Chapter 5

The family car was still at the convention centre, but Lucinda, Fred and Marcie were at her now-former home, busily loading rabbit cages and sending them into space. Fred's other concubine, Ginger, was up on the assault ship Sir Caradoc, busily loading bunnies into storage spaces usually used for Marines. The Sir Caradoc carried only a platoon of its usual complement and a single Leopard assault shuttle; there was plenty of space. The platoon itself was down on the Okanagan Valley somewhere busily filling the belly of the Leopard with yet more plants and horticultural supplies. Captain Fontaine was literally breathing down her neck, anxious to get this miserable business over with and get on their way to the colony they'd been assigned to so she could get a new assignment, one involving battles instead of bunnies. The kids were helping as much as possible, of course, but the most help that Lacey could do at the moment was keep her little siblings from making nuisances of themselves with the Navy crew.

Finally, all of the Everest and Williams dwarf rabbits were aboard the assault ship. Captain Fontaine bedded the colonists down in the forward section where half of the Marines were usually quartered.

The man was neither terribly tall nor terribly short, not terribly chubby or terribly thin, not terribly noticeable in terms of clothing. In other words as he walked the halls of Tri-County General Hospital, Lieutenant Carstairs blended in perfectly with staff, patients and visitors without arousing the slightest hint that he was actually Confederate Navy Shore Patrol. And that's just how Lieutenant Carstairs and his superiors wanted him to be.

Bearing a large briefcase, he slipped into the executive offices and found one whose occupant had long gone home for the day. Sitting in the shadows, he listened to the AI and waited for his cue.

In the boardroom mere steps away, Judge Walter Armstrong and DFCS Regional Adoption Coordinator Lois Abernathy were hearing the testimony regarding four young Wards of the State. The children, still dressed in the hospital-issued pyjamas, had just agreed to be adopted by Sid Cheevers and Victor Walden.

Judge Armstrong signed the approval form. "Miss Abernathy, I'm going to contact the Regional Adoption Coordinator Supervisor. In the future, we'll deputize you and your cohorts to function in our stead. If a volunteer is getting extracted and you agree that it would be in the best interest of the orphaned child to go with that volunteer, then you'll just have to agree in the presence of witnesses for the adoption to be finalized. And yes, the AI will function as a perfectly suitable witness. Just present the case file to my office and we'll sign off." He sighed. "I know it's quite irregular and if we were to disapprove it would be almost impossible to retrieve the dependants, but in the interest of speed and to maximize the number of children we rescue from the Sa'arm, I think it's for the best."

As they left, Lois turned to the Hospital Administrator. "I wish all my caseload could be handled so easily. Some of them have true 'winners' as parents — CAP scores probably less than one on a good day."

Dr. Proctor chuckled, as did Tribune Whitefeather. The tribune knew her CAP score of 6.9 combined with her subscores meant that she was a prime candidate for a position with the Civil Service. "Maybe you can, sooner than you think," the Tribune suggested. She left; her body full of nanites and her head full of conditioning. Lois would not be able to discuss this with anyone else before 24 hours had elapsed.

Moments after they left, Lieutenant Carstairs arrived. Wordlessly, he nodded at the Tribune, opened his large briefcase, hauled out a transporter nexus, and activated it in a corner of the boardroom. After conferring with the AI and the Navy rating at the other end of the transport beam subvocally, he turned back to the Tribune and the somewhat bemused medical staff and dependants surrounding the table.

"If we're ready?" he asked politely of the audience. "We'll take the children up to the Dix. Perhaps we could have Sponsor Victor and Concubine Jacquie act as escort?"

The four wounded children and their medical escorts made their way to the transporter nexus. "Just step through the nexus, and when you reach the other side, take two more steps to get off the platform. They're waiting for you," Carstairs reassured the six, giving them an encouraging smile.

The group emerged into a technological wonderland. A tall man wearing the black uniform of the Confederacy Navy, wearing the rank badges of a Colonel and a caduceus on the service shield over his left breast pocket stood to attention, flanked by similarly-clad officers of both genders. On the wall opposite the transporter nexus was the ship's shield and the pronouncement:

Welcome aboard Hospital Ship Dorothea Lynde Dix

AH005

You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!

"Ma'am, youngsters, I'm Captain Proulx of the Confederacy Hospital Ship Dix, also known as the Dixie Chick, and I'd like to welcome you aboard our ship," the Colonel announced. He gestured to a kindly-looking older man standing off to one side, a pretty 13-year-old clutching his hand. "These are Sid Cheevers and his granddaughter Vickie. We'll let the Cheevers meet each other as soon as we have the little ones' wounds attended to. If you'll follow the Chief Surgeon to the medical bays?"

At the medical station, the four children found themselves lying down and quickly asleep in medical pods. At the request of Captain Proulx, his executive officer invited Sid, Vickie, Jacquie and Victor to enjoy the hospitality of the ship's Officers' Mess pending completion of treatment — ship's captains are not considered members of the Officers' Mess and so cannot themselves directly issue the invitation.

As befit a ship named after the leading American reformer of insane asylums, the Mess was named the Crazy Horse Saloon. The inside was decorated to look like a log cabin from the Yukon, and the pictures festooning the walls of the chamber ranged from advertising for the early talkie movie Indian Love Call to photos of nude dancers taken at the room's Parisian namesake. On the far wall, Vickie noted a moose head sporting a Mountie's hat at a jaunty angle.