FIC: The Lucky Country
May. 25th, 2006 04:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalNotes: A sequel to my story Opening Shots set in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaypeta's Terinu universe. PG-13 for langauge.
The school children sang the old song, while Bobby Swinson, once upon a time Australia's Minister of Defence, sat in his chair with a false smile on his face. It was a bloody hot December day, in bloody awful Queensland, and he was sitting on a bloody hot folding metal chair on the tarmac at Brisbane International Airport in his best civilian suit trying not to explode.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me.
And he sang as he watched and he waited 'til his billy boiled
"Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?"
"Have I ever told you, Marty," he said softly between clenched teeth, "how much I loathe this bloody song?"
Marty Costilitz, current Minister of the Police, also his friend and occasional political rival, answered softly, "Can't count the times," while maintaining his own smile.
"What the hell is wrong with Advance Australia Fair anyway?"
"It's the national anthem. Wouldn't exactly be politic to be singing the national anthem right now. Not in front of the tourists anyway." Costilitz nodded in the direction of the great green alien that sat beside the Prime Minister on the reviewing stand. Beside him sat a dingo on two legs wearing a suit, and behind them two tall fellows with feathery hair, piano keys for ears, and expressions that said "Bodyguards, Do Not Annoy."
Along came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
"It's better than this song. Bunch of nonsense about a sheep snatcher getting his just desserts. Makes us all out to be a bunch of thieves hangin' about in the outback, wearing those bloody stupid hats with the corks hangin' off the brim."
"Bobby, for the love of God keep your voice down."
Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Whose is that jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Sorry," Swinson murmured, and shut up. The schoolchildren, faces bright with innocence (or perhaps the beginnings of heatstroke) sang right through the last And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong and received weary applause from the audience, and politely baffled looks from the contingent of aliens. Then the Prime Minister stood to begin his speech, welcoming the Varn to Earth, and making assurances that Australia would accept the Varn Dominion's command of humanity, unlike the other unfortunate nations of the East and West which had dared to contradict the Varn assertions of control. Politely not mentioned were the fates of those nations, now lying in ruin for the most part, their cities either cratered or sunk in massive artificial tsunamis, their people now dependant on the benevolent Varn for food and shelter.
It was all starting to make Swinson sick to his stomach, and he was praying that the Varn's speech would be as short as the PM's was long winded, when Costilitz held his finger up to the comm bug in his ear and softly said "Understood, I'm on my way."
"Trouble?" Swinson asked.
Costilitz was frowning in worry as he stood up. "Attempted breach at the outer perimeter. I'm going to check it out."
"Need a hand?"
"Anything to get out of this awful heat, eh Bobby?"
They made polite sotto voce apologies to the other guests as they stepped away from the reviewing stand, and stepped aboard a Hummer that whisked them towards the airport's security offices.
"What's the full story?" Swinson asked, as he basked in the Hummer's air conditioning.
"Not sure yet. All we know right now is that there were a half-dozen of them, all armed, some with heavy weapons."
"Oh, bloody hell!" Swinson cursed. "That's all we need right now!"
"I know, I know. Thank God we stopped them without making a ruckus." The Hummer pulled up to the security offices, a series of low, bunker-like buildings built in the earlier part of the century in the time of the terrorism scares. Swinson followed his friend into the main building, where Costilitz flashed his ID card at a uniformed security commander and asked, "What's the situation, Albert?"
"We were very lucky, sir. A patrol caught them as they were pulling their weapons out of their truck, and managed to taser them before they could react. They are six of them in all, and they were armed with automatic rifles, a mortar, and several RPG's."
"Good god." Costilitz turned to Swinson, furious. "Your final report said all of the Army's inventory had been disabled, Bobby. You swore to the PM that it had been!"
"And it was, as far I knew! We piled every weapon we could account for into the pits and poured concrete over the lot of them. But if you're asking if I personally counted every bloody gun we had, then I didn't. If some supply sergeant diverted equipment and mucked up the paperwork to cover his tracks, we've got no way of finding him now."
