The box-like Bushmaster we were riding in had quite a colourful history. Lieutenant King and his squad of Custodians had driven the vehicle to Hamamachi under the pretext of escorting the Japanese ambassador back home. King’s real reason for going to the Japanese colony was to deliver a nuclear warhead hidden in an embryo maturation tank, set to go off after he had left. When that little plan backfired, resulting in the death of King and the Custodians, the Bushmaster fell into the hands of the Japanese. Turned out they had no use for the vehicle. So when Madison and I asked them if we could borrow it to return to Newhome and stop the renegade Rangers from murdering the town’s Korean population, the keys were in our hands before we even finished asking the question. After we helped stop the Rangers, inadvertently saving Newhome’s venerable dictator in the process, we drove the vehicle back to Hamamachi.
Since then, we had used the Bushmaster to spearhead several raids into Skel territory. The vehicle wasn’t indestructible, but being bulletproof and mostly impervious to mines and IEDs, made it the perfect choice in fighting the brutal savages.
“Think the Skel will ever work out how we always know where they hide their slaves at night?” Nanako said.
“No way,” Madison said from her seat in the passenger compartment.
“The Newhomers ever figure out how the Skel managed to hit all of the joint Custodian/forager teams at roughly the same time, even though they were scattered all over Melbourne?” Shorty said.
“Not that I heard,” I replied.
Which was no surprise. How could anyone in this ruined world guess that the Japanese Rangers had managed to take control of an American recon sat – a spy satellite – stationed over Australia? And that they had been using it to spy on Newhome’s day-to-day activities? That information was passed on to their Skel allies. Although the Rangers were no more, we had access to the satellite now. We used it to spy on Newhome, as well as watch where the Skel stashed the slaves before making one of our raids.
Chapter Three
~ Chelsea Thomas ~
I glared at Anna. “Look, I know the chancellor told us to take the war to the Japanese. But just how many towns does the Kardella Water Treatment Plant supply – apart from Inverloch and Hamamachi?”
“What’s it to you?” she asked.
“Humour me.”
She glared back at me. “From what I saw, it supplies five towns. Used to be more, but the others were all abandoned after the war.”
“So we’re not just depriving Hamamachi of its water, but four other towns as well.”
“So what? As far as we know, they’re all in cahoots with each other.”
“And if they’re not?”
Anna rubbed her thumb against the first two fingers of her left hand, mimicking a tiny violin. Tell someone who cares.
“Anna–”
“Chelsea, the Rangers killed fifty-one Koreans, including women, children, General Lee and Colonel Kim. They almost killed the chancellor too! That’s why we’re here.”
I let the matter drop. Even though I disagreed with any attack on Hamamachi, I understood the need for Newhome to send a clear message that we would not sit back and take what they dished at us. Hopefully this raid wouldn’t backfire as badly as the chancellor’s previous raid on the Japanese town.
After that terrible night last December when the Skel and Rangers broke into North End and the lab, the chancellor responded by sending a Custodian unit to Hamamachi. It was commanded by Lieutenant King, and Ethan Jones and his foraging team were conscripted as guides. They went under the pretence of establishing a trade agreement with the Japanese as well as escorting their ambassador back home. However, the real purpose of the mission was to blow Hamamachi off the face of the earth with the nuclear warhead concealed in a maturation-tank.
That one act illustrated the chancellor’s hypocrisy more than any other did. He criticised the pre-apocalypse nations for nuking each other into oblivion, but when Newhome was threatened, he resorted to the same tactics. Fortunately, Ethan Jones detected the bomb and foiled Lieutenant King’s plan.
After that, relations between the two towns spiralled downhill quickly.
The Japanese sent a sniper to terrorize Newhome in revenge for King attempting to destroy their town. An assault to capture or kill the man resulted in a bunch of dead Custodians. Ethan Jones and his forager team finally eliminated him after they slipped through the Skel siege lines at night.
