The Feminine Queendom Charlie’s War 77

© Beverly Taff - Nov 11th, 2021

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 77

The Feminist Queendom of Atlantica made a fundamental strategic error when they presumed that ‘Charlie’s War’ would comprise a ‘hi-tech’ operation fought mostly in sub-space just as the repulsion of the Chinese assault on Singapore had been fought.
Hastily they had prepared for just such an operation by locating several geo-stationary satellites at various locations to give intense, high-resolution total coverage of the United Queendom. Charlie smiled to himself when he detected the first satellite being carefully located. It mattered not to him how many detection stations the UQ stationed in space for Charlie had no intention at all of dashing about sub-space or space proper; his was a subtler strategy.

When Charlie had built Dawn 1 with its armoured airtight hull, he had in effect; created a craft as equally capable of functioning under water as in the vacuum of space. All the vitals including the anti-gravity engines, were located inside the hull and immune to water. Dawn 1 could travel underwater without a drop of water penetrating her skin.

The first evidence of this submarine capacity was the sudden and inexplicable sinking of a United Queendom destroyer just as it was departing from Diego Garcia naval base in the Indian Ocean. The ship had just cleared the main entrance to the atoll when it had experience some sort of violent collision with a submerged object and the amidships hull section had suddenly developed a huge, longitudinal, fatal leak.

Charlie had simply waited on the seabed outside Diego Garcia, then inverted Dawn 1 so that the ploughshare now extended upwards. When the destroyer had passed over his spaceship, Charlie had simply ascended rapidly and thrust the blade into the belly of the ship then accelerated slowly along the hull to slice all the way along the keel. It was like opening a tin of sardines compartment by compartment.

Fortunately, there had been no violent explosion or fire and every crewmember had safely evacuated from the ship as it slowly settled ignominiously to the seabed. Every transverse bulkhead from bow to stern had been ruptured from below as the hull had been slowly split like a kipper.

For a week, the facts were suppressed while the UQ authorities struggled to determine what had happened but eventually the facts forced themselves into the limelight as the surviving crew contacted their families via personal mobile phones. By then the UQ navy had searched the wreck which was only down at fifty fathoms depth in the approaches to the atoll. The shocking details soon found their way to the media and in the London headquarters, admirals shook their heads. The destroyer had indeed been split open from stern to bow like a giant kipper.

“It looks as though a giant tin opener has ripped right along the hull. She must have struck a pinnacle of rock at speed.”

“What! Going backwards?” Another admiral objected. “Look at the rip! It runs from aft to forward! Something has simply ripped it’s way along the full length of the underwater section. Besides, there are no pinnacles of rock in the approach channel. Aircraft carriers have been entering and leaving for decades plus the place has had a full, modern survey. I tell you that ship was attacked!”

The Naval findings were passed immediately to Ten Downing Street who ruefully concluded that the seemingly hysterical and impotent declarations of a mentally disturbed individual in the United nations Headquarters were indeed a very real and present threat the UQ’s security.

The newly installed UQ prime minister, who had just won a substantial feminista majority in Parliament, felt forced to summon Ms Jane Anston the proprietor and Managing Director of Anston Aerospace to her cabinet office at ‘number ten.’

“I want a complete history of this lunatic’s time spent working at Anston Aerospace and a factual list of all the improvements he supposedly wrought for your company. In the meantime, I’ll be having my attorney general looking into what breaches of law your company and this lunatic have committed.
Finally; I want your honest opinion, is the man a serious danger?”

Jane Anston had come well prepared for this inevitable confrontation. She had never been comfortable with the circumstances surrounding Charlie’s time at Anston Aerospace nor the Feminista employment laws that had forced her to deny Charlie (and she still thought of him with some affection as Charlie) all the benefits and promotions he had deserved. She gave it to this new feminista harridan with both barrels!

“Well; firstly Prime Minister, Charlie Sage is certainly no Lunatic!”

“That’s not what our intelligence sources tell me.”

“Your intelligence sources!” Jane Anston inquired with a soft ring of irony.

“Yes.” The PM snapped.

“Hmmm.” Jane Aston sighed. “And your intelligence sources obviously understand how anti-gravity works; and that would put them on a par with Charlie Sage.”

“Well no :- we –“

“Exactly!” Jane Anston shut the prime minister down. “Your so-called intelligence services have no idea how Charlie Sage’s mind operates; in fact, I doubt if there’s another person on the planet who can get inside that man’s mind. Who suggested to you that Charlie is a lunatic?”

“The intelligence report is here.” The PM tapped a bound paper file at her elbow.

Jane extended her hand and flicked her fingers impatiently.

“It’s strictly confidential,” the PM advised. “I can’t let you see it.”

“Very well then, let me guess the signature at the bottom of the medical assessment. Would it be a certain Doctor Wilson? Now ranked as a General in your intelligence branch.”

The PM opened the file and double checked before looking up.

“Uuhm, yes; it is as a matter of fact. She’s a fully qualified psychiatrist.”

“Oh I know what she is Prime Minister, I’ve met her several times and I’m one of the few people who might have witnessed her sparring matches with Carlie Sage.”

“Meaning?”

“She invariably came off second best. In fact her whole team came off second best every time we at Anston Aerospace found ourselves trying to justify our position or argue a moral issue with Charlie Sage.

