Chapter 5

Ivy Sorensen was waiting for them and escorted them to their quarters.

"You teach me how to work it your way and I'll teach you how the proper people use them."

TJ and Morg put on their innocent faces to be met with scorn,

"You both do that so well. Da let slip you called upon him and I wheedled it out of him. He doesn't know how close we are, seeing I spent the leave at home; just like you said, Morg. Da had a spare and taught me the inner workings the 'proper' way and a couple of days ago got a new one for me. He did mention he might get one of his ... ah, shall we say ... bent? ... contacts to show me the other side but we didn't get around to it." She smiled sweetly at them, "and I didn't push it as I knew you'd teach me and I could leave Da with some delusions about his innocent little daughter."

She gurgled as their gazes went fish eyed towards her.

"There are only seven of us straight out of recruits so we are together, two cabins sharing ablutions. Don't worry, Morg, three others are female in the other cabin. I signed in forenoon and looked over the place. TJ, your gear goes there and Morg you are on the other side."

Morg inspected the freshers and Ivy turned diffidently to TJ,

"I'm being pushy, I know, but I claim first 'dibs' on you. If you don't..."and trailed off uncertainly.

TJ smacked her rear end possessively, hugged her tightly and was lingually inspecting her tonsils to her great enjoyment to be interrupted by an exaggeratedly polite cough from the door. The pair disconnected their faces to stare at the stacked tall crimson headed female whose uniform shirt was about to burst — it wasn't that she was too big it was that her protuberances seemed out of proportion to her almost painfully skinny frame;

"Hi! I'm Pat Sweeney; I'm next door and I thought I'd introduce myself. I see you two know each other or at least I hope you do."

"They do" rumbled Morg as he stalked over to the now tensing woman "I'm Morg Windsor and that pair are Ivy Sorensen and TJ Hobson. Partnered up yet?"

"Deity, you don't waste any time do you? No, I'm not partnered up as you put it and I'm not looking either."

"You don't have to look, I've put my lock on you. Now let's find the Mess Hall, I haven't eaten for twenty hours and it's supper time."

Morg grabbed Pat's hand as she tried to retreat and he led them back outside with Pat protesting at every step.

"He is a gentle and kind person when you get to know him" Ivy tried to reassure Pat who was still trying to get her hand back.

"Let me go, you idiot" Pat snarled at Morg and she turned to Ivy "He probably holds on to a female so long, he literally grows on her, I expect?"

"No, he usually has to beat them off and I've heard no complaints" came from TJ, "he probably wants to have you hanging off him as camouflage for protection from the crowd."

Pat was still spluttering as they joined the queue. The others noted Pat didn't take the opportunity to move away and she sat with them. The usual comments about the victuals were made but this time the Mess PO overheard.

"You could do better?" he demanded.

Morg remained seated and stared up at the pole thin figure in the chequered trousers, black shirt and flat cook's hat who glared down at him.

"No; actually not even I could given the circumstances."

"What do you mean "circumstances"?" was the quizzical reply.

Looking about him, Morg answered

"You have to cook ... what? Two hundred meals three times a day? The staff consists of probably a Master Chef who is kept busy just ordering the food and running the place, ten Chefs who have interest in cooking and are hoping for transfer to the Senior NCOs' mess but will settle for the Officers' Mess, twenty one juniors most of whom are in catering because no one else wants them plus what ever defaulters you get lumbered with as their punishment and who aren't worth the time you have to spend supervising them encroaching on the time you could be using to properly cook the food. And then you have to dump it into trays for bulk serve when ideally food should be served individually at the correct temperature with the proper garnishes. No, I couldn't do better under the circumstances."

The Mess PO had sat by this time and a lively conversation about the best methods to cook food to its best advantage followed; it wasn't that the PO didn't know or wasn't interested, it was as Morg explained — the circumstances. Pat and Ivy were utterly fascinated by the conversation; TJ just groaned inwardly anticipating the word getting about that Morg was someone who knew about catering and guilt by association...

"How come you know so much?" Pat demanded from Morg on the walk back to the quarters.

"About what? I'm a genius but do admit to some failings like I don't know what colour panties you like or don't you wear any?" replied Morg with a perfectly straight face.

"And you aren't ever going to find out" as she thumped Morg hard on the shoulder and then recoiled holding her hand, "Deity, you're built of stone. Cooking, you clown. Catering, that sort of thing."

"Ain't love grand" Morg fended off another blow from her other hand, "me Ma has a Club in Georgipest and in the early days, I helped out in the kitchen and even went to Technical to learn more. Our chef was ex-army and had gone through the Combined Catering School to learn his trade. He could tell tales of bitchiness and backstabbing in Catering that'd make you think Catering should take over spying for the guvmint. But he could deliver an excellent dinner on demand with the right victuals. Top quality gives best and he said Army did buy good but the cooking didn't deliver."

"Morg, you have just landed yourself and probably us on Kitchen Duty for the rest of the course."

