned the settlements with the scope making mental notes of every activity that looked as if it was even superficially involved with guarding or transporting prisoners. None of the temporary shelters the humans were erecting had bars or force emitters around the doors or windows.

  After about five minutes, Morning Grass started to get an uncomfortable feeling she wasn’t alone. She dropped the phase rifle to her side and looked around below her. She saw no movement on the forest floor or heard any rustling in the underbrush.

  The slight whirr of an electric motor somewhere to her left startled Morning Grass. She grabbed her phase rifle and quickly twisted counter-clockwise to find a drone observing her from a distance of ten meters.

  As she lifted the rifle to fire, one of the branches she was standing on gave way with a loud crack. Morning Grass felt herself falling backwards. She lost her grip on the rifle while desperately grasping for a branch. She tumbled through leaves and branches for three or four meters and fell into a large fork in the tree that broke her fall, but not before cracking some ribs and taking her breath away.

  She wrapped her arms around the tree just above the fork, trying to keep from sliding out and falling further. She was dizzy and felt as if she were about to lose consciousness. She tried hard to take a full breath to clear her head, but couldn’t. She looked just above her and saw her phase rifle hanging precariously by the strap. She could not reach it.

  Below her, Morning Grass could hear the shouts of human soldiers who had been alerted to her presence by the drone and were now closing in on her location. She tried to get herself together enough to climb down from the maple tree and run deeper into the forest. Adrenaline was starting to clear her head, but it was also making her more aware of her broken ribs. As she gripped the tree to pull herself to a standing position, the sharp pain from the broken ribs shot through her whole body. She had to fight to keep from screaming.

  Once standing, she let go with one arm to reach for the rifle as the humans got dangerously close. She almost had a hold on the barrel when the strap slipped from the branch holding the rifle and it fell.

  Morning Grass followed the tumbling rifle with her eyes. It brushed a few small sticks on the way down and then solidly struck a thick branch that caromed it into the tree trunk. She was stunned and blinded by the concussion and white flash as the phase rifle vaporized.

  The last two things Morning Grass felt were a sudden numbness in her left extremities and the sensation of flight. She was unconscious when she hit the ground.

  Chapter 3

  31-August-2409

  A cadet raised her hand.

  “Yes, Cadet,” Zheng asked. “Do you have a question?”

  “Yes Sir, Colonel,” she replied and rose to introduce herself.

  “I am Cadet Childress, Sir, and I was wondering just how much of your description of these events is based upon actual documentation and how much is speculation?”

  Zheng laughed out loud.

  He had often been asked that question both in and out of the classroom. He was considered to be an expert on that period of time, but he had to admit there were large holes in what he knew. The Central Government of the League of Aligned Planets refused to release most of the first-hand accounts of that era. The excuse was that there was nothing of any historical significance outside the officially reported story.

  The Central Government also maintained their sealing of documents that might shine more light on the events of that period in human history was necessary for the security and well-being of the League. “For the greater good,” was the phrase often repeated with the fervor of a religious homily, although no good explanation how the truth might harm things was ever forthcoming.

  Zheng had been able to piece together quite a bit of the story from his own personal research, however, and he was not afraid to share it with his cadets even though the Central Government was adamant about telling its citizenry there was no benefit to anyone outside the government possessing full knowledge of the period.

  “I can safely say very little of my lecture today could be considered speculative, Cadet,” Zheng said. He thought for a moment before adding, “I will leave it at that.”

  “Understood, Colonel,” Childress said. “But, if I could ask one more question?”

  “Of course, Cadet,” Zheng answered. “What is it?”

  Cadet Childress looked around before continuing. Some of the other cadets encouraged her to speak up. She turned back toward Zheng and swallowed.

  “Many of us, Colonel,” she said meekly. “Especially those of us from Earth…” She looked around again and pointed a few of her classmates out. “Well, Sir. We’ve been told your ideas about the colonization period are just a bit on the fantastic side.”

  Z
heng laughed again.

  Humans, especially those from Earth, had been telling their children for years Zheng was somewhat of a crackpot and a media hound. However, it didn’t keep them from buying his books. They also seldom complained when they found out their children were attending his history classes at the Academy.

  “I’m sorry, Cadet,” he said. “I thought you told me you had a question.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Childress said without apology for barely avoiding ad hominem territory. “Is it possible we don’t really need to care who the creators were or what motivated them?”

  The Historian gestured for her to elaborate.

  “If you are correct,” she responded, also meekly. “And, it is true the Central Government is hiding something sinister about the goings on at that time, what good does it do me to know about it? Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but anyone involved is long gone and, in its current form, the Central Government is doing quite well by its citizens.”

  Zheng answered the cadet confidently and straightforwardly. He had dealt with this mindset constantly throughout his career as an educator.

  “My answer to you, Cadet, would be in the form of a question of my own,” Zheng said. “Wouldn’t it be preferable for the government to allow you the dignity of making that determination by yourself?”

  Zheng moved his eyes from the nervous Childress and looked around the class.

  “Your parents accept that they have the responsibility to do everything they can to protect you from evil and harm,” he stated. “And, often it means they must hide information from you until you are mature enough to utilize it properly.”

  “Eventually, they must allow you to start making life decisions on your own, even if you make the wrong ones. So, as you mature, they share more and more of that information with you, and it is up to you to evaluate it and assimilate it. Once you reach adulthood, your parents have to allow you to stand on the foundation they built.”