Post by rusel on Apr 10, 2019 7:40:14 GMT 10
The dog broke cover and the Ranger followed it through his scope. As it cleared the tight cover of the mulga scrub he touched the fire button on his hand control and his HunterDrone loosed its dart. The Ranger watched the dog jump and yelp then slump into the red desert sand. There was no poetic image of a clean head shot or of the animal’s life blood draining into the red dust of the Mother.
'Yeah, nah, just cold, clinical and dead.'
The Ranger liked it like that, which is why he’d used the drone and not his favourite Sauer 303 semi auto. He had a thing for German rifles and blamed it on his Prussian great grandmother. She’d come out to Australia to escape all the new Prussian restriction laws during the late 1800s. Smart girl Augusta, but marrying into an outback farming clan hadn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped. Indigenous farmers or not, big droughts and white supremacists and then the Great War had destroyed plenty of livelihoods but, he was here, and this was his country. Frederick looked around and smiled. The last feral dog in Australia was dead.
Every Dogger he knew preferred one make of rifle over another and they all did the job in the right hands. Drones, now, well, that was a different story. Fred had adopted the new technology as soon as he’d seen them at a farm equipment field day. So now he had a thing for drones.
Well that’s me out of job then, bugger! he thought as he walked down the dune face and through the spinifex to where the last feral dog in Australia lay dead.
He removed the dart and eTagged the corpse for the Inspectors. It contained the video of the kill and all his details, then he hefted the dog onto his shoulder.
The dog was scrawny and the coat stank. He’d drop the carcass back to the Government Office then collect his bounty and go home to the family.
We can live off this for a while, he thought, then I’ll make a start on the cats!
Should only take a couple of years using drones, he mused, bloody hell won’t the bush be different then.
He hated all those exclusion fences around the endangered species breeding islands, but they’d worked. He’d helped out at a couple just so’s he could get used to the sounds and tracks and scats of the animals that should be in the bush here ’bouts.
The Hunterdrone followed him back to his Skytruck. He thumbed the recall button and watched it descend and land itself onto the recharge stand.
He opened the rear equipment locker on the Skytruck, slid out the chiller draw, dropped the carcass in and closed the locker.
He saw the slither marks on the sand going under the side of the truck and his shoulders slumped as he swore from monday to sunday!
“Hey you plenty deadly fellah, get out from under me fuck'n’ truck!” He followed the tracks and saw where it ended near the right rear ducted prop housing. He was supposed to close the shrouds on them after landing but the red dust kept jamming the mechanism so he just left them open now. Which meant any inquisitive local could climb in.
What was it with him and snakes. “Oi you in there”, he called to the very deadly Desert Brown he could just make out coiled in one side of the hub, “get yah legless arse out of my truck!” The Brown raised its head toward him and its tongue flickered, tasting him.
“That's right shit for brains, stay there where yah think yah safe! All I fuck'n need is cleaning out minced snake."
Not too big, thank goodness for that!
He walked around to the cabin door and banged it a couple of times to shake off the dust that had settled during the morning. He swung the door up and put his pack into its cradle on the rear seat. He carefully lifted the drone off its stand and placed it into its lock-box next to his pack. He reached under his drivers seat – he didn't need a pilots licence for the skytruck so he always said he was a driver not a pilot – and pulled out a rubber mallet and square metre piece of skinsuit cloth.
From high tech to low tech, whatever it takes, he thought. He walked back around to the vagrant, “Oi you, plenty deadly soon dead fellah!” and he banged on the housing with the mallet.
He always did this, it loosened the dust from the props and if he’d been on an overnighter like this time, there were often stowaways.
The Brown came out of the housing with the shits and came straight for him. It hit the mallet with its first strike then dropped to the sand and went for his legs as Fred did his cranky snake sand shoe shuffle.
Fred stepped back as the Brown coiled itself into a sulk. He undid the cuff of his shirt and thumbed on his skinsuit to fend off any further strikes then squatted down in the shade of the housing and pushed the mallet at the Brown. It struck again leaving poison smears on the rubber, then recoiled back.
“You plenty angry fellah. You dead, plenty quick!” The Brown snake tightened into a coil ready to strike again. Shit you got attitude mate!
“Yeah, this your country eh. Same dream’n you and me eh. Same old fellahs sing us, come this place! My country, your country, our country eh.”
The Brown didn’t move. Fred wiggled the mallet in front of the snake to distract it then quickly tossed the cloth over it and put his left hand down on the Brown’s head. The skinsuit cloth was impervious to snakebite but ...
“You plenty cranky fellah,” he said wrapping it up. His wife hated this part, 'smart arse show off', she always said. He’d only been bitten once. On his right index finger by a small Red Belly. Hurt like blazes for a few days but the arthritis had been better ever since. Funny that!
