CHAPTER 5

AN UNEASY ALLIANCE

I could hear Daniel approaching the house long before I could see him.

"Those JC freaks… I can't believe they're alive… so Bec was right all along… and we actually have to work with them… this is insane… I won't do it! They're nothing but a pack of cold-blooded killers! No! I won't!"

Graham was out there with him, trying to talk reason. I wouldn't have bothered, it was a pointless exercise.

"Bec, thank God you're safe… when I heard those bastards had you, I thought you were done for… thank God…"

As soon as Daniel walked in the door, he hugged me, very obviously relieved.

"But working with JC? What's with that? I mean, Larry told me we're meeting them tomorrow morning, which I'm not exactly jumping for joy about. But he didn't tell me much else. What happened today, in the space of the last four hours?"

I told him the story as well, leaving out Matt's whispered threats of torture. I didn't want to think about those.

He was quiet.

"Shit."

It was a quiet night overall. We were all busy coming to terms with what had happened in the last twelve or so hours. Me, I didn't sleep a wink. I lay, tossing and turning all night. I thought a lot about JC, though that was pretty understandable, I think. They were alive! I couldn't come to grips with it. And so friendly, now that we'd agreed to help them. Maybe they'd mellowed out in the last eighteen months…

At four am, sick of just laying there thinking, I got up to get a drink. Vodka was preferable, though I was happy to settle for milk. Tamara was sitting at the kitchen table.

"Hey, what's up, Tam?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"Obviously. Now tell me why."

She fidgeted nervously.

"I guess… with this whole Jade Columbia thing that's just come up… I'm feeling left out."

"Left out? Why?"

"You and Daniel, you both have history with JC. You know them. Graham and Larry are involved as well, because all you guys knew each other at the time of the war. But me, I just joined this group a year ago. All I know of JC is what I read in the papers, what I saw in the war. For you guys, it's personal. For me… I'm just feeling weird about the whole thing."

"Believe me, you don't want to know JC like we know them, me especially. If only I could forget what I've seen… what I've seen them do… but I can't."

Call me stupid, but only then did I notice the shot glass and the half-empty bottle of Cowboys on the table.

"Tamara, you're drunk. Go to bed."

"No. I can't sleep. Being alone with my thoughts is depressing right now, so I'll sit here and drink quietly."

"Fine, do whatever you want."

Glass of milk in hand, I headed back to my room. I still didn't sleep.

Everyone was awake bright and early, and chattering nervously. At ten o'clock on the button I stood in front of my bedroom mirror, trying to tame my hair. It was a difficult task normally, but was made even harder by the fact that my hands were trembling.

The doorbell rang. I felt sick to my stomach. I could hear Daniel answering the door, welcoming JC inside. Everything sounded so… strained. I forced myself to leave the comfort zone of my room.

Everyone was seated in our lounge room, 7A on the couches, JC on the floor. I took a seat in my armchair. For a moment no-one spoke.

"Look, I can see this is a bit uncomfortable," Buffy said, breaking the ice.

"You think?" replied Daniel, sarcastically.

"I don't see why this has to be so uncomfortable…"

"You'll have to forgive us, we're not accustomed to being in the company of a pack of murderers."

"Graham!" I was shocked.

"Well, it's the truth."

"Look," Mike interrupted. The voice of reason. "I know this is kinda awkward, but it doesn't have to be. I know we all have our differences, and there's a fair bit of history involved here. Why can't we just put that history aside, and work together on this?"

"Because you might decided to betray everyone again! Turn around and support Stella, or something!"

"Dammit, we explained this all to Bec yesterday, why we're helping here. Didn't she tell you?"

"Yeah, I told them, but I also told them how you threatened to kill me."

The whole situation was breaking down fast. Everyone was bickering, squabbling, arguing with increasing intensity. Daniel and Phil looked like they were about to start throwing punches at each other.

"Everyone! SHUT UP!"

Tamara had finally broken her silence. And she picked an opportune time to do so. Everyone quietened down.

"Listen, this is going to get nowhere if we sit around arguing! We have to work as a team, and we have to start now. For all we know, Celgro is perfecting the Golem as we speak, we have no time to waste! Now, you guys can sit here bickering, or we can actually get some work done! What do you say?"

Her words had quite a surprising effect. I felt ashamed at my actions, the fact I was preoccupied with a personal issue when there was so much at stake. I got the distinct impression that everyone else was feeling the same thing.

