The Feminist Queendom Charlie’s War 57

© 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 57

“The other four jets are currently held by the Singaporean Air-force.” Lieutenant Asi confided.

“Oh!” Charlie exclaimed. “How did they come by them?”
“It was a consequence of the original deal coming apart. The guy who set the deal up is being hunted by the Chinese who sold the damned jets and also by the Saudi’s who paid for them and never got them. Both sides are looking to kill him and he’s hiding in Singapore.” Engadine revealed.

“Or at least he was when we last heard.” Angela added.

Engadine affirmed this by explaining.

“He used the remaining jets as bargaining chips to secure his safety by being allowed to stay in Singapore.”

“The secret won’t last long,” Katie added. “Singapore is swarming with Chinese.”

“That’s not really our problem,” Charlie observed. “In a few months, we’ll have the material to defend ourselves.”

“The spaceships;” Engadine confirmed.

Charlie nodded before continuing.

“Our best course of action is to find out everything about your Algebra organisation and somehow use it to reverse the feminista agenda, - peacefully.” Charlie surmised.

“You’ll need us then,” both pilots opined.

“Right then ladies and gentlemen. My god it’s been a long time since I heard that expression, - ‘ladies-and-gentlemen.’ I want you all in my office tomorrow,” the PM demanded.

“Sorry Ma-am, No can do.” Charlie apologised.

“Indeed Captain Sage! And might I ask why not?”

“Some of my mineral sources are not locked in one location. They move around and consequently if I lose track of them, I might not find them again, or at least I would have to go hunting again.”

“Angee, the second pilot and physicist squinted at Charlie thoughtfully before remarking.”

“The only two places I can think of out there where things move around unpredictably are the Asteroid Belt and the rings of Saturn.”

“’Appen,” Charlie replied, but other planets have rings as well.”

Angee stared hard at Charlie.

“Are you trying to tell me you can travel to Saturn and back in a week or so!”

“There’s a lot of gravity out there Angee and I don’t just harness the earths’ gravity. Anyway Prime Minister, it’s an interplanetary case of time and tide waiting for no one. If I don’t get back to my mineral source and plant a beacon on it, I’ll lose track of it, and I was very lucky to find it.”

“How long will you be gone?” The PM asked.

“This time I should think about six weeks. Two weeks quarrying the materials and about four weeks manufacturing six engines.

Those six, plus the two I’ve already delivered to Woomera, should give us a useful space-craft capable of supporting a bigger expedition while exploring and prospecting for other rare minerals as far out as Saturn.”

“My people tell me that you’ve decided not to build the engines at Woomera but to Create a manufacturing facility off-world.”

“Yes.” Charlie replied. “After my experiences at Darwin Military base, I’m still not convinced the security situation is recovered yet. Have you located any ring-leaders?”
“Sadly, no.” The PM admitted, “but you will be building the spaceships at Woomera I hope.”

“Yes,” Charlie nodded, “you’ve shown good faith by building a shipyard at Woomera and it would be dishonest of me to renege on that promise.”

A look of relief swept across the two ministers and Charlie smiled.

“You’ve been fair by me Prime Minister so I’ll play fair with you. Now, I’m sorry to have to tell you I’m bound for the Asteroids and Saturn’s rings tonight. The longer I leave those rocks orbiting and colliding the more likely that my original co-ordinates will have been degraded. There’s quite a traffic jam out there.”

“I’d love to come with you,” Lieutenant Asi lamented.

Charlie smiled sympathetically.

“There are a dozen people who would love to accompany me but Sadly, Dawn does not carry sufficient life support for more than one person to travel for six weeks. Once Dawn Two is completed, she’ll be a much bigger ship with capacity for up to twenty people depending on how much equipment accompanies the expedition.
Once she is up and running, the whole project should grow.”

“Like Topsy.” Engadine finished.

Charlie’s blank look once more demonstrated to the educated women how lacking Charlie’s feminista, ‘boy’s education’ had been. None of them had the heart to compound Charlie’s hurt by describing who or what Topsy was.

Telling him would have just put one more brick in the wall of Charlie’s silent, suppressed resentment.

With arrangements completed, Charlie, Chloe and Engadine left Canberra and returned to Hammersley ready for the late evening departure of Dawn and Charlie for the asteroids and the gas giants.
In their bedroom that afternoon, Charlie and Chloe shared one last intimacy and chat before ‘zero-hour’ arrived. As they lay post-coitally beside each other Charlie whispered one last request.

“Just Check that Lieutenant Asi is standing beside you as I leave. I don’t want to be half-way to Mars and find I’ve got a stowaway.”

Chloe released an involuntary chuckle.

“She wouldn’t, would she?”

“I dunno’ Charlie confessed. She was giving Dawn some very envious looks as we were coming back. Just check.”

“Shall I have Margaret keep an eye on her?”

“That should work.”

With these words, Charlie’s arm snaked around Chloe’s waist and they slept until eight PM.
ooo000ooo

Come departure time, Charlie slipped quietly into the bedrooms and kissed his sleeping children farewell before completing the final checks to Dawn.

As he climbed up the clamshell ramp, Chloe went to alert Margaret and Engadine that Charlie was leaving. Margaret duly came to the front porch and gave Charlie a wave through the cockpit window but Lieutenant Asi complained as she stood beside Chloe and the inspector.

“Why didn’t you wake me earlier, I wanted to wish him goodbye?”

“He doesn’t like to make a fuss.” Chloe replied, glad she was actually speaking to Engadine Asi even as the Dawn was silently ascending into the night sky.

