The Feminine Queendom Charlie’s War 52

© Beverly Taff

List of Characters.

Charlie Sage Maths and electronics genius.
Shirley Sage Charlies elderly mother
Chloe Charlie’s one time early school friend.
Josephine Flint Surgeon and associate of Chloe’s.
Mrs Jane Anston Director of Anston Aerospace.
Ronnie Garage mechanic at top of lane
Pauline Garage owner, Ronnie’s sister.
Briony Pauline’s teenaged daughter.
Billy Pauline’s middle son.
Abigail (Abby) Pauline’s youngest daughter.
‘Poppy’ Charlie’s little micro-runabout.
‘Doris’ The armoured mobile home.
‘Lady’ Chloe’s Sports Car.
Dawn Charlie’s armoured spaceship.
Colonel Wilson Vindictive misanthropist doctor.
Margaret Thomas ‘Failed’ police security guard.
Sally. 1st Oz Special forces trooper
Jacky 2nd Oz Special forces trooper.
Juliet Charlie’s Mal engineering assistant.
Laura The second mate of the Second Dawn
Kate (Katherine Bergson) The Australian defence minister.
Lieutenant Engadine Asi Charlie’s second prisoner.

Chapter 52

Charlie almost trotted across the base parade ground in his haste to get to his spaceship Dawn and the surgeon was struggling to keep up.

“You take huge strides!” She protested, “slow down.”
“Sorry, I forget my height. Well we’re almost there now. Look there’s still a drizzle of doughnuts around her.”

“That looks like a security ring,” the surgeon offered.

“Marvellous!” Charlie snorted. “They slap a cordon around her but my prisoner can’t even have one guard.”

“I suppose they have their priorities.” She hazarded.

“Yeah. And I’ve got mine,” Charlie remarked as he unconcernedly went to step past the cordon.

“Sorry! You can’t go through the cordon Ma-am!” A guard explained to the surgeon.

“Oh! And why not?” Charlie asked.

“I was talking to the officer not you.” The guard replied pugnaciously.

“Well now you’re talking to the captain and commander of this ship. Explanation – now! - Soldier!”

“My orders, she’s to be detained for inspection.”

“You address me as Sir soldier!” Charlie fumed as his irritation mounted.

He was coming to the end of his tether with the blind, feminista attitude to his masculinity.

“They are my orders, - sir!”

“Who gave you those orders?”

“My Sergeant, - Sir.”

“Well I’m giving you fresh orders. Step aside while I board my ship!”

“I can’t sir. Orders are orders.”

The surgeon could see Charlie getting slowly angrier and she tugged at his sleeve.

“Come on Captain Sage, we’ll speak to the general about this.”

“We damned well won’t,” Charlie cursed. “I’ll sort this here and now!”

“Don’t do anything stupid, the doctor urged. They’re armed.”

“Oh nothing stupid doctor. More demonstrable than stupid. Let’s step back a couple of hundred metres and return to the parade ground while I get hold of my beloved wife.”

“What are you going to do now?” She pressed nervously.

“You’ll see. There’s more than one way to navigate a ship.”

“Oh, oh. Go on, surprise me.”

They returned to the parade ground where Charlie advised the doctor to wait by the saluting rostrum while he re-entered the ICU. There he met Chloe and Juliet who had ensconced Lieutenant Asi in her wheelchair with drips directly attached.

“Hello darling. Where’s Dawn?” Chloe wondered.

“Small change of plan we’re leaving from the parade ground square.”

“Why?” Chloe asked.

“Pass me your phone again please, darling. I'll show you.”

Chloe dug it out and handed it to her husband who immediately dialled in a long string of numbers and letters.

“What ‘choo doing babes?” She asked.

“Watch.” Charlie replied as he worked the arrows. “The bastards are trying to deny me access to Dawn; well – somebody is.”

“And?” Chloe frowned.

“Just watch, - look over the hangar roof towards the flight parking apron.”

Chloe and Juliet turned to look through the window and were amazed to see Dawn slowly rise from behind the hangars then turn and head for the parade ground.