"Are we all going to start co-operating now? Are we over our little debate?"

Slowly, everyone started nodding. I could see Matt trying to hide a smile. That, itself, put a smile on my face.

"Alright," she continued. "First things first. Back to the basics."

She turned to face the JC members.

"Just who the hell are you guys, anyway? I mean, I know you're the legendary Jade Columbia, I reckon everyone in Australia knows you guys. I think I know all your names. But which one of you is which?"

She was completely serious with her question. It completely broke the tension, and did the impossible - made us all laugh. Matt stood up and started introducing them, and I silently ran through mental dossiers as he did so.

"I'm Matt," he began. Matt was twenty-six now, and stood five foot ten. He had short brown hair, and brown eyes that, in the good days, always seemed to be smiling. He had been our team leader in JC, and we had all respected him. He had been a good team leader, even though he did brood a bit when it came to making tough decisions.

"This is Buffy," he continued. Buffy was the oldest person in the room, a whole twenty-seven. She was short, just over five feet tall, with fiery red hair and clear blue eyes, which still seemed to be permanently hidden behind a pair of reflective sunglasses. Buffy and I had been good friends before the war. But something had gone wrong. Even when we were still friends, I had felt like I hardly knew her at all.

"That's Phil, over there," he said, pointing. Phil was also twenty-seven, with an Asian appearance, due to his South Korean background. Black hair, hazel eyes, and always those wire-rimmed glasses. He still looked like he wanted to punch Daniel, which was fair enough because most people who knew Daniel wanted to beat the hell out of him.

"That's Brett," he said. Brett was the member of JC I knew the best. I had known him since I was ten years old, had grown up being close friends with him. He was twenty-seven, with dark blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He was tall, extraordinary tall, nearly six foot five. He had joked to me once that the reason he was so tall was because he had wanted to be a jockey when he was growing up. So many memories came flooding into my mind as I stared at him then.

"And lastly, that's Mike," he concluded. Mike was the joker of the group, he had a real sense of humour. No time was too serious for Mike to make a joke. Most of the time, it was all good, but sometimes his comments were out of place. He was twenty-six, with black hair and hazel eyes. He was clever too, his quick thinking had saved my life on more than one occasion. It had also taken more than one life. I tried not to think about that.

Almost instantly, all the animosity in the room had disappeared. It was like we were just a big group of friends. I shook my head in amazement, it felt so surreal.

"Well," Phil said. "Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about why we're here. Project Stella."

Everyone sobered up fast.

"What have you guys learnt so far?"
"Well, we've only been on the case since yesterday morning…"

Larry, our unofficial spokesman.

"… but we've found out some pretty scary things. Like the fact that Celgro are being paid off by the government."

JC were nodding. They had already known.

"I met with Dobson, the guy in charge, yesterday. He of course, denied the existence of the project. But they do have a team of staff named Stella, and the guy was thick enough to give me a list of their names. So now we know who's working on the project. That's all we've got so far."

Brett stood up and started making a speech of what JC knew. It reminded me very strongly of a TV spy show, both sides trading information.

"Well, we've been onto Celgro for a while now. You see, we've been doing the same job unofficially that you guys do officially. We can give you complete profiles of everyone involved with project Stella, including the team members you were given the names of yesterday. Celgro have been working on Stella for a while now, believe it or not. They started investigating neo-mitochondria just after the end of the war, but only in the last few months have they been working on super-mitochondria. They were approached by the government in July last year, in particular by a man named James Nicol. Nicol's the Liberal party's minister for biotechnology. We've tried to contact him, but to no avail. To sum it all up, Nicol promised Stephen Dobson, the CEO of the Melbourne branch of Celgro, fifteen billion dollars to be paid out over ten years, plus ten percent of any money made using the super-mitochondria technology. We're talking some serious cash here. Dobson accepted the deal, and formed the Stella team. Almost straight away, Dobson set up shop with Stella in a warehouse out in Pomborneit…"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Pomborneit?"

"Yeah," Brett replied.

"The Pomborneit out in Corangamite shire?"

"Yeah, I think that's the one."

"But that place is less than twenty kilometres from Camperdown."

"And your point is…?"

"The entire Corangamite shire was declared a no-go zone after the war, due to the lasting effects of the device used to end the Battle of Camperdown."