Costilitz's anger deflated. "Right, you're right. I just wish you were wrong." He ran his hand through the thinning hair on his scalp. "We're just damned lucky we caught them before they fired a shot off. I am not going to have us overrun by those damned grey skinned soldiers of theirs, shooting up our people like they did that poor Namatjira girl."
"We need to question them before they get their bearings, find out who was equipping them," Swinson said. "If they're just an isolated group then we're lucky, and we can nail this shut before it gets out of hand. If they're a cell of an organized resistance group, then we've got to find out who supplied them and who their contacts are."
"Right then," Costilitz said. "Are they in separate cells, Commander?"
"Yes, sir," the security commander confirmed. "They didn't have any ID on them though."
"Figured as much. Come on, Bobby, let's see what we can get out of them." Swinson followed his friend and the security commander down the hall, into the holding area, which was divided into separate concrete cells, each closed with a solid steel door. The commander unlocked the door to one cell, locking it behind the two men after they entered.
Sitting on the cell's bunk, already changed into an orange prison jumpsuit, was a tall, rangy, native Australian man with a shaven head and a thick black beard. To Swinson's surprise, he stood and saluted the ex-general when they entered.
"Hello, General Swinson," the man said, his face saturnine.
"At ease," Swinson replied, returning the salute, never mind that they were both in civvies. "You ex-Army then?"
"Yes, sir. De-mobbed with everyone after the surrender." The man stood straight and tall, looking Swinson right in the eye.
"Who are you? Who else is in your organization?" Costilitz demanded.
"I am just a lone soldier, fighting for the freedom of our nation, and our planet," the man said. It sounded like rehearsed speech. Swinson squinted, wiping the drying sweat from his brow, trying to place the man's face. Someone from the telly…?
"Oh, dear God," he muttered. "Sergeant... Namatjira, am I right?"
"Yes, sir!" The man snapped to full attention. "Sergeant Roland Namatjira, RAA. Discharged with honour, sir!"
Costilitz covered his face with his hands and said a very rude word. "Another martyr to The Cause, that's all we bloody well need."
"Your daughter was Rachael Namatjira, right?" Swinson asked.
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Swinson sighed. "I am sorry for your loss, Sergeant."
"Thank you, sir!"
"Did it occur to you that your wife would have been rather upset, had you managed to get yourself killed doing whatever it was you were going to do out there?"
Sergeant Namatjira blinked twice, eyes tearing up. "She would have... would have understood, sir."
"Mortars... RPG's..." Costilitz said, his eyes burning. "Did you realize, Sergeant, that other people's children out there on the tarmac, singing away?"
Sergeant Namatjira swallowed. "The plan was to wait until the children had finished their portion of the program and cleared the field. Then we would have attacked."
"Yes, that would have worked perfectly. No one's ever heard of shots going astray or shrapnel hitting innocent civilians," Swinson said blandly. "And what about everyone in the reviewing stand? The Varn Gene Mage was your target, was he not? Striking him when he was in the center of crowd, unable to dodge out of the way was your best shot wasn't it? What about all the poor sods around him, eh?""
"Collaborators," Namatjira said stiffly.
"'Collaborators', oh that's such an easy word to throw around. Myself and Minister Costilitz included of course."
Namatjira's expression grew outraged. "You threw away the army! Our best chance to strike at them!"
Swinson's voice was a low growl. "I supervised the demobilization. I was following the orders of Australia's civilian government. That's called the Rule of Law, Sergeant, or aren't you familiar with the concept? Without it our nation would be nothing more than another tin pot Pacific Rim dictatorship like Burma or North Korea. I didn't like it, but what else was there to do?"
"Disappear into the outback. Fight them!"
"Wouldn't have worked," Costilitz said. "Oh, you probably would knocked off a few patrols, killed a few of those Creo fellows, or maybe a couple of 'collaborating' government officials. You know what would have happened next?"
"We would have drawn them in, forced them to divert resources."
