Cargo Cult (50 page)

-oOo-

Standing between Chuwar's ship and
the ruins of the Vinggan's was a tall, black, humanoid figure,
unseen beneath its invisibility dome. The figure's grey eyes
scanned the rubble. They came to rest on Braxx.

Ah, there you are
, thought
the Agent.

All eyes were on the smouldering
wreckage of the Vinggan ship. From the ruins of the air base
buildings, Air Commodore Braby and General Treasure held onto one
another and watched. From near the base's main entrance, John and
Marcus and their many charges looked back at the mushroom cloud
rising from where the Vinggan spaceship had been. Sam and Wayne,
Barraclough and Drukk, climbed a hill of broken concrete to get a
better view. All of them struck dumb by what they saw. And, from
where the hangars of 2 Squadron had once been, Shorty and her gang
gazed in horror at the wreckage of what should have been their ride
home.

“Don't move!”

The roos all turned to look. A
human woman in a fitted blue dress, sensible shoes, and a
corporal's stripes on her epaulettes, stood with a hand-gun pointed
at them. “You so much as twitch your noses and I'll blow them off,”
the woman said.

“It's only a human,” Shorty said,
and they all turned back to stare at the destruction on the
tarmac.

Corporal Emily Brownlowe, slightly
concussed from several blows on the head sustained during the past
few minutes, had hardly credited the memos regarding enemy forces
disguised as kangaroos, but now, here they were, as real as the
throbbing in her temples, roaming loose on the base and no doubt
responsible for whatever the hell was going on.

“Hey! You lot. I want you back in
your cage at the double.”

Mostly the kangaroos ignored her,
although one big buck turned it's little head towards her and said,
“Piss off.”

“Did you hear me?” she yelled. “Get
moving now or I shoot.”

Nobody moved. She took aim at the
biggest of them. Her eyes kept sliding off the target and her gun
was swaying in a way that was quite hypnotic. All the same, she
thought she could hardly fail to hit one of them.

She fired. Not a single roo
twitched jumped or fell to the ground. She fired again. How could
she possibly miss? She fired again, and again. By the time she had
emptied a full clip, a man was standing next to her. He was dressed
in the uniform of an Army Major, which was pretty weird. “Hang on,”
she said, and pulled another clip from the pocket of her dress. “I
keep missing,” she told the man. “Can't understand it.” She fumbled
with the magazine, but finally got it into the gun. She turned back
to to the roos and raised her gun again.

He introduced himself as Les
Totterdell and put a hand on her shoulder. “There's no point
shooting at them. They have shields of some sort. You'll never get
through.”

“My aim's a bit off. That's all.”
She squinted down the barrel, trying to force it to stop moving for
a moment.

“Come on,” the Major said. “You
need to sit down.” He led her over to a low wall and she let him
without objection.

“What about the roos?” she
said.

“Buggered if I know,” said
Totterdell. “My orders were to stop them being stolen by other
aliens. Bloody stupid orders I reckon.”

Medics had begun to appear among
the ruins, searching for the injured and helping them to safety.
“I'll grab one of those fellas and see if we can't get you checked
out,” Totterdell said, peering into her eyes and frowning at what
he saw there.

Brownlowe was touched by his
kindness. “You've got a kind face,” she said. “What's a nice army
boy like you doing in a place like this?”

Totterdell had caught the attention
of one of the medics and had waved him over. “Wrong place, wrong
time,” he said with a wry smile.

“Nice smile too,” she said. “My
name's Emily. Do you want to get a drink when this is all
over?”

He laughed and she liked his laugh
too. “You really have got a bad concussion!” he said. “Tell you
what, if you'd still like that drink when you're feeling better,
I'd be honoured.”

There was another man pulling at
her eyelids and shining a torch in her eyes. Now where the hell had
he come from? “Oh yes,” she said. “The medic.”

The two men helped her to her feet.
For a moment she panicked, having lost her firearm. She would be is
so much trouble if she couldn't find it. But Totterdell said, “No
worries. I've got it here.” She reached for it but he held it away
from her. “It's all right,” he said. “I'll look after it.”

