The Ultimate Aphrodisiac

by Robert G. Barrett

Brian aimed his camera out the cabin. There was nothing but floating ice getting thicker and thicker. Then it thinned out and the first icebergs began to appear, floating in the sea like white islands. Two were covered in penguins, another was home to dozens of seals. Milne skimmed the disc over to the ice shelf and flew along the huge cliffs that towered over the sea into the endless distance. Brian took a photo as tonnes of ice broke away from one section and thundered into the ocean. The shelf reminded Brian of the Great Australian Bight. Only instead of rock, the massive cliffs were white, snow-covered ice. Milne turned the disc and flew back out amongst the icebergs, a couple of kilometres away from the ice shelf. He stopped and hovered near one floating well away from the others.

  ‘That’s what I’m looking for,’ said Milne, pointing to the iceberg. ‘A nice fat one, with nothing on it and nothing around.’ He turned to Brian. ‘How big would you say that iceberg was, Brian?’

  Brian studied the floating island of ice for a moment. ‘I dunno. Not quite a kilometre square, and about twenty metres high.’

  ‘Plus another two thirds under the water. Okay. Watch this. I’ll reverse back a little.’

  Milne shot the disc straight back for a kilometre. Again there was no feeling of movement or inertia; to Brian it was as if the disc was standing still and the iceberg had moved. The President pushed the button on his side and the red crystal glowed in the dash. Brian watched as Milne clicked the button on top of the handle and a row of tiny lights started flashing towards each other on the dash. Milne squeezed the trigger, the lights joined, then formed a stream of red above the dash. There was a sound like escaping steam for a second, then a two-metre circle formed in front of the disc like a ring of spinning water. It spiralled across the ocean and a split second later hit the iceberg just beneath the waterline.

  Brian heard a distant thump, then the iceberg disintegrated as if it had been hit by a meteorite. All the snow was flung into the air, along with an enormous cascade of water, and blocks of ice as big as houses, spinning end over end. A yawning hole momentarily opened up in the ocean before a wall of water, filled with great lumps of swirling ice, rushed in to fill it. Seconds later, chunks of ice and snow pelted down on the ocean like a sudden, furious hail storm. There was no explosion or flames. But the violence and upheaval in the water was terrifying. Brian watched in awe as a huge cloud of spray hung above the sea before it was swept away in the brisk Antarctic wind. The floating pieces of ice bumped and smashed against each other, then everything started to settle down.

  Milne smiled at an incredulous Brian. ‘There you go, Takatau. That’s full tilt boogie. And that’s AMI. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Holy bloody hell!’ Brian turned slowly to Milne. ‘I didn’t even get a photo.’

  ‘No worries, mate,’ said the President. ‘I’ll blow up another one.’

  Milne swung the disc around and found another deserted iceberg not quite as big as the first one. He primed AMI and fired off a DV. It was the same again. The DV slammed into the iceberg showering the ocean with snow, ice and water. It was like watching a piece of ice floating in a bathtub get hit by a bullet. This time Brian got some good photos.

  ‘Now we’ll do a little strafing,’ said Milne.

  He flew the disc back out to the pack ice where pieces were floating all over the sea. Zooming above the surface, he clicked AMI back to one and pulled the trigger. The lights joined on the dash, then hundreds of tiny, spiralling rings spurted from the front of the disc like a heavy calibre machine gun, smashing the floating lumps of ice to pieces. Brian snapped more photos.

  ‘How’s that for a new kind of helicopter gunship,’ grinned Milne. ‘Now, a bit of a broadside from our cannon, Mr Hornblower.’

  Milne took the disc up and around then back down, before stopping half a kilometre from another iceberg. He set the switch on two and started pulling the trigger. Everytime he did, a DV would smash into the iceberg, sending chunks of ice and snow splattering into the ocean. In half a minute the top of the iceberg had been blasted away and the rest was pushing up from below the surface. Milne flew over the iceberg, did a loop the loop and came at it again firing on the move, blowing more chunks of ice everywhere. Still firing, he overshot the iceberg and the DVs thumped into the ocean, sending huge plumes of water spurting up into the frigid air. Milne banked the disc around and turned to Brian.

