Sabatine refrained from snorting which would have been unlady like. Few officers would make lieutenant commander before 30 and fewer still without a war to open slots both on new vessels and through casualties. She took the decanter and poured herself another generous measure of the minty liqour. It was probably vodka of some sort, though that was a fairly broad designation given to most vegetable alcohol rather than implying it was made from potatoes. She raised her glass.

"Well you know what they say, to a bloody war or a sickly season," her gaze making it clear whose slot she hoped either of those dooms would empty. she knocked back the alcohol just as Commodore Welkins stood and rapped his fork sharply against his glass several times in quick succession. The general buzz of combination quited save for one midshipmen, wearing an improbably number of commendations continued an animated description of what was either a space battle or an amorous encounter. One of his mortified fellows cuffed him over the back of the head to silence him to which Welkins nodded his approval.

"Fellow Spacers," he began, "as you have no doubt heard tensions with the Alliance are coming to a head." There were grumbles from the assembled officers, uniformly bellicose variations of let us at them. Welkin's smiled his eyes glinting like agates.

"We have been in the past twelve months, largely on a passive footing, lifting out to deal with crisis and incident as the develop." Welkins had the trick of making it seem like he was taking his officers into his confidence, despite the fact that everyone of them, with the possible exception of Kaiden, already knew that.

"No longer, with the base secure under the protection of the mine field, we are going to spread our patrols far and wide, show the locals that the Cinnabar flag sill flies and let them that if they are thinking of exchanging our friendship for Guarantor Pora's chains they had best reckon on what the RCN has to say about it!" This raised a round of cheers from the officers, most of whom were at least buzzed on whine or strong liquor already, but the RCN was no place for abstainers. A sober part of Sabatine's mind recognized the other unspoken factors that went into the Commodore's decision to disperse his fleet. If war did break out the first they would hear of it would likely be the arrival of an Alliance squadron extracting from the matrix and launching missiles. A small force like that which operated in the Rayleigh stars could be gutted in minutes if it were caught in orbit by an enemy likely to boast many times their missile tubes. Dispersed the squadron had a better chance of avoiding a crushing defeat and could remain a force in being even if an Alliance task force arrived to attack Herculaneum. Ships would return from their patrols to find the enemy in the system and could fade away if they were too strong or attack from the rear if they were unwary.

"To that end," Welkins continued, cutting through the excited babble once again, "I'm ordering Vicount and Grandwing out at 0600 and 0700 tomorrow, Cadbury will follow as soon as her refit is finished, certainly within the next 24 hours." Officers were begining to reach for recall plates to call their crews back from liberty and Sabatine watched Captain Micha whisper into the ear of one of spacers from the Vickie, doubtless passing his own orders to start rounding up the crew.

"Vesper and Solidad," he went on, referring to the two small sloops, small pocket warships with guns but no missles, "Will remain on station in case the enemy does arrive in force. In such a case Vesper will run for Cinnabar and Solidad will be tasked with attempting to alert the rest of us. Orders have been transmitted to your ships regarding patrol routes." Welkin's grinned wolfishly.

"Perhaps we will finally get our chance to show those goons from the Alliance what real spacers are like! RCN forever!"

"RCN forever!" the assembled officers roared. Sabatine happened to be watching Micha when the cheer went up, the Captain did not join in and looked a little queasy. Well perhaps the booze hadn't quite agreed with him.