74: Home

The Damocles popped out of warp almost frighteningly close to the planet, which blocked out most of the bridge windscreens.  Although the sensors said that they were thousands of kilometres away, the instant impression of all those on the bridge was that they were about to bounce right off it.

Lt.Cmdr. Kelly was almost rubbing his hands with glee.  After over a year away, he and Vig and Crash were approaching their homeworld.  As a sailor and a commando, he was used to being away from home for extended periods, but his recent experiences on Earth II had made him long for the comforting embrace of the Australian climate, the landscape, the lifestyle.

Sam, Vig, Danny, Crash and Jock were officially on leave as soon as the sleek corvette docked at CNF Naval Station Coonawarra—an asteroid in a medium-distance geosynchronous orbit around the equator—and Lt.Cmdr. McPeak wasted no time in getting them out of her way for refuelling and resupply.  As a former member of a foreign Special Forces unit now engaged in hostilities with CNF, Danny was immediately detained by the base Force Protection detail.  He waited patiently in the brig while Sam Kelly made the arrangements for him to be processed as a civilian ‘consultant’, which took a couple of hours and plenty of pulled strings, before a message from Brigadier Wallis at CNF Special Warfare Command suddenly made all the red tape disappear.  Danny was released with an apology, and the five of them boarded an atmospheric shuttle down to the planet surface.

Sam and Crash were the first out of the gate at the shuttle pads in New Sydney, followed closely by Vig.  Danny and Jock trailed behind, looking around and squinting in the bright sunlight.  “So this is your homeworld, huh?  It’s… clean,” remarked Danny.

“Thank the tourists for that,” said Vig.  “Like any place, it has its underbelly, but most of the inner city is kept sparkling for all the tourists we get from the rest of the region.  The New Britannic folks like getting away from the permanent drizzle they get over there, so you see a lot of them on holiday here and in Free Latin America.  Can’t say I blame them.”

They hired a cab to take them to the tube station.  Just less than two hours after relaxing into their seats in the capsule, they were sliding to a stop a thousand kilometres away in New Melbourne.  What little luggage they had was slung over their shoulders or carried between them, and they walked through the city centre together.  Vig and Sam wore their shore duty uniforms, crisp white for Sam and sandy beige for Vig.  Instead of a garrison cap, Vig wore his dark crimson Marine Reconnaissance beret.  Jock wore a faded blue singlet over his hairy, barrel chest and a pair of jeans all torn at the knees, along with what looked suspiciously like a pair of Navy-issue black boots that had seen better days.  Crash and Danny had no choice but their same street clothes they’d bought on Dessalines before flying down to Earth II to do battle with the mutants.  Crash kept eyeing Vig’s uniform with what may have been jealousy, but was more likely an eagerness to try her new rank on for size.

After a brief stop at a transit authority booth, at which they bought their electronic transit tags, they wound up at a small busway stop at the edge of the city centre.  The smooth concrete busway stretched out left and right, and a shell of tinted glass and brushed steel sheltered them from the mid-afternoon sun.

“They’ve really given this place a facelift,” laughed Crash.  “I haven’t caught a bus from here in years.”

Vig was looking at a timetable board.  “Looks like the 840 is still the 840.”

“And it looks like one’s coming now,” said Sam, gesturing to their right.  Sure enough, a bus rolled to an easy halt at the end of the platform.  They touched their transit tags against the readers inside the doors and hauled their luggage aboard.  The bus took off down the busway, which arced upwards around a bend and gave them a view out across the city for a few moments.  Sam, Vig and Crash were practically drowning in nostalgia.

After a long bus ride out through suburbia, they turned a corner past a Squick Burger restaurant and Crash was the first to mash her finger against the bell button, almost by reflex.  The bus cruised to a stop, they dragged their gear out and thanked the driver, and were left standing by the side of the road.  Jock shielded his eyes with a hand and squinted around.  “And now?”

Vig and Sam looked at each other.  “I’m getting that feeling,” said Vig with a smile.

“I feel it too,” agreed his brother solemnly.

“Squick it is.”

“Sadly.”

They all walked into the Squick Burger and took a few minutes to order.  It was almost surreal, for all of them.  Jock, Crash and Danny were used to the humid, dirty slums of Haiti-Nouveau and were now in the middle of the humid, clean, mind-numbing suburbia of Australia.  Sam and Vig had gone from living off rations and fighting off mutants to living aboard spaceships.  They ate their lunch slowly, taking it all in.  Finally, gathering up their luggage again, they began the walk through the old ‘hood.  No more than ten minutes from the Squick Burger, they turned down a broad street lined with nice houses behind nice gardens.  Sam and Vig stopped outside one such house, expressions blank, bags dropping from their hands.  Crash sank to her knees.  The windows were open and the blinds were tied back, and they could sort of see into the living room.  There was a shriek from inside and footsteps on the floorboards, before a small woman with a long ponytail appeared at the window.  Her hands gripped the windowsill, and it looked like she was about to vault straight out.  Crash, Vig and Sam all yelled “Mum!” at the same time and jumped the low fence.  They stood under the window and she leaned out to hug them all at once.  After a lot of clucking and exchange of information, Mrs Kelly looked out and saw the other two standing by the road.  “And these are friends of yours, I take it?”

“Yeah, they work with us,” said Sam, wiping his eye.

“Come around the back, all of you.  You can bring those bags under the house.”

They hauled their luggage through the gate at the side of the house, and Mrs Kelly met them on the back steps.  The slightly sloping block and the stilts under the floor had created a space with a low ceiling, which was used for storage.  A lattice screen ran all the way around the back of the house, enclosing the space, and a gate by the back steps acted as a door.  Mrs Kelly slid the bolt back and let them in, all of them stooping at the waist to scuttle inside.  Mrs Kelly herself only had to duck her head slightly.  They looked around at the rusted bicycles, unused cabinets, cardboard boxes half-full of old junk, Vig’s old surfboard coated with a film of dust, and shelves upon shelves of books.

“I’m afraid, Sam, that I’ve converted your room into a study.  Viggo’s is now a guest room, with a new double bed.  I suppose we could shuffle some things around and put the other three in the living room.”

“Oh, we were just visiting,” said Crash.  “We were thinking of just setting up camp at the hotel back on the main road.”

“Nonsense, why pay for a hotel?  You’re always welcome here.”

“We’ll be able to clear out some space for beds,” shrugged Vig, indicating a patch of empty floor space.

“But it’ll get cold down here,” objected his mother.

“It’s only temporary, Mum,” said Sam.  “A week or so.  Then we’re off again.”

“Where to?”

“I’m afraid we can’t say.”

Mrs Kelly sighed, but nodded.