Whooie!  We have a plan.  In fact, the assets of my generation at
this point seem to be one plan, out of two we need, one complete idiot, a
slew of oddball offspring, and some sundry people with swords and sorcery.

	I think we need a morale office or something.

	Nicholas has been abusing the other kids in some very
sophisticated ways.  I admire that in a sense; it means he at least takes
after his mom in brains.  But it is the wrong thing for him to do.  So the
other kids are going to be ignoring him for a while.  Except for the
really weak ones, who are authorized to either hit him or run away.

	I don't really like telling people to hit my kid, but on one side
he asked for it, and on the other, better kids his age than me or his mom. 
Much easier to get over.

	The other parents were pretty cool about it.  Ariana was her usual
smarmy self, but I put that down to bad disposition and being upset about
the way her boys are Nick's puppets.  Hee hee.  Shame to fix that part of
the situation.

	I'm going to be gone while this is all happening, fighting for the
Jewel in a high-tech Shadow.  That part doesn't strike me as a real good
scene.  I saw what tech weapons can do to people when I was on Alpha.  I
was wearing powered armor at the time, and my Black Legion platoon were
usually the ones doing the hurting.  But there was still a lot of it.

	Granted, the Black Legion were bad people.  We were the members of
the Seven Swords army who had lost faith in the realization of the dream
of the Seven Worlds, who had nothing left to live for.  So we fought with
complete courage - or rather complete lack of fear.  I wanted to live, but
I knew my armor would protect me long enough to teleport out, so it worked
out to the same thing.  Attack, attack, attack some more until the
ferocity of your assault has them on the run.  In the end, we always won,
simply because nobody could hold their position long enough to burn
through our armor before we engulfed and destroyed them.

	Those tactics don't work real well with hand weapons and no armor. 
Even for Amberites, lasers and particle beams can make a big mess.  That
bitch of Driscoll's taught us that, and we're going to be weaker going
into this one.  It will be touch and go.

	But I feel like I have enough mad stored up for Dara that I could
fight all day and all night even with a pencil-size hole through me. 
We'll see.  One way or another we're coming back with a chunk of Jewel.

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