Brad is in class looking very smug with himself and Kate sees the smirk on his face. When she sits down beside Nikki, her friend asks her for the umpteenth time that morning if she is ok. Kate decides to reply in the one way Nikki will understand.
"Nikki, if you ask me one more time if I am ok, I will get you a toothbrush and find a toilet somewhere for you to clean," which causes them both to start giggling. As Mike hears the two of them, he feels a little less stressed about Kate.
Brad sits there grinning for most of the morning's class. At lunch Kate starts to wonder why her classmates are giving her interesting looks, Nikki just tells her to ignore it and it most likely about being pulled from class yesterday.
Once everyone is back in class, Mike and Bill decide they will spent the afternoon trying to get the students to think on their feet more.
"Right class, you're out in the middle of the ocean, on your way to a location. The XO has the ship and you've just arrive on the bridge when the boat strikes something in the water; what would be the first move?" Mike asks the class, some people put their hands up.
"Smith?"
"Stop engines."
"Yes, but you don't do that straight away," Mike says. Kate sits there with Nikki, both with smirks on their faces and whispering to each other, which doesn't go unnoticed by Bill.
"Ok, anyone else?"
"Caetano, McGregor, care to share your views on this?" asks Bill.
"Of course we shall, first of all the Captain takes back control of the ship. Then he would tell the person at the helm to go full astern both engines and ask for depth and radar checks. If they come back clear you've then hit the invisible man, so you then would stop both engines," comes from Kate.
"Your Navigator, if you have one, should then mark the location down on the map; if not the navigator then the XO or someone else should do it," replies Nikki. They both have smug looks on their faces. Mike, who is sitting down at the desk, whispers under his breath God help us which Bill hears and smiles at.
"Then, Sir, you would get the diver who is on watch to suit up and check out what it is that you have hit, while Chefo complains about someone stopping the ship without asking for his permission before doing it," replies Kate, trying not to giggle, but as Nikki can't stop herself from laughing, she can't help but join in.
"One day Nikki, I will get in ahead of you," Mike says.
"Yeah, in your dreams, Sir. I was taught by the best in the business, you know," she replies. And don't I know it, Mike says under his breath, once he has turned away from the class in front of him.
Bill then steps in, giving Mike some breathing space and he runs through some scenarios with the class. Kate and Nikki can't help themselves with their tandem answers to questions. Brad, though, is not liking how these two seem to know far more than the rest of the group, and how they smugly answer the questions without giving the others a chance first.
At the end of class, Bill informs the group that tomorrow they are going to be going out on the training patrol boat to practise, and that they are all to be ready to leave by 0500.
The next few days go by quickly and before Mike and Kate know it is Thursday. They finish class and are greeted by Jarrod, who informs them that the lawyer is here to do one final go over before tomorrow's hearing.
Bill, Phil, Nikki and Jarrod have all noticed a slight change in both of them. Nothing major, but they seem a tad more closed up than they normally are. Jarrod puts it down to the hearing tomorrow, but the others have no idea why.
Friday arrives and they go about their normal morning routine. They both run with the rest of the class, have breakfast with them and then they head to the conference room. They meet up with Jarrod and they talk through a few things before the lawyer turns up at nine.
In the classroom, Brad notices the Kate and Mike are both missing from class and that nothing is said about where they are.
Up in Cairns, Steve, Maxine and a few others are getting ready for the conference call to HMAS Watson.
The morning starts off fairly routine, 1000 hours rolls around and the hearing starts out ok. Simple questions being answered without too much worry.
Then the topic comes up as to why Maxine provided Kate with the information Mike gave Fleet Command. Maxine's response was, of course, to protect Mike from Kate, who she felt was just using him and still thinks that way to a degree. She kept saying it was to protect Mike's career so she felt Kate needed to know.
When she is asked why she thinks Mike needs protecting from Kate, she goes into detail. She explains that Kate's childhood was troubled and she was often left alone at home to fend for herself. She was sometimes hit by her mother's boyfriends, which a couple of times needed her to be seen by a doctor the following day for wounds sustained in those incidents. She mentions how Kate has always been a loner and at ADFA never mixed with others. Maxine suggests that Kate seduced Mike when he was instructing the Navigation course ten years ago to make sure she got full marks, using the skills she had seen her mother using with men to get what she wants. This comment irritates Mike. How can she say that about Kate, she is not like that. He thinks to himself. Then she drops the bombshell of Kate's abortion, claiming Mike did know about it and that because he would not support her she had no choice, and that she did it to make sure she could keep hold of him.
Steve notices Mike walking around, then he sees Kate looking at her hands. He has a feeling she is hiding her face so they can't see how hurt she is by what Maxine has said. He is also surprised at how well control Mike is being with all of this. He was expecting some sort of outburst from him over this, but so far he has managed not to.