Far from celebrating them as heroes, the Custodians accused Ethan, his wife Nanako, and his foraging unit of being Japanese spies. Somehow, they managed to escape from the town and flee into Melbourne’s ruins.
Several teams of Specialists and Custodians were sent out to catch them and bring them back. They all returned empty handed except for Madison’s unit, which didn’t return at all.
A couple of months after that, dozens of Rangers attacked Newhome one dark night, this time going straight for the chancellery. No attempts were made to find out what the geneticists were doing – the Rangers were out for blood. Before they could be stopped, dozens of Custodians and over fifty Koreans had been killed, including half the councillors.
The chancellor was only saved by the unexpected and inexplicable arrival of Ethan Jones and Madison Taylor, who hadn’t been seen since.
After that fateful night, we eleven remaining Specialists were put through an accelerated cadet-training program at the Custodian Academy. We did the course in six months instead of twelve.
It was during those six months that Anna’s leadership skills came to the fore – someone had to step up and fill the vacuum created by Suyin’s death and Madison’s absence.
“They’re turning us into soldiers,” Bhagya had said one night when we returned from the Custodian Academy. “You all know why, right? They’re sending us to war with Hamamachi.”
That was why we were at the Kardella Water Treatment Plant tonight. We were taking the war to the Japanese.
As we drew closer to the facility, I saw a large field dotted with concrete-walled pools that were arrayed in four lines. The water in these pools bubbled furiously, like fish tanks but on an infinitely larger scale. To one side of the pools was an administration building. Behind them were more buildings and structures, as well as large, round tanks. Connecting the pools and structures were sturdy green or white pipes.
Anna stopped suddenly, gesturing for us to do likewise.
“Safeties off. Two pairs of sentries patrol the plant – if you see them, shoot to kill. We advance in teams, leapfrog style,” she said.
Romy, Bhagya, and I couched our assault rifles, flicked off the safeties, and jogging at a crouch, advanced fifty steps. Kneeling down, we covered the buildings and pools with our guns. Anna, Claire and Lucia, got up and advanced a hundred steps, leapfrogging fifty paces ahead of us.
We repeated this tactic until we reached the dilapidated chain-link fence that surrounded the water treatment plant. The fence was rusting away and had collapsed in several places, granting us easy access.
“Something’s wrong,” Anna said as she studied the facility – to all intents and purposes, it appeared as lifeless as Melbourne’s ruins.
“Where are the sentries?” Romy said.
“Precisely.”
“Shall we abort?” I asked, hoping against hope she would order us to do exactly that. It was hard enough trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world without this maddening war between Newhome and Hamamachi depriving five towns of fresh water.
“No – we proceed as planned.” Anna stepped through a wide rift in the fence and we followed with weapons held at the ready. We passed a low, rectangular building labelled pH Correction and advanced towards a larger one identified as Fluoridation.
Stretching out before us was the field of aerated rectangular concrete-walled pools, the water bubbling away noisily. I felt exposed moving through the brightly lit facility so openly, unable to shake the feeling that the missing sentries could be watching us right now, fing
ers on their triggers, ready to fire.
We stepped closer to the Fluoridation building to avail ourselves of its cover, and Anna motioned for us to gather around. We did so, but kept our guns at the ready and senses on alert in case the missing sentries decided to make an appearance.
“Right, sisters – now that we’ve reached our first target, the aeration tanks – I will brief you on the mission.” She spoke with an inflated sense of self-importance, an annoying trait she picked up when she was promoted to lieutenant at the Custodian Academy.
“First target? What’s the second?” Claire asked.
“The Hamamachi satellite ground station – that’s why we brought explosives. We’re going to blow up the station and the dish. That will turn their phones into useless trinkets. Never again will the Japanese and Skel be able to coordinate their attacks against us.”
“What’s to stop them taking over another abandoned satellite ground station?” Romy asked.