“How d’ you do that?” Chloe squealed.

“It’s a little programme I installed in Dawn’s nav-pack some time ago. Nobody would think to look on your phone once they know she’s my ship. Macho-feminista psychology in reverse. If the bitches ever went looking for a remote-control device they would invariably think I had one hidden away on me. They could never conceive of me trusting my wife to remain utterly loyal and carry the remote.”

He handed Chloe the phone and showed her the arrow keys.

“It’s easy, it works just like the video games. Dial in the forty digit and letter pass code, then you operate her just like a video game. She’s all set up; so go on, land her on the parade ground.”

Chloe took the mobile phone, cautiously tested the controls and within moments, she was landing Dawn as delicately as a bee on a flower. A huge grin spread across her face.

“That’s fantastic Charlie!”

“Bloody brilliant Boss!” Juliet added as he watched with equal delight.

“Right! Come on, toot sweet! Let’s get out of here!” Charlie urged.

Within moments, Charlie had grabbed Lieutenant Asi’s wheelchair and presented at the rear clamshell doors of Dawn. Then he took the mobile off Chloe and pressed another code to open the doors and within seconds, the three crew plus Lieutenant Asi, followed by the base surgeon were scrambling aboard Dawn. Charlie was ascending even before the rear clamshell doors were still closed.

Once well clear of the ground, he paused to study the pandemonium on the ground as the clamshells shut with their familiar armoured ‘clunk.’ It was in the nick of time as all five inside the ship heard the staccato rattle of a hail of automatic fire, as bullets bounced uselessly off the armoured hull.

“Somebody definitely doesn’t like us. I think we’d better skedaddle!” Charlie grinned as he motioned to the others to fasten themselves securely.

“You’d better secure the lieutenant Juliet. Strap her wheelchair to the heavy handrail on the airlock door.

“Okay boss.”

Charlie smiled inwardly, Juliet’s cheery ‘Okay Boss,’ had already become a sort of talisman for the Dawn.

With this done, Charlie accelerated steadily away towards the west and south. Even so, there was a parting shot as a heavier shell exploded from the barrel of a more alert tank commander. Fortunately, the shell exploded just below the ship as Dawn accelerated far faster than the gunner could adjust his range and elevation. The thump of the explosion had rattled them though.

Once clear of the turmoil, Charlie settled into his seat and pursed his lips thoughtfully. It was obvious that somebody had prepared to stop the Dawn departing from the base, and it was only by good luck that they had inadvertently bypassed the trap. Charlie turned to his chief officer.

“Juliet. Get on to Canberra and describe what just happened. Somebody not only want’s Lieutenant Asi dead, they appear to want us dead as well. Curiouser and curiouser, it seems.”

This time, Juliet did not respond with a light-hearted ‘okay boss.’ The shell had been too close for that!
ooo000ooo

“Well, everybody. I think it’s full speed towards Hammersley,” Charlie offered.

The mutual chorus of agreement left no doubt, everybody wanted to get clear of Darwin.
They chatted openly on passage and Lieutenant Asi was ears all agog as she began to realise that the crew of Charlie might be like minded souls about the Feminista. Nevertheless, she kept her thoughts to herself, ‘the doctor didn’t seem to be entirely of like mind.’

When Charlie announced they had arrived at Hammersley, Lieutenant Asi confirmed for certain that Charlie’s ship the Dawn, was definitely a craft capable of at least seven thousand knots as she did the geography and mental arithmetic in her head.

Nor indeed did the thing use jet propulsion and that was considerable food for thought. Despite being confined to her wheelchair, she had readily recognised the black sky and tightly curved horizon. On passage, she noted the Dawn had easily entered space and gone considerably higher than the normal atmosphere.

When they arrived at Hammersley, there was already a reception committee at the Sage homestead off the main mining road. After hugging her children, Chloe, as the hostess, made the introductions while Charlie and Juliet examined the hull for bullet marks and shrapnel. When Lieutenant Asi was wheeled down the stern ramp, Charlie and Juliet took her aside and wheeled her around the hull to show her the damage.