“You're such a lovely man,” she
said. And he was. She just couldn't get over how lovely he was. She
waved to him as the medic led her to the waiting ambulances and he
waved back in that lovely way of his.

-oOo-

“What did you do? What did you do?”
Werpot was goggling in turns at the wreckage of the Vinggan ship
and at Chuwar who still had the gun controls in his gigantic
claws.

“I didn't do anything, honest. It
just blew up.”

“Ships like that don't just blow
up! Do you know how sophisticated the systems are in a thing like
that? No, of course you don't, but let me tell you, nothing happens
by accident, nothing goes wrong without ten self-repairing backups
and an army of maintenance bots jumping in to fix it. And if that
all goes wrong, it fails safe. It doesn't just nuke itself.”

Werpot tried to keep himself under
control, tried to keep his mouth shut, but this was too much. The
great galumphing idiot had blown up the Vinggan ship, and if the
Vinggans ever found out about this, there would be nowhere in the
whole sector that would be safe for them. The Vinggan space corps
was well known for being almost robotic in its single-minded
pursuit of its enemies. “We're doomed,” he said. “Doomed.”

“But I didn't do anything. I was
just shooting at those little gnat things the humans sent.”

Of course he was. Werpot had
watched the great buffoon's attempts to shoot down the human jet
planes with amused contempt, wondering if he should mention the
computer assisted targeting systems that would have had them all
out of the skies in five seconds flat. But he had kept quiet,
enjoying the warlord's frustration.

So, if Chuwar hadn't blown up the
Vinggans, who had?

He raced over to the navigation
console and scanned the skies. The systems were simple, by N'oid
standards, although Chuwar had been impressed by all the pretty
colours and whirling holograms when the salesman demonstrated it. A
modern cloaked ship would be completely invisible to the primitive
sensors the warlord's yacht sported. However, if something had
struck at the Vinggans from space...

Werpot wound back through the
sensor recordings to the point where the ship exploded and, yes,
there it was, a massive energy spike. What it was exactly, the
N'oid could not tell, but a particle beam of stupendous power had
reached down from space and destroyed the Vinggan ship, like the
Tentacle of God squashing a marsh bug.

Chuwar was still prattling on.
“Anyway, with the Vinggans gone,” he was saying, “doesn't that mean
that the Mechazoid Hoard is all mine now?”

“Huh!” The idea was so audacious
that it hit Werpot like a slap on the tertiary brain stalk. Yes,
there was a mysterious killer in orbit, who definitely didn't like
Vinggans, but he, she, or it was up there. Not down here. And a
quick-witted N'oid who acted with speed and resolve might find and
claim the hoard before anyone else realised what was happening.

“Yes! You're a genius. Grab your
biggest gun and meet me at the ramp. I'll organise a few trolls in
case there's trouble.”

He glanced at Chuwar, to check he
was on his way, only to find the enormous creature standing over
him with a menacing look. He immediately realised his mistake.

“Er, of course, what I meant to say
was, that is an excellent idea, Your Magnificence, and may I please
be permitted to fetch a troop of trolls and await your pleasure by
the exit ramp?”

“I think I've changed my mind.”

What mind?
Werpot fought
down the words and, instead, said, “As is your prerogative, O
Mighty Chuwar. If you don't want to go out there and snatch the
Mechazoid Hoard for yourself while everyone else is still confused
by being blown up in one way or another, I am, as always, ready to
accept the profound and subtle wisdom of your choice.”

Chuwar's frown turned into a kind
of wince. He seemed to be enduring an inner struggle. In the end,
however, self-interest prevailed, as Werpot knew it would, and the
mighty despot said, “All right, we'll go. But if you try telling me
what to do again, you shrivelled little worm, I will pull your head
off and eat it. No matter how disgusting it looks.”

“A perfectly acceptable
arrangement, Your Magnificence.” He waited. And waited. “So, may I
go now?”

“Oh, right. Yes. Go. Hang on.”
Werpot stopped in mid-stride. “What was it I was supposed to
do?”

“Get a big gun, Your
Magnificence.”

“Oh yeah. Big gun. Got it.”

