A Proper Gentleman...

[Cannonshop]

Prologue, Groningen Pre-Academy Prep Course, Donegal Province, Lyran Commonwealth, 3083

My Family is famous...well, at least, my uncle is.  Well, technically he's my uncle.  I can't imagine what my 'father' might have had to be using when I was conceived.

Whatever it was, no doubt it was potent as hell, if he's really my biological father.  I suppose I might have been the pool-man's get, or maybe the security specialist, or even some random houseless person's contribution instead.

Lord knows, it could even be a case of 'combine egg and sperm on a slide and insert with turkey-baster, cook for nine months'.

I'm not, you see, a stupid child.  If I were, perhaps Benny Bradford wouldn't be my tormentor.

My name is Simon, and I'm the embarrassment of my family.  Or, as Benny says it, 'lummox boy'.  You see, here in the Year Seven at Groningen Pre-Academic Preparatory School for young gentlemen, I'm what the counselors call 'sized' and the Coach calls Fat.

I'm the largest boy in year seven,  almost ONe meter Sixty and one hundred kilograms.  I don't play Gridiron, I don't play Hockey, I'm far too fat to play basketball, or Lacrosse, and my growth was more in my torso, than my legs-I'm dreadful at footie, and this is in spite of sadistic bastards from the PE instructors to their assistants trying to run me to death three hours a day four days a week, the other three days?  well, that's strength training.

and I've managed to keep my spot in the class despite being a freakish, cow-like dullard, because my marks in Mathematics are far beyond grade level.

But maths and science scores aren't as important at a private school like this one.  Here, the only thing that matters, is your bloodline. Mine's an embarrassment.

you see, My full name, is Simon Vincent Klaus Robert Odegarde Hogarth.

Yes, from that family.

Uncle Thomas and my Father decided to send me to this place after my mother's latest adventure in tranquilizers and booze.

I hate them.  I hate them all.

"Get it moving, Lardo!! your ass is too wide to fit in a cockpit!!"

****** them.  I don't want to be a glorified heavy equipment operator!  I have no desire to 'carry on' with that 'proud tradition'.

Why?

Because frankly, I can do the math.  Even when my dear famous uncle can't.  I'm being tormented because my Uncle Thomas got himself famous piloting an assault battlemech...and if you listen closely to the whispers, he mostly got famous for being able to escape with his hide intact while letting 'the bloody proles' as he puts it, do the actual fighting and dying.

I have a better idea...but get there, I have to tolerate being berated for my size, and mocked behind closed doors as one of 'those' Hogarths.


It won't matter.  I know I can solve the right equations.  You don't have to be able to fit a pasteboard cutout shape to sit in the central seat of a warship-you just have to be able to do the math.

And I know I can master that, even if I can't master a thirteen minute two-mile running course.

 I have five years to study, and when it's time to apply to an academy programme, I'm fully going to shove it in my Uncle's face.

I'm going to join the bloody navy.

[Artifex]

Good on you Simon. Nothing better than a man that breaks with preconceived molds! :thumbsup:

Helm, Station keeping!

[Trace Coburn]

Prologue, Groningen Pre-Academy Prep Course, Donegal Province, Lyran Commonwealth, 3083

[...]
It is Thirty-ninety-three, and I have five years to study, and when it's time to apply to an academy programme, I'm fully going to shove it in my Uncle's face.

  Uhm... Simon’s maths may be great, but the writer’s could, uh, use a little attention....  :P

  Well, this should be interesting.  A Hogarth with an actual brain, and the drive to make something of himself despite his family?  The LCN — or, quite possibly, the KCG — might find themselves quite pleased that the majority of the Hogarth family are not only overbred morons, but also shitty judges of character and talent....

[Wrangler]

Getting a Warship will be interesting.  I don't know what Au this is, but warships got be more common for Holgath to dream about them. 

[Nikas_Zekeval]

Getting around in freefall, in a vacuum suit, and/or under multi-gee acceleration all require considerable physical fitness Simon.