  ‘Not bad?’ he said to Brian.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ answered Brian. ‘Do you ever run out of ammo?’

  Milne shook his head. ‘Amy just keeps making her own.’ He looked at Brian. ‘Okay. I think we’ve seen enough of Antarctica. Let’s give it the arse.’

  ‘Righto. Where are we going? Back home?’

  ‘No. A place called Quazi Ahmad. Near the Indian–Pakistani border.’

  ‘Yeah? What are you going to blow up there?’

  ‘I’m not going to blow up anything,’ replied Milne. ‘The Pakis have got a nuclear missile site there. And they’re very touchy about it. We’ll call in and say g’day. And I’ll show you something else a MeG 21 can do.’ Milne took the disc straight up to thirty kilometres and they started hurtling across the sky again.

  Brian stared out the cabin reflecting on what he’d just seen. Shit, he thought. Ron sure wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to offer me unimaginable power. How else could you describe what I just saw? Brian gripped the joysticks, keen to get behind the controls himself. Then another thought occurred to him: What a feature article I’ll write when this is all over. Feature article? I’ll write a book. Publishers would kill to get this story.

  By the time Brian had worked out what he was going to call his book, they’d flown across Tasmania. By the time he put fresh film in the camera they were over a larger land mass.

  ‘Hey Ron,’ he said. ‘Is that Australia down there?’

  ‘It sure is, mate,’ answered Milne. ‘Don’t it get you where the doctor puts the stethoscope.’

  ‘What about stopping at Bondi for a minute while I drop this film in.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll park in Campbell Parade. We can have a milkshake at Bates’s.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Brian.

  ‘Actually. I’m going to slow down and fly over near Alice Springs. It freaks the Yanks out in Pine Gap when I buzz the place. They don’t know what’s going on. They think it’s the Russians.’

  Brian watched South Australia go by and the harsh red desert of central Australia. Soon the white domes of Pine Gap came into view near the cluster of Alice Springs. Milne brought the disc down to around five kilometres and hovered for a few moments. He grinned out the cabin and stuck his index finger up.

  ‘How do you like that, you dopey Seppo bastards. The boogeyman’s back in town.’ Laughing to himself, Milne worked the joystick, then the disc rose back in the sky and they sped off again.

  The Northern Territory came and went, then they took a left at Melville Island and flew over East Timor.

  ‘That’s Indonesia down there now,’ said Milne.

  ‘You sure know your way around, Ron,’ said Brian.

  ‘Not really. It’s just that these things are so fast. After a while the world seems like a country town. Take a map with you when you first start flying, and you’ll pick things up in a day.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said Brian.

  Milne pointed out the green jungle of Sri Lanka then they zoomed across the Indian subcontinent. Before long harsh desert changed into even harsher mountain ranges. Clouds were thin in the sky, then the surface changed to small, scattered villages and yellow desert surrounded by mountain ranges. In the distance were more mountain ranges capped with snow. Milne brought the disc down and cut the speed. Brian peered out the cabin. There was a thin trickle of river, another village and more mountain ranges edged by desert. He had a closer look and noticed a small airfield near one mountain range with two jet fighters standing at the side of the runaway.

  ‘That’s what we’re looking for,’ said Milne. ‘I’ll
just park here for a while. This shouldn’t take long.’

  Brian watched the airfield below, while Milne hovered the disc back and forth above one end of it, as if he was wiggling his bum in front of someone, trying to provoke them. A red light blinked on above one of the buildings, then there was movement all around and Brian could make out two figures in particular, sprinting to scramble the fighters. Moments later the jet’s twin after-burners fired and the two MiG 29 Fulcrums started taxiing across the runway.

  ‘Here they come,’ said Milne. ‘Sure as God made little brown curries.’

  The Pakistani fighters left the runway and roared up into the sky. Milne waited till they’d circled the airport and were coming towards them, then he began to fly off. Brian watched the two fighters get to about a kilometre behind them then, climbing at the same speed as the fighters, Milne took the disc away from the mountains out over the desert. With the fighters still on his tail, Milne moved up into the thin cloud cover, then circled back towards the airfield. One fighter peeled off to the left, the other stayed behind the disc. After the speeds they were travelling before, it almost seemed to Brian now like they were walking. He turned around just in time to see a puff of white smoke beneath the wing of the fighter that was following them and an air-to-air missile began streaking towards the disc.

