Operation: Home Front, The Australian Connection, Pt. 2

      by Lt. Turbo, TRES

      Turbo sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag. He didn't hear anything,
 and a quick glance around told him that it was still dark. The only people
 he could see up and moving about were the pickets they'd posted, and they
 had stopped and were staring in the same direction. They'd stopped about
 ten kilometres out from the Element site and had harboured up for the
 night.
      He looked in the same direction as the pickets and saw... There were
 tracers arcing up into the air. And he heard the distinctive sound of heavy
 weapons firing. <What the hell?>
      One of the pickets crouched down next to him. "What the hell is that,
 sir?" he whispered, pointing in the general direction of the Array Element.

      "I have no idea. The boss awake?" Turbo replied in an equally quiet
 voice.
      The shadow nodded. "He sent me over to wake you up and tell you that
 an O-Group's been called."
      Turbo groaned and clambered out of his sleeping bag, careful not to
 wake Bec, who was sleeping next to him. "I'm on my way."
      When he reached the command vehicle, he saw that he was the last one
 to arrive. The others were standing in a group, looking at the visible
 signs of an obviously brisk firefight. "That's the site we were going to
 level in the morning," Henderson commented. He looked at Turbo. "Do you
 have any ideas?" he asked.
      Turbo shook his head. "Not a one. If I didn't know better, I'd say
 that someone has beaten us to it."
      "That's pretty obvious. But why if you didn't know better?" "Well, I
 know for a fact that there are no other TRES personnel in the country. And
 if a team *had* been sent in, I'm pretty sure that I'd be informed. Apart
 from that, don't you think that they'd try to link up with us?"
      Everyone nodded at that. "I suppose that they would," Henderson
 agreed. "So who do you think it is, then?"
      "I have no idea."

      * * * *

      Smoke was still drifting up from the burning wreckage when the unit
 arrived. "Whoever it was did a very thorough job," Turbo commented as he
 surveyed the wreckage... and the bodies that littered the area.
      "Thorough, but somewhat messy," Henderson agreed. He turned to his
 second-in-command. "Get the guys out and perform a sweep. We're looking for
 evidence... or survivors," he ordered.
      The troopers jumped from their vehicles and fanned out, weapons at the
 ready. At first, the reports coming in only detailed damage done to the
 site and the number of casualties found - something that was obvious from
 looking around.
      Then, pay dirt was found.
      "We've got a bunch of live ones!" the breathless voice crackled from
 the speaker. "They appear to be gathered around something, and they look
 sorta dazed."
      Henderson turned to Turbo and said, "Jackpot."
      By the time they got there, the group was surrounded by heavily armed
 troopers, with their weapons in neat stacks well out of reach. "They
 offered no resistance, and they keep muttering stuff about 'naughty people'
 and 'we thought they were our friends'. Apart from that, they look like
 they're in shock."
      Turbo nodded and dug through the bag he'd brought over. In it was his
 despongification kit. Soon, bottles began to appear. Henderson eyed one
 black-labelled bottle with the air of a man in a desert eyeing an oasis. "I
 hope you don't plan to use that," he commented, pointing.
      "Huh? This?" Turbo asked, holding up the bottle. "No way. Bundy Black
 is hard enough to come by at the best of times, and spongies wouldn't
 appreciate it. This is for me - I was just waiting for an appropriate
 moment to open it."
      "Save it for tonight. A couple of nips will chase away the cold."
      Turbo nodded and began putting together a cocktail that he'd named the
 'De-sponge Special'. It was basically an Illusion, but instead of fruit
 juice, it used Coke or, if available, Jolt. It hadn't been tested, but
 Turbo was sure that the fumes alone would despongify anything this side of
 the Hell Wyrm itself. If you weren't a spongie to begin with, the amount of
 alcohol and caffeine would be enough to send you into a hyperactive frenzy
 - but a drunken one. Turbo had also discovered that it made a nice warm-up
 prior to going out on the town.
      Once a jug had been prepared, Turbo braced himself and headed over to
 the group. "Hi, guys," he said in his friendliest voice. "What's up?"
      The story came in a torrent - but from one person at a time. When
 someone who wasn't currently speaking had something to add, the current
 speaker stopped to allow the new contribution, and when it was finished,
 continued with his or her part. The gist of it was that another group of
 Minions - labelled 'Friends' in the story - had approached the Element, and
 had been let in. Not long after, they had attacked, killing most of the
 Element's staff before proceeding to destroy anything that took their
 fancy.
      "They were our friends!" one spongie sobbed.
      "How many of them were there?" Turbo asked gently.
      "I don't know - lots," she wailed before bursting into a new outbreak
 of tears. Hardly surprising, that. Being attacked by people you thought
 were on your side was hard enough for someone with a *functional* brain to
 deal with. But Turbo and Henderson had to get a rough idea on numbers, as
 these attackers weren't on their side. That much was obvious, as even
 spongies would have recognised uniforms from any of the major JAOs. Turbo
 had a mental image of them rolling into an attack on an Array Element,
 running into these 'naughty people'... and getting swarmed by a battalion
 or brigade of spongies.
      "You must be feeling thirsty," he said to her.
      "I am," she replied. "Can I have a drink, please?"
      "Sure," Turbo replied, pouring a glass of his brew and handing it to
 her. "Don't worry, it's the decaffeinated diet version," he assured her
 when she hesitated. That seemed to do the trick, as she gulped it down in
 one go. Turbo held his breath - this was the field-test for an idea of his.
 Suddenly, the glaze vanished from her eyes, to be replaced by the spark of
 intelligence.
      She looked around, at the other spongies, at Turbo - a rather
 measuring look, he noticed - and then at the SAS troopers nearby. "What
 the..." she began, and then looked down at what she was wearing, and gasped
 in shock. "Why am I wearing something in this colour? I don't even *own*
 any clothes like this!"
      <Back to normal,> Turbo thought, hiding a sudden grin. "Bec?" he
 suggested.
      "Yep, got it," Bec replied, stepping forward. "If you'll come with me,
 I can fix you up with something decent."
      As they headed back to the vehicles, Turbo and Henderson glanced at
 each other. "Secret women's business," they said in unison before bursting
 into laughter. "Women," Turbo added. "Just when you think you've got 'em
 figured out, they go and change the rules of the game."

