Jethro had prepared his speech but being offered the extra time sounded good to him. “Thank you for the offer of extra time. I would like to present it tomorrow, please, your honour.”
The senior judge nodded. “The court will adjourn and return at the same time tomorrow.”
Jethro was taken back to his cell. There was little to say to his defence team so they left and planned to meet before the session tomorrow.
chapter 43
Jethro was alone in his cell with his thoughts. Escape was impossible. He could have pleaded guilty and maybe got a reduced sentence in the mines on the far side of the Moon. Maybe he could escape from there but that was unlikely. And anyway he knew the aliens were coming. They were going to defeat Mars then they were going to invade the Moon and defeat that, so he didn’t have much hope for those on the Moon, including his troop.
Then the aliens would attack the Earth. And he and his troop were the only ones, as far as he knew, who had come face to face with the aliens and survived. Earth would not be ready and Jethro could see no other result than an alien victory. What would that mean for the Earth?
From what he had seen on Mars it could mean the end of the human race. He had seen no evidence of the aliens taking prisoners. He dare not think about his parents having seen what happened to Maddy’s parents. The turmoil they must be going through now when they heard from the Admiral what was happening to him. Then an alien invasion. Jethro tried to blank them from his thoughts for the moment because it meant he couldn’t think straight. Not there was any straight thinking left for him to do.
Jethro knew he was sacrificing himself to give Earth a chance. His statement should get the message out that the aliens were coming and that might give the Earth some preparation time. If not, Earth was doomed and everyone would die including him. By sacrificing his defence to make a statement he hoped he could convince enough people in that court room that there were aliens and they were coming to destroy everything on Earth.
Or was he going mad? Was this a dream? He tried to control those thoughts too.
The cell door opened. Two guards entered with an interview chair and secured him to it. This involved shackling his ankles to the front legs and strapping his hands to the two arms of the chair. Jethro didn’t resist because the guards would win and he would end up with a face and body full of bruises. When he was secured the guards left him alone.
The cell door opened again and a cloaked figure came in and made sure the cell door was closed before he removed the hood of the cloak. It was one of the judges, an Admiral.
Why is he here? What does he want?
Jethro said nothing but examined him closely as he removed the cloak. He was in full number ones beneath the cloak. An old man carrying some extra weight which showed in the ill-fitting dress jacket and with no hair on his head, his face was expressionless and his eyes were glazed over revealing nothing to Jethro. He sat opposite and started breathing deeply. What was he doing?
The Admiral looked as though he was going into some sort of trance as he closed his eyes.
Then a strange feeling came over Jethro as if something was trying to enter his mind. Jethro struggled but knew he would never break the bonds that held him to the chair.
“Hey guards.” Jethro shouted even though he knew they couldn’t hear him.
CCTV. Jethro looked around his cell, as he thought he was being videoed twenty four seven, but he had never spotted a camera.
He struggled and shifted in his chair but resistance was futile.
Whatever was trying to get into his mind was having problems. Jethro remembered his resistance to interrogation training. He had to think strong thoughts, something that would occupy his mind. His parents. He imagined Mum on the farm tending her kitchen garden. It was autumn and there would be an abundance of vegetables and fruit to pick and pickle and freeze and store to last out the winter months.
Mum would put some aside for her neighbours and some for the harvest festival fete, to sell for church funds. She was good like that. She even taught others how to grow their own vegetables, because it was a skill that was being forgotten with the advent of food replicators being able to make anything. Food replicators could exactly replicate the taste of anything, but they couldn’t yet replicate the smell of fresh food from the ground, nor the texture of vegetables and fruit prepared on a chopping board, so gardening was coming back into fashion for those in the sticks who had enough land to grow stuff.
Jethro could feel the pressure on his mind ease and he relaxed.
Immediately thoughts entered his head. They were not command and control thoughts, they were communication thoughts.
You can’t resist me forever.
Jethro was now desperate to get free from the chair but he couldn’t. He tried shouting again and again but nobody came.
The Admiral still appeared to be asleep or in a trance.
We cannot have you telling your stories in the court. We need your Earth. We need your resources. Your Earth is full of resources. When the Admiral leaves you will be under our control and you will not make your statement.
Jethro was frantic now but he wasn’t getting anywhere.
“You bastards. You’ll never take Earth. We’re too powerful for you.”
It was trying to get into his mind again. Trying to control him but that was a level deeper than merely sending him messages. He was not going to kill himself. Why would he? Then he realised whatever was trying to get into his mind was going to try to make him kill himself. He had to resist.
