A New World Begins

Preparations…

Travis and Will claimed the two gaming chairs in front of the dorm’s large screen, with Nathan, Kyle and Shane pulling up the arm chairs from Kyle’s bedspace. As Will twiddled with the settings on his laptop to start a link with Craig, Noah pushed the door open, struggling in with a tray of coffees from the kitchen and a large bag of pastries he’d brought over from the ante room where everyone else was gathering for tea. Noah placed the pastries on the admin desk, took one himself, then grabbed a coffee from the tray. Nathan chuckled to himself as Travis leaped up to grab a pastry and immediately lost his gaming chair to Noah who casually sat down and started to munch on a slice of apple pie.

“Noah!” exclaimed Travis, “That was my seat!”

“Was,” said Noah.

“Pull up another armchair, Travis,” said Will, “Craig is just coming online. Pass me a coffee, please, Travis.”

Travis weighed up the options. If he held back, Will would have to get his own coffee and that would mean a chance to dive into the other gaming seat as Will vacated it. Will would almost certainly prioritise establishing the link with Craig over getting a coffee though, and so might even forego a coffee until the link was up and running. Maybe someone else would pass Will a coffee too. Then again…”

“Travis…”

Travis knew when he was beat. Nathan didn’t need to say anything more. Travis picked up a cup of coffee and passed it to Will. “Do you want a Danish too, Will?”

The screen flickered and then Craig came into view. He was in his bedroom again. Quite a small bedroom, noted Nathan. Craig’s ceremonial band uniform was hanging in a protective cover on the back of the door behind him and a British army pattern combat jacket was hanging over a radiator.

“Hi Craig, how are things?”

“I’m good, Nattypus, nice to see you all again. Will, can you email one of those pastries to me?”

“I’ll work on it, Boots. Might need some help from Scotty and the transporter beam though,” laughed Will.

“Nattypus?” mouthed Travis silently to Noah.

“Will tells us that you and him have been working on something called ‘terrain analysis’ and ‘intelligence preparation of the battlefield’, Boots. What’s that all about?” asked Nathan.

“That’s right,” said Craig. “Will and the guys linked me in to Travis’s survey camera feed for a few seconds when they were flying. My dad has shown me how to use aerial photography for planning patrol routes and observation post siting for my cadet stuff, so me and Will have looked at updating stuff. We reckon we can give you an advantage for the military training. Look at this.”

Craig put two aerial photos, stills from the imagery Will had sent him, on the desk in front of him, then took a ruler and pencil and drew a line on one of them.

“These two pictures are what is called a Stereo Pair. They have about a sixty per cent overlap. Once, a camera would have taken proper photos with that amount of overlap. Now Will can extract them from the high-resolution video feed. If I look at them side by side, I get a 3D image if I use this image viewer.”

“We don’t need that now,” said Will. “I can colour one red and one green using digital filters. Just like a 3D movie.”

“I’ve drawn that line from the top of a hill down into the valley below,” said Craig. “When I look at in 3D I can tell if I have a clear line of sight. If the line appears to float in space, it means nothing impedes the view and the point at the end of the line is visible from the hill top. But, if the line looks like it is cut instead of floating, then something is interrupting the view, maybe a tree for example, and so that’s a blind spot.”

“I can do the same thing in the computer,” said Will. “I can draw a line with my mouse, like this, and get the computer to view the two images. See how the line floats here, but is cut here? That means I have a good view of that point, but can’t see the other point.”

“Reconnaissance patrols would spend ages doing this on old fashioned photos before going out onto the ground,” said Craig. “But now Will can write a few lines of code and automate the process. It still needs a human of course, somebody smart has to choose the best places to site the observation point, but then the computer can do all the donkey work.”

“So,” said Will, “If we input the entire coverage of the woodland where we do our military training to the computer, and identify good vantage points, we can do two things. We can work out where we can see stuff from…”

“And you can work out routes for moving about where you will be hard to spot by the other patrols out there. Not impossible of course, luck plays a part, and so does noise. This can’t make you quiet. But it tips the odds in your favour,” added Craig.

