“I found PO Edwards down on the strut platform. She was a mess and crying. So I gave her the full drill instructor treatment and then promoted her. She’s cleaning herself up now and we’ll be leaving in a bit. I need something else to do and town inspections looked like a good idea. For now, I want you to enter a promotion for Anaya Edwards to Petty Officer First-Class and change her floater pilot rating to first-class due to field requirement effective 0330 hours ship time this day.”
“Right, sir; doing that now; I hope you will be including me in some of those trips.”
“I will; you and a few others.”
Talking to CeCe kept him from having to regard the deadness around him until Edwards arrived, “Looks like my driver is here; I’ll call later.”
“Right, Admiral.”
He cut the connection and checked the time display, “Hmm, forty-one minutes; very good.”
Edwards came to attention and saluted. Wills returned the salute and began another critical inspection. Her ship suit wasn’t new, but it was clean and unwrinkled. He noted her hair had been pulled back and tucked under a work cap. Boots were shined, a slight touch of makeup, and . . . she smelled sort of like a pine tree. Not bad!
“I must admit I’m slightly surprised that you were able to find PO1 rank insignia on such short notice. They look new.”
“They are, sir; I’ve had them for over two years now; I believe that could be called either wishful thinking or astute planning depending on your point of view.”
“Let’s call it astute planning for now. Now, I would like you to pick a town for me to visit. I have no agenda in mind so I’ll go with whatever feels good to you.”
She turned her head to look at him, “Well…the Jordans were here a little before you arrived, sir; they said they were headed for H, I, and J.”
Wills thought about crossing paths with Katrin again. He looked down at Edwards, “By any chance did they come across you down here on their way out?”
She let out a long breath through an annoyed expression. “Yes, sir.” came out of clenched teeth.
Wills shouldn’t have, but he smiled anyway, “How did that go?”
“Like the worst part of basic training and Petty Officer Command School, sir.”
Wills nodded thoughtfully, “Yeah, she gives me flashbacks too; what say we track them down and see if we can annoy them?”
Now she smiled up at him, “Ready anytime you are, sir.”
#
The Gregory Falls floater--like all of the other floaters--had been retrofitted with a fan of powerful light panels that faced outward and down from the edge of the grav plate apron all around the ship and from under the nose. The relative delicacy of the installation required a severe limitation in top speed in the atmosphere but, for current operations, that did not present a great restriction. Besides, it was the only way to see the miles of ground between the clusters of bonfires and battery powered light systems that marked the towns along the rail system.
Navigation would not have been a problem without the lights; array imaging, inertial, and ranging from a beacon on the Weasel gave positioning information down to within centimeters. But, being able to see something always took precedence over using the cool gear that all of the floaters were equipped with.
They followed the rail line on the north side of the river; these towns had letter designations from A to X while those on the south side of the river were labeled 1 to 29. Wills watched the dead, leafless trees sweep by below them as they cruised up the tracks. Jordan’s floater had not been in H so they had flown by and were now looking at the fires of I.
“There it is, sir.”
Another Gregory Falls floater sat in a small open area near the center of town that was lit with two of the linear battery light panels from the Weasel. Wills figured it had once served as a park for the locals; now it was just a dead spot. The core of the town consisted of around fifty buildings constructed of wood, brick, and stone with no apparent rhyme or reason; the population was believed to be in the area of 4,000 with that many or a bit more in the surrounding farm communities.
Nothing moved on the streets, and Wills doubted that the glare of their lights had attracted any attention as they settled next to the other floater. Stepping down to the ground only firmed up his suspicion that their arrival went unnoticed. He and Edwards stood in the center of the street and looked at unattended bonfires at both ends of it and a glow that seemed to come out of every window they could see.
He swept a finger around the windows, “I detect a reluctance to turn out the lights.”
She gave him an embarrassed look, “Sir, I find myself leaving the lights on in my quarters while I just sit in my bunk with my arms around my knees and try to close my eyes.”
Wills gave her a sympathetic look, “I’m not that far gone, but I have to confess that this eternal night is really beginning to annoy me.”
Edwards pointed down the street, “Sir, I think there is some activity down there.”
Wills looked and saw the flickering of light on a large, lower level window that indicated movement inside, “Okay, we start there.”
The street was a hard surface just like the streets in all of the towns; Wills had come to the conclusion that it was some sort of do-it-yourself concrete equivalent with a wide mixture of aggregate showing on the surface. There were no walkways along the edges of the streets unless you counted the individual porch-like structures and stairs that some of the buildings had. The building they were approaching was what served as a general meeting place and
