Cargo Cult (44 page)

Chuwar glared at him from beneath
heavy brows. "Are we there yet?" he asked.

Werpot choked down a scream. "No,
Sire. Our estimated time of arrival is seventeen hours from now. As
I mentioned the last time you asked – and the time before that –
there is a display over here..." He indicated a viewscreen about
the size of a Klebin troll which displayed the words, “Time to
arrival: 17 hours.”

Chuwar made a dismissive gesture
and growled at the screen. "I can't be expected to learn every
damned instrument on this whole ship! Look at them all!"

Werpot cast his eye over the dozen
or so instruments on the bridge. "No, of course not, Sire." The
real bridge was several decks below them, where the real captain
and a crew of ten seasoned spacehands piloted the ship. Chuwar's
bridge was just for show – and to make the great tyrant feel
important, naturally.

"Why aren't we there yet?"

"Sire?"

"You heard me." Suddenly distracted
by something, Chuwar studied his vizier closely. "Doesn't that skin
of yours itch, Werpot?"

The N'oid drew himself up and
avoided his master's eyes. "Actually, yes, Sire, it does." It was
not something that was spoken of in polite N'oid society.

"Are the guns ready?"

"Yes, Sire. Everything has been
ready for three weeks, Sire. The crew is exhausted from being on
battle alert for all that time. Perhaps we could give them all a
short break before we arrive?" Werpot himself was feeling pretty
wiped out.

"I don't pay them to be exhausted,
Werpot. I pay them to be alert. If anyone's slacking, I want them
brought here to me. Do you understand?"

Realising he'd almost said enough
to have half the crew summarily executed, Werpot got a grip on
himself and forced a smile. "They're a fine bunch of men, women and
things, Sire. No problem there I assure you."

"Good. Good." The warlord paced the
room, distracted again. He picked up a multiphase linear neutron
flow reticulator and inspected it closely. Then he put it down
again and continued his pacing. Werpot watched him, despair filling
his hearts. The crew might be exhausted but Chuwar appeared to have
endless resources of nervous energy. Still, he consoled himself, if
he could just stand it for seventeen more hours, they'd arrive and
Chuwar would have something other than waiting to occupy his mind –
such as it was.

Reaching the far end of the bridge,
Chuwar stopped in his tracks and turned to the forward viewscreens,
peering into the infinite grey of infraspace as if he'd lost
something out there.

"Are we there yet?" he asked.

-oOo-

The senior civil servant who burst
into the Defence Minister's office was red-faced and sweating. Not
a man used to physical exercise, he had nevertheless sprinted the
fifty metres between his office and the Minister's.

"George?" she asked, taken aback by
his abrupt appearance. Beyond him, her PA was looking distressed
and flustered. "What is it?"

He closed the door behind him. "The
Parkes observatory says something large has just appeared in
space."

“Pardon?"

"It's a ship, Jessie. A bloody big
one."

"Oh my God."

"It looks like they're back."

The Minister tried to think, but
the enormity of what was happening kept thwarting her efforts. "Is
it coming here?"

"It's heading for Earth, yes. Flat
out like a lizard drinking, they say."

"No, no. Is it coming here? To
Australia?"

Realising he hadn't even thought to
check, George shook his head. "I don't know. I..." His mobile phone
rang and he pulled it out of his shirt pocket, squinting at it in
deep concentration as he tried to work out which of its
brightly-coloured icons would answer the call. “Baskin," he snapped
once he'd fathomed it. He listened briefly. "I want regular
updates," he snapped and then had to study the phone again for a
moment before he could hang up.

"Well?" the
M
inister wanted to know.

“Pine Gap has it on radar too."

"Damn, now the Americans know."

"They can't say where it's going to
land. It's changing course. But it will reach orbit in seven
minutes. If it bothers to orbit, that is. They say it might just
come straight down."

"Seven minutes?" The Minister was
on her feet. "I've got to call the PM! We've all got to get to the
bunker. Seven minutes? They couldn't give us more than seven bloody
minutes?" She gripped the edge of her desk and tried to calm down.
She needed to focus. She grabbed her desk phone, a finger hovering
over the PM's fast dial button.

