HEDY LAMARR<br/><br/>I gave the obnoxious German a steady glare. It was true. No sense of humour. No sense of anything much at all even... However, the interesting meeting was interrupted by the deck tilting and a voice coming across from outside.<br/><br/><em>Communists? This far south? Idiots got lost.</em><br/><br/>I picked up the crew room telephone and wound the handle. The control gondola answered.<strong>"Captain Lamarr speaking, action stations! Shoot those Collective numbskulls out of the sky, annoying fools."</strong><em>Map reading is a skill in short supply...</em>I looked at the pilots in the room.<strong>"And send the bosun with four armed men from the brig down to the hangar deck. On the double."</strong>I now addressed the rag tag collection of so-called pilots I'd been unlucky enough to pick up in Haven.<strong>"Ladies and gentlemen, you can either sit here and suffer our fate if those Collective boys out there shoot holes in us, or you can get to your planes. If you launch, it's up to you whether you go your own way or shoot at them. You are still not in my employ until I say so and until you've proven to me that you know how to set a course between A, B and another letter of the alphabet."</strong>I pointed at the German,<strong>"You. You will stay right there. I won't insult you by taking your pistol but I'll trust there is some honour left in the Prussian aristocracy and assume you won't be so crass as to draw it. Benson, keep an eye on this one. Once this battle is over, he can go."</strong>I addressd the German directly again,<strong>"You are not and never will be employed by me. And if your plane so much as turns to face this ship once I release you from the launcher you will be shot down. Are we clear?"</strong><br/><br/>Benson moved forward.