Chapter 24

Gazza blinked to his workshop before opening his parcel from Dan.

The others knew not to disturb him unless it was time for food, so he had a couple of hours of peace to himself. He opened the package and looked at the band that looked very similar to the ones he had made for Basil and Petal but it was suited to fit him.

“Master, can you put it close to the vambrace please,” Bluey asked. Gazza did as Bluey asked. He was surprised to see the screen of the pad in his vambrace do some crazy flashing and it blinked on and off several times before, it settled down. “Wow-wee! What an update,” Bluey told him.

“Master, our Overlord is truly a benevolent master. He must have sensed us when we became active but he decided not to interfere. I was told to inform you that when you are ready, he would be delighted to come and visit with an introduced pest.”

Gazza snorted at the reference to cane toads being a pest. “What is an Overlord?” he asked intrigued.

“He must have known you’d ask that because the message we received was to say that he is like a High Queen, between the Queen Wizards and the Emperor Wizard of a planet. Because this planet is large and has many more continents that were found on the old Keltrian worlds, the position such as his became necessary.”

“Also when you have the different sets of Wizards active then more than one type of Queen is required to keep the balance. His position negates this need for the time being. When the populations on the islands grow larger, then he can pass on the responsibilities to the Queens he will create. It is an elegant solution for this planet, master.”

Gazza was spinning at this news. He had worried about the issues of needing different Queens when Asha had made him aware of the problem if his children were accepted by the other set of wizard’s items that she had in her treasure room.

She’d told him that to make a Queen’s box his set would need at least three wizards active in it. He was relieved that it wasn’t going to be a problem now. It was interesting to know that at least one decad set had wizards in it, on one of the other islands. The story about Queen Huntress being a Lord Wizard would be true, especially if Darcy were on that Island.

The rumours of a wizard being on Cuttail Island may also be true and he was curious as to what Darcy knew about that wizard. He then wondered if Darcy would like to come to a coronation party at the end of the year. It would be nice to know that he, Nat and Bette would have some back up if they needed it.

He looked down when Bluey said, “Master, I asked and Lord-Lightning replied that he would be delighted to meet you then. He realises that you need to concentrate on your studies right now and feels that his presence won’t be required until then.”

“Master, he did say to keep an eye on the Lords and the Ants. He didn’t explain but his AI passed on the message that he thought you can sort out what’s going on without his interference since it is going to be your and Bette’s problem.”

Gazza chuckled. It was nice to know your new, unseen, never met boss, had faith in you. It almost felt like being in the Army again. He adlibbed to himself in his last Commanding Officer’s smoke gravelled voice, “Your mission son, whether you choose to accept it or not, is to put down the rebellion but don’t start a civil war, or you’re on your own and we know nothing, nothing.”

Gazza got a very odd sensation that someone was sniggering at his fanciful thoughts. “Snigger on, smartarse. For all you know, you’re one of my great-great-grandkids, so a little respect here,” he said aloud to the mind he felt gently touching his.

He jumped when a voice came back on his comms, “Sorry, Pops, but you’re a lot more capable than you believe you are.” The voice then asked with a hint of curiosity, ‘What is your surname anyway?’

This cracked Gazza up. “It’s White, for your information, I spent a year in Canberra when I did my helicopter training in nineteen-ninety. One of my instructors, Lieutenant Laurence Brown, aka Larry and his wife Denise, were very accommodating. I wasn’t with more than three other females before my flight to this world. To my knowledge, none of them got pregnant to me, so I think you’re safe.”

“How interesting. My mother’s maiden name was Brown and she came from a long line of military personnel in Australia until she moved me to London as a teenager. She told me when I got my Pilot’s wings that fly-boys were traditional in her family, right back to the First World War,” Darcy sent back.

Gazza frowned, ‘Nah, the kid couldn’t have been mine. Denise and Larry didn’t decide to have kids until after I left Canberra. Denise sent me a picture of the kid just before I was due to fly back to Kabul. That’s where I was heading before I ended up here. She said he was six months old in it. For him to be mine, I’d have to have knocked her up just before I left Canberra.”

“Mind you, Larry had been away for a couple of weeks, some memorial thing for his dad, Colonel Davin Brown and it had been just me keeping her company. She had mentioned that Larry’s mum had told them to stop screwing around, as she wanted grandkids. So I wasn’t surprised that she went and had one.”

“Stranger things have happened to several people I knew before I came here. So why did they call my great-grandfather Gary, Gazza?’

“Get out of here! She didn’t tell me that, she just called him Junior in the letter,” Gazza scoffed.

“Sorry, Gazza Senior but a distant relative of mine was into Genealogy and I’d had to supply her with my family tree as I knew of it. You just named three distant ancestors we believe that we have in common and in the correct succession. Her great-grandfather and mine on our mother’s side were twin brothers.”