“Somebody definitely wanted you; and us dead!” Charlie intoned somewhat angrily. “It’s a good job that Dawn is a flying tank! I want answers from you Lieutenant, and soon!”

Lieutenant Asi cringed slightly. Although he had not laid a finger on the lieutenant; Charlie could cut a menacing figure with his one point nine five metres. Especially when he spoke softly. However, the more she was amongst these three crewmembers the more certain of their true leanings she was becoming. She still doubted that Army surgeon though.

ooo000ooo

After the homecoming celebration was finished, Charlie and Juliet reluctantly bid Chloe a quick goodbye.

Inspector Margaret Thomas agreed to keep an eye on Lieutenant Asi and she was offered a bedroom in Chloe’s home. There were still a trio of federal police officers guarding the babies and Charlotte Sage as per what had become a long-standing agreement.

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, Chloe stood on the land behind their house with her four children, Inspector Margaret Thomas and lieutenant Asi. They watched the spaceship Dawn lift silently into the sky until she became invisible, then they returned to the house and prepared to put the children to bed. Two of the federal police constables volunteered to help with the children’s bathing while Inspector Margaret showed Lieutenant Asi her en-suite bedroom.

“They’ve got a big house,” Lieutenant Asi observed.

“Yes. Chloe managed to screw the British company Anston Aerospace, for Charlie’s patent rights when she married him. His intellectual property was denied to him as a single man but when Chloe married him, in the UK technically she owned everything he was entitled to. It was an interesting law case in London but she won. The feminista gangsters could not have it both ways.”

“So how did it work?” Engadine Asi pressed.

“May I call you Engadine? It’s a nice name that, where did it come from?”

“I don’t know. I was a foundling. Somebody found me in a box wrapped in Blankets in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland. The coppers called me after the Valley but I could not claim Swiss citizenship because I was illegitimate. Consequently I was emigrated to Australia and adopted by a woman with the family name Asi. She was half Samoan and Half Finn, so go figure.

Call me a mongrel, I’ve no idea whatsoever who my egg doner or sperm doner were. So tell me more about this Charlie. What happened in the UQ that enable him to get to Oz? How did they get to own a place like this?”

“Well, according to that court case, if a man was virtually a wife’s property then those property rights extended to all that the man is and the man owns. It was a complete reversal of the old Victorian marriage laws. The end result was that all the technical developments and improvements that Charlie had enabled and created while working for Anston Aerospace, were now accredited to Chloe.

Chloe’s a very shrewd girl so she claimed all the Patent rights and intellectual rights that Anston Aerospace owned due to Charlie’s endeavour. While Anston where employing him, they could hold the patents indefinitely because Charlie, as a man, could not own intellectual rights. They simply held the patent rights in trust, but they could not claim title to them. Slavery is illegal in the narrowest legal sense in the UQ so Anston Aerospace could not own Charlie or his intellectual property.

That slavery and property law still stands but when the marriage laws were virtually reversed after the great upheaval; men could become female property and did. Usually to escape from the rookeries or work camps.”

“Yeah. We were taught all about the UQ rookeries and work camps. Many said they were death camps.”

“Yes, it is still true over there,” Margaret revealed, “many of the less cerebral ones are still worked to death through hard labour. Especially if they’ve broken any laws.”

“How did Charlie manage to get out of the UQ?”

“He built an antigravity truck and flew to Oz via Antarctica to avoid all the air traffic radars. He’s a very clever boy and that’s why Oz wants to keep him; even though he entered illegally.”

“How did Chloe get in.”

“She’s geneticist who transferred to surgery and she’s very good at it, especially trauma surgery. Physical injuries and such like. Australia still needs people like that. She was welcomed with open arms and Charlie gained acceptance through her. Now we’ve found out just who Charlie sage is and what he does, well; would you deport such an asset?”

The lieutenant was forced to agree.

ooo000ooo