It would be harvest time on the farm so Dad would have a lot of work to do. Jethro wondered how he would get on without an upgrade to his cyber arm and cyber leg. The twins would help him out. They were always on hand to help just as Jethro helped them on their farm, repairing their farm machinery and hoverbikes. Dad would be OK.
“What’s the problem?” The Admiral said, but the voice was wrong so Jethro knew it wasn’t the Admiral speaking.
I can’t get inside his head, he is resisting.
Jethro knew that were two things in the cell with him and the Admiral. One was inside the Admiral’s head and was controlling him. The other had come into the cell inside the Admiral and was now trying to get inside Jethro’s head to control him. It wanted him to kill himself to prevent him from making his statement in court. Jethro was not going to let it.
“Get inside his head now.” The Admiral’s voice told the second presence.
I can’t.
“Try harder.”
Jethro felt a massive jolt inside his head as if he had been electrocuted but as soon as it started it stopped and he felt something invisible slide down his front onto the floor in front of his chair. He looked down and there was nothing there but he had definitely felt it. Then he saw a leak appearing from nothing and forming a puddle on the floor and he noticed his own clothes had a wet stain down the front.
The Admiral stood up.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he kept repeating in the strange voice.
Jethro watched the wet puddle grow in the floor.
The Admiral shouted at him in his strange voice. “You’ve killed it. You’ve killed it.” Then the Admiral put his hands around Jethro’s throat and tried to strangle him, but his hands were weak and he was unable to do it.
Jethro heard the voice from the Admiral say, No. Do not kill it here. We will be discovered. Leave him. They won’t believe his stories.
The Admiral put his cloak back on and he pressed a button on a communicator he produced from his pocket and the guards came to let him out and release Jethro from the chair.
Jethro said nothing to the guards but when he was alone again in his cell he shook for a long time.
He thought of his parents back on the farm in Devon.
Dad was right.
Jethro hoped there would be a good Soy crop this year. It would see Mum and Dad through the winter and the Soy wine would buy a lot of favours with neighbours and local official
s.
Here I am. One of my last nights and all I can think about is Mum and Dad and the farm. I guess I will always be a farmer.
Jethro got little sleep that night.
chapter 44
The News
Ted: “And finally. We have been asked by the Earth government to read out a public health notice.”
Alice: “Thanks Ted. Because of the recent spate of deaths to fishermen and fisher-women, the Humboldt Squid has been declared a menace to the public. Fishing for the Humboldt Squid is no longer allowed except by license. And licenses will only be awarded to boats in excess of fifty feet long.“
Ted: “Yes. We have our resident Squid expert Professor Carol Amari in the studio. So what do you think of this Professor?”
Cal: “I’ve always said it’s about time the government did something about them. These Squid are vicious dangerous animals. In fact they’re more alien than animal.”
Alice: “More alien than animal. I like that. Maybe this is where all those alien invasion conspiracy theorists get their ideas from.”
Ted: “If we’re going to be invaded by anything, then Squid would be fun.”
Alice: “Fun? I don’t think being invaded would be fun Ted.”
Ted: “Sorry Alice. I didn’t quite mean it that way. I meant they would be easy to defeat because they’re only Squid.”
Alice: “Only Squid. Yes. Thanks Ted. So that was World News for today. Remember people, unlike other news channels we deal in facts. We don’t make this up.”
chapter 45
Everyone was in the Court room as yesterday standing and waiting for the judges but they didn’t come. Instead a Warrant Officer came through the doors and handed a piece of paper to a Court official. The Court official read the paper then cleared his throat.
“Court will be adjourned until this afternoon. Please return the prisoner back to his cell.”
What was going on? Jethro was nervous enough. He had been over his speech again and again overnight and tried to blank the incident with the Admiral from his mind. It was bad enough but he wasn’t allowed to have any material. The speech had to be from his head.
After lunch which Jethro hoped would settle his stomach the Court reconvened. This time the judges did come in but not the Admiral who had visited Jethro. He was replaced by a Brigadier General from the Space Army. What happened to the Admiral? Maybe he had a stomach ache. Jethro tried to concentrate on his speech. He didn’t want anything to distract him from what he was going to say.
The formalities were over and Jethro was given the floor.
“I am a soldier not a politician so I don’t know how to lie, obfuscate or deceive. I only know how to tell the truth.” This opening statement caused murmuring amongst the prosecution team and the court officials, and even the three judges looked at each other.
Jethro continued. “I received a communication from Mars from a close friend of mine, whom I have known since I first went to school. She came from a farm near to my own parents’ farm in Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor. She moved to Mars after the First Galaxy war between Mars and Earth was settled by the famous Treaty of the Moon because Mars wanted farmers.