"Nah; the chef doesn't want me. I literally know too much — more than his assistants do anyway and possibly as much as he does. He'll have a word with me to make sure I'm not putting it over him and we'll share some moans about the 'circumstances' and that will be all."

"Did you do anything else at the Club?" Ivy asked idly while hugging TJ's arm to her side.

"Yeh, did doorman a lot. Y'know me size, it keeps people quiet; actually, I'd been Doorman for my last few months full time..." Morg stopped and Pat cannoned into him; he didn't notice, he was staring at TJ and the memory came back - 'call me TJ'. The Recruiting Officer had been looking for a woman, his Mam had said; well, here was a son and Beryl could probably be the woman depending upon TJ Snr's propensity to spread his genes. Put a beard on TJ and he was the living image of Captain Thomas Jefferson Strathlawn, RMN. Morg shook himself and started walking again as his companions looked strangely at him

"A doorman at a Gentlemen's club? OOOaaahhhh" teased Ivy.

"It is a very respectable place I'll have you know, even the wives have luncheon there" Morg maintained, adding mentally 'at least in front and daytime', "why, just before I left we entertained Sarnt Oscar, an ol..."

"You know Bill Oscar?" Ivy bounced in front of him "DCS Sir William Oscar? He's the Da's oldest friend. He stays with us whenever he comes up. I used to sit on his knee and listen to their tales about the old policing. How did you come to meet him? What..." Ivy kept rattling on delving into Morg's early life and Pat hung on every word and then went to her own bunk at Lights Out.

Morg was not unhappy to have the conversation shelved as he wanted to think on a certain matter and decide whether his Mam should be told of Morg's suspicions.

However, Ivy had not forgotten the PDAs.

"We are going to set some time when we wont be disturbed and seeing as how we started rising early at "Scylla", we do that here and spend an hour each day exchanging information. Starting tomorrow? Suit?"

Both men agreed and it was no great effort to start early again.

The men insisted Ivy begin, as they pointed out that hers was the official system whereas theirs was somewhat in addition to the advertised. It took Ivy nine days to cover the 'proper' use of the instrument and the men absorbed the information like sponges; their comments were equally absorbed by the others. TJ's added information took another five days and Morg's surprisingly took nine as he had discovered functions the manufacturers had not envisaged. The trio continued experimenting and were able by the completion of the Gunnery School to make the PDAs 'sit up and beg'. Morg, of course had not disclosed the files present on his PDA and his prior knowledge combined with the experience of three astute minds had unlocked considerably more information, some of which, particularly the finance, Morg understood.

The Gunnery School course presented no intellectual problems to the trio and they were able to easily stay ahead of the plot. For individual reasons, none of them sought 'upper deck' rank; Ivy's was the most straight forward — policing galaxy wide did their own commissioning and being commissioned previously was always something of a barrier to entering constabularies.

The theory of the maser was straight forward and as the instructors explained the pumping mechanism was the only difference between the 'guns' and the missiles; in the case of the 'guns', the stimulation, obtained by reaction mass from the bunkers, was used and the missiles carries nuclear bombs inside them to pump energy into the gain medium.

A statement that for all practical purposes information could not be transferred faster than the speed of light in pure vacuum whereas FTL photon velocity could be attained stuck in TJ's neurones and niggled; he knew that Warshawski sails in hyper space allowed ships to travel faster than light by effectively creating a 'new' universe in which to move. That they didn't travel FTL was because of problems caused by wave turbulence. It was all so confusing.

They were informed that modern warships did not really require turret crews as all weapons were controlled from the Gunnery Director on the Bridge or CIC (Command Information Centre) where the battle 'puter correlated all the electronic inputs and worked out the firing patterns with input from humans as to priority of targets. Being in a battle, however, implied damage (and personal injury, but that little item was never mentioned) and either the central control was damaged or more often a hit took out the control runs to a turret. It was then humans were needed, either to do the old fashioned "Turrets follow Director" or "Independent Manual Control". Both of those presumed that the mount was undamaged so the student gunners were introduced to the intricacies of how the mount actually moved on its axes and how to move the mount by hand; where the energy runs to energise the weapon were situated and what could be done in the event of damage — not much (Morg was awarded fifty pushups for sarcastically suggesting that a gunner could grasp the broken ends of the leads and allow the power to pass through the body — the Master Gunner with a perfectly straight face said the practice had been abandoned when it was found the resistance offered by the crisped body was too high and the weapon could not be energised so it wasn't worth the effort). Just as an extra, how to egress the mount in emergencies and where the emergency bottles were secured was covered and the last gem was that an intact sealed mount was liveable - the problem came when carbon dioxide rebreathing occurred.

Actual mounts were used for training in combination with simulator 'puters from the usually fully automated small twin laser barrelled anti missile point defence up to the humungous "Homer" mounts with the 1.5 metre calibre masers of the new DNs which were just on the slips now. There was a very large amount of electronics in their training, not only to cover the gunnery side of things but also to give the gunners a background of the ways and means information for the Gunnery Director was gathered from the ship's sensors. With that information being multiply used, some knowledge of Navigation and Electronic Warfare specialities seeped into the training.