He edged out from under the propduct and its shade, keeping a firm hold on the Brown. Standing in the full sun he marvelled at the day and his skinsuit keeping him cool then carried the snake up the swale between the dunes to a circle of Mulga. It was too late in the day for Blackheaded Pythons to be a threat to the Brown, “plenty good place, plenty safe!”
He unwrapped the Brown and it came out sullen and chastened. He watched it slither straight out from the Mulga and up into the Spinifex of the dune face, "plenty stupid fellah!" he yelled at it then shook his head and turned back toward his skytruck.
He collected the mallet then urinated on it to wash off the poison. It dried quickly in the now stifling heat of the day and he put it and the catching cloth on his seat.
Fred packed away his gear, then did a quick emu bob around the site to make sure it was as undisturbed as possible. He grabbed the mallet and proceeded with his preflight checks. He banged here and there all around the skytruck and no-one else appeared. Stowing the mallet and cloth, he checked his skinsuit’s forearm screen. All his readings were green but shit he was supposed to have been out of here an hour ago.
Slither, slither, hiss! He just heard it above the general sounds of the scrub and the calls of Wedgebills. "
Bugga’t," and he turned slowly to get a better idea where the dragon was. There it was half way up the dune, tasting the air. Big bastard too!
Fred moved slowly to his cabin door and kept his eye on the mongrel. He powered up the skytruck. It was made of carbon fibre with boron carbonate crash panels, but he'd seen what one of these resurrected dragons had done to a wheeled vehicle last month and it wasn’t pretty.
He’d never liked the idea of resurrecting Megalania giant goannas, they were just so, bloody, big.
I mean sure, bring back frogs and thylacines, and any of the other extinction victims of colonialism, but Dragons, shit eh! Most of the resurrectees were all back to stable populations in the exclosure fenced eco-islands dotted all round the country, but the old megafauna? Nah, not right, too far gone. Besides, never felt comfortable around anything the size of me truck.
The skytruck’s eRepel had never worked well against large beasts and he wasnt about to test it out now. 'Shit the thing’s advancing.'
He hit the start button and the ducted props spun to life sending dust and sand in all directions. He dropped into his seat, swung the door shut and waited for the green lights.
It was not a good idea to do this, Dragons hunted around sand storms, fuck’n weirdos. No wonder they went extinct!
Green, go, and he pulled back on the wheel as the skytruck lifted off with it’s usual graceless lethargy.
His heart was racing and his sweat was overloading his skinsuit so that it started to feel like a wetsuit!
Phwor, shit eh! He circled his landing site and saw the dragon still on the dune. '
Yeah righto,' he realised.
'It’s your country now mate,' and Fred set course for the Ranger Station to register his kill of the last wild dog in Oz.
'Yeah, nah, just cold, clinical and dead.'
The Ranger liked it like that, which is why he’d used the drone and not his favourite Sauer 303 semi auto. He had a thing for German rifles and blamed it on his Prussian great grandmother. She’d come out to Australia to escape all the new Prussian restriction laws during the late 1800s. Smart girl Augusta, but marrying into an outback farming clan hadn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped. Indigenous farmers or not, big droughts and white supremacists and then the Great War had destroyed plenty of livelihoods but, he was here, and this was his country. Frederick looked around and smiled. The last feral dog in Australia was dead.
Every Dogger he knew preferred one make of rifle over another and they all did the job in the right hands. Drones, now, well, that was a different story. Fred had adopted the new technology as soon as he’d seen them at a farm equipment field day. So now he had a thing for drones.
Well that’s me out of job then, bugger! he thought as he walked down the dune face and through the spinifex to where the last feral dog in Australia lay dead.
He removed the dart and eTagged the corpse for the Inspectors. It contained the video of the kill and all his details, then he hefted the dog onto his shoulder.
The dog was scrawny and the coat stank. He’d drop the carcass back to the Government Office then collect his bounty and go home to the family.
We can live off this for a while, he thought, then I’ll make a start on the cats!
Should only take a couple of years using drones, he mused, bloody hell won’t the bush be different then.
He hated all those exclusion fences around the endangered species breeding islands, but they’d worked. He’d helped out at a couple just so’s he could get used to the sounds and tracks and scats of the animals that should be in the bush here ’bouts.
The Hunterdrone followed him back to his Skytruck. He thumbed the recall button and watched it descend and land itself onto the recharge stand.
He opened the rear equipment locker on the Skytruck, slid out the chiller draw, dropped the carcass in and closed the locker.
He saw the slither marks on the sand going under the side of the truck and his shoulders slumped as he swore from monday to sunday!
“Hey you plenty deadly fellah, get out from under me fuck'n’ truck!” He followed the tracks and saw where it ended near the right rear ducted prop housing. He was supposed to close the shrouds on them after landing but the red dust kept jamming the mechanism so he just left them open now. Which meant any inquisitive local could climb in.
