Adventures of the Cosmic Woman

Chapter Eight

    

'Who would have thought the Navy'd ever come to the Army's rescue?' said the short, broad shouldered, bald headed man with ice-blue eyes as he climbed into the back of the military truck that Darrian Infield had been escorted to. Behind him soldiers worked quickly to get black tarp all over the smashed drone. He plonked onto the bench seat beside Infield. 'David Mostert. Lieutenant Colonel. Armored Corps.'

'Where is my daughter?' she demanded again. The truck shuddered to life and they started rolling out of the park.

'Relax!' he said. He put one large hand on her knee. 'You can relax. She ran all the way up thereabouts,' he pointed with a wavering finger toward the floodplain. 'We found her, she's in the back of the ambulance on her way to hospital. Which is where we're going now.'

'She's okay?'

'She's shaken. Very startled. But physically she's fine. Emotionally I'm sure she will be, although we're still not certain about the emotional fortitude of her generation.'

'She's got plenty of emotional fortitude,' Infield spat.

Mostert raised both his hands and shrugged, then slapped his hands onto his knees and looked at her. She sighed out her frustrations. Her body felt fine. Everything had healed. There was not one bruise on her, she didn't feel tired, rattled or like she'd just be thrown around and beaten up by bullets at all. But her heart was a mess. She ground her teeth and clenched her jaw and knew she had to be nice to this man now. 'What was that thing?'

'Hm?' he tipped his head forward as though he had glasses on, but he didn't. 'Oh, the drone? Standard weapon of war. Every defense force in the world has a drone division comprised of flight drones, kamikaze drones, comms drones, spying drones, and those armored battle drones, like what you just tussled with. We can usually knock them out of the sky with a well-aimed rocket. But the risk to the hostage, of course...'

'Mahlia.'

'Mahlia. We can't go shooting rockets while a drone has a hostage... speaking of which,' he shifted in his seat to face her. 'I've never known one to take a hostage before. They're normally searchers and destroyers. I'm told that you rejected service with the Australian Defense Force?'

'I haven't given an answer yet,' she wanted to cry again. Or hold her head and curl her knees up and scream until her teeth shattered and her jaw fell off.

'Well, other nations saw your performance in the Mediterranean Sea,' he used a dark tone, but still spoke quickly and without stopping to breathe. 'The whole world will see you defeat a Chinese Battle Drone on the news. Other militaries are going to want to recruit you. As you've seen, not all of them are going to be as cordial as ours.'

'It made a mumbling sound before it went dead,' Infield said. 'It mumbled.'

'Gobbledygook. The official language of China.'

'No, it wasn't language. It sounded like code.'

'Must have a long-range transmitter beacon somewhere. No point trying to radio any Chinese bases from here. Although we're lucky they haven't got New Zealand. New Zealand have gone so soft I'm surprised Fiji haven't invaded them.'

'Where is the nearest Chinese base?'

'Uh... that would be...' he put his finger on his chin, more acting thought than thinking. 'New Caledonia. We've got images of them building missile bases there. A nuclear war is very...'

'There is no way a direct radio signal could have reached New Caledonia from here.'

'It would have bounced off a satellite.'