"They would have bombed the living sh*t out of us, same as they did everyone else!" Costilitz shouted. "Do you want Australia to be like Japan or England, washed away under tsunami waves five hundred feet high? Do you want it to be like China or the Americas, craters from asteroid drops, cracks from fault lines opening up, from one end of the coast to the other? We're the 'Lucky Country', Sergeant, just as we always have been. We're the only modern nation in the entire bloody world to come through this invasion with our government intact, our infrastructure untouched, our people alive and safe, not living in tents and dying of starvation or dysentery in Europe, or just a speck of dust in a bloody huge crater where Los Angeles used to be."
"They're marching them all away in their transport ships. Making them slaves on other worlds!"
"Yes, them. Not us!"
Namatjira's voice was cold. "And that makes everything all right, does it?"
"No, but that's the way it is," Swinson answered. "It's the hand we've got to play with. You know why they haven't touched us, haven't dragged any Aussie away to work the mines on some other world?"
"Haven't a clue."
"Because that tall, green-skinned fellow, sitting on a reviewing stand in the middle of December in Queensland, with not a drop sweat on his brow, thinks we're interesting. We're his private little research project, so he can look at humans in their natural environment. Study us. He's a scientist and we're his control group, so he's not going to do a thing to us, so long as we've got the sense to be quiet. So we get live our lives almost as if the Varn Dominion never arrived. Nobody starves, nobody's homeless, nobody dies. Lucky country. Lucky, lucky Australia."
"Somebody died," Sergeant Namatjira said, his voice rising in fury. "My daughter. Her friends most likely. Everybody on Unity Station and millions elsewhere!"
"Billions," Swinson said softly. "By the best estimates we've come up with, there's about three and a half billion dead on the Earth."
"So why don't we fight? Even if it means we all die, we should fight! For the souls of all the billions dead, for all the dead children, we should fight them. Until our last breath we should fight them!" Sergeant Namatjira fell back, sitting hard on his bunk. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to weep.
Swinson felt old, very old, just then. Odd to think, that he'd once commanded the whole Army, but never fired a shot in anger himself. Of course the Sergeant likely never had either, not that he wasn't willing to try. "What makes you think we won't, Sergeant?"
Namatjira looked up at him, confused.
"Here's what we've got, Sergeant. Right now we're outnumbered. Outgunned. No allies. Nowhere to retreat to. The Dominion thinks we haven't got any fight in us, and right now they're right. But that's today."
"Bobby, we should be going now," Costilitz said, looking nervous. "Got to interrogate the others."
"If there's any man more worthy to know this, I don't where to find him, Marty," Swinson said, then turned back to the Sergeant. "But then there's tomorrow."
"You think you've got a plan, do you?" Namatjira asked.
"Oh, yeah, we've got a plan. We're going to sit here, quiet as church mice, perhaps for a good long while. Let the Varn see how useful we can be. In a few years, or decades, or maybe a century or more, they're going to think we've given in. Some of us, maybe just a few, maybe a lot, are going to be trusted by them. They're going to let our leash out a bit. We're going to see other worlds, get a chance to talk to the other races they've taken under their wing. They can't all believe the Varn are some kind of ruddy demigods. We're going to find the ones that don’t, the ones they had stomp as hard we were stomped, the ones that have managed to keep their mad on for year after year, century after century, remembering all their lost dead, all the children raised in chains. And then, when the Varn have turned their backs to us, to puff their chests and look out from their tower to survey all their dominion, we're give 'em a swift kick to their bloody arses, and send 'em flying out the window!"
"You think we've got a chance, doing that?" Sergeant Namatjira asked.
"Better chance than trying to send a rocket grenade into the reviewing stand," Costilitz told him. "That wouldn't have worked. They'd set some sort of energy field up to protect themselves."
"Oh," Namatjira said, and then seemed to deflate, sinking back onto his bunk, all anger and despair gone, replaced with… nothing. "What will happen to us, then?"
"Are there more of you?" Costilitz asked.
"Maybe a dozen in all. We were going to wait until our numbers had grown before we struck, but the Gene Mage appearing in public, relatively vulnerable, was too good an opportunity to miss."
"We'll need their names," Stimson said
Namatijira nodded. "And then?"
