The meeting, in an up-market Brisbane hotel, had been at the Defence Minister's invitation. The Defence Minister's invitation had been insisted upon by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's insistence had been at the U.S. Secretary of Defense's suggestion. The Secretary of Defense's suggestion had been prompted by the President of the United States himself who had taken Weinberger aside after the morning briefing a few days ago and had said, "Get onto the Aussies for me Gerry. Kick some butt. I want us in control of this cargo cult thing. The CIA tells me they're pissing in the wind, Gerry. I don't like the sound of that. If they won't play nice, I want you to take their ball away. D'ya hear me, Gerry? Do what needs doing. OK?"
Whatever the hell all that meant, Gerald Hubert Weinberger the Third had no idea at the time, but he was a can-do kinda guy and he was on the case. So he had the files brought to him, he spoke to a few people, he made a few calls, and here he was, listening to a bunch of tin-pot nobodies whining over their little territorial disputes.
"It's a State matter," the Premier was saying. "I'm happy to take input from anyone who has any relevant expertise and, of course, my government will keep you all informed but, I assure you, we have the investigation well in hand." He turned to his Police Minister. "Isn't that right, Bill?"
The Minister, who from long experience had expected the Premier to keep talking for at least another ten minutes, was taken by surprise. "Ah, yeah. Dead right Jim. No worries."
"I think the point you're missing here, Jim," the Federal Defence Minister said firmly, smiling the insincere and condescending smile her image consultants had made her practice for so long, “is that we don't need any further investigation. We all know full well what happened out at Saunders Station. What we need to do now is plan our response." At her side, the General nodded grimly.
“Response?" The Mayor was clearly astonished. "What response? We're visited by aliens with unimaginable powers and technologies and now the ADF is talking about a response? What are you going to do, shoot missiles into the air and hope you hit something?"
The Defence Minister regarded the Mayor with a stony expression. "Thank you, Steven. May I remind you that you were invited to this meeting as a courtesy? Strictly speaking, you are not considered part of this forum."
The Mayor looked apoplectic with rage – something his own image consultants had been trying in vain to train him out of – but before he could speak, the head of ASIO jumped in. "The Mayor is right, you know. I've read all the reports. Every last one of them. There is absolutely nothing clear-cut about the findings so far. It might have been aliens but it might have been mass hysteria or, and this is my favourite, mass hallucinations caused by chemical agents. We should probably stop looking for little green men and start looking for little brown ones – in turbans."
The Mayor, despite this ostensible support, still wasn't happy. "Terrorists? You think it was terrorists that disguised themselves as Loosi Beecham, stole clothing from a department store, blasted half of Elizabeth Street to rubble and then held off a couple of hundred armed police with ray guns? Not to mention bringing along their trained killer kangaroos?"
The Police Commissioner sniggered at the ASIO man's discomfiture and decided to twist the knife. "That was probably the ghost of Osama Bin Laden in a rubber suit pretending to be a three-metre tall space monster."
"Well how do you explain it, Barry?" The Premier wanted to know. "Aliens don't normally attack us wearing evening gowns and swimsuits! I think this terrorist attack theory makes a lot of sense. In fact, it's the only bloody theory that makes any sense at all!"
“But it doesn't fit the facts," the Commissioner persisted, earning himself a frown from his Minister. "Our forensic teams report that the damage to various buildings, cars and people can only be explained if the attackers were using high-energy beam weapons – like laser beams or somesuch."
The ASIO man threw his hands up. "We've been through all that. If we believe your forensic guys, they'd have needed lasers so big they would have had to carry them on twenty-tonne trucks, not in their handbags!"
"So how do you explain half-vaporised cars? Hallucinogenic gas?"
"Ordinary explosives and a sloppy investigation!"
The Commissioner was on his feet. "How dare you? I have one of the best forensic teams in the country!"
With a sigh, the tall American stood up too. "Gentlemen," he said in his soft, New England accent and there was silence all around the room. "I don't think that shouting at one another is going to get us very far." The Police Commissioner, looking surly, settled back into his seat. "I have to say that progress in this matter has been very disappointing so far. Wouldn't you all agree?"
The State Premier sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Here it comes, he told himself. Down to business at last. But the old pugilist still felt like going one more round.
"What exactly would you consider to be progress, if you don't mind me asking, Gerry?"
Weinberger smiled. Here was a man so handsome and naturally graceful, his own image consultants' only worry was whether he looked best in Armani or Gieves & Hawkes. "I don't think we should let ourselves be sidetracked into semantic squabbles at this stage, do you, Jim?" The Premier's face remained impassive at this, although his jaw clenched just a little tighter. "OK," Weinberger said as if he'd just made up his mind to share some important secret. "This is what my guys say we should do."
The Premier looked across at the Defence Minister. The look of quiet attention on her face told him everything he needed to know. The PM had already done a deal with the Yanks and it was all over bar the shouting. Fait bloody accompli.