Anna patted her backpack. “The IT experts back home have given me a program to upload before we blow the place. It will change the satellite’s orbit to make it enter the atmosphere and burn up.”
“What about everyone else who uses the sat-phones? Civilians, emergency services, other towns?” I asked.
“Peripheral damage,” Anna said, without an ounce of remorse.
I suddenly felt uneasy; something didn’t add up. “Ah, Anna, we’re going to blow this place too, right?”
“No.”
“What are we doing here then?”
Anna slipped her backpack off her shoulders, unzipped it, and took out an object that glinted in the harsh halogen and LED lighting.
It was a black metal cylinder.
A black metal cylinder with a biohazard symbol.
Chapter Four
~ Ethan Jones ~
“We have to pull over!” I shouted.
I was riding in the back of the Bushmaster with Nanako, a paramedic – Yuriko – and five of the wounded. Four of them were slaves, and the fifth…the fifth was Hiro. Madison was operating the roof-mounted machine gun, watching the road behind us.
Crouching on the floor in the middle of the passenger compartment, Hiro held my hand in a crushing grip. Tears sprang to my eyes when he or one of the slaves we just rescued screamed out in pain as the armoured personal carrier lurched over a bump or crevice in the road.
“We’re not far enough away yet,” Aika shouted from the cab where she sat beside Shorty. She was tying a bandage around her thigh, her hands slick with her own blood.
“We can’t make them travel in this condition!” I tried to support Hiro’s right leg with my free hand so that it wasn’t resting on the floor. I did my best not to look at the row of terrible metal spikes driven into the calf and shin. Two of the rescued slaves sported similar injuries, while the other two had been shot. Sometimes these missions to rescue Skel slaves went smoothly, sometimes they didn’t. This was one of the latter times.
“Just a few more kilometres,” Shorty shouted, glancing into the crew compartment.
“Then drive slower, for goodness sake.”
“Okay!” Shorty snapped.
The Bushmaster jolted again, causing Hiro to arch his back in agony when his leg bounced off the floor once more.
I would have asked Nanako or Yuriko for help but they had their hands full too. My wife was busy keeping an emaciated young woman’s spike-studded leg elevated. Yuriko was pressing a thick compress against the wound of a middle-aged man who had taken a bullet in the stomach.
At first, the mission had gone like clockwork. We found the derelict post office that served as the slaves’ prison for the night without any problems. A quick reconnoitre of the building and immediate surrounds revealed no Skel, which was normal. They rarely guarded the slaves at night, choosing instead to gather in depraved celebration by cavorting around and getting drunk.
After disarming several spring-loaded spike traps in the street using echolocation, we entered the building. Putting aside our distress at the sight of four dozen sickly, malnourished slaves, Madison and I checked the room for more traps. Upon finding none, we brought in the rest of our team except for Aika and Ken. Aika was crouching behind the ruins of a brick wall in the street outside, scanning the surrounding streets through a night vision monocular, her sniper rifle beside her. Ken was operating the Bushmaster’s machine gun, still wearing his night goggles.
That’s when disaster struck.
Hiro sprung the first trap, his foot plunging through a deliberately weakened section of floorboard into a metal and wooden contraption that snapped shut like a bear trap. I’ll never forget the shriek he made as he collapsed, clawing ineffectively at the rows of metal spikes embedded in his calf muscle and shinbone.
Even while we were trying to process what had happened, two of the slaves, a young woman and a teenage boy, stepped into spike traps as well. Ordering everyone to remain where they were, Madison sang and I shouted with echolocation, soon locating three other modified sections of floorboard.
Tendrils of fear shot up my spine when I realised Nanako was standing perilously close to one. Speaking slowly so I wouldn’t cause her to panic and take a bad step, I got her to take two steps to her right. Letting her come on these missions was a constant source of anxiety for me, but she was a good soldier and we worked together smoothly as a team. I also knew there would be no point trying to stop her.