  ‘Hey Ron!’ said Brian excitedly. ‘One’s fired a missile at us.’

  ‘Yeah I know,’ said Milne. ‘Watch this.’

  Milne waited till the missile was catching up, then moved to the same speed. The missile locked on behind the disc as Milne took the disc up in a long, slow, winding loop, then came down roughly a kilometre behind the attacking jet. Travelling at the same speed as the missile, the disc soon drew level with the jet and Brian could clearly see the pilot staring at the disc from behind the dark visor of his flying helmet. Milne gave him a quick wave then shot the disc well past the Pakistani fighter. The missile locked onto the jet’s after-burners and flew straight into the left one. A split second later there was a bright ball of orange flame and the MiG 29 broke in half; the nose section sailed in one direction and, leaving a trail of grey smoke, the tail section spiralled to the ground in another. Brian saw another, smaller explosion as the canopy flew away and the pilot’s ejection seat blasted itself into the air. A moment later the pilot’s parachute opened and he floated safely towards the ground.

  ‘Ohh yeah. Nice one, Sawi,’ commented Brian. ‘That poor bloody pilot wouldn’t have known what hit him.’

  Milne gave a look of grudging approval. ‘I have done it a few times,’ he admitted, ‘in places where they shoot first and ask questions later.’ He gave Brian a wink. ‘Funny how it never gets reported.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’ said Brian. ‘How come?’

  Milne took the disc away from the airfield. ‘Mate. What pilot in the world would hand in a report saying, “I was chasing a flying saucer. And got shot down by my own missile.” They’d have him psychiatrically evaluated and he’d never fly again.’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ agreed Brian.

  ‘That’ll go down as, “An unidentified aircraft violated Pakistani airspace. The ever vigilant pilots gallantly chased it off. Unfortunately, one pilot was forced to eject due to engine malfunction.”’

  ‘You certainly malfuncted something, Sawi.’

  ‘I did the same thing once in China. But the poor bloody pilot was a bit stiff. They don’t appear to have very good ejection seats in the People’s Republic.’ Milne looked at his watch. ‘Anyway. We may as well head for home.’ He turned to Brian. ‘When we get to the Pacific, you want to have a go, I’ll turn your controls on.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Brian. ‘All right if I have a little play with Amy?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? I’ll see if I can find something for you to shoot up.’

  ‘A school of dolphins’ll do,’ smiled Brian.

  ‘Okay. And a couple of yachts.’ Milne took the disc up to thirty kilometres and they zoomed straight across the rest of India, then Thailand and the Philippines.

  They reached the Pacific and Milne brought the MeG 21 down on the other side of Palau. Just before Enwetak Atoll the President slowed right up and handed the controls to Brian.

  ‘Very well, Mr Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘You got the con.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Brian.

  Brian had been getting the feel of the joysticks on the way over and he was ready and waiting. Milne turned Brian’s side on by moving the crystal in the dash and Brian felt a slight vibration come through the controls. He kept the switch on one and started moving the joystick wherever he wanted to go. Slowly at first, then a little faster. For something so powerful Brian was astounded how easy it was to fly. The disc seemed to blend in around him and Brian felt like he was zooming around the sky in a lounge chair. Brian took the disc up to thirty kilometres and Milne smiled in encouragement. The President reached over and clicked the switch to three.

  ‘Okay, Takkers,’ he said. ‘Let’s see you burn rubber.’

  Brian was now full of enthusiasm. ‘Righto.’

  Brian squeezed the controls, the speedo shot forward and in an instant he was zooming across the sky at maximum speed. The clouds and ocean flashed by and as far as Brian was concerned it was no different to driving a big luxury car. They were almost at the Hawaiian Islands when Milne told him to ease up and turn around. Brian slowed down, clicked back to two, spun the disc straight around and went back the other way. He clicked back to three and in an instant he was flying at top speed again. Before he knew it they were back where they started. Brian cut the speed, clicked back to one and brought the disc to a hover.