Costilitz clapped him on the shoulder. "You, my friend, are going to be given a ride back to your home, you are going to kiss your wife, and then hopefully live a very quiet rest of your life. No one is going to blame the father of one of the Three Children if he chooses to retreat from public view."
"I'm not going to prison?"
"Send Rachael Namatjira's poppa to prison? That would raise far too many questions. No, we're letting you go. We will probably let your companions go too, assuming they don't dig their heels in and vow to keep fighting. But you all will be watched."
Namatjira nodded, staring at the floor, and Stimson and Costlitz called for the Security Commander to let them out.
"God's teeth, that was a close run thing, Marty," Stimson said, once they were alone. "Could you imagine it all ending, before the Resistance has a chance to start?"
"Please, I'm going to have nightmares for years after this," Costlitz replied, shaking his head.
"Sir, one the Varn Lord's people is waiting the in the lobby," the Security Commander said, walking up.
"Thank you, Albert," Costilitz said, then muttered another obscenity under his breath.
"Easy, Marty," Stimson cautioned.
It was the talking dingo that had been sitting next to the Varn. Some sort of high up major-domo, Stimson remembered. He was leaning against the lobby wall, sipping a cup of tea from a styrofoam cup, as if he owned the place. Which he did, come to think of it.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," the dingo said, holding out his hand. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. I am Samaneous Sharpears, aide to our Lord Gene Mage."
"Pleasure," Stimson lied, shaking the alien's hand. "I'm Robert Stimson, formerly the Minister of Defence, and this is Martin Costilitz, our Minister of Police." He paused. "The Gene Mage's aide? What's your formal title that we may address you by?"
"Don't really have one, to be honest," Sharpears answered.
Very high up, Stimson concluded.
"Actaully, my current assignment is to act as a sort of liason between your continent's government and my Lord Gene Mage." Sharpears smiled. "So I expect you'll see me, ah, lias-ing about, mostly."
Stimson would have been willing to strangle the Gene Mage's dingo just for that awful pun, never mind it being delivered in a pommy accent. "How can we be of service to the benevolent Varn Dominion and Lord Gene Mage, sir?" he said instead.
"Well, milord was just a bit curious, you two cutting out in the middle of your leader's speech. There isn't anything to be concerned about... is there?"
"Nothing for Lord Gene Mage to worry about," Costilitz said. "There were a group of protesters on the edge of the security perimeter. Folks waving signs, hoping to be on the evening news."
"Now why wouild anyone want to protest, and against what, pray tell?" Sharpears took another sip of his tea.
The bloody talking dingo was playing with them, he was 95% sure of it. But for what? "We are... still in a period of adjustment, Mister Sharpears," Stimson answered, mostly because Costilitz, who had also caught the dingo's game, looked like he was ready to have a heart attack. "We've been on our on for so long, and recent events have been such a shock. It takes time for everyone to adjust to the new reality."
"Please, call me Sam," Sharpears said. "I quite understand your meaning. My own people... well, it took some time before we understood the true nature of the Varn."
Stimson blinked. He would be damned if he understood yet what the dingo was really going about. The possibilities however-- were worth exploring. "That's very interesting... Sam. I'd be pleased to hear more about it sometime."
"I am so very glad to hear that."
The End
NOTE: This was my own attempt to explain.... well, why there were so many Australians in Terinu. Yes I know it's because A) the author is Australian, and B) most of the humans we regularly see are all members of the same family, and just happen to be Australian. But being the nit-picker I am, I wanted to come up with a Holmesian explanation of why that might be. The best answer was that most every civilizatioh on the Earth were torn apart during humanity's brief period of active resistance prior to the Varn taking over.
The Australian government, lacking any sort of space capability, and certainly no nuclear weapons or signifigant air force, voted for the better part of valor and gave up without a shot. In return, they managed to maintain a coherent government, while most other government and cultures in the world were scattered to the four winds as Earth's remaining population was divided and moved off world. Which would mean that Australia would be in the best position to lead the eventual Rebellion against the Dominion, and be a leading force in the creation of the GSA.