“Their father was Gary Brown and you named his legal father and grandfather. Gary was also an only child. So I think you were set up. To put an even stranger twist on things, Gary married the granddaughter of his legal father’s older sister. My mother said that my grandparents on her side were of about the same age.”

“They met while serving overseas in the Army when they were in their late twenties. They hadn’t known about their supposed relationship until much later. She was a James after all and it was her grandmother that that had been a Brown. Mum told me that they had done DNA tests when they found out, so they knew that Larry wasn’t Gary’s father.”

“By the way, Larry was in a plane crash in two thousand in South Australia and his body wasn’t found. Denise admitted that Gary’s biological father had gone AWOL in Afghanistan, not long after Gary was born. The story was he absconded with a helicopter and some precious artefacts from a dig in the mountains to the east of Kabul. You I believe?”

“Holy camel shit!” Gazza responded.

“Sorry, you left with a tarnished reputation, but that was the official version. I gather the authorities didn’t want people to know what it was you had onboard. So, unless Denise was already screwing the guy she later married, which I doubt, you become the most likely candidate in my books, Pops,” he finished with merriment evident in his voice.

Thoughtfully, Gazza said, “It is possible the kids hadn’t met. Darla, Larry’s older sister, had moved to Townsville with her second husband, Captain Henry Bentley, a good ten years before I met her brother. She’d got left with four kids from her first marriage, but Henry never adopted them. He doted on their one kid, John.”

“I actually knew Darla’s daughter, Helen; she told me one time that she was only two when her real dad, Anton James died. She married a mate of mine, Ned Kelly. He was reassigned to Darwin about the same time I left to do my second tour. Helen’s kids would have been younger than my son because she wasn’t pregnant in May when I went missing.”

“You knew a bloke called Ned Kelly?” Darcy queried Gazza.

“Yeah, sure, he was a drinking and flying buddy. At least he didn’t wear a bucket for a flight helmet even though we called it that,” Gazza said with laughter in his voice.

“Damn, I thought my mother was having me on that one of my great-grandfathers was called Ned Kelly. My friends Lee and Sean gave me crap about him too,” Darcy came back.

Gazza cracked again, “Mate, the famous Ned Kelly died more than a hundred years even before my time. Wow! I can’t get over that Larry’s Dad was an ancestor of yours seven generations back. That is just wild. About as far back as I can trace is my Gramps, Quinn Green. He died in the Second World War but my mum said he was an orphan from the First one.”

“I don’t know much about the Mc Gee’s, my mum’s people on her mum’s side, as I never bothered tracing them and Mum didn’t talk about them much before she died. As for my Dad, he said he was a British orphan from London. He said White was just a name they gave him. I often think there was more he knew but I never asked, maybe I should have.”

Gazza looked at the brace, which was flashing a message and then said, “Damn I’ve got to go. Well, it was nice talking to you Darcy. We will have to chat again soon and swap our, ‘how the fuck we got here’ stories.”

“I’d like that. You know it’s odd but I don’t feel so alone here now that I know you’re here. I like that we have the British connection too. The Captain of the Saucy Sue seems to believe the people on Oron that he knows came from Earth too. If they are who I think they are, I think they are related to us somewhere along the tree too.”

“Well, my mum always said I came from a screwy family. We have a few MIA’s in it, like my Gramps so I wouldn’t be surprised if we have other crazy time-travelling, planet-hopping relatives in the generations between you and me floating around the universe,” Gazza supplied.

“Me either, Gazza. Damn, now I’m being called away. Later Pops,” Darcy replied.

“Yeah, I’ll look forward to our next chat, bye son,” Gazza came back with mirth.

Gazza grinned as he heard Darcy’s chuckle before the connection was cut.

Gazza looked at his vambrace.

“Do I need to give this communicator to the others so they can update their vambraces?” he asked Bluey.

“No, master, it seems that I can pass the necessary information on. I’ve also sent the information to Asha. She was delighted, as she has been able to use the information to upgrade her communication protocols and her satellites. Now they can talk to the new satellites that she has located. It gives her a much better coverage of the planet and she is delighted.”

“Master, Asha thinks that she is not the only section of a wheelship on this planet because of the satellites she has found. She believes that sections of a different ship also came here and she is investigating this possibility. She is very excited by the prospect of finding them.”

“Asha also believes that the time discrepancy that Bette mentioned may, in fact, be real and it could be centred on when the other sections came here. She is working on the hypothesis that when the hydrazine bomb finally blew up the blue sun from the homeworlds, it produced time distortion waves that have affected this galaxy.”

“Coupled with the rich hydrazine deposits on our worlds, the gates the Keltrians had placed in the various systems on this side and the black holes that are in the centre of this galaxy may have also contributed to why the galaxy and the teleportation rings have been affected by random time fluxes.”

“It would also explain why you and your future relative have come here when and how you did. Apparently, hydrazine has some interesting properties that the Keltrians hadn’t fully investigated when they decided to use it to power their ships and transporter rings. They are all interesting problems and should keep Asha quite amused for some time to come.”