  ‘This is just unbelievable,’ said Brian. ‘I’m … I dunno. I’m rapt.’

  ‘Wait till you’re flying solo, Luke Skywalker,’ said Milne. ‘Have a look, and I’ll show you how this crystal works in the dash.’

  Milne showed Brian how the crystal slotted around the dash much the same as a T-bar shift in a car. He showed Brian how to adjust the seat, one or two other things and that was all there was to it. It was even easier than Brian thought it would be, and by now he was keen to try out AMI. Milne pointed the way, and told Brian to take the disc to Kiribati. There was a stretch of sandbar not far from there with nothing on it; he could shoot that up. Fifty kilometres from where they were going Milne spotted a dead whale in the ocean surrounded by a pack of sharks feasting on the carcass.

  ‘What do you reckon, Brian?’ he said. ‘You want to go down and stuff up their smorgasbord?’

  ‘Yeah. Poor bloody old whale,’ said Brian. ‘I suppose it won’t matter now.’ He took the disc just above the surface and hovered a good five hundred metres back from where the dead whale was bobbing up and down in the water.

  Swimming amongst the shark pack surrounding the carcass was a huge white pointer, aggressively nosing its way through the other sharks, letting them know who was boss. Brian clicked the button on two and watched the red lights form on the dash. There were no sights. All you did was aim the front of the disc at whatever you wanted to hit, gave the handle a squeeze and that was it. AMI and the DVs did the rest. Brian tilted the disc and pulled the trigger just as the white pointer pushed its way in and started tearing off a great slab of blubber.

  The DV slammed into the dead whale and the carcass exploded in a gory, swirling cloud of blubber, bones and shredded intestines. Spinning end over end through the gruesome debris was the white pointer, its tail kicking frantically from side to side and the slab of blubber still gripped firmly in its massive jaws. With a huge splash, the shark hit the water as the remains of the whale rained down onto the sea around it. Not quite sure what had happened, the white pointer floated amongst the mess for a moment, then it shook its head, gulped down the piece of blubber and disappeared under the surface. When everything settled, the shark pack moved in on what was left of the whale, and along with a school of sleek barracuda that suddenly arrived on the scene, started feasting on the scraps.

  Brian stare
d at the carnage before him then looked at the joy stick. ‘Great green gravy, Batman,’ he said to Milne. ‘This thing’s unreal.’

  ‘Yeah. It sure is — I suppose.’ Wishing he’d chosen another target instead of the unfortunate whale, Milne turned to Brian. ‘Come on,’ he said grimly. ‘Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive.’

  Milne took back the controls, clicked onto number three and they sped back to Lan Laroi. They were there in next to no time. Milne hovered above the surface for a moment and showed Brian where to land on the reef by lining up with the temple, then took the disc beneath the water. Expertly he guided it into the tunnel mouth and along the subterranean passage. They came out in the pool, Milne showed Brian how to perform a docking manoeuvre, then he switched off the rotors. The steps came down, they got out of the disc and minutes later they were seated at the stone table, drinking coffee and eating chicken sandwiches.

  ‘Well, Brian,’ said Milne. ‘I have to admit you took to that like a duck to water. I honestly thought you would have been shitting yourself up there.’

  ‘After what happened in that wind shear, Ron, nothing about flying will ever frighten me again.’ Brian pointed to the discs. ‘And especially not in one of those.’

  ‘I wasn’t lying when I said I was going to offer you unbelievable power, was I?’

  ‘I was thinking the exact same thing when we left Antarctica. But the amazing thing is, they’re so easy to fly.’

  ‘Yeah. The ancients sure knew what they were doing, didn’t they.’ Milne smiled at Brian over his coffee and sandwich. ‘So do you think CC and his French mates might be in for a surprise?’

  ‘Just a bit,’ said Brian. ‘Should I say anything about this to Keleu and any of the others?’

  ‘No, not for the time being,’ replied Milne. ‘I’ll let everyone know at the right time. This all has to be done properly and I’ve got a plan in mind. Which I will explain to you when you get your wings, Mr Bradshaw.’

  ‘When I get my wings.’ Brian laughed.

  Milne finished his coffee. ‘Anyway, mate, we’d better get going. I have to go on TV this arvo.’