by Matt Pike
Steph joined me on Phoenix. Ye-jun and Asha wingmanned us. It was hard (almost impossible) to tell Kelly she wasn’t up for this particular mission. It wasn’t a judgement she took kindly to, but we needed everyone fully fit if we were taking six of Goodwood’s bigger bodies on their first day of hard labour. Not only did we have to be at our best on the off chance something were to go wrong, we still needed to play the game of strength perception. If we were a, say, 200-strong community, there’s no way someone like Kelly, still moving in quite a bit of discomfort, would be doing frontline operations. It was that point that finally got her to stand down. Thankfully. She gets rather scary when she feels she’s been slighted.
Before we picked up the labour force, we were off to the robot hand for our second meeting with Kent and Zoe.
The conversation had changed dramatically since our first meeting. We had gone from being screened to being informed. All driven by Zoe, Kent’s role seemingly nothing more than a contact.
Here’s the headlines:
The Fat Man and his faction have 32 people. They’re the ones who lodge in and around the war room facility. They eat separately from the others, they do pretty much everything separately.
Zoe is one of 105 citizens, as they are called (I’m sure they ripped us off with the name). As is Kent.
There’s another 46 that are the quasi-prisoners, including Shane and Trav. That also includes all the surviving TTP crew and a few remnants of the Fullarton crew and a couple of other victories they’ve had along the way.
They need the prisoners to do the dirty work, at least for now. The Government House excavation is so big it dwarves the frigate dig.
Zoe doubts the prisoners will have much use once the site is ready.
They’ve got a sense of that, as do most of the citizens, but none of that makes a difference because none of them are making the decisions.
Everything comes from the Fat Man. The structure around him is strong. Through all the things that have happened, his crew stays true to him.
They also have a lot of weapons. Zoe’s not even sure how big the cache is. However, the general vibe around the citizens that dare ask such questions is that might be running very low on ammo, but no one can say for sure.
Information seems to be the key to how they operate, and no one gets too much without being fully committed to the cause. That leaves the citizens in a really vulnerable spot, as everyone’s too scared to ask too many questions for fear of painting themselves as a target.
Citizens have disappeared before - the vocal ones. So, most just keep their head down. Some have formed this secret resistance group with Zoe, while others again are suspected of working for the Fat Man.
It all sounds such a mess. Fear, mistrust, lies and miscommunication. Makes me sick. Not only for what’s happening, who’s doing it and who I know is on the receiving end, it’s the fact that it’s all happening at my oval! The dream we created was never meant to be like that. Any part of that.
Anyway, contact has been made with us because they know they are going to get one known chance to get the Fat Man out in the open in the foreseeable future and that’s when he relocates from the oval to Government House.
When he does Zoe and a few others plan to take their one chance to change this city forever. And they need our guns and our help to make it happen.
Oh, and Kent handed Steph a letter.
*
After a quick debrief with Ye-jun and Asha (four people with the information was better than two) we were headed to Goodwood. At least, that was the initial plan. But once we knew there was a chance Norwood were running low on ammo, we saw a play we could make along the way.
We had scored our guns and ammo from the site of the Adelaide Gun Shop. It took us more than one dig to hit paydirt, but when we did, we struck it big time. We’d gone back to top up supplies on another occasion, but we knew there was more love to give.
I mean, we needed the ammo ourselves, but it was an even more appealing task knowing anything we could dig up would be a direct reduction of Norwood’s future supplies. It made the dangers of hitting the CBD worth it. It was a calculated risk, but there were too many benefits to ignore. And it sounded like they weren’t actively heading too far away from the oval at this time.
Maybe we should’ve waited to talk about it as a group but, in the moment, it just seemed like it had to be done.
We parked the hovercraft well west of the parklands and trudged our way on foot. Must’ve been more than half a kilometre. Through virgin ash, as we call it. Undisturbed from day one.
We were all exhausted once we’d reached the outskirts of the city. The remains of the old post office building still made a perfect marker to get us oriented. We were close.
Did I mention I hate virgin ash? If not, I should make it absolutely clear at this moment. It is deep, disgusting and super sludgey in the lower layers. Whatever the hell that sludge is, it stinks and it has the suction power to rip your footwear right off, if you’re not wearing some serious kickass boots. Or ash boots, obviously. I normally have mine at the ready in Phoenix, but stupidly removed them to make space for all the loads we’ve been transporting. Stupid mistake, won’t happen again.
Alright, I’ve got that off my chest - virgin ash sucks.
After a very cautious check to make sure the area was all clear, we headed back to the ammo site. It was pretty open beyond the post office building, so the heart rate was up.
Every now and then you have a moment in this world where you just get a little strut from your own cleverness. That was me when trying to track down the ammo dig site. We’d covered any former tracks in the area and anything we might have missed had been swallowed by the weather since. It was as if no one had passed through since rock night. So, finding where the action was would’ve taken as much trial and error as it had the first couple of times we tried, except for one small factor.