"We're going to move the USS Kitty Hawk carrier strike group into the Coral Sea off Brisbane." Despite a general spluttering and gasping, he went on. "We're moving our monitoring station at Pine Gap onto full alert, and we'll be upgrading capability and reinforcing the security there, as is only appropriate. This gives us the possibility of bringing the new Pacific Rim Missile Defence Grid Upgrade online a little bit sooner than planned." He was having to speak a little louder now as various people tried to interrupt him with questions and protests. "We've also scheduled a few impromptu joint training exercises for various Special Forces units in and around the Brisbane area, just so we can offer maximum support if it becomes necessary."
By this time the Mayor was on his feet. “Mate, I know it's just another desert to you blokes but it says Australia on the maps here, not bloody Iraq!"
"Let's not get silly about this, Steven,” said the Defence Minister. “This is clearly a global problem and we all agree that our thinking should be rather less parochial."
“Parochial?" the Mayor spluttered.
"Oh shut up Steven," the Premier snapped. "It's all out of our hands now. Isn't it, Jessie?"
The Defence Minister smiled tightly. "I'm afraid so. The PM and I have made all the necessary arrangements. All that remains is for General Treasure here to agree the operational protocols with our allies and put Operation, er..." She coughed, displaying a slight embarrassment. "Operation Independence Day into action. The PM has assured Mr. Weinberger that they will have our full co-operation and that we will be ready to integrate our command and control systems at all levels should that become necessary."
That brought a derisive snort from the Police Commissioner who had recently received the report on the complete command and control balls-up that had taken place when all this Loosi Beecham business had first flared up.
The Premier eyed him suspiciously but turned his attention quickly back to the Federal Minister. "I still don't quite see why we're being so pants-down friendly to the bloody Yanks." He smiled briefly at their foreign guest. "No disrespect intended." Weinberger smiled back, clearly completely indifferent to what the Premier thought.
During this exchange, a young man in uniform came quietly into the room. He walked quickly over to the General and spoke softly into his ear. Then he gave the General a note and discretely withdrew.
&
nbsp; Ignoring the interruption, the Defence Minister looked around the table. "What I'm about to say cannot leave this room. Is that understood?" The words were like a magic spell. Everyone watched her attentively. There is only one thing high-ups love more than being interviewed on TV and that is being on the inside, knowing things that ordinary mortals are not deemed important enough to know about. This was what it was all about. It made the grovelling of waiters, the fawning of minor functionaries, the parties with celebrities, the first-class travel, the trophy wives, the box seats at sports events, everything else, pale into insignificance. They were in the loop, in the know, part of the elite, on the inside.
The Minister watched them all waiting for the tidbit she was about to toss them, knowing exactly what was happening, enjoying her own moment of power, feeling their need, their dependence. Her face was serious but inside she was loving it. "Satellite surveillance has revealed that a Chinese warship group has broken off its exercises in the South Pacific and has set sail for Australia. We are also aware that Japanese and various European military bases in the region are showing signs of heightened activity." The faces around the table showed different levels of shock or amazement but there was also a twinkle of excitement in their eyes. Oh yes, this was the good stuff all right. "We're also experiencing a rather high degree of activity in foreign embassies and consulates, some of which have significantly increased their staffing levels. It seems sensible, at a time like this, to choose one's allies carefully with an eye to protecting our national interests."
Bloody hell, the Premier thought. Bloody hell.
"Everybody wants a piece of this," Weinberger said. "If your celebrity aliens decide to come back here, you're gonna need a big stick to keep the crowds back." He smiled. "And that's us."
The barrage of questions that followed was so frenzied that the buzz of the vibrator on the ASIO man's phone was not noticed by anyone. He picked up the phone and checked the message. His face remained impassive but his eyes flicked up to look at the General. The General looked back at him, both men seeing the tension in the other's eyes.
-oOo-
"They didn't like it did they?" said Sam as they waited for the ramp to come down.
"Who didn't like what?" Barraclough was lost in his own thoughts and didn't much care to have Sam interrupt them.
"The big ugly guy and his horrible little black peeling thing."
"You mean Chuwar and Werpot."
"Yes. They were pretty upset."
Barraclough gave up trying to think and turned his attention to Sam. 'Upset?"
"About the Vinggans muscling in on their treasure hunt."
They started up the ramp. "At least we get to go in through the front door this time," Barraclough grumbled.
"I don't get it though," Sam wet on.
"What's to get? Chuwar is some kind of local gangster boss. Our good friend John here convinces him there's a fabulous treasure to be had. Now the Vinggans tell him to pull his head in 'cause they want it all for themselves."
“But why would he let them? He's big and mean and they're all... Well, they're all Loosi Beecham. And this is his planet and he's got thousands of soldiers that look like Godzilla with extra legs and armour. Why didn't he just tell them to bog off?"
"I dunno. Maybe there are treaties or something. Maybe the Vinggans are the biggest kids on the block around here – in some kind of technological sense. Anyway, when it comes to sheer, cold-blooded mean, you can't really beat that Braxx character. She's like a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Lucretia Borgia."
“But hot." They both turned to glower at John, who had not spoken since their audience with Chuwar. He flinched under their collective glare, seeing the blame in their expressions. "Oh come on, guys! What else were we going to do? The ugly great thing would have fed us to his pets if I hadn't thought of something. Or worse, he'd have let the Vinggans take us back with them and who knows what they had planned for us. You should be thanking me for saving our necks."