Sort what do you think, sirs?
chaypeta's Terinu universe. PG-13 for langauge.The school children sang the old song, while Bobby Swinson, once upon a time Australia's Minister of Defence, sat in his chair with a false smile on his face. It was a bloody hot December day, in bloody awful Queensland, and he was sitting on a bloody hot folding metal chair on the tarmac at Brisbane International Airport in his best civilian suit trying not to explode.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me.
And he sang as he watched and he waited 'til his billy boiled
"Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?"
"Have I ever told you, Marty," he said softly between clenched teeth, "how much I loathe this bloody song?"
Marty Costilitz, current Minister of the Police, also his friend and occasional political rival, answered softly, "Can't count the times," while maintaining his own smile.
"What the hell is wrong with Advance Australia Fair anyway?"
"It's the national anthem. Wouldn't exactly be politic to be singing the national anthem right now. Not in front of the tourists anyway." Costilitz nodded in the direction of the great green alien that sat beside the Prime Minister on the reviewing stand. Beside him sat a dingo on two legs wearing a suit, and behind them two tall fellows with feathery hair, piano keys for ears, and expressions that said "Bodyguards, Do Not Annoy."
Along came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".
"It's better than this song. Bunch of nonsense about a sheep snatcher getting his just desserts. Makes us all out to be a bunch of thieves hangin' about in the outback, wearing those bloody stupid hats with the corks hangin' off the brim."
"Bobby, for the love of God keep your voice down."
Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Whose is that jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Sorry," Swinson murmured, and shut up. The schoolchildren, faces bright with innocence (or perhaps the beginnings of heatstroke) sang right through the last And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong and received weary applause from the audience, and politely baffled looks from the contingent of aliens. Then the Prime Minister stood to begin his speech, welcoming the Varn to Earth, and making assurances that Australia would accept the Varn Dominion's command of humanity, unlike the other unfortunate nations of the East and West which had dared to contradict the Varn assertions of control. Politely not mentioned were the fates of those nations, now lying in ruin for the most part, their cities either cratered or sunk in massive artificial tsunamis, their people now dependant on the benevolent Varn for food and shelter.
It was all starting to make Swinson sick to his stomach, and he was praying that the Varn's speech would be as short as the PM's was long winded, when Costilitz held his finger up to the comm bug in his ear and softly said "Understood, I'm on my way."
"Trouble?" Swinson asked.
Costilitz was frowning in worry as he stood up. "Attempted breach at the outer perimeter. I'm going to check it out."
"Need a hand?"
"Anything to get out of this awful heat, eh Bobby?"
They made polite sotto voce apologies to the other guests as they stepped away from the reviewing stand, and stepped aboard a Hummer that whisked them towards the airport's security offices.
"What's the full story?" Swinson asked, as he basked in the Hummer's air conditioning.
"Not sure yet. All we know right now is that there were a half-dozen of them, all armed, some with heavy weapons."
"Oh, bloody hell!" Swinson cursed. "That's all we need right now!"
"I know, I know. Thank God we stopped them without making a ruckus." The Hummer pulled up to the security offices, a series of low, bunker-like buildings built in the earlier part of the century in the time of the terrorism scares. Swinson followed his friend into the main building, where Costilitz flashed his ID card at a uniformed security commander and asked, "What's the situation, Albert?"
"We were very lucky, sir. A patrol caught them as they were pulling their weapons out of their truck, and managed to taser them before they could react. They are six of them in all, and they were armed with automatic rifles, a mortar, and several RPG's."
"Good god." Costilitz turned to Swinson, furious. "Your final report said all of the Army's inventory had been disabled, Bobby. You swore to the PM that it had been!"
"And it was, as far I knew! We piled every weapon we could account for into the pits and poured concrete over the lot of them. But if you're asking if I personally counted every bloody gun we had, then I didn't. If some supply sergeant diverted equipment and mucked up the paperwork to cover his tracks, we've got no way of finding him now."