“Can it spot badgers?” asked Shane.

Craig laughed. “No, Shane, that’s down to you and your fieldcraft. I can’t believe you let yourselves get ambushed by a badger…”

“Mountain lion, Boots,” smirked Travis. “Officially, it was a mountain lion…”

“I’ve got some other tips for you all too,” said Craig. “I’ll email them to Nattypus. The important thing now is to spend some time looking at the images Will is going to show you, then decide where you need to observe from, and where you need to move to, unobserved. Once you know that, Will can do the digital trickery and do some route analysis for you. You should be able to move around like ghosts next semester when everyone else is still learning all that Shape, Shine, Shadow, Silhouette stuff…”

“Thanks, Boots,” said Nathan, “We really do appreciate this stuff you’re teaching us. We still think of you as part of Bensinger Squad.”

“Yeah,” said Craig. “Obviously, if you lot weren’t revolting Colonials you’d have been with me last Saturday night at frost o’clock when I swam across the Sherford River to plant a smoke bomb in the enemy’s Land Rover.”

“Sherford River?” asked Shane. “Is that in London, the big river that goes under London Bridge, Boots?”

“No, Shane,” laughed Craig. “It’s the Thames in London. Sherford is down here in Holton, near where I live. It flows through the cadet training grounds. The Thames is bigger, but I could still swim it. I’ve got salmon genes.”

“Do you live in London, Boots?” asked Shane.

“No, not really, Shane. I’m a hundred miles away. Down in the Royal Marine barracks near a place called Hamworthy. Kind of two hours by train from London.”

“Hi, Boots,” said Kyle. “I think the question is because we’re coming to Europe over New Year. Mom and dad want to take me and Shane on a week’s holiday and England is one option. Or Paris, or Vienna.”

“Stuff Paris, guys,” said Craig. “It’s French. Bloody big Meccano tower dumped right in the middle of the place too. The architecture’s probably way better in Vienna, but if you come to London I can get there and show you round.”

“Paris is quite romantic though,” said Kyle. “I might ask if Lee can come with us.”

“How many French divisions does it take to defend Paris, Kyle?” asked Craig.

“Err, no idea, Boots…”

“Exactly, Kyle, nobody knows. The cheese eating surrender monkeys never try…”

“Boots, if we came to London, could we get to meet you again?” asked Shane.

“Probably, Shane. It’s just a few hours away by train. I have some money saved up from my job, I could get a train ticket and come up to London for the day. My parents would let me…”

Shane and Kyle exchanged glances, then Kyle spoke. “We’ll talk to my parents, Boots. I think we’ll ask to come to London instead of Paris. Won’t we Shane?”

“I’d like London. I’m reading a Sherlock Holmes book in English. Can you show us Baker Street?”

“Definitely, Shane, And I’ll take you both to a proper English pub and show you how to get rat arsed…”

* * *

“Bloody hell, Manders, you took your time answering the door. I was about to give up knocking and go home.”

“If I’d known it was you, Craig, I wouldn’t have answered. I was busy. What do you want?”

“I’ve brought some Christmas presents over for you to stick under your tree ready for Christmas, but if you are too busy I can always bugger off…”

“Oh, no, come on in, Santa. We have some presents for you and your parents too. I’ll dig them out for you. When does your dad get back from America?”

“At the end of the week, we think. That’s when it’s scheduled anyway, assuming he doesn’t get sent somewhere else at the last minute. Like that’s never happened before…”

“I can guess what this one is,” said Mandy, squeezing a soft elongated package wrapped in decorative paper. “Your mum was asking me about some scarves I liked the look of recently, my guess is that’s what you’ve bought me. It’s got my name on the tag. And this one is for mum, it’s perfume. She’s been dropping hints for weeks now to your mum about what she’d like for Christmas.”