Sam's glower turned into a sarcastic grin. "Great plan, Dr. Mesmer. Take a look around. Notice anything wrong with this picture?" She waved an arm at the walls of the Vinggan spaceship and the two Loosies who were escorting them back to their cargo hold.
The Vinggans had insisted that the humans go with them on the flight back to Earth, despite Chuwar's voluble protests. The little papery creature, Werpot had urged the warlord to do whatever the Vinggans wanted, clearly more scared of his celebrity guests than his monstrous master. The vizier had put up a number of feeble and clearly spurious face-saving arguments concerning the Vinggans' right to crap all over them, but it was only when Braxx stepped up, nose-to-snout with the great warlord and said firmly that the humans were travelling with them, that any lost treasure now belonged to the Vinggan Empire, and that there would be no further argument, that Chuwar backed down – with much growling and gnashing of teeth.
Sam had seen the Vinggans' hand-weapons in action, of course. She had also seen how poor and primitive the planet To'egh was. She suspected that the warlord's soldiers would be as useless against the Vinggans as the Queensland Police had been. What she couldn't work out was why Chuwar should be the one to give way when he had a whole planet's resources to back him up. Of course, she had never seen a Vinggan spaceship strafing a planet from orbit, or sitting smugly behind its shields while more primitive space fleets exhausted their armaments in futile counter-attacks. Neither had Chuwar seen this, as it happened, but Werpot had heard the stories and had poured them into Chuwar's ears in a non-stop stream on a private sub-vocal channel while the great big idiot tried to intimidate the Vinggan leader by growling in its face. As far as Werpot was concerned, the treasure was a myth and, even if it wasn't, it was better to be the Vinggans' friends while they stole it from them, than to be blown to bits before they even went looking for it.
They reached the door to the cargo hold and their Vinggan escort stepped aside to let them through. "Well here we are," said Sam. "Home sweet home."
"Can't wait to see the old gang," murmured Barraclough, sourly.
The door opened and they walked in. "Are you OK?" Sam quietly asked her brother, who had been uncharacteristically silent since they had left the Great Hall.
He lifted his eyes from the floor and looked dolefully at her. "I just miss Loosi – I mean Drukk. You know? I hope she can come down and visit us."
Sam's concern turned in an instant into exasperation. She slapped him on the arm. "Dickhead. If you hadn't brought her – him! – round to my unit in the first place..."
“Uh oh." Barraclough stopped in the doorway and Sam and Wayne looked round to see what had alarmed him.
Facing them across the cargo hold, a crowd of grumpy pensioners and hippies glared at them over angrily folded arms.
"And where do you think you've been?" one of the old ladies demanded.
Chapter 33: All Roads Lead to Earth
General Nicholas Treasure's helicopter made a pass over the landing site before coming around to settle under the guidance of a paddle-waving controller. The General disembarked into the bright glare of the portable arc lights that surrounded him and turned the outback night into day. Already the area around the pit was filled with military personnel and mobile command and control units. Portable generators roared from all directions, feeding power into the fat cables that snaked everywhere across the sandy ground. Two large tents, their flaps rolled up to let in any breeze that might stir in that hot night, held the civilians who were being debriefed. Another, larger tent was for the medical teams who were looking after the injured. The General took it all in at a glance and strode purposefully towards a small portable office, followed by his aide-de-camp and a young Major who had saluted him off the helicopter and was now trying to brief him as they went.
"Wimbush!" the General shouted. “Find the mess tent and get me a coffee and a sandwich. I'm sure the Major would like one too." The aide-de-camp hurried off to comply. "What's your name again?"
"Ah, Totterdell, sir," the Major stammered, realising that he was being addressed.
"You got a proper name, Totterdell?"
"Ah, my first name's Lester, sir?" The way the General turned and peered at him left the Major in no doubt that "Lester” did not count as a proper name. "Ah, some of the blokes back home call me Les, Sir." This wasn't actually true. The blokes back home called him "Lesley” and then only when they weren't being particularly nasty, but he'd always wanted them to call him Les.
"Good man! So, you've got these bloody roos buried in that pit, right?"
"Ah, yes sir. It was the local police who did it, in fact. Chap called Collins organised it. It all seems to have gone a bit pear-shaped though."
"So I hear. Anyone dead?"
"No, sir. Quite a few injuries but nothing too serious."
"What about the roos?"
"Well, we think they're still alive, sir. We have microphones on the surface and we can hear movement and sometimes shouting."
"Shouting? Roos don't shout, Major."
Totterdell grimaced at the prospect of contradicting a General but forced himself to say it. "Ah, I'm afraid these ones do, sir. They're armed too. Some sort of laser beam the boffins says – we've dragged in some science advisers under one of those emergency protocol thingies. You see the beams every now and then. They blast a hole through the soil and the beam shoots into the air. When the beam stops the soil falls back in and closes up any holes they make."
“Boffins, eh?" The General was quite taken aback. He hadn't heard the word since the last time he'd seen an old war movie.
"Ah, yes, sir." Totterdell felt himself blushing.
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