      * * * *

      'Something decent' turned out to be pretty much well the same as what
 Bec was wearing, although the female ex-sponge wore it slightly better. At
 that night's harbour location, she had been invited to sit in on the card
 game, with Turbo lending her fifty dollars so she could play. He'd won a
 fair bit more than that, so it was no problem.
      "It was just another day," the ex-sponge - her name turned out to be
 Linda - said, picking up her cards and giving them a quick glance. "Very
 boring - all we did was sit in our chairs and watch the gauges and dials.
 If something went wrong, we'd push a purple button and someone would come
 to fix it - we had no idea, either of how anything worked, or how to fix
 something that was broken." She paused before continuing. "Then again, from
 what Bec told me, while I was spongified, my IQ could have been measured in
 single digits anyway. It seems like a dream - nightmare, rather - now. I'm
 just glad that it's over," she concluded with a shudder.
      Turbo shook his head. "That's the second time I've heard a story like
 yours. It doesn't get better coming from someone else." He took a mouthful
 from the bottle of Bundy Black and passed it on, noting that the level had
 dropped sharply after its first lap of the group. Even a full 700ml bottle
 didn't last long among ten people.
      Linda looked at him. "You mean it's happened before here?" she asked.
      "Not all that long ago, as a matter of fact," he replied, and then
 told her about when he'd faced off with B'harnii... and somehow walked away
 from it. "I took a pounding, but at least I lived through it. Which is more
 than what B'harnii can say about that particular experience."
      During this story-telling, the card game had continued, and it was
 time to lay out the cards. When it came around to Turbo, he casually
 dropped his cards face-up. "Four nines. Read and weep, people - that money
 is mine."
      "Not so fast, Bobby," Linda interrupted, grinning. "What do you think
 this means?" She placed cards on the ground one at a time. First was the
 ten of hearts, then the Jack, the Queen, and the King. With each card,
 everyone's jaw sagged a little further. Linda paused to let the tension
 build a little before putting the last card down.
      It was the Ace of hearts.
      Turbo and Henderson immediately launched into a competition to see who
 could swear the most impressively, using the most words, and in more
 languages. Both had held fairly impressive hands, and had sunk a fair
 amount of money into this hand, hoping to break the other. This was not
 something that they had expected.
      Henderson checked his money supply. "That was a large dent," he
 commented sourly.
      "What are you complaining about?" Turbo returned. "I lost just as much
 as you did."
      "Yeah, but the difference is, you get fifty of it back. I don't."
 Henderson checked his watch. "Definitely past my bed- time. And if the rest
 of you are smart, you'll get some sleep as well. It's going to be another
 of those Army-special early starts."
      "I'm really starting to hate these zero-dark-hundred starts," Turbo
 commented sourly.
      "Starting? I've hated them for years," Henderson replied. "If you
 think more than five or six hours' sleep in a night is a luxury... you
 might be an infantryman."
      Turbo chuckled, recognising the adaptation of Jeff Foxworthy's 'You
 Might Be A Redneck'. "You ain't wrong there," he said, smothering a yawn.
 "And that's my body asking my brain, 'Why aren't we asleep yet?' And on
 that note, I bid you all a good night."
      Turbo, Bec and Linda headed off towards Turbo's car. Since Linda
 didn't have a sleeping bag, Turbo had donated his. He could sleep in the
 back of his car, anyway. After a small amount of tossing and turning,
 trying to find the most comfortable position to sleep in, he drifted off.