Costilitz's anger deflated. "Right, you're right. I just wish you were wrong." He ran his hand through the thinning hair on his scalp. "We're just damned lucky we caught them before they fired a shot off. I am not going to have us overrun by those damned grey skinned soldiers of theirs, shooting up our people like they did that poor Namatjira girl."
"We need to question them before they get their bearings, find out who was equipping them," Swinson said. "If they're just an isolated group then we're lucky, and we can nail this shut before it gets out of hand. If they're a cell of an organized resistance group, then we've got to find out who supplied them and who their contacts are."
"Right then," Costilitz said. "Are they in separate cells, Commander?"
"Yes, sir," the security commander confirmed. "They didn't have any ID on them though."
"Figured as much. Come on, Bobby, let's see what we can get out of them." Swinson followed his friend and the security commander down the hall, into the holding area, which was divided into separate concrete cells, each closed with a solid steel door. The commander unlocked the door to one cell, locking it behind the two men after they entered.
Sitting on the cell's bunk, already changed into an orange prison jumpsuit, was a tall, rangy, native Australian man with a shaven head and a thick black beard. To Swinson's surprise, he stood and saluted the ex-general when they entered.
"Hello, General Swinson," the man said, his face saturnine.
"At ease," Swinson replied, returning the salute, never mind that they were both in civvies. "You ex-Army then?"
"Yes, sir. De-mobbed with everyone after the surrender." The man stood straight and tall, looking Swinson right in the eye.
"Who are you? Who else is in your organization?" Costilitz demanded.
"I am just a lone soldier, fighting for the freedom of our nation, and our planet," the man said. It sounded like rehearsed speech. Swinson squinted, wiping the drying sweat from his brow, trying to place the man's face. Someone from the telly…?
"Oh, dear God," he muttered. "Sergeant... Namatjira, am I right?"
"Yes, sir!" The man snapped to full attention. "Sergeant Roland Namatjira, RAA. Discharged with honour, sir!"
Costilitz covered his face with his hands and said a very rude word. "Another martyr to The Cause, that's all we bloody well need."
"Your daughter was Rachael Namatjira, right?" Swinson asked.
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Swinson sighed. "I am sorry for your loss, Sergeant."
"Thank you, sir!"
"Did it occur to you that your wife would have been rather upset, had you managed to get yourself killed doing whatever it was you were going to do out there?"
Sergeant Namatjira blinked twice, eyes tearing up. "She would have... would have understood, sir."
"Mortars... RPG's..." Costilitz said, his eyes burning. "Did you realize, Sergeant, that other people's children out there on the tarmac, singing away?"
Sergeant Namatjira swallowed. "The plan was to wait until the children had finished their portion of the program and cleared the field. Then we would have attacked."
"Yes, that would have worked perfectly. No one's ever heard of shots going astray or shrapnel hitting innocent civilians," Swinson said blandly. "And what about everyone in the reviewing stand? The Varn Gene Mage was your target, was he not? Striking him when he was in the center of crowd, unable to dodge out of the way was your best shot wasn't it? What about all the poor sods around him, eh?""
"Collaborators," Namatjira said stiffly.
"'Collaborators', oh that's such an easy word to throw around. Myself and Minister Costilitz included of course."
Namatjira's expression grew outraged. "You threw away the army! Our best chance to strike at them!"
Swinson's voice was a low growl. "I supervised the demobilization. I was following the orders of Australia's civilian government. That's called the Rule of Law, Sergeant, or aren't you familiar with the concept? Without it our nation would be nothing more than another tin pot Pacific Rim dictatorship like Burma or North Korea. I didn't like it, but what else was there to do?"
"Disappear into the outback. Fight them!"
"Wouldn't have worked," Costilitz said. "Oh, you probably would knocked off a few patrols, killed a few of those Creo fellows, or maybe a couple of 'collaborating' government officials. You know what would have happened next?"
"We would have drawn them in, forced them to divert resources."