She looked up at George. "Call
General Treasure. Make sure he's in the loop. Make sure he's doing
something. Shit! You know what to do George. Just go and do
it."

George nodded and left the room.
Wandering back along the corridors of Parliament House, he felt
sick with anxiety. He knew they'd just had five days of contingency
planning meetings at a really nice tropical island resort, but he
couldn't for the life of him remember what the hell they'd decided.
Come to think of it, hadn't they all agreed that they needed to do
it again, real soon, to work out the details? Maybe at a
rain-forest resort next time.

“Bugger," he muttered to himself.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger."

-oOo-

General Treasure got the call while
he was still in the air travelling from Amberley back to Canberra.
"Has this got anything to do with those kangaroos?" he wanted to
know.

“Kangaroos, General?"

“Bit of a bloody coincidence don't
you think? We arrest the kangaroos and suddenly there's a spaceship
in orbit! I don't like the look of this. Get off the phone, George,
I need to call Amberley." He hung up and shouted for his ADC.

-oOo-

At the other end of the line,
George looked at the handset, purring quietly in his hand.
“Kangaroos?" he asked himself. "That bloke's always been one galah
short of a flock." But he hadn't time to worry about it now. He
needed to get to the bunker before they shut the doors.

-oOo-

"General?" Wimbush appeared from
the back of the plane where he had been having a quiet snooze.

"Tell the pilot to turn the plane
around. We're going back to Amberley. And get me that young Major
from the pit site before you go."

Wimbush took the phone without
comment and dialled the number. When Totterdell answered, he handed
it back to the General and made his way to the cockpit.

"Is that you, Les?" the General
wanted to know.

Totterdell recognised the voice
immediately, besides, no-one else called him Les. "Yes, General.
How can I help you?"

"I want to know you've got those
roos safely tucked away, Major. I want to be sure you're guarding
them with everything we've got."

Totterdell sounded a little
nervous. "Er, yes, sir. I'm not sure we could actually hold them if
we wanted to, sir, but they're being very co-operative. I don't
think they'll be going anywhere."

"I'm not talking about stopping
them getting out, Major. I'm talking about stopping anyone else
getting in."

Now Totterdell sounded distinctly
alarmed. "Anyone else, sir? You mean, like, more kangaroos?"

"I mean like ships full of invading
aliens, man. I mean alien armies. I mean War of the Worlds, Major.
There's a ship on its way right now from outer space and it could
be parked on your roof in about two minutes. And I want those roos
safe, do you hear, Major. I don't want them busted out, or beamed
up, or borne aloft in chariots of fire. They're my roos and I'm
keeping 'em. Got that?"

"Er, yes, sir. Ah, a ship, you
say?"

"Good man. Now get off the line. I
need to talk to the Base Commander." He stabbed the hangup button.
"Wimbush!"

His ADC appeared in the aisle,
staggering as the plane banked into its one-hundred-and-eighty
degree turn. "Yes, sir?"

The General waved the phone at him.
"Get me Air Commodore Braby on this thing will you, and make it
fast."

"Have you been drinking Nicky?"

Air Commodore Barnabas Braby was
one of the few men in the Australian Defence Force who would have
dared make such a suggestion to General Treasure and even he would
normally have been more circumspect. Yet what the general had just
told him to do could only be the result of one of those extended
lunchtime binges his political masters were so fond of.

"Damn it Barney, this is a direct
order. Scramble every damned thing you've got on the ground and
keep the lot of 'em in the air until I tell you to bring 'em down
again. Is that clear?"

"Clear as mud, if you don't mind me
saying so, mate."

"Just do it, Braby, or your next
posting will be to bloody Naru. Once they're up, get yourself
somewhere safe. There's a bloody spaceship heading our way and my
guess is your lot will be in the front line this time. I'll be at
the base in an hour. Now get off the line and get it done!"

With a crisp "Yes, sir," the Air
Commodore put down the phone and called his 2IC. “Aspen, give the
order to scramble everything." He spoke fast, to forestall the
obvious objections. "I want to see everything that can fly in the
air and flying right now." He had to raise his voice to stop the
Group Captain speaking. “Right now, Aspen. Orders direct from God
Almighty.”