[Cannonshop]

  Uhm... Simon’s maths may be great, but the writer’s could, uh, use a little attention....  :P

  Well, this should be interesting.  A Hogarth with an actual brain, and the drive to make something of himself despite his family?  The LCN — or, quite possibly, the KCG — might find themselves quite pleased that the majority of the Hogarth family are not only overbred morons, but also shitty judges of character and talent....

I was missing a MASSIVE amount of sleep, and forgot to edit that second date reference out. 

good catch.

[Daryk]

I LOVE the idea of Simon having his own thread... By ALL means, PLEASE carry on!  :thumbsup:

[ThePW]

I LOVE the idea of Simon having his own thread... By ALL means, PLEASE carry on!  :thumbsup:

So where does this story fit in the big scope (which BIG scope)?

[Daryk]

This looks to be part of "Important People"...  ^-^

[kioras]

This looks to be part of "Important People"...  ^-^

That is my thought.  It fits in the time frame properly and getting a new viewpoint character as the plot moves on is important.

The plot was ready to move into a Hot War next, so breaking things off might be a good idea.

The other thing is the timing, for the various AU's, the 3090's being interesting tends to be a branch of this series.

If that is the case it is interesting that Thomas Hogarth is a Lyran patriot in Important People, despite his Social Generalness.

[Dave Talley]

ping!

[Cannonshop]

Departure gate, Sanglamore Academy, 3088...

The young man isn't wearing cadet grays.  He turned his uniform in after quitting.  "I'm done." he'd said.

It wasn't really true, but the humiliation he was supposed to feel, was absent.  Simon wasn't the chubby, oversized boy he'd been when he was at Groningen.

at least, on the outside.  Years of constant exercising, carefully watching his diet along with his studies, he'd been 'the pick' just at the start of this term.

Simon was a big man, even at eighteen, but he was no longer a FAT man.

It really came down to  professor MacAllum's course.  It came down to honesty versus success, to choosing between writing what he knew to be true, versus what the professor wanted to hear.  Simon decided he couldn't do that.

so he quit.

He walked along the paved road leading to the second most prominent military academy in the Lyran Commonwealth as a former student, rather than hiring a cab, or calling a car, or using a car.

cars passed him as he walked, and to his right, in the fields of Sanglamore, he could see his former cadet colleagues doing all the things he'd spent part of this year doing.

Things he was not going to be doing himself.  At least, he would not do them here.

an automobile slowed as he passed the corner gate of the Sanglamore installation.

"Heyo, Tallboy."  The driver had a lilting accent, with a strange fluid guttering, "You needa rida yah? Specepaht?"

He stopped and looked through the open passenger window.

The driver was a woman, almost freakishly thin, with the frail build that could never have evolved in one gravity.

"Yeah, I'm heading for the spaceport."

"Kammaboahd, sallright, outa th' open?" she asked.

it took him a moment to process that he was being offered a ride.  "Yes please, and thank you?"

the door hissed open, and she folded the seat forward, "baggage th' hold yah."

He put his bag in the back seat, the front seat folded back and she let him get seated and buckled as the door closed.

"Gotta feeelin." the woman said, "Joo drop out, or kekked?"

"I quit." he confessed.

"ah. 'sokay. you know dirtyfeet schools, they shit for teaching." she cracked as she brought the car up to highway speed.  "You gone home, or you got better thoughts?"

it was really prying, but Simon felt like he could talk to this stranger about what he couldn't talk to his own family.   "I don't know." he said, "Honestly, I just...I wanted to make it through the Naval program, but the lies, the dishonesty..."

She nodded. "You's got th' look, yah. Where's 'home'?"

"uh...well, my family's on Gallery...except for a few relatives on Tharkad..." he sighed, "God, they're going to be livid."

"So don' tell ehm." She said easily, then changed tacks, clearing up her speech a bit.  "If you had a ticket, where would that ticket go?"

He frowned, thinking, before he spoke.  "Spider moon, in the Kowloon system, if I could pass their entry requirements, that's where I would go."

"Set on bein a soldier then?" she asked.