I had triangulated the dig site location, using some of the building remains in different directions to mark the exact spot. As soon as I neared the location it didn’t take long to line all the landmarks up and have my X marks the spot moment.
We started digging (with our hands) and soon were finding relics from the old gun store.
I can’t even describe the satisfaction of this moment, especially with the kudos I got from the others. It made me realise how much I’d leveled up in this world since everything began. I mean, it wasn’t even knowledge I necessarily knew I’d need again, but just knowing past me had the foresight to do something like that, and future me got to share the rewards with others, well, I think it tapped into my inner survival nerdiness.
It’s true, I am a survival nerd.
Anyway, while Ye-jun scouted close to the oval side of the city on lookout, we dug and collected. We had as much action as any fishing session on the beach and, within an hour, we were heading back across the parklands with hundreds of rounds of ammo.
So good to have them on the good guys’ side. And the site showed no sign of our presence in our wake. Eat that, Fat Man.
*
As we continued on to Goodwood, Steph turned her attention to the letter from Shane. Not sure what was in there, but she was choked with tears. I asked if she was OK and she nodded. Also asked if there was anything I could do, but I think she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts. What can you do in a moment like that? I had Alyce and she didn’t have Shane. They had found a way to connect, which must’ve helped in some ways, but made it so much harder in others. I felt for both of them.
Soon enough, Goodwood was near. I had to clear my head from one problem to the next. It wasn’t too hard as we all knew what we were throwing on the line at that moment. But no amount of mental preparation could really prepare you for the moment, I guess.
We were about to risk it all. Our transport - our entire active fleet of transport was being put on the line. That wasn’t the front we were presenting, of course, this was just one part of what we hoped they b
elieved was a large-scale operation. But this was it. This was our Hollywood studio lot version of large scale - just a 2D facade. If they knew to look from another angle, they’d see pine scaffolding and gaffer tape.
So, we had a backdrop and a role to act. That was the only thing between us and disaster. There were so many ways this could go south, we just had to trust the work we’d put in and our backdrop and acting.
Mind you, that was just to survive the pick-up, where we could easily be outnumbered and overrun. We had also discussed exactly what we should and shouldn’t say once we had the help onboard. The general brief was nothing, but we knew we were going to be asked a lot of questions. Our approach to everything about our camp, or numbers or our hardware - like hovercraft numbers etc - was going to be responded to with the line, “We’re not allowed to discuss that.” We figured that not only gave us a good blanket excuse to not reveal anything, it also gave the appearance of a larger group of decision makers giving us orders. In this story, with the dodgy backdrop, we were pawns in a larger organisation, not almost the entire leadership group, along with our entire transport capabilities.
What we were doing seems even riskier as I write it down now. I mean, we had already established a rapport with Goodwood and built a believable story, and the chances were things would go smoothly. But that didn’t really help the nerves much as we were approaching, nor did it make me underestimate the amount of chess pieces we’d pushed into an attacking position on the board.
Anyway, we arrived at the far end of the car park - both hovercraft. We waited for the alien lookouts to show themselves at the southern end. Once they had, Ye-jun drove his craft back into the distance north.
Steph and I waited on point until Maria and Jimmy appeared with their chosen crew and closed the open ground towards us. We hadn’t really discussed the details of how this pick-up would go down, but it was good to see they were quick to get on board with how we intended it to go. There were six of them making the journey, including Maria’s two goon boys. That did not thrill me, knowing those two were going to be part of the dig party. There were another two men and two women. They all looked rather large, certainly too much for us to handle if it came to a fair fight. I had to keep reminding myself of the role I was playing. And the guns.
When they reached us, it didn’t take much of Maria’s busy talk to allay fears an ambush was coming. ‘Look after my boys,” she said after way too many lead-up sentences.
I would be looking around for them more than after them. I still really didn’t have a trust for them or how they looked at me.
Then we instructed the goon boys and the others to walk north along Goodwood until they reached the other hovercraft. They boys looked at their mum, who nodded her approval, then they headed off.
We stayed around and talked to Maria for a couple of minutes. Surprisingly, it was small talk from her after that - the weather, how delicious the fish were, her eagerness for another trade. No mention of looking after the boys again.
I figured she probably didn’t like them that much after all, which seemed fair enough from what I’d seen. Once we heard a cooee from Asha, we had our cue to leave. We nodded our goodbyes to Maria and Jimmy, jumped in Phoenix and headed after them.
We reached the other hovercraft and the hired help soon after, then loaded them up into the two craft. A hovercraft is a tight fit with five, but we were able to line them up three across the back, while each co-pilot squeezed in next to the driver, facing the other way to keep an eye on the newbies, with pistols out.
I guess it wasn’t overly surprising we didn’t actually get any questions on the way down.
They must’ve been shitting themselves.