      * * * *

      The next two Array Elements were the same - completely trashed with a
 small amount of shell-shocked survivors huddled together. "I don't know
 whether to be glad or nervous," Turbo commented as they headed for the next
 Element.
      "Why's that?" Linda asked from the back. She had volunteered to tag
 along after the rest of the survivors from the Array Element she had
 'worked' at had opted to return home.
      "Happy, because they're doing our job for us. Nervous, 'cause they
 ain't on our side. We could blunder into them at any time. Which would not
 be fun," he replied.
      "You got that right," Bec commented. "How long to the next one?"
      Turbo glanced at the map clipped to the dashboard before replying.
 "About ten kilometres, give or take. We just roll into this one and level
 the place."
      Ten minutes later, the column came to a halt, and everyone de- bussed
 and shook out into formation. The last kilometre was covered at a trot, and
 the attack began, exactly the same as the first one.
      Turbo emptied the magazine of his rifle into windows that spongies
 were firing from, then added a grenade from the underslung launcher. The
 firing stopped immediately. With the rest of the group that he was moving
 with, he raced forward to find a new firing position.
      Just then a fresh outbreak of small-arms fire came from in front of
 him. <Huh?> Turbo thought, confused. Who was in front of him? His group was
 the furthest-advanced one, so it couldn't be friendlies. It had to be these
 'naughty people' who had attacked the other Array Elements.
      Another burst of firing from each flank made Turbo's head twitch
 nervously. They were being flanked, which was somewhat unusual for a
 spongie attack. Flanking manoeuvres indicated, at least, a rudimentary
 knowledge of infantry tactics. The person doing the thinking for this new
 group was obviously fairly intelligent.
      "We're being hit! Company-plus at least!" Turbo recognised the voice
 of someone who was on the left flank. A similar report came from the right
 flank. Doing some quick mental juggling of numbers, Turbo figured out that
 they were now facing an enemy that, at best, matched them in numbers.
      "Back! Fall back!" Henderson ordered over the radio. "We need the
 heavy weapons in the vehicles!"
      Turbo's group was now repeating the same process that had brought them
 into the camp. Put down some fire, then find a new spot to fire from. Only
 now, they were moving backwards, rather than forwards. The sounds of firing
 from both flanks increased, as did Turbo's worrying. The enemy commander
 had picked up that his opposition was pulling back, and was increasing the
 pressure. This was not good.
      Once they had fallen back through the outskirts of the Element,
 everyone simply got up and ran as fast as they could - or rather, as fast
 as they could while carrying wounded friends. The ground was simply too
 open for proper fire-and-movement. Turbo just hoped that whoever was in
 charge of the enemy would settle for driving them away...
      He did, and they managed to get back to the vehicles without taking
 any more casualties.

      * * * *

      "Let me guess - those were the 'naughty people'," Henderson said as he
 and Turbo walked towards the command vehicle.
      "Yeah, I s'pose so," Turbo replied. "We can probably count ourselves
 lucky."
      "Good point. And here's a good question: what now?"
      Turbo didn't say anything for a moment as he pondered the options. "I
 suppose waving a hearty farewell and heading off into the sunset towards
 the next Element is not an option?"
      "You'd be surprised about that. But that still doesn't answer the
 question of who they were and why they'd attack something that, by
 appearances, should be on their side."
      "I can find out," Turbo pointed out.
      "How? We didn't capture any - in fact we were lucky that none of us
 were captured..." Henderson paused as he thought about what Turbo had said.
 "You don't mean..."
      "I do. I infiltrate them and find out everything I can, then I do a
 runner," Turbo said.
      "Simple, but it might work. I don't suppose I can talk you out of it."

      "Not a chance," Turbo said, shaking his head. "I have to go now,
 before those guys take off." He grinned suddenly. "Smoke me a kipper, I'll
 be back for breakfast."
      "Ace Rimmer you ain't," Henderson muttered. Turbo didn't hear him, as
 he was already heading towards Bec and Linda to say goodbye before going on
 his self-appointed mission... which, admittedly, he had the best chance of
 all of them of pulling off successfully.

