The Feminist Queendom Charlie’s War 75

© 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.
Charlotte Charlie and Chloe’s older daughter
Michael, Jessica & Lucy Charlie and Chloe’s younger triplets

Chapter 75.

The Australian Delegation still had to remain in New York to counter the Chinese claims about having committed an act of war against the CCP. This of course naturally required Charlie to remain with the delegation because his evidence was crucial.
When the charges were laid by the CCP, they had done so long before anybody had full knowledge of the Spaceships Dawn 1 and Dawn 2. Like many instances before, the CCP had firmly believed they would be in the driver’s seat ever since their successful adventurisms and attacks after the great upheaval.

The CCP quite naturally thought it could bully it’s case through the Security Council hearings because there was nobody with enough military muscle to withstand their threats.

The case against Australia had already been brought by the CCP and now it had to be heard.

China had laid a claim that unknown forces had attacked their military base at Riau and that they believed those forces to have been Australian. When asked to show evidence of the first attack, all the CCP could do was present photographs of the huge rips through the hangars and the deep furrows ripped into all the concrete aprons but there was no hard evidence of any Australian involvement.

When the claim concerning the second attack was raised China had plenty of evidence again but no evidence of the identity of the attackers. All they could show was the occasional fragment of some ordinance with some roman script proving the bomb or shell must have come from a western source.

Again, with the second attack having been premeditated and launched at night, there was little or no hard evidence to show who or what fired the ordinance. The night had been pitch black with heavy storm clouds and monsoon rains while all illumination around the base had been knocked out with the first bomb placed thoughtfully in the power station.

Desperate attempts to photograph the attack by CCP soldiers with their mobile phones, had simply shown shadowy black shapes blurred by the intense monsoon rain that would ordinarily have curtailed any flying.

There was nothing solid to implicate Australia.

On the other side however, Australia’s counterclaim had mountains of hard undeniable evidence.

Firstly the recordings of the first incursion into Queensland showed the voice recordings and radar recordings of four aircraft that refused to respond to calls from the Australian regional traffic control.

Secondly the Australians were able to show that two planes had been brought down over the Timor Sea while the other pair had been brought down in the Queensland rain forest. The crashed airframes had been recovered and shown to have been of Chinese manufacture. This showed that China was at least supplying sophisticated weaponry to enemies of Oz even if they had not attacked themselves.

The dates and times clearly showed that four, Chinese made, unmarked aircraft had invaded Australian territory long before the attacks on Riau.

The third Australian claim was that Chinese agents had attacked and injured Charlie, now a senior Australian diplomat, in a third country, namely Singapore.
The Singaporean investigation had proven beyond doubt that the attackers were Chinese but this time the Chinese could not brow-beat or bully Singapore with threats military or commercial. Charlie’s space fighters with their anti-gravity had ensured that.

Finally, when Dawn 2 had captured a Chinese hypersonic missile in space directly over Australia while further hypersonic missiles had exploded in the remote Australian outback after being ‘nudged’ in flight by Australian space fighters in space, Australia was able to show that a massed, multidirectional missile attack by China against Singapore had only just been deflected and averted by Australian intervention.

The two missile explosions that had reached Singapore were further proof of Chinese aggression towards Singapore.

The oppressive Chinese hegemony over Eastern Asia and the China seas was soon broken as Asian countries recognised that Australia, through some very advanced yet flexible technology, had removed the militarised yoke from their collective necks.
ooo000ooo

“Well! I’m glad that bloody mess is over!” Katie sighed as the Australians emerged from the security council chamber.

“We can sleep peacefully in our beds now,” the PM smiled with some relief, “what do you think Charlie?”

“Your war might be over Prime Minister, mine’s just beginning.”

His words and demeanour quickly brought a halt to the celebratory mood.

“Oh come on Charlie! You cannot deny, we won a stunning victory in there.”

“No Prime Minister, for me it was one small battle won in my war against the Feminista. And make no bones about it, I for one, am at war with them!”

“I think you’re over-egging the pudding Charlie. The mood in many countries is changing. We can all agree that things went too far.”

“If you think that an attempt to kidnap me and somehow drag me back to the Feminist Queendom of Atlantica is somehow a precursor to a change of mood; then I must beg to differ.” Charlie argued. “For years I simply kept my mouth shut and my head down, while those harpies and their laws denied me my due rewards for all that I did, while working all the hours the devil sent.”

“I will willingly help to set Australia on the road to security and fairness but no way will I ever truck with such as the UQ Feminista. When is the UN inquiry to be held upon the lavatory attack on me and Juliet? Two UN Delegates no less, attacked in broad daylight in the UN headquarters!!”

The PM fell silent, she had no answers nor even a date set for the hearing. Charlie just compressed his lips angrily before observing.

“Your silence shouts volumes Prime Minister. What’s holding things up?”

“I can’t say Charlie because I don’t know. Our Lawyers are looking into it.”