Maxine then tries to say the only reason Kate is still working in Cairns is because she has been sleeping with Mike since she arrived there. The look of shock and horror on Mike and Kate's faces tells Steve that it is not true. She also admits that over the last 18 months she has watched how they interact with each other. She spied on them and found they spend a lot of time together outside of work, and that Kate was blackmailing Mike into resigning, just to get her way and her promotion, which Maxine says she does not deserve.
For Steve, that gives him something to go on regarding Kate's promotion forms not getting to him. She never sent them.
Then Maxine brings up Ryan, and how Kate is getting in the way of them being a family.
Jarrod and Kate both hear Mike say a few curse words about that, but only just. Kate goes and talks to him, asks him to relax to calm down and not let it get to him. Everyone watches on at how Kate moves to him and as she is whispering to him, they see him starting to relax some.
All this takes about two hours to go through in detail from Maxine's side of things. Steve decides to call a lunch break and that they will come back in 30 minutes to resume with Mike and Kate's side of things.
Out on the rest of the base, Brad is sitting down with his lunch he pulls out his mobile and clicks a few buttons, he then presses one more button with a smirk on his face. Princess Perfect is going down, there is no way she can't say nothing is going on between her and Commander Flynn now.
Several phones beep around the base, people check and open to view what has been sent, they then start talking about what they have been sent.
Lunch is brought into the four members in the conference room. They lawyer asks a few more question to Mike and Kate.
He finds out that when Kate first came on board Hammersley they were both in semi shock to see each other, and that about a year later Kate started a relationship with Captain Jim Roth, who had sadly been killed the line of duty not so long ago. They go through a few more details about things that Maxine had brought up.
It does not take long and they are back with the video conference.
It is now time to hear their side of things, Mike and Kate decide to use the lawyer to speak for them.
The lawyer confirms that Kate did not have the best of upbringing as a child once her mother moved from England to Australia. He informs them that Kate worked hard at school to achieve good grades, this was also present in her work at ADFA. She never socialised because she was always reading the books, working on what she needed to learn to be an officer in the RAN, and that she has goals on where she wants to be. He confirms that Kate did sustain injuries by her mother's partners, and that she never let it get her down, instead she decided that she had to be strong and make sure she had a better life as an adult than her mother.
He then goes on to explain the few months that she was here at HMAS Watson on the navigation course with Mike. How they would go see each other, how both felt something they never felt before but were also worried about the rules and regulations if they were caught. When Mike left to return to Cairns to command Hammersley, Kate did not know at the time she was pregnant. It was about two weeks later when she started to wonder if she was when her monthly cycle was overdue, and also the fact she had been sick for the last two weeks. She went and got herself check by a naval doctor and found out she was. She thought about contacting Mike about it but she decided on her own that she did not want Mike to lose his job over her own mistake, so she did the only thing she though was right at the time and had the abortion. She thought about contacting him and informing him of what she was doing, and then even after she had it done, but she could not bring herself to do it for a number of personal reasons which are semi addressed in the email that was found in her drafts folder. The whole time he is talking about this, Mike and Kate are sitting side by side, his hand interlocked with hers.
Then there is a knock on the door at HMAS Watson's room. Jarrod opens the door and the officer on the other side whispers something into his ear. Jarrod whispers something in return and does not look impressed as he walks back to his seat, shaking his head.
The lawyer then goes on to say how until Kate stepped back on Hammersley that neither one of them had spoken, emailed or had any type of contact with each other since the day Mike left. Neither of them were sure what to do about how they felt for the other; both scared to love the other because of the rules in place.
Next the lawyer moves on to the events of the last six months. He talks about how Mike chose on his own accord to resign, and that even when things were not great between Kate and himself he was still prepared to leave, because he wanted more from his life. He wants to have a family, and had found that working for the Navy and trying to have a relationship just did not work well. Kate had no influence in the matter and it was Kate that informed Mike that he was reassigned to Hammersley for another twelve months, and that Maxine had not informed him of this important bit of information. He also explains how Maxine's ex-husband arrives back and he finds out that Ryan is not merely Mike's godson is, in fact, his son.
He goes on to say that Maxine is jealous that Mike no longer has the same feelings for her that he once had when they were in ADFA together, and that she was using her position to make sure any person who got to close to him was warned off in some manner.
He talks for a good three hours, by the time he had said everything he wanted to say about both Mike and Kate, and how they had been. Including how ten years ago was the only time Mike has broken the rules set in place by the navy, he has often used the rules to the full extent, even going as far as making sure he can do what is needed without breaking them; he has used irregular techniques and so-called cowboy antics to get the results.
Steve then asks questions about some of the emails he has. Maxine is not impressed that he has been through them, but when he informs them that Mike and Kate happily allowed them to go through their emails, she is even more pissed off. Maxine discreetly gets her phone out and sends a text to Mike.
Mike's phone vibrates in his pocket and he has a puzzled look on his face he pulls it out in front of everyone. He looks at the screen and it lights up with 'Maxine', he shows it to Kate. When he opens it, they are both shocked by what she has sent.