"I am eighteen, and a Lyran, and patriotic...at least, I think I am."

"Hm.  That's a spendy ticket.  How'sabout this, You crew on my ship as an apprentice, we're running the circuits, make Kowloon in October next year, If you do good, I'll sign your guild certification, that's extra points on the Coasties' entrance exams right there, sound good?"

His heart lifted, "Yeah!! I'll do that!"

"Mind it's hard work, and not easy, especially for a Dirtyfoot and a greenie, but I know to trust it when I get the feeling.  By the way, Beth Zimmer, you'll be calling me horrible names when you think you're private, and 'skipper' when you're on duty." she smiled, "but I'll put the stars under your feet, youngster.  What's your name?"

"Simon...Simon Hogarth." he said, flinching a little.

"Huh, weird name, nice and biblical though." the car reached the off-ramp to the spaceport, "We'll get your papers set up at the shed before lift.  We'll need to, you don't have a Skin and you'll need one, I'll take part out of your wages for it for the first three months, and if you work out? maybe you'll change your mind and work to get a stake in your own ship."

"I...I don't know what to say?"

"Say...'yes, skipper, i like that', and appreciate the opportunity. We Folk rarely get to recruit Dirtyfeet the old fashioned way anymore." she said with a chuckle.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Iiiinteresting.

[Cannonshop]

From Simon Hogarth's personal notes, December 3088...

The ship's name, is Mary Ambree.  She's a two-collar Merchant class, and older than she looks.  The Captain is Beth Zimmer1086.

I'm still not ready to call my parents.  I know it's petty, I know it's selfish.  In a way, I don't care.  I've had more time with nannies and tutors, than with my mother or my father, though I've lived with the scandals from them both.  I think it's the dishonesty in that home that I may be rebelling against.

It's funny that I can understand that intellectually, when so many of the people I knew in the various boarding schools and preparatory academies had the same sort of home life, and simply accepted it as 'normal', or even 'right'.

Uncle Thomas will no doubt take my abandoning a full ride scholarship at Sanglamore as proof of my fundamental weakness of character.  Father may only notice if his lover comments on it, and who knows what mother might think in her cycle between manias, recovery programs, and binges?

I don't know.  What I know, is that Captain Beth hired me without a resume', without training, and without an appointment first, from the side of the highway.

We did the paperwork at the port, signing me into the ship's crew as an Apprentice, getting my 'stake gear' (A used 'bag suit' and a skinsuit with utility overgarment, two helmets, and personal equipment).

My locker is built into my bunking space, the door is also my pallet for sleeping, and I've only got half of it-I'm sharing with another apprentice named Danielle Sivicks-Noght.  There's less privacy here, yet everyone is very private.

"You're too open." Danielle tells me, "It's fine among crew-but you need to be quiet around not-crew, diggit? some of us are from Folk families and some aren't."

"So who can I be...open with?" I ask her as I am preparing to start my first real day in null gee.

"Easy 'nough-Rockjacks, Belters, Spacer-borns." she tells me, "Everyone else, you need to watch your words with, don't give 'em more than you absolutely have to, if you're in the habits, then it's best-this is a Folk boat, not a dirtyfeet smack."

"but...I'm...not Folk." I tell her.

"You will be." she says, "That's what it means when a Skipper picks up a stray like you-you're fated to be one of us, so we'll teach you how to be right, the apprenticeship is step one, if you work out, you'll be Staked, one of the families will bring you in deeper. If you don't, and somehow survive it? you'll get a cert card and put ashore at the end of your apprenticeship, and maybe someday your kin will come back to us."

"given my kin? I'm not sure you'd appreciate that." I tell her.  she laughs at it, claps me on the shoulder, and tells me, "You did this part wrong, here, let me show how to do it right..."

I spent the rest of the day with her, being shown how to walk the hull and inspect the rigging for the jump-sail.

The view through a suit's helmet is amazing.  It's everything I dreamt of as a boy in the tunnels of Gallery.

[Artifex]

Off to a great start, Simon. Keep rocking!

