Wills couldn’t wipe the grin from his face as he held her hands and looked her over, “CeCe, you look wonderful; what’s it been now, two years?”
“Just over two years now, Admiral.” She pointed at the third star on his collar, “I’m glad things have gotten moving on Archer lately.”
“Well, with Forest out of the way, literally, business has exploded. I just had to hire my fifth aide. How are things going for you since you got your star?”
“Quite well, sir; being your aide was perfect preparation for becoming Governor-General of Castelan.”
A subtle throat clearing diverted their attention to others waiting to greet Wills. Admiral Helt was standing at the near end of a group of familiar faces.
“Ellias, how are things going at the Academy Research School?”
The grinning Helt firmly shook hands with Wills, “The Sprint-class ship that brought you here is our first practical result from the isolator research program. The Weasel-Forest thing lit a fire under the theorists, and we are at the beginning of a program to peel isolator drive technology like an onion.”
Wills narrowed his eyes and got a serious expression on his face, “Has anyone made anything out of all of us seeing that stretching toward a black hole or whatever it was.”
“Well, the current general opinion is that we weren’t being stretched toward a black hole but being pulled out of the isolator field. The dominate thinking is that the Silverman had to peel us out of a fading isolator field instead of just turning it off. I still get a kick at parties after everyone has had a few drinks when I bring that up and watch the theorists just look at each other and then start scribbling indecipherable formulas on every flat surface. Meanwhile, us engineering types figured out how to change velocity while in isolator drive and we now have Sprint ships.”
Another audible indication of impatience interrupted the technical briefing, and Wills turned to greet the rest of the group. Stoker, Ames, Treelam, and Twisst were next in line.
Wills warmly greeted them all, “So, Roland, I heard that you and your team had gone your separate ways; how did you manage to get them all back together?”
Stoker stuck out a thumb in the direction of Helt, “Helt’s development of gravity compression warp of isolator fields has made many things possible. You used to be six months away from Earth when you were on Archer. Now you are three weeks away. The rest of us were closer, but this gathering would not have been practical without his work or the incident on Forest that triggered the research.”
Wills had to nod in agreement with that.
Victoria Treelam placed a hand on his arm, “Admiral, how is Hayes doing? Jonathon and I were hoping that he would be here with you.”
Wills smiled at that memory, “When he arrived back at Archer, he found out that he was the highest ranking officer on the planet since I promoted him to Lieutenant Commander, at least until Billings got back in the Melinda and reported that Forest had vanished. It seems that Billings had gathered a small fleet at Sandalwood and New Braxton. The first of them arrived eight days after we left.” Wills broke into a big grin, “I’ve talked to several of the bridge officers of some of those ships since then and the stories of blank faced, stunned incredulity are invariably similar. Billings organized a mass resonator sweep of the entire system before he committed to the conclusion that Forest had been ‘…removed without trace by agencies unknown’ as he put it in his report.
“Billings posted two Navy ships that were with him with orders to remain on station for as long as their supplies would allow and dismissed the civilian ships. By the time he got back to Archer, we were twelve days overdue and Hayes was having the Santana prepped for a return flight. It took another three months for word of our emergency message to reach Archer.”
He put one arm each around Roland and Victoria’s shoulders, “Since then, he married his girlfriend and has a little girl that he named Eva. He is still doing scouting work but has one of the new Sprint variants. He was away on a mission when my transport arrived from Earth.”
Another step down the line and he was facing Captain Amanda Kraigor.
Wills returned her smiling salute, “Amanda, I thought you were doing survey work for CeCe?”
“I was, and I am, sir, Admiral Helt needed people to fly his Sprint ships, and I now command the Sprint-class survey ship Runner. My first assignment is to transport you back to Archer and then report to Castelan.”
Wills was happy to hear that, “I’m looking forward to it already.”
While he had been talking to Amanda, he had seen the last two people in the group standing several meters away. There was something familiar--
He turned toward them and got his first good look at them. His eyebrows went up when he recognized Doctor Bernard Jordan. The problem was that he didn’t recognize the woman he was standing next to. As he approached, he had the thought that Jordan had divorced Katrin. The woman next to him was as tall as Katrin--he must like them tall--but had long, shiny black hair, wore a small amount of makeup, a soft, formfitting blouse, and a knee-length pleated skirt that was the current fashion.
He must have gotten tired of being chained to the bed and whipped every night.
He held out his hand to greet Doctor Jordan, “Doctor, I didn’t expect you to be here.”
Jordan looked up at the taller Wills, “Katrin and I have become humanity’s experts on xenopsychology and were on Earth for a series of lectures. When we heard that you and the rest of this group would be here for a reunion ceremony, we had to be part of it. So, here we are.”
We?
Wills shifted his eyes to the woman; intense, bright blue, smiling eyes