What was it with him and snakes. “Oi you in there”, he called to the very deadly Desert Brown he could just make out coiled in one side of the hub, “get yah legless arse out of my truck!” The Brown raised its head toward him and its tongue flickered, tasting him.
“That's right shit for brains, stay there where yah think yah safe! All I fuck'n need is cleaning out minced snake."
Not too big, thank goodness for that!
He walked around to the cabin door and banged it a couple of times to shake off the dust that had settled during the morning. He swung the door up and put his pack into its cradle on the rear seat. He carefully lifted the drone off its stand and placed it into its lock-box next to his pack. He reached under his drivers seat – he didn't need a pilots licence for the skytruck so he always said he was a driver not a pilot – and pulled out a rubber mallet and square metre piece of skinsuit cloth.
From high tech to low tech, whatever it takes, he thought. He walked back around to the vagrant, “Oi you, plenty deadly soon dead fellah!” and he banged on the housing with the mallet.
He always did this, it loosened the dust from the props and if he’d been on an overnighter like this time, there were often stowaways.
The Brown came out of the housing with the shits and came straight for him. It hit the mallet with its first strike then dropped to the sand and went for his legs as Fred did his cranky snake sand shoe shuffle.
Fred stepped back as the Brown coiled itself into a sulk. He undid the cuff of his shirt and thumbed on his skinsuit to fend off any further strikes then squatted down in the shade of the housing and pushed the mallet at the Brown. It struck again leaving poison smears on the rubber, then recoiled back.
“You plenty angry fellah. You dead, plenty quick!” The Brown snake tightened into a coil ready to strike again. Shit you got attitude mate!
“Yeah, this your country eh. Same dream’n you and me eh. Same old fellahs sing us, come this place! My country, your country, our country eh.”
The Brown didn’t move. Fred wiggled the mallet in front of the snake to distract it then quickly tossed the cloth over it and put his left hand down on the Brown’s head. The skinsuit cloth was impervious to snakebite but ...
“You plenty cranky fellah,” he said wrapping it up. His wife hated this part, 'smart arse show off', she always said. He’d only been bitten once. On his right index finger by a small Red Belly. Hurt like blazes for a few days but the arthritis had been better ever since. Funny that!
He edged out from under the propduct and its shade, keeping a firm hold on the Brown. Standing in the full sun he marvelled at the day and his skinsuit keeping him cool then carried the snake up the swale between the dunes to a circle of Mulga. It was too late in the day for Blackheaded Pythons to be a threat to the Brown, “plenty good place, plenty safe!”
He unwrapped the Brown and it came out sullen and chastened. He watched it slither straight out from the Mulga and up into the Spinifex of the dune face, "plenty stupid fellah!" he yelled at it then shook his head and turned back toward his skytruck.
He collected the mallet then urinated on it to wash off the poison. It dried quickly in the now stifling heat of the day and he put it and the catching cloth on his seat.
Fred packed away his gear, then did a quick emu bob around the site to make sure it was as undisturbed as possible. He grabbed the mallet and proceeded with his preflight checks. He banged here and there all around the skytruck and no-one else appeared. Stowing the mallet and cloth, he checked his skinsuit’s forearm screen. All his readings were green but shit he was supposed to have been out of here an hour ago.
Slither, slither, hiss! He just heard it above the general sounds of the scrub and the calls of Wedgebills. "
Bugga’t," and he turned slowly to get a better idea where the dragon was. There it was half way up the dune, tasting the air. Big bastard too!
Fred moved slowly to his cabin door and kept his eye on the mongrel. He powered up the skytruck. It was made of carbon fibre with boron carbonate crash panels, but he'd seen what one of these resurrected dragons had done to a wheeled vehicle last month and it wasn’t pretty.
He’d never liked the idea of resurrecting Megalania giant goannas, they were just so, bloody, big.
I mean sure, bring back frogs and thylacines, and any of the other extinction victims of colonialism, but Dragons, shit eh! Most of the resurrectees were all back to stable populations in the exclosure fenced eco-islands dotted all round the country, but the old megafauna? Nah, not right, too far gone. Besides, never felt comfortable around anything the size of me truck.
The skytruck’s eRepel had never worked well against large beasts and he wasnt about to test it out now. 'Shit the thing’s advancing.'
He hit the start button and the ducted props spun to life sending dust and sand in all directions. He dropped into his seat, swung the door shut and waited for the green lights.
It was not a good idea to do this, Dragons hunted around sand storms, fuck’n weirdos. No wonder they went extinct!
Green, go, and he pulled back on the wheel as the skytruck lifted off with it’s usual graceless lethargy.
His heart was racing and his sweat was overloading his skinsuit so that it started to feel like a wetsuit!
Phwor, shit eh! He circled his landing site and saw the dragon still on the dune. '
Yeah righto,' he realised.
'It’s your country now mate,' and Fred set course for the Ranger Station to register his kill of the last wild dog in Oz.