Eight heads turned to face me simultaneously, and eight pairs of eyes were glaring at me. I winced. So soon after reuniting with Jade Columbia, I had brought up a seriously taboo topic. Everyone in the room knew what I meant when I mentioned the device, technically known as the Neo-Mitochondria Disruption Device. Well, everyone except Tamara.

"Huh? What device?"

Graham was giving her meaningful looks from across the room, telling her to shut up. Eventually, she got the message, and changed the topic.

"So, Corangamite was placed off-limits?"

"Yeah. Every town in the shire was evacuated, every one in between Colac and Warrnambool. That's nearly fifty small towns, including Woorndoo, Purrumbete, Stoneyford and Terang. For the next ten years, you can't even drive through the shire without a permit. If Stella is stationed out in Pomborneit, that's got some serious implications."

"You know, we never even thought about that."

Brett had taken over the meeting again. I remembered how he was a natural leader, and how he had gotten so angry when Matt was made head of JC, all those years ago.

"We haven't been out to Pomborneit yet to scope out the place, due to all the travel restrictions on the area. We never even put two and two together to wonder why there were such restrictions. I mean, the six of us saw the device, felt the effects, and survived. All this talk about lasting effects is crap."

The device was mentioned again. I winced again, and slid down further in my seat. In the chair next to me, Larry reached out and placed a hand on my arm. It reassured me enormously. I sat up straighter, forgot about the tension of the war and focussed on the problem at hand, here and now.

"So, just before we found out the NCA had put you guys on the case, we had two options on the table. One, we were going to get our butts out to Pomborneit, somehow avoiding all the roadblocks, and measure up the warehouse. Or two, we were going to go in to Celgro HQ, in Parkville, bust in there and see what we can find."

"Wait, Parkville?" Me again. I was full of dumb questions today.

"Yeah, Parkville." Buffy gave me a crooked smile. "You know your beloved Melbourne University? Celgro now use the old Genetics building as their headquarters, and biology students can do their work experience there."

So it had been a few years since I had visited my old university. But Celgro? In the tiny, three-story old Genetics building? Something about that seemed wrong.

Larry spoke up beside me.

"I don't mean to sound patronizing, but you guys were going to bust into HQ? How exactly were the five of you going to do such a thing?"

Across the room, Mike's eyes were flashing dangerously.

"For starters, there's six of us, not five. You're forgetting that Bec's a member of JC too. And to tell the truth, you don't know what the hell we can do. Sure, we've been out of the game for a year and a half. But we can take on anything, anywhere, don't you forget that, don't forget it for a second."

"Mike." Immediately his gaze shifted from Larry to me. "I'm not a member of JC anymore, I work with 7A now."

It seemed like my words echoed through the room for an eternity. All the previous joviality had been replaced with tension yet again.

Matt stood up. He was calm on the outside, but his voice was pure ice.

"Fine. Have things your way. We'll get inside Celgro, and we'll do it alone. I told you before, we don't need your help, not for a second. In a few days, we'll go, we'll retrieve as much info as we can about the project. But seeing as you guys are still in the picture, you can take other option. Get out to Pomborneit. Investigate. We'll be back in a week, same time, same place. If you need to reach us for any godforsaken reason, Bec knows how to contact us. We'll be seeing you then."

He snapped his fingers, and like clockwork, all five of them rose and walked out of our house in single file. I heard them talking as they made their way back to Phil's Pathfinder, heard them climbing into the car, heard them drive away at well over the posted speed limit.

A sort of stunned silence settled over us.

"Great bunch of people," Daniel remarked.

"I told you yesterday I was wondering what they were doing right now. Seems strange that only then I started thinking about them again, and here they were today."

"Man, we don't need their help, you know. We could have taken on Celgro by ourselves, we don't need them interfering and screwing around."

Graham was punching a cushion for emphasis as he spoke. Silently, Tamara reached over, took the pillow from his hands and hugged it tight, drawing her knees up beneath her chin.

"At least they left the Stella profiles behind," Larry commented. He picked them up and started flicking through them distractedly. I glanced at them for only a split second, but was startled when I saw a familiar name fly past.

"Hold it, stop for a second," I told Larry. "Go back a few pages… back a few more… that's it, right there. The name at the top of the page. Recognize it?"

For a moment, Larry looked confused. Then it dawned on him.

In big black letters at the top of the page, were two words that formed one of the most recognizable names in recent history.

"Mark Baker."