Chapter 65

The Navy Board would have been surprised at just what McCock and his friends had been doing.

He desperately needed crew for the surviving destroyers. "Shriek" needed to be in six places at once and the demands on that cohort were extreme.

He enlisted navy personnel who had no work with the yards in the state they were in. He took only those who would swear to his service. This did restrict his choices but he wanted no conflicts of loyalty in his ships – "You either trust me or you don't, your choice." They took their discharges from the RMN; the SNO accepting them under protest; the SNO however could not pay them, McCock could and did.

Sir Joshua and Tony Galbraith's services had been obtained to run the currency and a local treasury. Remaining public servants had protested McCock's authority.

"Look to the high orbitals. See the gun mounts. My authority, your choice."

No one had the courage to call whatever bluff McCock might have been making. The tangled wreckage of an office building was still present in the CBD – mutinous elements of the Naval Yard workforce had tried to take control when they realized that McCock had no ground elements available; McCock didn't bluff.

Once his ships were functioning at a basic level, he turned his attention dirtside. His crews needed training and that was given on the job.

He got GmBH Avers to catalogue the damage and inventory what was left. Admiral Higgins had caused as much damage as could be arranged but his time frame had been limited and sometimes pieces of the plan fell off – that stray which destroyed the Ferguson scrap yards had been meant for the destroyer dock; those docks however had sustained sideway blast damage but relatively little damage overall.

McCock told the civil authorities to get on with it and except for a very short lived mutiny, they did.

The Harbourite POWs had been shuttled well out into the farmlands where they were told to work the farms and they would eat well and so would the rest of the population or they could sit on their rear ends and get thin and get very hungry. Your choice. The reports after several months were that the POWs had become model citizens with a very good football team. Their living equipment had come from the stores on the Riders and the camp was gradually transformed into solid permanent barracks with streets, water and sewage laid. There were no guards, there was no place for them to go and it was a long walk home.

McCock was briefed by Hugh in more detail. There had been steady progress on the upgraded non hyper HAC (Armed Cutter). The prototype flight was progressing satisfactorily. The idea of extending missile controllable range had been subject to preliminary work by making a tractored missile controller into a powered unmanned vehicle rather than held by ships' tractors (KeyHAC). GmBH had worked on and completed small unmanned HAC-type real time surveillance vehicles (UVA). Both types of craft mounted small but deadly controllable missiles. The original surplus of fission piles were now fitted in the Armed Cutters, KeyHACs and the UVAs. There had been some losses in testing but here were now five Armed Cutters and five KeyHACs and nine UVAs. GmBH had aquired a further large shipment of upgraded fission piles, i/cs, and nodes. The nodes had been improved based on the work of Denny, Slow and Cowboy before the arrival of the Harbourite raid. During the briefing Wayne Burton –Avers and Toby Galbraith had joined them. After the briefing Toby enquired,

"Aggy, what's with this "salvage" business. There are rumours flying all over and Wayne's no help?"

"Don't put it on me, Toby. I know as little as you do!"

McCock contemplated them, made his decision and declared

"Toby, I'm going to need every salvage crew available. I'll contact SNO whoever he is, Approach should know who he is and we'll meet back here for dinner. We do have an Avers Chef? Good."

It was a mixed gathering in the "Trader" lounge that evening for the meal. The Chef had done well. The people retired to the more comfortable chairs of the lounge with their coffee. McCock got their attention,

"Gentlemen, as you can see this is going on vid. It is going up to ships in high orbit. All the crews are seeing it except duty crew. May I make the introductions,

Captain Dane Petersen, Senior Naval Officer.

Lt Cdr Edward Morrison, Engineering Branch.

Lt Cdr Colin Egmont, Admin HQ.

Sir Joshua and Tony Galbraith, finance.

Tobias and Tobin Galbraith, Salvage experts.

Charley, Charliboy and Bill Ferguson, onetime scrap yard owners.

Hugh, Theo, George, and Paul Avers."

Peterson interrupted,

"McCock, I am here under protest, and I want to lodge a protest at the high handed way you are recruiting my people."

"Noted Captain. I have four V and W class destroyers and one armed cutter. This constitutes the total absolute defence of this local space. As a result of the actions of the Brown Hollow government, I am a stateless person, RMN dispensed with my service and dispensed with the services of everyone of the nearly five hundred men and women I had under my command. Because of the circumstance I signed my people under articles. We arrived here to find this place abandoned by the Navy and greatly destroyed. Let me finish Captain, but let me say now that I am not looking charitably towards your Kingdom. Because the RMN does not use the Type 71 energy torpedo now, we brought them with us for destruction here. Without them those BCs would still be there or perhaps they might have left but with two marine battalions dirtside they were going to create more havoc and take a lot of prisoners and you Captain were one already on board one of those transports. The other reason those BCs aren't there is because everyone of my five hundred volunteered to take that ride with me. They are all hardened combat veterans and they knew the score, DDs against BCs. We could have loaded everybody into one ship, shifted bunkerage and departed even quieter than we came. We were only ninety per ship; normally five hundred and thirty when we were operational in Paracelsus. We are not Royal ships; we are all privateers and when we recapture prizes we get rewarded for it. That is why I claim salvage. I am taking this base over, I am going to be a tin pot dictator, I am going to get this base going again to restore its value and therefore my bargaining power and when your Kingdom comes to negotiate as negotiate they will or I'll drag them through their courts and the faxes, I'm going to put mouth mints on the end of it and I'll shove it so far up Brown Hollow he will taste it...