"They would have bombed the living sh*t out of us, same as they did everyone else!" Costilitz shouted. "Do you want Australia to be like Japan or England, washed away under tsunami waves five hundred feet high? Do you want it to be like China or the Americas, craters from asteroid drops, cracks from fault lines opening up, from one end of the coast to the other? We're the 'Lucky Country', Sergeant, just as we always have been. We're the only modern nation in the entire bloody world to come through this invasion with our government intact, our infrastructure untouched, our people alive and safe, not living in tents and dying of starvation or dysentery in Europe, or just a speck of dust in a bloody huge crater where Los Angeles used to be."
"They're marching them all away in their transport ships. Making them slaves on other worlds!"
"Yes, them. Not us!"
Namatjira's voice was cold. "And that makes everything all right, does it?"
"No, but that's the way it is," Swinson answered. "It's the hand we've got to play with. You know why they haven't touched us, haven't dragged any Aussie away to work the mines on some other world?"
"Haven't a clue."
"Because that tall, green-skinned fellow, sitting on a reviewing stand in the middle of December in Queensland, with not a drop sweat on his brow, thinks we're interesting. We're his private little research project, so he can look at humans in their natural environment. Study us. He's a scientist and we're his control group, so he's not going to do a thing to us, so long as we've got the sense to be quiet. So we get live our lives almost as if the Varn Dominion never arrived. Nobody starves, nobody's homeless, nobody dies. Lucky country. Lucky, lucky Australia."
"Somebody died," Sergeant Namatjira said, his voice rising in fury. "My daughter. Her friends most likely. Everybody on Unity Station and millions elsewhere!"
"Billions," Swinson said softly. "By the best estimates we've come up with, there's about three and a half billion dead on the Earth."
"So why don't we fight? Even if it means we all die, we should fight! For the souls of all the billions dead, for all the dead children, we should fight them. Until our last breath we should fight them!" Sergeant Namatjira fell back, sitting hard on his bunk. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to weep.
Swinson felt old, very old, just then. Odd to think, that he'd once commanded the whole Army, but never fired a shot in anger himself. Of course the Sergeant likely never had either, not that he wasn't willing to try. "What makes you think we won't, Sergeant?"
Namatjira looked up at him, confused.
"Here's what we've got, Sergeant. Right now we're outnumbered. Outgunned. No allies. Nowhere to retreat to. The Dominion thinks we haven't got any fight in us, and right now they're right. But that's today."
"Bobby, we should be going now," Costilitz said, looking nervous. "Got to interrogate the others."
"If there's any man more worthy to know this, I don't where to find him, Marty," Swinson said, then turned back to the Sergeant. "But then there's tomorrow."
"You think you've got a plan, do you?" Namatjira asked.
"Oh, yeah, we've got a plan. We're going to sit here, quiet as church mice, perhaps for a good long while. Let the Varn see how useful we can be. In a few years, or decades, or maybe a century or more, they're going to think we've given in. Some of us, maybe just a few, maybe a lot, are going to be trusted by them. They're going to let our leash out a bit. We're going to see other worlds, get a chance to talk to the other races they've taken under their wing. They can't all believe the Varn are some kind of ruddy demigods. We're going to find the ones that don’t, the ones they had stomp as hard we were stomped, the ones that have managed to keep their mad on for year after year, century after century, remembering all their lost dead, all the children raised in chains. And then, when the Varn have turned their backs to us, to puff their chests and look out from their tower to survey all their dominion, we're give 'em a swift kick to their bloody arses, and send 'em flying out the window!"
"You think we've got a chance, doing that?" Sergeant Namatjira asked.
"Better chance than trying to send a rocket grenade into the reviewing stand," Costilitz told him. "That wouldn't have worked. They'd set some sort of energy field up to protect themselves."
"Oh," Namatjira said, and then seemed to deflate, sinking back onto his bunk, all anger and despair gone, replaced with… nothing. "What will happen to us, then?"
"Are there more of you?" Costilitz asked.
"Maybe a dozen in all. We were going to wait until our numbers had grown before we struck, but the Gene Mage appearing in public, relatively vulnerable, was too good an opportunity to miss."
"We'll need their names," Stimson said
Namatijira nodded. "And then?"