      * * * *

      "Are you out of your mind?"
      Bec, predictably, didn't like that idea. Neither did Linda, for that
 matter. They both thought that it was suicidal at best. At worst... that
 was something they didn't want to consider.
      "Have you decided that today really *is* a good day to die?" Linda
 asked with a raised eyebrow.
      "Nope, but I don't see many options. And no time to argue, either." He
 leaned forward and hugged them both, kissing them on the cheek. "If you
 suddenly hear a burst of shots, that was probably my firing squad."
 Turning, he jogged off towards the array Element... and probably, his
 death.
      Henderson moved up to stand beside him. "The sun must have fried his
 brain," he commented. "But the truly scary thing is, I think he'll pull it
 off." There was a note of admiration in his voice. What Turbo planned on
 doing was audacious as of the seemingly crazy stunts SAS were renowned for
 doing. After their little Canberra jaunt, there had been serious talk among
 the surviving officers about making Turbo an 'honourary' SAS member, but
 there hadn't been time to bring it up with him yet. If he survived this,
 they would just hand him the sandy beret with the winged dagger. He would
 have earned it.

      * * * *

      Turbo adjusted his new 'borrowed' uniform so that it fitted more
 comfortably, slinging his rifle and adjusting his shoulder holster so that
 it snuggled neatly under his left armpit. He'd never heard of spongin
 carrying pistols before...
      It had been ridiculously easy to sneak up of the Element, find a
 spongin who was about his size and was away from everyone else. The rest,
 which included attracting his attention and then knocking him out and
 stripping him of his uniform, had been lifted straight from any of a dozen
 movies. Proof positive, if Turbo had needed it, that spongies were
 effectively brain-dead - even this bunch. Just because the commander was
 smart, it didn't mean that everyone else was, too. Putting on his best
 imitation of a sponge minion, he moved off towards the other minions,
 keeping his eyes and ears open.
      As he approached the centre of the Element, he felt a sudden spike of
 terror. Standing there was a robed figure...
      A Lyran. Judging by the colour of his robes, a fairly high- ranking
 one, to boot. Turbo hoped that his nervousness hadn't been detected. More
 to the point, he hoped that he could keep up the subterfuge. The Lyran
 looked in his direction. "Commander!" he barked.
      <He means me,> Turbo realised. Sneaking a surreptitious glance at his
 borrowed uniform, he realised that he hadn't mugged a regular minion, but a
 Wyrm Minion. Apparently, the commander of the minions...
      Turbo frantically flicked through his mental file of information on
 Lyrans that DobIntel had compiled and sent to all Jihad officers. "Yes,
 Lord Rez'nexor?" he asked, in what he hoped was the proper form of address.

      Apparently it was, for the Lyran merely said, "Report, Commander."
      "The perimeter is secure, Lord, and the demolition squads have nearly
 completed placing the explosives," Turbo stated, fudging like hell and
 hoping that it worked. If he was recognised as a TRES Corps officer now...
 well, it would be a quick but messy death.
      "And the intruders?" it asked, his tone implying horrible things if
 the answer wasn't to his liking.
      "They appear to have retreated for now, Lord, but they may attack
 again once they have re-grouped."
      It nodded slightly, obviously irritated to concede that a human could
 show such intelligence. "That is of no importance. Once the explosives are
 set, we will be returning to America, to deal with Rhyn's treachery there.
 Independent missions such as this do not advance our cause. It must be
 driven home that all efforts to destroy the Jihad must be a part of the
 whole, and the destruction of Rhyn will do that."
      Turbo filed that titbit under the heading 'Useful Information, But Not
 Really Relevant Right Now', then realised that he was expected to respond.
 "Of course, Lord. Treachery such as this cannot go unpunished," he said,
 again in what he hoped was the proper tone of voice.
      "And it will not. Once the demolition squad have completed their
 tasks, rally the troops and form them up for the march back to the
 rendezvous with the transports. This is the last Array Element in this
 country. All others have been destroyed."
      "Yes, Lord." And with that, the Lyran turned and stalked off, while
 Turbo breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd passed his first hurdle, and
 with flying colours too, it would seem.

      * * * *

      On the long flight to Kansas - where Rhyn had set up his headquarters,
 apparently - Turbo had many things to occupy his mind. Who was this Rhyn
 character? And, more importantly, why would the construction of a
 Spongification Array be considered such a horrible offence that a
 high-ranking Lyran would be sent out to Australia to personally oversee the
 destruction of a dozen or so Elements? Also, why would this Rhyn construct
 one in the first place without authorisation? There were more questions in
 Turbo's mind, but those were the most important ones.
      After giving those matters some serious though, he gave up on it as a
 lost cause, and decided to get some sleep. He had a feeling that there
 wouldn't be much of a chance to rest when they arrived at Kansas.
      To be continued...