Chapter 56

"Washton" had been paid off before the CLs had come sniffing and after a month's leave, the crew had been dispersed among the other vessels including "Grendel". "Washton" had been sent in for major refit expected to take six or seven months.

R2's damaged nodes had been replaced and she was space worthy again. Trained crew from TJ's and Morg's tender hands had moved across to R2 to man her shuttles and maintenance trained personnel had moved across to fill the vacancies in R1. Both "Riders" were manned by Avers "retreads" as ships' crews with the younger generation handling the shuttles and some as trades' apprentices.

Special workshops had been established in the after holds of both FURS in which the Flock would tinker with a project. Denny had a bit more time on his hands with "Washton" in dock — but only a bit as his wife, 'Mina, exercised her prerogative and made the most of her opportunity. Some of Denny's time was taken in oversight of "Gorgon" as McCock had appointed him captain of her.

Approaches to TJ and Morg to accept senior appointments in the "new" 119 were declined. TJ eventually shamelessly used the offers as a lever to get their discharges by pointing out that McCock's personnel did not want to be constantly looking at TJ or Morg as potential rivals for promotions. McCock reluctantly released them mistakenly believing they were returning to R & D work at SHOW Inc which had continued to turn out scouts, missile controllers and inert nest frames.

(Inert, despite SHOW offering controllable frames courtesy of Cedric's and Orville's work on "Sundowner". RMN were ordering seven missile frames from SHOW for general fleet use. Third Space Lord had recently requested submission of tenders for a nine missile pod to take eight cruise controllable missiles and a larger modified scout type missile to act as the control missile for the other eight; as this setup was a variation of the earlier SHOW Inc submission, Jane, Orville and Cedric had sent modified plans to TJ and Morg for their comments and shortly before "Sundowner" had returned to Gorgipest, SHOW Inc had tendered, been accepted and production was moving into high gear. The cruise missiles were being produced on Scapa, but SHOW Inc was not too put out as they still collected royalties on the original patents.)

TJ and Morg, by the time of their release from 119, had been able to curtail their shuttle pilot duties as the students graduated and the "Shriek" support returned to "Vance".

Once Clare had been satisfied Gorgipest was "safe", 737 was recovered to "Sundowner" and the new flivver in Morg's hand retrieved Simmo to be reunited with his father and to finally meet his siblings. Despite the difference in ages, the four children meshed.

There was no chance of Simmo being held down to the others' class at the school but otherwise as Ivy commented, they grouped together and then mingled with their peers at play. There was only one incident which was serious and resulted in the children being suspended for the remainder of a week.

It had been originally the intention of the Headmaster to expel the four of them but, thanks to Cedric, the Head was rapidly convinced to change his mind.

Cedric had the bad habit of becoming engrossed in a task and concentrating so intently on the moment, he often forgot what he had done an hour or so ago and very often didn't log it in his R & D journal. Jane Foster and Mary Fogg, his self appointed partners, were alert to this propensity and whenever their duties allowed, would drag him back to reality, feed and water him; and at Clare's and Orville's insistence, get that!@#$%^&() journal written up. Even four hour gaps meant a certain amount of repetition and Cedric, in pure self protection from Clare's hide tearing explosions, designed a mini-vid with sound operating on an endless loop of twelve hours; it could be clipped to a collar and Jane and Mary ensured that it was clipped on before he left his / their cabin. Orville programmed the clean room's minicadcam to turn out fifty of them as Clare thought it a good idea to ensure accuracy of all logs — and it did.

Simmo wasn't going to be left out of anything and collared one of them (literally), and, just before he was about to board the flivver, hurtled around "Sundowner" scrounging goodies to share with his siblings — little things like throwing stars, mimi-vids and extra ear buds. Morg noticed but didn't comment on the bulging pockets in addition to the pusser's bag — Simmo still travelled light to Berryl's despair.

So the children were collared when the larger bullies decided to exercise their dominance of the school ground — up to that point the younger trio had been left to their peers, but the arrival of Simmo changed the ball game; he was too big to laugh off as being too small.

Morg had been at Sloane Square when the call came to collect the children. He listened to the Head's explanation and without a word put out his hand for the minivids. The rather large buttons were deposited in his hand. He found a connection to fit between the mini-vids and the Head's desk 'puter and downloaded the data. Humming away absently, he used the 'puter to correlate the images and throw a holo of the data. The Head found himself surrounded by a holo of jeering males with several females egging them on. Nothing was heard from the four mutie children. Two of the larger males charged in and then quicker flew back out to lie bleeding on the floor of the Head's office. There was a stunned silence over the group which moved back slightly. In the background was the sound of a police shuttle's siren "ouahgahing" closer. The tableau was also disturbed by the sound of running adults and teachers appeared to take names and attend to the injured. After about two minutes, the siren coughed into silence as the shuttle struck the road surface outside the school. In less than a minute "Poison Ivy" appeared. The Sergeant called for ambulance and for back-up as she had an interest in the affair. The teachers protested at the call for more Constables but were quelled by a glare from Ivy. The evidence was collected from the onlookers and appeared damning against the muties. However the collected evidence was totally at odds with the story told by the muties. It wasn't until Morg did his thing with the holo that further questions were asked by the back-up Constables who also took possession of the data. The chaos was further increased by the arrival of irate parents one of whom was the Gorgipest King-at-arms who demanded and obtained a replay of the vid. The other parents and teachers became extremely alarmed when King-at-arms was unsuccessful at stifling her mirth which triggered "Poison Ivy's" riotous laughs as the two women held each other upright. Morg's time was divided between patting his friends on the back asking them to calm down, keeping his grin under control and placating the children with "Later."