-oOo-

“Why don't we just shoot it?” Trugg
asked. He wore the gold evening dress and, like the other Vinggans,
was cowering in a crater so the Agent couldn't see him. It had
dropped its invisibility shield and seemed to be waiting for them
to surrender.

Braxx turned a scathing expression
on his acolyte. “It's a Lalantran Agent,” he explained. “It's been
hunting us. It's just blown up our ship. It's a gigantic, black
monster in an impenetrable force shield and it's armed with weapons
that make our blasters look like pointy little sticks.” He held up
his blaster to illustrate the point. It did, indeed, look like a
pointy little stick, so he put it down again.

“So what are we going to do?” asked
Joss, who wore the grey Jersey dress and looked as though she'd
stuffed a beach ball under it.

“I will ask the Great Spirit for
guidance,” Braxx said, stalling. “She has never failed us, and
never shall.” He closed his eyes and tried to connect with the
Great Spirit. Anything was worth a try at this point.

“We are but Pebbles on Her beach,”
the others mumbled.

“What we need is another space
ship, to get us out of here,” said Klakk, who wore the red
nightie.

“Yeah,” agreed Trugg. “Like that
one over there that Chuwar came in.”

Braxx gave a silent prayer of
thanks and opened his eyes, smiling. “The Great Spirit has spoken
to me,” he said.

-oOo-

“Why are you grasping my
appendage?” Drukk asked. He and Wayne were waiting beside a
rubble-strewn road while Sam and Barraclough searched among the
shells of buildings for someone in authority. There were plenty of
airmen running about the place now and one or two had actually
taken a moment from their running about to say things like, “You
civilians should make your way to the evacuation muster zones,” or,
“Sir, Madam, I have to ask you to leave the base right now.” Then
they were off and running again.

“I'm not grasping your appendage,”
Wayne said. “I'm holding your hand.”

“Why are you holding my hand?”

“Because... I thought...” He looked
embarrassed and let go. “It's a sign of affection. People do it
when they feel close to another person.”

Drukk looked at the gap between
them. “Our nearest surfaces are about five centimetres apart.”

Wayne looked unhappy. “You can be
very... literal, sometimes.” Drukk did not reply. “Do you have a
boyfriend back home on Vingg?”

“A boyfriend?”

“Well, a Vinggfriend, I suppose.
Someone you go out with? Someone you like? A special someone you
want to spend all your time with?”

Although the translator did its
best, there were some concepts in what Wayne said that just did not
make sense to the Vinggan. The idea that you can choose who to
spend your time with, for instance, or that people chose their
friends on the basis of sex. He tried to explain this to Wayne.

“You must have some way of choosing
who you mate with,” Wayne insisted. “Someone you feel romantically
attached to. Someone who you want to have babies with.”

Drukk shook his head. “Males come
in and out of readiness. If you're ready and a passing female likes
the colour of your slime, she might rub against your spore sac as
she goes by. Then she will bud.” While Wayne blinked in confusion,
Drukk pondered the mysteries of sex between Vinggans. He was only
ten years into his maturity and was only a Space Corps Operative,
sixth class. His slime was pretty ordinary and no female had ever
rubbed against his spore sac. None of his crewmates had experienced
it yet, either, but he'd met an older male at the training camp who
said it was nothing special and he didn't know why they made such a
fuss about it in the holodramas.

“Do you think,” Wayne said,
struggling with the words, “that, one day, you and me might... I
mean, would you ever consider... It's like this, Drukk, I love you
so much and I really hope that, one day, you'll feel the same way
about me. Is it out of the question that, you know, we might, you
know...”

Drukk picked his way through the
disjointed rambling but couldn't make much sense of it. The human,
Wayne, who wore clothing with the distinctive glyph, wanted Drukk
to 'love' him – whatever that was.

“Do I need to do anything in
particular if I love you?” he asked.

Wayne looked bewildered. “I don't
suppose so. It's more a state of mind, I reckon.”

“Well, I don't see why not then.”
As far as Drukk was concerned, if it didn't mean he had to do
anything, it was worth it just to stop Wayne droning on about
it.

Wayne, grinning like a loon in his
happiness, grabbed Drukk and hugged him in a joyful embrace. Drukk
endured it for a few seconds then shrugged him off.