Cooper's first day.

NaNo day 9. Still ahead of schedule and wordcount pace picking up a little after stalling last weekend. I've skipped ahead a few years and left myself notes to fill in later. I may go back to them during NaNo, I may not, but they'll get filled at some point.

[image error]"Welcome to the Gardiner Trust and to the Hangar, Major Cooper. Please proceed directly to main parking where you will be met by our representative." The voice was female but had that metal edge to it that led him to suspect it was a recording, or a computer generated response. If that's what it was, it was very good.

Cooper had started his career with the Royal Engineers, risen through the ranks quickly and then progressed through the SAS until an injury took him out of action for the best part of six months. That had resulted in his being shunted onto office duties, which he'd loathed with a passion. At forty five years old, Cooper felt his career in the army was over, he wanted to be active, not pushing paperwork around. The metal pins and plates that held his left leg together had meant he kept the leg but had also meant that he wasn't as fast or as fit as he needed to be. But his experience was exactly what Sage, and McKinnon, felt was needed for the newly established Hangar base of operations for the EarthLink project. Cooper was open minded, more flexible than most and had a reputation for getting things done. A chance meeting with McKinnon had put him in the frame when McKinnon retired and here he was, driving along a rough, badly maintained track across an apparently abandoned private airfield. The doors to the hangar were closed but one half slid smoothly open as he approached. He drove in and parked his tiny, bright red, Citroen C1 between the Landrover Defender covered in mud with a dented driver door and the scratched silver Renault Laguna. He shook his head at the state of the two vehicles, and he ran a sharp eye around the vast, empty space that was the inside of the old hangar building. There were crates and equipment stacked neatly on one side, a mezzanine walkway roughly a third of the way up the side walls. But it was all clean, neat and tidy.

"Major Cooper." The greeting came from behind the Defender. "Welcome." She held out a hand, and offered a strong, confident shake. "I'm Sage Gardiner, get in the car."

I've hit that NaNo thing of trying to fill the word count target while keeping the pace of the story. There are times that it slips out of balance so badly that it's just words for the sake of the day's target, and that's happening here. Sage will need extensive cutting before editing and even then it'll be a much more slim line version before this sees anyone's kindle. There are huge swathes of waffle in here that are really and truly totally unnecessary. But it's all hanging together much better and is looking more like a proper story with a story arc that follows through a series of incidents – it's almost a plot!

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