“They’ll be Feminista trained lawyers I suppose, encumbered with years of Feminista law and training. After all there are no male lawyers are there? Leastways not in any proper, democratic, liberal sense. The only male lawyers are to be found in patriarchal dictatorships or monotheist theocracies and they are not what I consider allies. Bit of a bum rap really, isn’t it Prime Minister? Where does a fair-minded, liberal man turn?”

“I don’t have a simple answer Charlie.”

“I do Prime Minister; he turns away!”

“Turns away from what?” The nervous PM gasped.

“Everything.” Charlie finished.

ooo000ooo

Somewhat lost for words, the PM, Katie and almost the whole Australian delegation fell silent as they watched Charlie step out of the large foyer of Dawn 3, through the cargo access door and into Dawn 1. Moments later a shadow passed by Dawn 3’s main access door and the delegation craned their necks to see Dawn 1 silently accelerating upwards and southwards away from the UN headquarters and New York.

“Where’s he going d’ you think?” Katie asked the PM.

“I’ve no idea, it could be anywhere on this planet or the next; how should I know?”

Once in space, Charlie put Dawn 1 into a geostatic orbit above the UQ and switched off her engines. Utter silence descended on the little ship as Charlie turned the environmental gravity down to a sufficient minimum, enough to keep him just resting lightly on the single bunk; enough to avoid drifting around the cabin. With the lights turned off and the visor closing out the harsh sunlight Charlie came closer to sensory deprivation than any other known condition short of floating about gravity free.

This condition had recently become his preferred circumstance when ruminating on his thoughts.

His problem was dealing with his anger towards those who had tried to either end his life or capture it for their own ends. Lying perfectly still in total darkness usually helped him gather and sort his thoughts but this time it was emotions that were troubling him, not rational thoughts.

It was impossible for him to find a reasonable course of action against a government who had come armed to do him mischief or worse, physical harm. The UQ agents had come armed and they had gassed Charlie and Juliet plus their companions Engie, Angie and Laura. Fortunately, Laura had been armed along with her team but bullets had flown and six people killed in the attack, one of whom had been one of Charlie’s guards.

“There but for the grace of god go I!” Charlie reflected.

In the deathly stillness of Dawn 1’s isolated cabin, Charlie struggled to find a fair solution. It was no good going to law because technically, Anston Aerospace had not broken any Feminista Laws. Only the UQ had broken the law by trying to kidnap him or worse, kill him in the UN headquarters.
Charlie had no faith in UN law, it had demonstrably failed to act on too many occasions down through the years.

As he lay thinking, Charlie’s mind kept returning to the second assassination attempt by the Feminist United Queendom of Atlantica; the UQ. This act had been as bad as, if not worse than the first assassination attempt by the CCP.

The retribution that he and his Australian allies had wrought upon the CCP had been exonerated by the UN Security Council and there had been no censure. Surely then, he concluded, the UQ could, and should be punished to the same degree. Unless the UQ was stopped in it’s tracks, Charlie was convinced yet more assassination attempts would follow.

As he had previously described to his wife Chloe; he would be forever ‘looking-over-his-shoulder’

There was nothing for it but to punish the UQ, however; for his actions to be deemed legal, he would first have to declare war upon the UQ. The next problem lay in his nationality. As an Australian citizen he could not unilaterally declare war on another sovereign country as that would implicate Australia.

He therefore had to ask Australia to declare him stateless.

ooo000ooo

Two days later, after having slept upon his idea, Charlie reappeared in New York where the huge Dawn 3 ore-carrier was still loitering over the river opposite the UN Headquarters. After docking Dawn 1 inside the bigger Dawn 3 Charlie presented his request to the Australian Prime Minister.

“What! After all the trouble you went to, to get an Ozzy passport, you now want to revoke it?”

Charlie nodded.

“Might I ask why?”

“It’s nothing personal Prime Minister but I have a very personal axe to grind with the UQ. They have twice now assaulted me and or my family. They also denied me my intellectual and patent rights for many years to the ground effect gravity engine; the hovercars.

Any retribution I bring must be attributed to me and me alone; and I do not want Oz to be implicated. My war is personal but no less justified.

“But is an individual entitled to declare war on a sovereign country?”

“Why not. All I have to do is make a public declaration and there is no better place than the UN Security Council.”

“You don’t have to revoke your Ozzy citizenship for that.”

“Maybe not, but it removes any source for future enmity between you and any ancient ties you used to have with the old country.”

“Well, it’s your choice I suppose.”

“Don’t worry Prime Minister, I’ll not be taking my gravity secrets elsewhere. I’ll ask for my citizenship back after the war.”

“Very well, by the power invested in me as Prime Minister of Australia I hereby revoke your passport. Your citizenship was on five years’ probation anyway, so it’s a formality. I’ll get the government and the home secretary to endorse it and by this afternoon, you’ll be stateless.”

With this wrinkle smoothed out, Charlie prepared his own personal declaration of war ready to be presented to the UQ delegation in the Security Council chamber.