Whilst the Head was convinced not to expel the children, he wanted these hysterical women out of his school — fast; these two were among the most powerful women in the city and when they were joined by Julie Windsor, another women who exuded influence from every pore, he ordered all the children suspended forthwith, without prejudice, pending further investigation. A very relieved Head watched as Morg and Julie herded their group out of his school yard and with equanimity turned to the other parents and directed them to collect their little darlings and also depart. The Head would notify all concerned of his decision — he piked; he sought the advice of a hastily convened meeting of his Board.

Some high powered legal talent earned large fees bluntly informing some extremely annoyed and obnoxious parents that their little boy or girl was going to have to find another school and if they appealed the Board of Governors' decision all they would get was a depleted bank balance. The Board's Counsel had viewed the vids and influence didn't come into it. The witnesses had lied; the vids which had been, unbeknownst to them, literally under escort of the school staff from time of the action until viewing and therefore could not have been fabricated, were damning.

...

It was the suspension which got TJ moving and by that endweek, TJ and Morg amicably parted company with 119 (direct involvement, that is).

The debriefing of the children proved satisfactory. Sarnt had activated the open circuit and had kept up a running commentary which Ivy had recorded onto her shuttle's log. She had been on the other side of the Stews when Sarnt came on line and within seconds had swung about and pushed the throttles to the firewall. (Bill Oscar tore a humungous strip off her for putting the shuttle into the workshop for maintenance when she knew the children were not getting hurt. Bill's wife tore a larger strip off him for doing it.) Pat's main problem had been getting out of her office and to her armoured shuttle. The companions had kept all the children aware of the overall situation and had given seconds warning of the actual attack which Simmo and George had dealt with -harshly — Simmo had crushed a larynx leading to permanent voice damage and snapped a forearm while George destroyed a knee's ligaments and sent the owner's nasal septum into the base of the frontal lobes making the boy permanently affectless. The parents had postulated the force used by the children was unreasonable but their legal counsel were unsympathetic and drew attention to the "force ratio".

TJ was surprised at the local coms discipline exhibited by the others particularly in view of their rather casual attitude toward their FTL link which had almost become a backyard chat line.

The difference was that the private FTL link was just that — private.

No one else could eavesdrop as the equipment was unique; Mountserrat might have been able to had it put its experts to work on the frequency modulation used in the equipment and perhaps found the "second board" embedded in the motherboard, but the managers in Third and Forth Space Lords, under the influence of Silas Rowan, worked on the principle of if it worked leave it alone as there is more R & D needed elsewhere.

The Heralds' net was known to very few and RMN was content to use the FTL's preset modulations with directional antennae.

...

"Sundowner's" ex RMN officers, Cdr Clare Gillard and Lt Malcolm C. Cahlewis had become aware through discussions with TJ and Morg that 119 was conducting its own in-house "Crusher" and by slightly underhand means had obtained the data — by the simple expedient of having Morg copy the files out of R 1's 'puter. Clare had studied the files and compared them with her memory of her uncompleted course and she realised that the files went far beyond her own memory of what the outline she had been given covered.

Clare approached Pat with a simple(?) request. Could "Sundowner" access the Warminster Staff College library files through the Herald net, preferably without sounding alarms all over the local galaxy. After a bit of negotiating, Sir Jonathon instructed Sir Neville to use the Royal link to obtain the data and transmit it down to Gorgipest. Both of the Settlement Heralds agreed that the data did not reveal anything that the Sundowners didn't already know through SHOW and Sundowner Inc.

Armed with the additional files, Clare again assessed the 119 files and found the 119 course also covered a considerable amount of the Staff College course.

Clare had "Sundowner" monitoring the progress of 119 Reinforced (as it had become designated) and generally held "Sundowner" off to the southwest of the planet. The "lower deck" was being utilised on care and maintenance but Clare was concerned about her "upper deck" being at a loose end — Orville Jang was regarded as part of the "upper deck" ; Morg particularly as TJ kept himself busy with the mutie net but he admitted that was mostly make work.

Clare booted the 119 and Warminster files into the simulator in the after C deck and spent several days demoralising herself as she tested the systems.

Officer Call!

Dorothy Ember was included and the group clustered around the simulator as Clare explained her plan to have "Sundowner" conduct its own Command and Staff Course. The major concern was the absence of the tribal knowledge which backed up the courses in all Navies and didn't get written into the documentation. Agreement was reached that this was a self help course and problems could be worked through drawing upon Clare's experience on her aborted "Crusher" and Clare's, TJ's and Morg's experience of "Cornwallis".