The Monkey and Squirrel fight for freedom. (17 page)

Chapter 15

Repercussions

Earth watch, observed these goings on as usual, putting out a summary on the net each day.

Tman was allowed out of hospital, between treatments but had been told strictly no physical work, so met up with Chatty, at the Mexican canteen.

“Hi Chatty, what do you make of the reactions, to our last e-mail?”

“Not as bad as we feared, but bad enough we're not going to be responsible for triggering a war between the western power block and China. The west going cap in hand to the Chinese, for help with finding us has defused the current tension between them. But if they can persuade the Chinese to make a real effort, they could find us relatively quickly.” replied Chatty.

“That could be a problem, but that calls for a bit more misdirection.” signed Tman.

“Delay the inevitable, you mean. Lay false trails in the e-mails?” asked Chatty.

“I think they will be expecting us to try that sort of thing, they'll analyse any e-mail to death. I was thinking of something more direct, at the minimum they will be sending out search probes to all candidate planets. I thought why not have a couple of fighters loitering around Jupiter, perhaps Uranus and Neptune also. Use them to destroy the probes before they get into observation range, logistics would be a problem long term. We could initially use the mine raider to deploy fighters and a detection net of satellites to Jupiter orbit. Equip the fighters with extra fuel tanks, no drones and a small ion engine for non-engagement manoeuvring. That should give them sufficient endurance to hang around for a year or two without needing to refuel.” Tman explained.

“What about the probes they send here, do we hide from them?” asked Chatty.

“No they also have to be destroyed, there is no way we can hide from a purposely designed probe actively looking for us. Those astronomic ones that they tried to re-purpose to the task are not really equipped for it and we have hacked them all anyway.” responded Tman.

“Wherever they send probes we destroy them, to keep the humans in the dark for as long as possible. What about the Kuiper belt, will they bother?” asked Chatty.

“Probably not, even our probes haven't got there yet, those Neptune bound are still a couple of years away.” replied Tman.

“Do you really think it would be worthwhile for us to send fighters.” asked Chatty.

“Certainly anything we do to slow them down is worthwhile, it can't harm us and might make them think again. I expect the spy probes they'd use are small low mass jobs, launched by mass driver from the asteroids. With one of those large ion engine boosters, fuelled for constant acceleration it could get to Neptune about five years after launch. If we do the same with our distraction fighters, let us call this variant, using its ion engine with external fuel tanks. Our fighters could be there a couple of years ahead of those probes, the fighter would discard the extra tanks before action.” signed Tman explaining his vision.

“Not a high priority then?” asked Chatty.

“We would only need to send them off when we knew their probes were on the way. Another idea, would be use the scoop ships for emergency rapid deployment of our fighters.” suggested Tman.

“Would that be in addition to your power relay, enabling very rapid deployment, without having to lug around the extra engines, tanks and stuff.” asked Chatty.

“You've obviously been thinking about this, in chamber I'd guess.” signed Tman.

“Yes we look for problems to solve, even if they haven't happened yet. We feel duty bound to stay for at least an hour that can lead to some interesting proposals we have discovered.” signed Chatty.

“Can't say I'm surprised, the same sort of thing happened when I was in chamber myself. That's why we have all these fighters, with the flexible self adjusting attack/defence programming, loaded with really nasty weapons. Soon to be a lot nastier with your force multiplier.” observed Tman.

“With the fighters using their own power plants to make up for the transmission losses, the number of relays can be doubled and effectiveness maintained. Alternatively our fighters can boost each other’s power at need, so each can add about ninety percent of its power to another.” reported Chatty.

“Making it appear even more formidable than it actually is. The probe detects one fighter and is then destroyed at a greater range than expected. I think it would be better to keep some surprises in reserve, destroy those probes at no more than ninety percent of normal maximum range. Fifty percent would be better, otherwise when they come to exterminate us they'll be tooled up for the job.” optioned Tman.

“I'll take that to chamber, we've been thinking in terms of scaring them off. But this push to find us is because they fear we could go back to Earth looking for payback, we'd somehow forgotten that when humans are scared they attack.” signed Chatty.

“We can also be guilty of wishful thinking, humans are a problem we just want to go away. Frightening how human we can be at times, even with our obedience programming disabled.” replied Tman.

“Probably due to our shared genetic inheritance.” observed Chatty.

“More likely culture, our entire lives have been shaped by human knowledge, culture and actions, we are only at the beginning of creating our own. It will take several generations to create a culture that is truly ours. We'll be dependent on human knowledge and research until we are sufficiently established for ours to be comparable in scope, depth and reach. But the foundation will always be human, we have to turn it into something solid then build on it.” optioned Tman.

“We're running research programs now, processors, electronics, programming, energy, medical, genetics, new materials and weapons development. Are just the ones I can name off the top of my head.” signed Chatty.

“A good example they are all in applied sciences, to meet our urgent needs. All the original research we do is within the hobby projects, blue sky thinking, pure research and theorem development is only a small part of that. We are too few in number to do more than the essentials dictated by circumstances; there would have to be millions of us to compete head to head with Humankind.”explained Tman.

“You really have had too much time on your hands! We've got a long way to go, our population now stands at twelve thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven. Within ten years if not too many of us die, it could be twenty thousand. To date we have had sixteen die of old age and two from cancers, and if those two had gone to medical before they collapsed, they probably would have been saved.” exclaimed Chatty.

“Effectively working themselves to death.” observed Tman.