Doctor Wilson, like many a psychiatrist, has an ego bigger than a barrage balloon and Charlie always managed to burst it. Doctor Wilson, or to give her, her full rank, Lieutenant General Wilson, absolutely detests Charlie Sage! Asking Doctor/General Wilson to assess Charlie Sage is akin to inviting Lucrecia Borgia to assess the drinks!”

“So you’re saying he’s some sort of amateur philosopher.”

“I wouldn’t so bold as to say what Charlie Sage is, all I can say is that he certainly knows right from wrong.”

“Do you think he’s a danger?”

“Yes! As the Feminista republics across the pond would say; he’s an existential threat!”

“Are there any weapons you can think of that might stop him?”

“Yes, reason and remorse.”

This riposte left the new PM stunned to silence for she had only been in office for a day and morning and she still was not au fait with everything that had gone before. She had come to power on a feminista ticket promising stricter penalties for male transgressions and now here was one of the most powerful executives in the Queendom advising tolerance and compassion.

“Are you serious? Compassion? Towards men!”

“That’s my advice Prime Minister. You can take it or leave it. Charlie Sage worked for me for fifteen years. I even met his mother a couple of times and I know his wife very well.”

“What’s his mother like?”

“You won’t be able to blackmail him, his mother is long dead!”

“What about his wife?”

“Forget that as well. She’s now an Australian citizen and a dedicated supporter of her husband. She’s a surgeon and a geneticist and she’s even more anti-feminista than Charlie.”

“What caused her to become that? She must have had all the advantages to have become a surgeon.”

“She explained it to me once. She and Charlie were at school together then one day she was not allowed to speak to him anymore and he was dumped out of her class via the Feminista rules. She met him again, years later, labouring for his mother who was a plant geneticist. She thought he was just digging the soil and assisting his mother and it made her angry to see such a splendid mind going to waste.”

“Go on.” The Prime Minister pressed.

“Well, one thing led to another and her work as a genetics specialist brought her into contact with him at his main place of work in my Aerospace Factory. He had been denied access to advanced mathematics of course so he had developed his own maths and he was using it to solve some complex engineering problems that my best engineering managers couldn't

Our company was lamenting the seeming degradation of intellectual standards throughout the population and the difficulty finding engineers and scientists capable of keeping up with the Chinese. The feminista societies were falling behind technologically.

This geneticist Chloe Hawkins was brought in to test the intelligence of the whole executive workforce. While she was at the factory she saw Charlie and recognised him of course. She asked the Human resources department if she could test this messy male supervisor who did some complex problem solving for us but the human resources manager had to say no. Feminista rules and laws wouldn’t allow it. Charlie was only a supervisor and the Feminista law prevented any promotion.

Chloe was made of sterner stuff so she secretly tested him at his mothers home, with his mothers permission of course; and Charlie’s results stunned her. His IQ was off the clock. She tried several other recognised testing systems and they all came up with the same results.

His IQ was so high it could not be accurately assessed.

Then she tried him with some really complex maths problems. He smashed them in minutes where our executives took hours. That’s where she and I learned about his personal mathematics. He had devised his own maths because he had never been taught higher maths. It’s a form of maths we still don’t understand.

It was that maths that solved gravity and that is the reason nobody’s managed to emulate his work.

Having discovered Charlie’s freakish IQ, Chloe now faced an impossible conundrum. If she publicised his IQ, Charlie might be forced to undergo forcible feminisation, or he might be imprisoned to be forcibly milked of his sperm to try and improve the deteriorating collective intelligence of the feminista societies.

She explained this to Charlie’s mother who had laboured for years to hide Charlies genius because she was fully aware of the Feminista dangers to her son. They decided to discuss it with Charlie and it was Charlie who eventually found a workable solution.

Charlie’s maths was able to provide Chloe with irrefutable proof of the IQ degeneration.

Oh the figures were already known of course but it took Charlie’s maths to make the biological connection to the genetic conundrum to the societal reality. That really frightened the feministas and Chloe had to pretend that she had come up with the scientific proof to protect Charlie.

This really exercised Chloe’s sense of fair play and she had to admit her dissatisfaction to him. That was the first time, apart from his mother, that Charlie had knowingly met a girl who was demonstrably anti feminista.

Once that bond of trust was forged, coupled with the ‘childhood sweetheart’ dimension, Charlie and Chloe became an item. The rest is history of course and the United Queendom consequently lost one of its greatest assets; Charlie!”

“Well I must admit, I heard a slightly different version.” The Prime Minister replied.

“From General Wilson I suppose.”

“Uuhm, yes.”

“Well you can be assured Prime Minister, I was present throughout the whole of Charlie’s working life in the UQ, plus; I was closely associated with Chloe, - until they decided to make a break. That’s when the real veil of secrecy began to descend over Charlie Sage’s life. Once his mother died, Charlie slowly cut all ties with the UQ, and I for one, think it was done reluctantly.

Be assured Prime Minister, Charlie is NOT a violent lunatic unless seriously provoked.

Oh and one last thing. Just remember, not a single person died when that destroyer was sunk! It sank slowly and everybody got off close to shore. He could have blown it out of the water and killed everybody aboard instantly.

He didn't! He sent you a clear message!

ooo000ooo