The Feminist Queendom Charlie’s War 90

© Beverly Taff

List of Characters.

Charlie Sage Maths and electronics genius.
Shirley Sage Charlies elderly mother
Chloe Charlie’s early school friend become wife
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
Katie (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
Queen Sophia 35-year-old monarch of the UQ, recently
crowned
Princess Victoria Her fourteen-year-old daughter

Chapter 90

As the five friends entered the conference chamber all eyes turned.

The five hesitated as though trying to gauge the mood in the room but the tension evaporated when Queen Sophia actually stood and greeted them. This was a very unusual breech of royal protocol and by her very action, Queen Sophia had set the mood for informality and transparency.

“Come and sit here Captain Sage,” she indicated the vacant seat to her right. “There is a lot to get through and your party will necessarily have much to contribute. The rest of you can choose your seats, there’s no formal arrangements.”

“Thank you your majesty. Where are we to start?”

“Well firstly, you can explain how you got here and what circumstances propelled you into this cauldron of intrigue.”

Charlie swallowed nervously as he searched the faces around the conference table.

“Do you want me to start from first base Ma-am?”

“Yes. Begin at the beginning please. How you fell foul of the feminista laws and how you escaped feminisation.”

Charlie took a long deep breath as his mind raced to try and precis his life from early teens to the present.

“This going to take some time Ma-am; I mean we’re talking seventeen to eighteen years.”

“Time is the one thing we now have Captain Sage, thanks to you and your crew’s endeavours.”

“Very well Ma-am, stop me if it gets too long-winded or boring.” He sighed.

“Every word, Captain Sage.” Queen Sophia demanded as she sat poised with her laptop. “If I want clarification or dates etc, I’ll stop you.”

And so Charlie plunged in.

ooo000ooo

It took over four hours of occasionally painful recollection as Charlie described his life. Oft-times he had recourse to Dawn 1’s logbooks and frequently, Chloe his wife, was able to more accurately recall dates before the antigravity discoveries when Charlie worked in the workshops of Anston Aerospace.

In those years between separating during high school and meeting again after college, Chloe had sometimes encountered Charlie’s academic work and on several important instances, was able to affirm a date that some important discovery or development attributable to Charlie, had appeared in Anston Aerospace’s catalogue as their invention.

At the end of the hearing Charlie let out a long slow sigh and fiddled with his lap-top computer as the Queen and council muttered amongst themselves. It was embarrassingly obvious that the Feminist Queendom while abusing Charlie, had squandered a valuable intellectual asset through its feminista agenda and half-baked laws.

Ridden with guilt, Queen Sophia released Charlie from the inquiry but asked him to remain in the United Queendom until the several serious issues had been resolved.

Somewhat, reluctantly, Charlie agreed but demanded a safe house and his own trusted coterie of friends and guards.

The royal council had no option but to agree though it caused no small consternation when two MEN (Charlie and Juliet) were to be frequently seen in London and elsewhere enjoying all the privileges of women.

Now that the extremist feminista government had been exposed and discredited, the Queen’s emergency power councillors were entitled to research all the work that Charlie had contributed to enable the UQ’s advancement as a leading aerospace manufacturer.

More importantly Queen Sophia was required to call an election but a universal franchise had to be returned to the whole population before Charlie perceived things as fair. The previous parliament had been prorogued by royal command and then disbanded but these legal processes were slow. Charlie and even Juliet became frustrated with the delays.

The five original spacers became more concerned with growing and developing their Celestial endeavours and eventually they felt forced to return to Australia while leaving the United Queendom to sort out its own affairs. Charlie was disappointed that he had not had the success with the United Queendom as he had had with Australia, but he felt he just had to recognise and accept his lack of total success.

It was to be a full year before Charlie became involved again with developments in the UQ.

By that time General Wilson was fit to face a trial despite her now being a paraplegic. Additionally, her left hand was virtually a frozen claw where the bullet had smashed into the back of her hand and destroyed most of the motor nerves, while smashing several carpels and metacarpals out through the palm of her hand. The disfigurement was severe.

At the trial, Charlie was ‘put through the mill’ by the lawyers as they charged him with attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.

