Chapter 43

The political relationship with Harbouria was further deteriorating; border clashes were more frequent and hotting up, Raffles and Armageddon had made the lead news for several days. The Admiralty ordered all vessels to a higher state of readiness and authorized Captains who found themselves in space with a Harbourite to raise full shields with weapons hot. Parliament seemed finally to be getting the message. The Reserve was activated and crews brought to war levels. The major yards went to two shift days for the full week.

At GmBH after discussion with Wayne a further twelve Avers were brought in with arrangements to continue fly in fly out to maintain adequate rest cycles. Wayne had rather delicately pointed out to McCock that most of the Avers were "old codgers"; many of them had been 'lifers' in RMN. Having learnt something about discretion, McCock had stressed the need to maintain standards as well as efficiency as his reasons for the strict roster. It was of great advantage that there were many more Avers than GmBH could utilize and they appeared disinclined to work for any one else. GmBH was a privately owned company with McCock previously holding sixteen shares and the Flock holding one each.

Who knew? Perhaps they had shares in GmBH yard. GmBH yard was privately owned and there was no share register available for scrutiny. Had it been available, an investigator would have found two trusts among the share holders of GmBH yard. Immediately McCock was told he actually owned the yard, he had MFH investigate the situation. Bollard Shipping Line had transferred title of the yard to the current regular full time service members of G.D.F. Upon receipt of affidavits from Grenoble government – in- exile and the Grenoble Military Secretary, the Companies' Register was notified that the Managing Director, being the solitary member of GDF was one Hezbediah Matthius Samuel McCock whose business address for service was GmBH with MFH as his agent. McCock had called a special general meeting of both entities for the purpose of merging and amending the memoranda and articles of association. MFH had drawn up the documents. The two trusts were established each having as assets twenty percent of the newly merged company, GmBH, with beneficiaries the named members of the Flock (less McCock) in one and the members of the Gorgipest Avers' extended family in the other – that had been a bit difficult to word to cover the lot of them. Roderick Milligan, Silas Rowan and Sir Joshua Galbraith had agreed to be the trustees.

The creator of the trusts had not informed the beneficiaries. He later claimed it slipped out of his mind as he had other things to worry about.

That other thing was the HCL. The mock up of the various sections of the HCL were assembled in B tween and the detailed equipment and designs were finalized. With Avers providing three shifts a day and the Flock needing only to supervise, progress on the HCL was rapid.

At the same time three yachts had been completed in A hold and a fourth well on the way to completion when war was declared.