“I’ve been dropping hints about a Porsche but I don’t think anybody will buy me one, Mandy.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I did, but now you’ve guessed it I’ll have to take it back and swap it for something else or it won’t be a surprise. I’ll get you a pair of socks instead.”

“Sealskinz, Mandy? They have to be Sealskinz socks.”

“You’ll have to wait and see…”

“These two are for your dad, Mandy.”

“Why does my dad get two presents? What are they? Oh, I can guess what these are: gloves. He was saying he wanted some new ones. But this one? It’s weird.”

“You’ll have to wait and see, Mandy. It’s specially from me and dad.”

“Maybe I’ll unwrap it when you’re gone, take a sneak preview.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Mandy. You might not make it to Christmas if you do…”

“What plans do you have for the rest of the day, Craig?”

“I’m heading in to town, I need to buy a few last-minute Christmas presents, and I want to call by the station and see if they have any special offers on for cheap tickets over New Year.”

“That’s convenient, I’ll head in with you. Carl is coming back from Aberystwyth today so I’m going to borrow mum’s car and pick him up, save him getting the bus. I can give you a lift too.”

* * *

“Hi, Craig, wipe your feet. I found your note in the kitchen saying that you were heading into town with Mandy. Looks like you’ve been pretty busy shopping! Presumably you’ve no money left now…”

“Oh, these, mom? No, I didn’t buy anything expensive. Just a few small stocking fillers for people.”

“I was thinking more like those two packages you sneaked on to the chair over there. One from the jeweller’s on the High Street and the other one, the suit bag. I’m guessing you’ve bought yourself a suit. I know it’s your money, and you can spend it how you like, but you would have got better value if you’d waited for the sales after Christmas.”

“Wrong, mom, I hardly paid anything at all. Actually, Mandy spotted it and talked me into it. She was looking in the Salvation Army charity shop for an old dress she could cut up and modify for some school project or other when she saw this and said it looked about my size. Look, I’ll go get changed and show you.”

“You don’t have time, Craig, dinner is almost ready, you can show me afterwards.”

“Perfect timing, mom. I’ll only take a minute or two to change. You can start putting dinner out…”

Craig grabbed the bags off the chair and ran up the stairs as his mum shook her head and tracked the progress of his footfalls across the ceiling, then she went into the kitchen to serve up dinner. By the time she had carried two plates of beef casserole into the dining room and placed them on the table, a further rumble and then a sound like thunder indicated that Craig had changed and come back down the stairs, jumping the last few entirely.

“Craig, how many times have you been told not to run down the stairs? And most definitely not to jump the last few? You’ll either fall and break a leg or wear the carpet out or both. Not to mention…” She paused as she looked up and took in the young man stood before her. Craig was wearing a dinner jacket. A very elegant dinner jacket, well-tailored with silk lapels and a silk trim running down the side of the trousers.

“It’ll look better with a proper shirt, mom, but you said dinner was ready so I didn’t think I had time to change out of my T shirt. It’s a good fit, and hardly ever used. An absolute bargain! They only wanted seventeen pounds for it. It’s got a proper tailor’s label in it, from London, not from a chain store. I actually gave twenty pounds for it, it’s worth that much easily, and it is a charity shop after all. Probably cost hundreds when it was new. Like I said, it’s still nearly new. Mom, are you okay…?”

“I’m fine, Craig. And the T shirt matches very well, you might start a new trend. Shabby-chic I think they call it.”

“It’s just that, for a moment mum, you looked…”

“It’s okay, I was just thinking. You’re growing up fast, Craig. Perhaps sometimes me and your dad don’t always see that. Still think of you as our little boy rather than the young man you’ve become. Now, sit down and start your dinner before it goes cold. Given how smart you look, and the fact it’s nearly Christmas, I think we can swap the jug of water for one of those bottles of wine I have put by.”