With a deep frown Group Captain
Aspen yessirred the phone. Within seconds calls were being made up
and down the flight line. Moments after that, senior NCOs were
running about shouting and officers and men were to be seen
throwing themselves through doors, into and out of hummers, up and
down ladders, and sprinting for their posts.

Aspen watched the pandemonium he
had unleashed from the tarmac beside 1 Squadron. He really needed
to ask Braby what was going on.

"Get over to the Air Base Command
Post, Aspen,” Braby barked at him when his return call finally got
through. "Seems there's a UFO on its way. We've got about two
minutes.”

"Yes, Sir," he'd said. "Did you say
two -?" But Braby was still speaking.

“And while you're at it, I want
every last civilian off the base right now. Every airman with
weapons training should report to the armoury and be issued with
sidearms. Do not lock down the base. Do you hear?”

“But standing orders -”

“Standing orders be buggered. If
you were an invading alien spaceship, where on this base would you
land?”

Aspen struggled with the idea. “On
the runaway, I suppose. It's the only clear ground. But -”

“So we don't want our people locked
in there, do we? Not if they might need to make a hasty retreat.
Anyway, there's no time. You've got one minute.”

-oOo-

"Well how am I supposed to
know?"

John Saunders was becoming more and
more irritable. The Vinggan ship was in a stationary orbit over
South-East Queensland and he was peering into a screen that looked
disturbingly like a Google Maps image of the terrain below him but
without any towns labelled or roads marked. He could recognise a
few things – Moreton Bay, Stradbroke Island, and a fuzzy greyness
cutting into the green bushland that must have been Brisbane
itself.

"Amberley's in the West somewhere,
over there." He pointed at the image. "Can you zoom in or
something?"

"I don't know," snapped Braxx.
"Drukk! Where's Drukk?" Everyone on the bridge looked around for a
moment.

"You sent him to fetch the vehicle
operator," said one of the Loosi Beechams.

"I'm here," shouted another Loosi,
dragging one of the humans into the room. This copy of the lovely
megastar wore a skin-tight orange dress, which John remembered well
from their recent adventures together.

"Is that the vehicle operator?"
Braxx asked.

Marcus Grogan, aspiring author and
erstwhile vehicle operator, struggled in Drukk's surprisingly
powerful grip. "Let me go, you alien bimbo! I'm not a bus driver. I
– am – not – a – bus – driver! How many times do I have to say it?"
He looked wildly about him at the roomful of staring, identical
faces. "J
e ne suis pas un conducteur d'autobus
!" he shouted,
surprising no-one with his mastery of high-school French since the
translation field rendered it automatically into Vinggan, or, in
John's case, back into English.

"It was felt," John said into the
ensuing silence, eyeing Braxx accusingly, “that since you did such
a fine job of finding my house that time, you'd be able to point us
in the right direction for Amberley."

Marcus goggled at John as if he had
revealed himself to be the ringleader of this mob of alien
celebrity impersonators. "Amberley?" He bawled. "Amberley? How the
hell am I supposed to find my way to Amberley from bloody space?"
He noticed the big display and threw a dramatic arm gesture its
way. "I'm a writer, I keep telling you all, not a bloody... Hang
on."

He stepped closer to the display.
John was surprise to see him blush hotly. "That's Amberley, just
there," Marcus said, sheepishly. "That little grey splodge next to
Ipswich."

John peered at the image. "How the
hell did you find it?"

Marcus shrugged. "I should know it,
really. I was born there at the base hospital."

John rolled his eyes in
frustration. Instead of hitting Marcus, he turned to Braxx. "OK.
We've found it. You can take us down now."

-oOo-

Corporal Emily Brownlowe took the
gun and the ammo clips she had been handed. The armoury was a low
white building with a white-painted corrugated iron roof. Airmen
were busy inside queueing weapons up and passing them through a
barred window to the people filing past. A Flight Sergeant at the
window pushed a clipboard at her.

“What's going on, Sarge?” she asked
as she signed.