[worktroll]

Ping ...

[idea weenie]

In a few years if Simon does well, and things go bad at court, Simon may be one of the ones either protecting his family from space-based attack, or be the one protecting the Lyran Archon from his family's attack.

[Euphonium]

This is fun already!

[Daryk]

I LOVE the fact that Beth managed to recruit him the "old fashioned way". :smitten:

[Cannonshop]

Mary Ambree 26 December, 3088...

Preparation for Jump on a ship this old ends up including crewmen on the hull to keep the retracting cables of the jump-sail rigging clear.

Yesterday, He'd learned how to do a pre-retraction inspection and service.  Today, he was with the rigging gang-all four of them, as the  automated winches drew in the power leades and the mix of hydraulics and myomers flexed the masts, then rolled the sail into stow.

"...watch the running ribs on your side, Hogarth, see those fist-size rollers?"

"Ah, yes." he answered.

"Say 'ayeh', okay? I guess you need to learn the lang." Danielle's voice on his comm said.  "Ayeh for yes, 'nuh' for no, sabby?"

"Um..ayeh?" he inquired.

"correk." she stated, "The rollers-they're connected to a sensor that feeds the CIC's engieboahd, indicator's supposed to show the rate of retraction and indicate when the sail's stowed-only it never really works right-I've crewed Folk Ships, Dirtyfeet ships, even Navy ships-they always have malfs with those, and it's a low priority part so they don't get serviced on most ships.  one of your jobs on Sail crew, is to make sure the rollers roll along the length of the cabling, so it sends accurate data."

"what do I do if it doesn't?" he asked.

"Depends on why, but you always speak up on the common channel if you see it sliding or skipping." she explained, "that way the bridge knows that their indicator's off."

"Got it."

as the system went active, he could feel the vibrations as the systems first folded, then retracted the solar sail assembly.

he watched the rollers.

and it worked correctly.

well, that's good...but kind of a letdown.  He mused.

Danielle sent Veidt and Konumbe back in, "Come on, Hogarth, couple more jobs out here."

He made his way to an indicated waypoint near the bell of the station-keeping drive.

She showed him how to verify that the sail assembly was, in fact, properly stowed, this wound up with his first experience with a crowbar for real-because the tie-down clamp hadn't closed fully, and was pinching on a bundle of Myomer.

prying it free so the lock could engage was hard work, made harder because his only leverage came from locking his boots into a loop on the hull built for the purpose, and hauling hullward while she worked on the extenders to get the clamp closed.

"all green." she said.  "Now, take your safety line, Hogarth, and secure it to the hull."

He did so.

she locked to the same rail, and switched to the command deck frequency, "ALRIGHT! Sail Stowed!"

"Rajah det, standby."

"What's-"

"Magic." she said to him, "keep low, okay?"

[Cannonshop]

From the journal of Simon Hogarth, dated 26 December, 3088...

Jumpship travel is not instantaneous.  christ, i'm not sure how to explain this, but everything we've ever been taught is wrong.

it's not instant.

It's forever in there.  we don't see it during a jump from inside the hull, I think maybe because...

It's forever.  a colourless void is the closest...no, that's wrong.

I'm still scattered mentally from the experience.  They call it 'hull surfing', and god only knows how or who came up with it.

I need to gather my thoughts.  give me a moment.

Okay, day two of my apprenticeship, I'm learning how to ship the solar sail...and how to unship at the destination, because while it's technically an automatic function, it's so rarely automatic that even Naval vessels maintain a sail crew to prevent accidents and problems.

Most of the time, those crew go inside before jump, but this time, the Bosun had me out on the hull with her when we jumped.

and I saw hyperspace with my own eyes...eyes? mind??

I can't begin to describe it adequately, except it wasn't instant.

it was forever.  eternity in a second, a second that stretches for eternity.

Only it wasn't a second, because you can't conduct a conversation in the space of a second.

Not even talking very quickly.

Danielle touched her helmet to mine.  "Fantastic, isn't it?!" she asked me.

the sights...did she speak or did I just hear her?  I'm still not sure, and it's been six hours since.

