Looking out over the Gawler Reach, the shipyard at his back, Chima Kwembe accepted another beer from his friend.

'How long you reckon, Mas?'

Masaki Yamada turned to look at the skeletal shapes being welded together behind them. Twelve here at the Birkenhead shipyard, another thirty taking form around the coastline of South Australia.

'Adelaide is probably six months ahead; we got an early start. Should be ready for sea trials three, maybe four years? Nothing like this has been constructed for who knows how long mate, we were lucky to find the old blueprints. Adapting them, sourcing the materials, retooling, training the workforce…it’s a wonder we got this far in just twenty-odd years!'

Kwembe stroked his beard, calculating silently.

'So, give it another five years, accepting there’ll be glitches…2 months trials, another two more supply fitting, three to actually get there, if we work out how to navigate with this ancient tech!'

'Damn them for blowing the Tube! This could’ve been over in two bloody weeks!'

'That, my friend was unfortunate, who knew the P/P would act that quickly? But, on the upside, it gave our original troops some battle training, a taste of what’s to come!'

'But six years!'

Yamada’s mood became sombre.

'Can’t wait that long, Chim. Six years is too late for them!'

Shouts from the dock, the clanging and straining of steel sheets, a sound like gunfire, as one of the ancient stiff legged derricks sheered and collapsed into a pile of useless rusty metal.

Chima shook his head.

'Okay….six, maybe eight, a decade? Or maybe we can concentrate our efforts, one big push, get the Southern Tube up and running sooner?'

'Call a meeting, Techs, Engineers, Unit Commanders, I want everyone moved over to Port Lincoln, that Tube gets sorted! No more bloody boats!'

Across the Tasman Sea, Meera stood, hunched over yet another map. The Pneumatic Transportation Grid, commonly know as the ‘Tube’ showed on her screen.

Dotted lines indicating the breaches made to the branches linking Area 6 to the rest of Society. Three miles of the system taken out with high explosives packed onto a pod.

Meera stabbed at the City Omega Terminal, just outside Adelaide.

'Here! If I was going to attempt to fix the link, that’s where I’d start! Look, Straight run West to Area 5. Once that’s been taken, they’ll have all the resources they’ll need to keep on rolling northward through the major mass of the Cities. If 5 and 2 fall….?'

'Why not Brisbane/ Santiago? Another straight run, East?' Abbot pointed at the schematics.

'If they targeted the Americas, they’d have to move North, ok, they’d take Area 3 and 4, probably with little resistance, the Cities are more widespread, supply chain issues, and… coming back East easily?'

She traced the Tube spokes coming from Area 4. Three out of four unused, too close to Greenland. The remaining Tube , easily defendable, or blown up, either side of the Atlantic.

'Only my guess, but if I was planning an invasion, I’d go 5,2, 1 then 4.'

Freewayriding

17.07.23 Front Page

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