“Even with the compulsory rest breaks, and new routine medical checks, it still happens.” signed Chatty.

“We do have some bad habits that need stamping out, medical never told me my chance of recovery was good.” agreed Tman.

“That's because they don't want you to be complacent and take liberties with your health.”                      

“I have always been as careful as conditions allow. Anyway have I had any replies to the last e-mail?”

“None from your actual friends, plenty from security, most of whom are pretending to be your friends and asking the sort of questions, that could locate us. There was one from Jimmy, it just said thanks. We could use the back door to put in an encryption key, so only they can read the e-mail, the spies will only know it's been sent.” answered Chatty.

“No that could lead to a lot of trouble for them, I will compose another, you can send it from Georges home computer, he deserves it.”signed Tman.

“What about your former owner?” asked Chatty.

“She was living off the income from the trust fund her parents had set up for her. The trust fund and her parents were heavenly exposed in the space sector when we did our runner. Both went bust in a big way, she has to work for a living these days. I could send her a cryptic e-mail, sort of 'what you did to me, made liberty or death my only choice'. What do you think?” asked Tman.

“Security will be all over her, demanding to know what she did, she'll have to tell them every grisly detail. Will she find it embarrassing?” asked Chatty.

“More than a little I hope, I think it was just fun to her when no one knew. I like the idea of her being fearful, squirming with embarrassment as the truth of her behaviour is dragged from her, knowing how she will be judged.” explained Tman with thin smile.

“So even security, would be shocked by her cruelty?” asked Chatty.

“At her age at that time, I was a present for her thirteenth birthday; my ordeal lasted three years eight months and nineteen days. When I was taken away, my only thought was wherever I'm going it can't be any worse, and I was right. I can see my biographer just coming in, I'll slide out the door before he sees me, catch you soon.” signed Tman already moving.

“Yes, soon.” Chatty managed before Tman was gone.

“Chatty was getting up to leave, when Ernest asked “Have I missed Tman?”

“Yes he's just left, and I'm going now, I have work to do.” signed Chatty.

“Ho well I'll have to make an appointment with him, medical don't like me visiting him during treatment, they say it over stresses him.” signed Ernest.

“That's not surprising, anyway we'll have to catch up another time, see you.” signed Chatty.

With that Chatty went to work.

At the next chamber meeting she raised Tman's concerns and suggestions, they added their own ideas to round out a plan. Handing it over to the relevant teams ready to slot into their schedules, timed so everything would be ready when it was needed.

Six months later Earth sent out its probes, two to Jupiter, two to Saturn, one each to Uranus and Neptune. The Newp fighters were sent out on their one way missions, to lie in wait for their prey. Their programming allowed crewed ships one chance to retreat when challenged, by the broadcast message, 'You are not permitted in this space, remove yourselves or be destroyed when in range'. The probes would be destroyed the moment they were within fifty percent of laser range.

In Tman's next e-mail he told his old crew mates he was sorry for all the fuss the e-mails had triggered. It was why he had stopped sending them for a time, but as search probes had been launched, he may as well resume. Tman then wrote we have adopted a name for ourselves, Newp. It was a bit of an accident, we initially called ourselves the New People, but that got abbreviated to Newp, now everyone uses it by default. Next he told them how Earth's power blocks had been arming for space warfare. But it looked like they had settled their differences for now and were sending out probes to the outer planets.

Chamber has resolved that they would not allow probes to spy on them. Any invasion would be stopped with force if necessary, they were never going to be victims again. Any attackers would pay a high price for their stupidity. Please reply I don't think it's possible for our exchanges to make things worse, we don't hate all humans. Just those individuals who have given us cause personally, you can probably name a few candidates. Irrational idiots like George who have been a real pain, we love to wind up.

Most of the companies involved in the slave system having gone bankrupt, has satisfied our general need for pay back. Unfortunately security's paranoia coupled with political opportunism, means we are forced to build fighters rather than schools for our growing population. Our motto is freedom or die trying, we have paid a high price up front for our achievements, reprogramming your own brain is hard to do.

We have one hundred and thirty seven psychopaths locked up, for everyone's safety. They hate everybody, but especially humans, every one of them has volunteered for fighter duty. I shudder to think of the damage they could do if they got their hands on a fighter, it doesn't bare thinking about.

It also has caused the experiments required to develop my interstellar vessel, to be pushed to the back of the queue, as have most other non-urgent projects. Our priorities are survival and finishing our homes, our habitats are the only homes we've ever had. We are preparing places alternative hiding places if necessity forces us to retreat, naturally we have a rear guard of volunteers.

If we have to run, we will unleash the one hundred and thirty seven who have all ready volunteered, to buy us time. Maximising the cost to our attackers by any and all means available. But it shouldn't come to that, we hope that sane rational people like yourselves, will one day be in the majority. Given enough time maybe the majority of humanity will one day be prepared to meet us as equals.

Some of my friends regard me as a hopeless dreamer, saying we won’t be in the same epoch when that happens. The majority feeling is we should go where humans cannot follow, make humanity irrelevant to our future. The basis of popular support for our interstellar vessel development projects, required before we can even begin to build interstellar vessels.

One of our very good engineers has produced plans to modify our homes to make them into interstellar generation ships. Personally I favour finding out what resources are available before we go anywhere, astronomy is insufficient for our needs. We have decided to increase the gravity effect by fifteen percent at our accommodation levels so we'll be better able to cope if we ever need to work on a planarity surface.