“Sorry, we didn’t know about them traps,” said a young teenage boy with filthy red hair. “The Skel bringed us in through the back door, and telled us not to go near the front. Didn’t know why.”
“It’s okay, mate, it’s not your fault,” Nanako said.
After David triggering the remaining traps with a crowbar to render them harmless, we began the painful process of helping the slaves out the door and into the backs of the three trucks. Nanako and I carried a white-faced Hiro out to the Bushmaster, putting him in a seat near the front.
“Blast it! A whole boatload of Skel coming this way!” Aika’s voice sounded in our headsets. She opened fire a heartbeat later, an empty bullet cartridge bouncing on the ground after she ejected it. She immediately loaded another round and fired again. Meanwhile, Ken opened up with the machine gun, forcing the Skel further down the street to seek cover.
Bullets and arrows began landing in our midst, skipping on stones and ricocheting off brick walls. One hit a balding middle-aged man, who grunted in pain and collapsed, blood pouring the wound.
“Move like you mean it, people – we’re out of time,” I shouted as Ken and I hurried back to assist two of the wounded.
Chaos reigned as we shepherded the rest of the slaves into trucks while under fire from Skel armed with old bolt-action rifles and crossbows. Yet thanks to the herculean effort by Ken and Aika to force the Skel to keep their heads down, only ten people were wounded and only five seriously. Unfortunately, that included Aika, who took a bullet in the leg when she made a mad dash for the Bushmaster.
Nanako’s voice snapped me back to the present.
“Sorry?”
“It’s not your fault, mister,” she repeated, seeking out my eyes in the vehicle’s poorly lit interior. Her face was full of genuine concern – she knew how hard I was on myself when things went pear-shaped.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied, examining each of the wounded inside the Bushmaster as waves of guilt buffeted me. The slave with the stomach wound wasn’t going to make it, and that broke my heart. We were trying to save them from being worked to death as slaves, not get them killed in the process.
“The Skel are a relentless enemy,” she said. “And their ability to adapt to our tactics just shows how resourceful they can be.”
“I know – and that’s why I should have been more careful.”
“There’s no possible way you can anticipate everything they’re going to do, Jones,” Aika said, looking back at us. “They’ve never put traps under the floor of a building holding the sla
ves before.”
“They don’t know you and Madison can echolocate, but they’ve obviously come to the conclusion that we can spot their traps. That’s why they’re trying new tactics,” Nanako said.
“We’ll have to be doubly careful from now on,” Aika added.
“I wish we could round up all the Skel and ship ’em off to Tasmania or something,” I said.
“We’d need an army to that, and even then the cost in lives would be prohibitive,” Aika said.
“Yeah, I know. Hey, how’s your leg – you doing okay?” I asked.
“It hurts, but I’ll live,” she said.
“Hey, I reckon we’re far enough away to pull over now, if you want me to,” Shorty said a few minutes later.
“Okay, let’s do it.” I used the headset to call ahead to David, Leigh, and Miki, who were driving the three trucks in front of us. When we approached Skel territory, the Bushmaster took the lead. When we left, it drove at the rear.
Our four-vehicle convoy pulled to the side of the road and the team of paramedics riding in the other trucks hurried back to the Bushmaster give emergency medical aid to the wounded. They had already treated those who had been riding with them.
Quitting the Bushmaster, I hovered outside its rear door as they set to work, fretting over Hiro and the four slaves. I hoped the medics could remove those terrible spikes and administer morphine so they could travel the rest of the way free from pain.
Suddenly Nanako was there, pulling on my arm. “Come on, mister. They can’t work with you breathing down their necks.”
“Sorry. Just wish there was something more I could do.”
“You got them out of there, yeah?”
“But–”
“You know the best thing about these missions?”
I shook my head.
“The expressions on their faces when they get to Hamamachi and realise they’re not dreaming, that they’ve been rescued.” She gave my arm an encouraging squeeze.
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