Costilitz clapped him on the shoulder. "You, my friend, are going to be given a ride back to your home, you are going to kiss your wife, and then hopefully live a very quiet rest of your life. No one is going to blame the father of one of the Three Children if he chooses to retreat from public view."
"I'm not going to prison?"
"Send Rachael Namatjira's poppa to prison? That would raise far too many questions. No, we're letting you go. We will probably let your companions go too, assuming they don't dig their heels in and vow to keep fighting. But you all will be watched."
Namatjira nodded, staring at the floor, and Stimson and Costlitz called for the Security Commander to let them out.
"God's teeth, that was a close run thing, Marty," Stimson said, once they were alone. "Could you imagine it all ending, before the Resistance has a chance to start?"
"Please, I'm going to have nightmares for years after this," Costlitz replied, shaking his head.
"Sir, one the Varn Lord's people is waiting the in the lobby," the Security Commander said, walking up.
"Thank you, Albert," Costilitz said, then muttered another obscenity under his breath.
"Easy, Marty," Stimson cautioned.
It was the talking dingo that had been sitting next to the Varn. Some sort of high up major-domo, Stimson remembered. He was leaning against the lobby wall, sipping a cup of tea from a styrofoam cup, as if he owned the place. Which he did, come to think of it.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," the dingo said, holding out his hand. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. I am Samaneous Sharpears, aide to our Lord Gene Mage."
"Pleasure," Stimson lied, shaking the alien's hand. "I'm Robert Stimson, formerly the Minister of Defence, and this is Martin Costilitz, our Minister of Police." He paused. "The Gene Mage's aide? What's your formal title that we may address you by?"
"Don't really have one, to be honest," Sharpears answered.
Very high up, Stimson concluded.
"Actaully, my current assignment is to act as a sort of liason between your continent's government and my Lord Gene Mage." Sharpears smiled. "So I expect you'll see me, ah, lias-ing about, mostly."
Stimson would have been willing to strangle the Gene Mage's dingo just for that awful pun, never mind it being delivered in a pommy accent. "How can we be of service to the benevolent Varn Dominion and Lord Gene Mage, sir?" he said instead.
"Well, milord was just a bit curious, you two cutting out in the middle of your leader's speech. There isn't anything to be concerned about... is there?"
"Nothing for Lord Gene Mage to worry about," Costilitz said. "There were a group of protesters on the edge of the security perimeter. Folks waving signs, hoping to be on the evening news."
"Now why wouild anyone want to protest, and against what, pray tell?" Sharpears took another sip of his tea.
The bloody talking dingo was playing with them, he was 95% sure of it. But for what? "We are... still in a period of adjustment, Mister Sharpears," Stimson answered, mostly because Costilitz, who had also caught the dingo's game, looked like he was ready to have a heart attack. "We've been on our on for so long, and recent events have been such a shock. It takes time for everyone to adjust to the new reality."
"Please, call me Sam," Sharpears said. "I quite understand your meaning. My own people... well, it took some time before we understood the true nature of the Varn."
Stimson blinked. He would be damned if he understood yet what the dingo was really going about. The possibilities however-- were worth exploring. "That's very interesting... Sam. I'd be pleased to hear more about it sometime."
"I am so very glad to hear that."
The End
NOTE: This was my own attempt to explain.... well, why there were so many Australians in Terinu. Yes I know it's because A) the author is Australian, and B) most of the humans we regularly see are all members of the same family, and just happen to be Australian. But being the nit-picker I am, I wanted to come up with a Holmesian explanation of why that might be. The best answer was that most every civilizatioh on the Earth were torn apart during humanity's brief period of active resistance prior to the Varn taking over.
The Australian government, lacking any sort of space capability, and certainly no nuclear weapons or signifigant air force, voted for the better part of valor and gave up without a shot. In return, they managed to maintain a coherent government, while most other government and cultures in the world were scattered to the four winds as Earth's remaining population was divided and moved off world. Which would mean that Australia would be in the best position to lead the eventual Rebellion against the Dominion, and be a leading force in the creation of the GSA.
Sort what do you think, sirs?