“I was serving as a junior officer on the Blackbird EMV tasked with determining the feasibility of mining various Asteroids, when I received a communication from her by private station. She said that her farm had been attacked by aliens and both her parents were killed by them and she was hiding out in a bunker from the aliens.”
Jethro had to stop talking because even though the Court Room was only full of officials there were animated conversations going on throughout the court.
“Silence in court.” The official had to shout. “Any more of this and the Prosecution and Defence teams and most officials will be removed from the court.”
“This was about the time Earth ceased to have communications with Mars. We were ordered by Earth to go and investigate. We landed just outside Uruk and the Marines divided into two teams Major Misere led the bigger team of twelve into Uruk and I led a small team of six to my friend’s farm.
“We found my friend hiding in a bunker but no evidence of her farm, no bodies, no buildings and no crops. My friend had video of the attack which she gave to me. Both I and the team watched the aliens attack her farm, kill her parents, and eat them, then systematically strip the farm of everything. I have seen the evidence. I took the evidence to Moonbase. The fact that nobody here has seen it, does not mean it does not exist.
“We returned to the Blackbird which was under attack. We fought them off. This is all recorded in our helmet cams. Is it not suspicious to members of the court that there is no footage at all from any of my team’s helmet cams? If I was a traitor would there not be some fake helmet cam footage to prove my innocence? Instead you have nothing.
“I took my team to Uruk which was under heavy attack by aliens. I found Major Misere who told me his entire team was gone and soon after I found him, he died. He gave me his helmet cam footage and a recording of his verbal report. Where is that report?
“Someone in this room knows the truth.
“Someone in this room knows that there is evidence of aliens invading Mars and they have suppressed it.
“Someone in this room wants Earth to believe that aliens do not exist so Earth will be unprepared when they come. And your honour, ladies and gentlemen the aliens are coming to invade Earth and unless we prepare for them with the evidence and knowledge I and my team have collected they will win.
“Some of you may wonder why I have chosen to make this statement rather than offer a defence. There are two reasons. One I have no defence because someone, possibly someone in this court room, has made sure that there is no evidence to prove I am right, so I could not possibly win an argument.
“The second reason follows on from the first.” Jethro was speaking quietly and slowly. “If I’m right and there are aliens. And they invade the Earth then I am going to die anyway. Earth is not prepared for these aliens and all the things that I and my team have learnt about the aliens will not be known and Earth will be defeated and we will all die. Every man woman and child on this planet will die. The human race will die. So I am making this statement not as a defence. I am making this statement in the hope that I convince someone that I am right. I am making this statement in the hope that someone hears me and does something about it. I am making this statement in an effort to save the human race.” Jethro sat down.
There was no public in the Court, only officials, but it was in uproar. There were arguments going on between almost everyone in the room except for Jethro’s defence team. The Court officials eventually regained order enough for the senior judge to make a statement.
“You have just heard the statement of a man accused of treason who denies his guilt and comes up with this story with no evidence whatsoever. However we must abide by the law and his statement will be filed under Top Secret Earth Eyes A only. This means only those with the right security clearance can read it and there are severe constraints about anyone revealing what they read. To that end I should make it perfectly clear that anyone in this room who reveals any of the statement you have just heard to the public you will yourself be charged with Treason.”
Jethro expected this but he knew as well as anyone else in the Court room that within twenty four hours or less it would be on the Mesh. But apart from the conspiracy theorists and the young would anyone believe it?
The Court was adjourned for the judges to consider their verdict. They returned after only thirty minutes.
The senior judge placed a black silk square on his hat and pronounced, “in light of the fact that the defendant has been unable to present any evidence to contradict the charge of Treason it is the verdict of this court that the defendant, Sub Lieutenant Jethro Tull C1533536F of the Earth Defence Force, is guilty of treason and as we are currently at a state of war with Mars, I have no option but to award him the death penalty.”
He looked directly at Jethro.
“You will be taken from this Court room to a waiting cell and within forty eight hours you will be hanged by the neck.”
The End
What Next?
Well done for reading to the end of this first book of three in this story in the series “The Legend of Jethro Tull.”
I have completed all three books and they will all be available from Amazon. If you bought in to the series early, book two will be published in early August 2019 and book three will be published in early September 2019.
I have also planned and am currently writing, books four to seven in this series which will be published early 2020.
I will be grateful if you can find the time to write a review of this book on Amazon.
Thank you for reading the first book in “The Legend of Jethro Tull” series.
Red Dust of Mars Page 16