For a defence, Charlie’s Australian lawyers produced scores of instances of theft, abuse, assault, kidnap and even attempted murder by agencies of the UQ crown against Charlie and his family. Almost all of these crimes had been instigated by General Wilson including the attack in the United Nations headquarters for which there was abundant video evidence.

Even when Charlie had been in a position to invoke the law to protect himself and his family it was proved that his chances of receiving protection or justice were nil; save for his own endeavours. It was those endeavours listed over the whole seventeen years in UQ and Australia and the United Nations Building that summated to Charlies plea of self defence having to be accepted.

It was further demonstrated that when Charlie discovered General Wilson lounging in the captain’s cabin of Dawn 4 and trying to issue orders whilst somehow gaining command of the spaceship; it was tantamount to an attempted act of Piracy, especially when none of the rightful crew were even on the bridge. Only Lieutenant Engadine Asi had been present on Dawn 4 and she was stuck in the conference rooms with the Australian Prime Minister.

Piracy was one of the crimes that had been re-apportioned the death penalty in the UQ to prevent MEN from trying to steal ships to escape from the UQ. Suddenly, General Wilson found herself potentially facing a possible piracy charge on top of a treason Charge that definitely carried the death penalty.

The next part of the trial that involved Charlie was the lethal implants in Queen Sophia’s and Princess Victoria’s neck.

When requested to produce the murderous devices, he duly placed them before the tribunal complete with a description of their lethality followed by a demonstration of identical devices on a crash-test dummy.

The results left the court shocked while Queen Sophia was physically sickened when she was shown video of the results. The thought of having been forced to host such vicious little bombs under her own skull left her determined to clean out the feminista virus in her country.

The longer she held off the elections, the more thoroughly could she prepare for an overwhelming feminista electoral defeat and the treason hearings were daily adding more power to her elbow.

The last legal process was the trial of the previous extreme feminista UQ Prime Minister. This was a much more delicate political issue because originally she had won the election be a fairly large margin; however this was without a universal franchise because men had not been allowed to vote. The feminista argument being that men were not sufficiently educated to vote intelligently. In the Feminista lexicon, intelligence and education had become subsumed under one meaning.

Charlie had of course encountered these Feminista arguments for years, so much so that he had wearied of ever getting women to acknowledge the difference even if they understood.

Now the argument had become a material instrument in confronting the feminista prejudices, Charlie thought he could see some light.

“Whilst Queen Sophia had been fairly popular during her first year’s reign, her daughter Princess Victoria had been adored by the younger women. After the princess’s testimony and the demonstration of the explosive device, the female electorate had certainly ‘volt faced’.

The most common argument was that it was men who instigated violence against women and that was why the feminista wars had been fought. The UQ’s prime minister’s ghastly attempt to frighten the princess into always acceding to their extreme feminista agenda had finally been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The royal order in council had been presented to parliament and after much debate, both lords and commons had eventually acknowledged that the lack of universal franchise was a breach of men’s rights.

Charlie was dismayed that the Feminista culture had become so embedded in the country’s female psyche but relieved when the new reform bill finally passed.

This law however was only part of the new process. It meant that males now had to be registered on the electoral registers and that was a process that would take months, even with computerised lists and information.

Throughout the interim Charlie’s friends the OZ PM and her defence minister made a big play of Australia’s huge military and commercial power based upon antigravity and spaceships enabling OZ to reach for the stars.

The Brits in the UQ, with their innate predisposition to a sense of superiority over everybody else were now having ‘their noses rubbed in it’. And to make it worse, the antigravity engine could have benefited them had they not become a feminista queendom.

Every time an antigravity leviathan delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of all types of ore from space to a UQ smelting works, the Brits were reminded of their inhuman, feminista blunder and their catastrophic, economic loss. Nor was the lesson lost, that the UQ was now essentially dependent on OZ for protection from Chinese aggression.

On a more personal level, it also galled many a woman that Charlie’s science was available to nobody. Several generations of women had been brought up and taught to believe that men were dumb brutes. For these women, Charlie’s fame and obvious intelligence had become a painful ego-buster.

It would be at least a generational span of twenty to thirty years after genuine equality had returned to the UQ, before friendly relationships were restored between the two once historic allies.

THE END