The hopeful lieutenant had not sneaked aboard and Chloe knew she had fulfilled her part. As Dawn finally disappeared into the glittering star-speckled sky, the three of them turned to sharing some supper. Several of the guards who were off duty joined them while the remainder continued with their guard duties.

“It’s pity you still need guards,” Engadine observed.

“Charlie might need them for the rest of his life, or until the feminista regimes end.” Margaret opined.

“Well, we’re safe; or at least safer, now the reformation bill has been written into law.”

After discussing the pros and cons of men no longer being curfewed, they retired and silence returned to the house.

Far above the earth and now free of any atmospheric constraints, the spaceship Dawn was streaking towards the asteroid belt. She had her destination pinpointed and Charlie paid little heed to Mars now showing as a tiny globe to his left as he sped onwards and outwards.

Soon Charlie spotted his marker, the dwarf planet Ceres silently orbiting the sun in the company of the countless millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt. From this relatively certain position in the belt, Charlie carefully matched his speed to that of the belts’ until he had relocated the huge cluster of platinum-based rocks glittering in the weaker sunlight as they slowly rotated within the orbiting rock fields.

Very, very slowly, he eased his ship in amongst the rocks until the Dawn and the orbiting docks were in virtual stasis. Thus ensconced amongst the glittering ore-field, Charlie was able to study each rock and decide if it was suitably rich enough to load into the cargo hold of the dawn.

This was only Charlie’s second attempt at space walking amongst the rocks but already he had developed techniques to collect suitably sized rocks and then reel himself back inboard with his oversized security line.
For ten days he located the most suitable rocks then secured the treasured metallic ores in the cargo hold until he had a large enough load and it was time to return home.

He called his technique ‘soft excavation’ because he created a cavity in the surrounding rocks just as a metal excavator created cavities in earth or solid rock; but he did it with thick, heavily gloved hands. Dawn had not yet been modified enough to replace the simple ploughshare with a dextrous hydraulic claw. That would be for Dawn Two and a veritable team of miners, minerologists and chemists.

Finally, before departing what he come to think of as ‘his claim,’ Charlie attached a small, very weak radio beacon to the dwarf planet Ceres just as an insurance to facilitate speedy relocation. On the journey to his secret workshop, Charlie reflected on what future laws would be enacted concerning space prospecting and mining rights.

After two weeks of harvesting the precious minerals, Charlie arrived at the far side of the Earth’s moon and waited for nightfall in Western Australia. As darkness enveloped the continent, Charlie first swept down from the moon to Antarctica then travelled at wave-top height to the great Australian bight.

At a remote and totally isolated location below some high Cretaceous sea cliffs, the Dawn ‘slip-profiled’ close to the cliffs and slithered snakelike up and over the cliffs into Australia without detection. A fast ‘tree-top’ crossing of the Nullabar Plain and Western Australia soon found Charlie undetected at the grotto where his and Chloe’s original desert hideout ‘Coach’ had lain undisturbed by anybody else except Charlie and Chloe.

A swift, silent arrival soon had Dawn docked in the isolated, hidden grotto where Charlie had his workshop. It was a place invisible from the air and virtually impossible to find from the ground because of the shrubs and rocks that lay undisturbed by wheels. Antigravity precluded wheels and tracks.
Once the large bush had been carefully eased back across the entrance to the grotto, the hideout known as Coach was invisible.

There in privacy and secrecy, Charlie busied himself away with his machine tools making the contracted remaining engines for Dawn two.
Eight weeks later the remaining engines were delivered to Woomera.

ooo000ooo

“I thought she was only going to have eight engines,” Juliet remarked curiously. “Are we going to have to modify her?”

“Not really, Charlie explained. The extra two are to create better lateral stability. I spotted some larger rocks of platinum and palladium ore and they were big enough to displace Dawn while we were parked in the spaces between the rocks.
Better to have sufficient power to hold Dawn Two stable when the bigger rocks bump up against her. Especially when we are hauling the bigger rocks into the cargo holds.”

“I thought we were using mechanical grabs for that.”

“That’s okay when the rocks are close to the ship, but it’s more cost efficient to secure a line to the bigger rocks when further away, then winch-haul them close enough for the grabs to take hold. It’s more efficient than constantly re-locating the ship every time we want to expand the work-face.”

“How big is this deposit?” Juliet asked.

“It’s an egg-shaped cluster of rocks about three kilometres long and a kilometre across and it contains very high grades of all of the platinum family of ores. I think it might have been a piece from the very core of whatever it was that formed the asteroid belt.” Charlie replied.

“Will there be more of them?”

“Possibly,” Charlie opined. “We’ll find out when you and I command the exploration.”

“And when will that be? Juliet pressed.

“When the Dawn Two is good and ready. How’s the rest of the project going.”

“Very good. It’ll be a damned sight less cramped than Dawn! If you compared her to a typical ocean-going cargo ship, she’d displace about twenty thousand tons. A two-hundred-metre-long cylinder about twenty metres diameter. Each crewmember has his or her own cabin and she’ll carry her own gravity of course.”

“All the comforts of home.” Charlie grinned.

“That’s what you asked for.” Juliet remarked. “Will you be staying for the final fitting out?”

“Nah. I’ve got business elsewhere.”

“Is this to do with the intruder business.” Juliet frowned.

“Got it in one.” Charlie confirmed.

“You be bloody careful!” Juliet warned. “That whole business stinks.”

“Don’t worry. Katie the defence minister is adamant we go loaded for bear.”

“Is she going with you?”

“She’s the delegation leader to Singapore. I’m just happening along for the ride. – As a guest as it were.”

“Yeah! Pull the other leg Charlie.”

Juliet wagged her head despairingly as they separated to their different duties.

ooo000ooo