Robert Smith

In A Dockyard Apprentice's Story, Robert Smith ('Nige' to his mates) told of his formative years as a young trainee in Chatham Dockyard, where he trained as an engine fitter and turner. The Technical Progressman is set in the 1960s, taking up the story from the point where Bob transfers to the Weapons Section as a Technical Progressman. It is the second part of a trilogy covering the whole of Robert's working life with the Ministry of Defence. Far from being a dry catalogue of working experiences, the story is packed with amusing and offbeat anecdotes - as befits a young man growing up in the decade of pop groups, mini skirts and flower power.

The apprenticeship at Chatham Dockyard is the finest in the world - if you stick to it, the world's your oyster' Robert Smith's dad told his teenage son. When young Robert started there in 1958, the docks employed 6000 people on a two-mile- long site encompassing hundreds of workshops, offices and storehouses as well as its own police station, fire service, medical centre, technical college and telephone exchange. There were three ship-refitting basins and eight main docks. Yet less than 30 years later Chatham Dockyard had effectively closed, with catastrophic consequences to the local economy. Robert did stick to his apprenticeship, and he has never regretted it. Along with the studying and the hard work there were plenty of good times, with laughter and practical jokes, scrapes with motorbikes and cars, encounters with extraordinary characters and moments of excitement - and frustration - with the opposite sex.

The Dark King's power is growing. Jack Lancaster's simple life is thrown into upheaval when he meets a mysterious woman named Ariana. Forced to flee ahead of the monsters that pursue her, he finds himself drawn into her quest to find the only thing in Aivin that can contend with the Dark King. A demon with the power to destroy worlds. When Jack becomes magically linked to the volatile creature, he has no choice but to seek out the demon's stolen power if they are to defeat the Dark King. But they are not the only ones searching.