In that...place, that space?

I could hear something indescribable.  like the sound of angels...or music?  She told me during that experience I was hearing the Choir.
The Choir.

I'm without words to describe the sensations.  I can't get it out of my mind, like a craving and a terror and it's all wrapped together.

I can't wait for our next jump.

[Daryk]

Gifted indeed!  :)

[Cannonshop]

Seginus system, 9 January 3089...

The Seginus system has a month-long approach with four 'waypoint stations'.  A good navigator can cut some of that time down, with a risky in-system jump.

Almost nobody does this.  The Mary Ambree's contract in the system, however, is time-sensitive and was negotiated over HPG at the client's expense.

Beth Zimmer judged it was worth it, to wait the seven days at the Nadir point, then drop the hammer with the sail reefed, for Seginus system's L1 point-which is about three days travel at onegee, instead of a month.

"All hands to deck and rigging!" she ordered.

Acknowledgements came from the crew as the Sail team took up position for the reefing.

"Engineering, report core status!"

"Core status green, mum!  Coolant at one oh five percent rated.  Charge is one two fife over optimal minimum and Caps are holding!"

"Reef Sail!"

she watched the monitors and displays, and she watched the suit cams from the sail crew.

her mind was only partly on the crew, the rest of it, was rechecking her calculations for everything from needed drive charge for a transitory point, time of year, hour and duration, the mechanics of plotting an insertion on a moving target.  The telescopes had had time to lock on the planet, track its motion and orbital period, the paired moons, and the visual cues of gravitic distortion from masses in the system.

She didn't actually need to recheck the numbers-the "express route" in the Seginus system wasn't exactly a secret, it sits on the databases of half the traders in the Commonwealth because while the waystations are nice for dropship crew, some cargoes have a time limit.

the numbers added up. 

"Sail reefed, skippah, ship is ready for jump."

"all hands below decks-that includes you and the apprentice, Dani." she ordered, "no hullsurfs this close in, the field's going to be tricksy."

"Aye mum..." the reply came over the comm.

She checked the time.  "Hurry it up while you're at it, Dani, Tide isn't waiting."

The airlock lamp lit, first red, then green.

"ALL hands secure for jump in three...two...one..."

she reached up, punched the calculation in, and hit the initiate.

Discontinuity 

[namar13766]

You know, it probably shouldn't have taken me this long to have the realization.

Just because you can hear the Choir, doesn't mean you should listen to it. I'm not entirely assured of its 'benevolence.'

[Euphonium]

You know, it probably shouldn't have taken me this long to have the realization.

Just because you can hear the Choir, doesn't mean you should listen to it. I'm not entirely assured of its 'benevolence.'

I've always viewed listening to the choir as comparable to staring into the abyss...

[Red Pins]

Tagged.

[Daryk]

When the Guild types tell you to stay inside the hull, you STAY INSIDE THE HULL!

[idea weenie]

Gifted indeed!  :) 

Agreed.  He can hear the choir, and no TDS reported in-story yet.  He could be one of the extremely rare who gets all the benefits of being hyperspace sensitive with none of the disadvantages.  I'm sure that once that fact gets to them, there will be a few Clans that challenge for a sample of his DNA

[glitterboy2098]

honestly whenever i hear "listening to the choir" in a non-religious context, i think of that serial killer from babylon 5 Season 1 "The Quality of Mercy". kinda undermines the feel.

though i'm sure that the "One Moment of perfect Beauty" from season 2 "there all honor lies" is probably (thematically) the closest thing to the experience in the story that a mortal could get outside hyperspace.

[Giovanni Blasini]

honestly whenever i hear "listening to the choir" in a non-religious context, i think of that serial killer from babylon 5 Season 1 "The Quality of Mercy". kinda undermines the feel.

though i'm sure that the "One Moment of perfect Beauty" from season 2 "there all honor lies" is probably (thematically) the closest thing to the experience in the story that a mortal could get outside hyperspace.

I think of the accursed flutes and drums playing for Azathoth.