Once they’d somewhat gotten over the whole gun pointing at them thing, they got lost in staring at the landscape as it passed them by. Not that I got too much time to appreciate it, being at the controls, but I did get updates whispered from Steph and even took the odd glance behind me to see it with my own eyes. There was wonder at seeing what lay north of Cross Rd, their badlands, areas they wouldn’t have seen since before rock night. The expressions soon turned to dismay as we started moving west into what was now not much more than wastelands.
In a way, it brought it all back to Steph and I. It was just a trip to us these days, but the looks on their faces reminded us what it really was - an endless tomb of destruction, a loss of life and development beyond comprehension. It was a trip that seemed to take a lot longer than usual, too.
We eventually reached the turn off to the frigate. A few minutes later it came into view. It just appeared through the misty conditions like a goliath. There was enough cleared away now that the shape could be instantly recognised and once again our passengers stared in wonder.
This was to be their new home.
It’s hard to describe the sense of pride that seeing their faces filled me - us - with. I mean, they had just travelled 100 times further than they had since rock night, on tech they clearly didn’t have the wherewithal to create themselves. All of it opened up a new world of possibilities and, more importantly in their eyes, ongoing survival.
Even the goon brothers were gobsmacked.
This ship was everything to them. You could see it with every expression, every sigh of disbelief.
Our dig crew were already there waiting. They had the shovels laid out and ready to go. Eliza gave them the lowdown on what was expected and Mark gave them the systems to follow in terms of where and how to dump the ash once removed from the site. These guys were chomping at the bit to get in and do the dirty work.
They jumped into their new role and, once everything looked like it was getting into a settled rhythm, we headed back to base.
*
Back at the growing settlement, things were equally busy. I think there was an increased sense of urgency now we had opened the door for another crew to move in on our patch. We just had to be rock solid and established before they did. It also helped having knocked off some big tasks, so we were able to focus more on the core construction stuff. I mean, the boats mean we can fish less often for bigger hauls and the desal system is built and just requires eyes over it across the day to ensure the fire is burning strong and the water containers are swapped out when full.
With the fish catches, Nate’s been smoking as many as we use for immediate food, meaning we have a growing stockpile for a rainy day.
That left a lot more man hours for construction, which was at a bottleneck around the bricks. Sure, we had our rubble piles and materials to work through, and could get more if needed. But the structures we made from that would never be as strong as what we could construct from the bricks. That meant we had to increase production. We needed more wood supplies to create more moulds. We also needed more mortar - we could never have enough.
Before lunch, we went on a two hovercraft trip to the hardware store to stock up. Once we unloaded, we repeated the effort.
By the time late afternoon hit, we were well on the way to having 10 times the brick-making capacity we started the day with. Things were going to progress quickly from here.
Then it was off to the frigate site to gather the foreign workforce and take them home. They had made so much progress in one day alone. They reckoned tomorrow was highly likely to be the day they’d hit a hatch. If not, it would be the day after.
We have a lot resting on what lies within the ship, so fingers crossed. We don’t really have a plan B offering for our trading partner if it doesn’t work out, but we can’t really afford to think about worst-case scenarios at the moment.
*
Back at camp and the evening was filled with talk of both the digate site and the encounter with Kent and Zoe. Thankfully, everyone seemed pretty pleased with both our decision making and the outcome around the impromptu ammo run. It was all too late to matter of course; we had seen a window of opportunity and acted. That’s what leaders do, I guess. Still, it’s nice to know our actions, which really represent the group, wer
e approved by that group. We talk so much about everything that’s going on and how we should act in relation to those situations, it’s kind of given us this group think brain. Not sure what other way to describe it. After enough time, you just get a sense of what the collective mindset would be for actions in any circumstances.
It’s good for each of us as well as the group. It’s also good for security and, at another level, belonging and trust.
Anyway, where was I? The digate site and Kent and Zoe. In both cases, we really don’t know where things are heading. At least we’re at the controls with the digate site.
It’s kind of symbolic of everything in our world right now. There’s really no future knowns. It messes with your head when you think about it, so you don’t. Well, you try your best not to. You just stay busy in the little things that need doing and try not to think about the big picture. Of course, everyone else is in the same boat, and when dinner comes around we just brainfart everything that’s been on our minds. Not that it really gets us anywhere. We talked about all the possibilities, and what we could do about them, for more than two hours tonight! We ended no wiser than when we began.
It’s hard having all this unresolved mental energy and all these cards we’re waiting to play in this game of poker. I guess we all know it will lead somewhere, sometime soon. We just want more control than this world is going to give us.
Fortunately, I had a beautifully pleasant distraction to stop me going into thought process overdrive. Alyce looked glowing tonight. Her smile, it’s just… something. I mean, her entire essence lights up when she smiles and nothing could wipe it from her face tonight. That in itself fills me with a power to take on this world. I’m a lucky man.
*
I should make a quick note of what things are like around camp in the evenings as there are some strange little dynamics at play. Tricky as it will be to surmise in words, I’ve got to at least try to record it, because it’s a big part of who we are. Besides, when I say, we decided this or that tonight, well, it just seems far too organised compared to what really goes on.