Second Chances (58 page)

Damn, he's a horrible dancer. Got her to laugh though.

Later in their quarters they slow danced. “This is more my speed anyway,” he said softly, nuzzling her hair with his cheek.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Me too,” she murmured huskily, smiling.

“Why don't we just dance,” he crooned softly.

She grinned. “I know how that video ends too,” she said, stepping back and giving him a shove. When he fell with a bounce on the bed she immediately pounced on him, pinning him with her body and giving him a hungry kiss. His hand reached up to stroke her hair gently. They made out for a little while before they took a breather.

“Not much of a honeymoon,” Sandra mock grumped, rubbing her tired and achy feet. He'd given her a foot rub among other things during the reception, but it would still be a day or so before her feet felt anything like normal. Still, it felt good to let her hair down and party. “The least you could do is take me somewhere tropical,” she said.

“Right now everything that walks, crawls and bites headed south for the winter or most of them. You really want to sit out on a beach nude with a raptor pack around?” Mitch asked. “We could ask them to rub the lotion on you...” he said, reaching for her thighs.

“Pass!” She said, fending his hands off with a light slap. She pursed her lips at him, eyes narrowed in annoyance at his mock innocent expression. “Spoil sport. Ruining a woman's fantasy,” she said in mock reproachful, not quite ready to let him off the hook. “Wait,
nude
?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

He chuckled, ducking his head. “Now that's
my
fantasy, dear,” he said, grinning. “I guess we'll have to settle for a ski chalet honeymoon. A fireplace, some hot beverage and a lot of snuggle time,” he said, voice softening into a lilting spell.

“Oh, I like that,” she purred, wrapping her arms around him.

He chuckled. “I thought you might.”

“You're still not off the hook on the honeymoon though,” she warned him, holding him off.

“Yes, dear,” he sighed.

“Good boy. I'll hold you to it,” she said, smiling sweetly as they kissed. “Now,” she said, taking his tie off. She went behind him with it and used it as a blindfold. “You stay here, and I'll be back with my gift,” she said wickedly in his ear. He grinned as she ran her hands over his chest, unbuttoning a few buttons, then holding his chin to kiss him long and hungrily.

“It seems like I'm not the only one looking forward to this,” he murmured.

“Damn straight. You better keep your end up buster,” she growled in his ear, then she was gone. He heard her pad to the bathroom door, then close it with a click. He sat back on his elbows thinking all was right with the world.

Chapter 31

A slow melt during a warm week indicated spring was getting ever closer. Moisture in the casing of solar panel deteriorated a few, dropping their efficiency or shorting them out altogether. Candy led an effort to replace the panels. Brian narrowed down the panels that had their weather stripping breached. Sam brought the panels in to the factory where they did a quick check to see what had gone wrong, then fed the panels into the recycler.

Candy managed to churn out seventeen replacement panels for the thirty-two that were recycled. She passed these on to Sam who installed them with Fresnel lenses and extra caulk.

Their hopes of an early spring were dashed when they were hammered by a series of blizzards once more just as he wrapped up installing the seventeenth panel. The moisture in the solar panels he hadn't gotten around to removing froze and expanded during the cold, bursting them and destroying them. It was a serious issue they had to deal with, a 2 percent drop in the base's power budget.

To compensate the Lings finally finished their side project. They hooked up treadmills and other gym equipment with alternators they had salvaged or built fresh. They even rigged a set of treadmills for the animals to exercise on as well. That made Maggie happy; she'd been concerned about the animals. “When you designed and built the barns you should have planned on an interior exercise area,” she told Mitch in one of their meetings.

Mitch shrugged. “I had planned on an exterior one, Mags. You know, outside? Fresh air, sunlight, you know, pastures? I had guessed about the snow but even I didn't know it would be this bad,” he said. She grunted but shook her head. He knew she'd tease him about it and probably nag him the rest of the year for better facilities. Since they were planning on making them in the spring and summer, that was a given.

“Did you put them in the plans you drew up with Vance?” he asked, cocking his head first to her and then to Vance. Vance shrugged.

“Um...”

“Uh? Uh?” Mitch digged, now glad the shoe was on the other foot.

She frowned ferociously. “Oh shut up,” she grumbled quietly. The others chuckled. Mitch smiled. She waved a hand. “Okay, so we've got to rework the design. Again,” she sighed, giving Vance a look. He nodded.

“Fortunately the lights and heaters Mitch had brought were LED or florescent, the most efficient systems out there.” Vance said. “So we're not losing too much energy. We've got a major drain with the chemical works and factories,” he said looking at Candy and then to Bob. Both shrugged. “And the greenhouses,” he added, giving Hejira a look. She shrugged as well. “But things are looking up.”

Mitch nodded. When he and his people back on Earth had designed the base he'd gone modular, but he'd gone big. He hadn't squandered on quality; everything from the pumps to the wiring was high end. Heat was pulled from the PC room, ducted to the home areas or vented if it wasn't needed. There was even a method to capture energy from the heat if needed. It was all very efficient.

Life had slowly returned to normal in the base. Bob had decided to stay on and be the regular sprayer and leader of the chemical department. He had dabbled in chemistry in high school and college before he'd settled on his pest control career. “I can't do much to curtail power. We need it for everything going on. The chemical works are all outside after all; keeping everything warm so the pipes don't freeze is a pain in the ass,” he said, making a face. Mitch nodded.

“Which reminds me,” Bob said, turning to face Mitch. “Having them all clustered like that is just asking for trouble. We need to separate it into blocks and put some space between some of those modules. And space between them and the base. For stuff like the ammonia and nitrate plant, I suggest far out,” he said. “Preferably with a berm between us and it just in case,” he urged.

“Nothing's happened yet,” Mitch said. He'd clustered everything together so it was out of the way and so they could feed one system after another without having to pipe them far. It had cut down on the pumps and equipment needed. Hell, it had cut down on the cables needed to power the modules.

“Yet,
” Bob said. “Let's not push our luck shall we? If that goes up it could cause a chain reaction and take the
entire
plant and the surrounding area with it.”

Mitch frowned thoughtfully and then nodded in reluctant agreement. “All right. It'll damage our efficiency, but I suppose more safety wouldn't hurt. Getting the power cables for it...” he shook his head.

“We'll be tripping over them too. We'll have to bury them. And run roads or something out to each to transport the chemicals in tankers,” Vance said. “That's going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Not to mention shutting down, draining the system, and then moving them,” Bob said. “I get that. Oh, and pouring new concrete pads for each,” he said, looking at Sam. Sam made a show of sighing but he nodded in understanding. “But it needs to be done.”

“Agreed,” Janet said, giving Mitch a look. Mitch spread his fingers indicating he wasn't going to argue the point.

Bob had also taken over the planning of the fuel works too. He researched “hydration” and experimented with adding water to the ethylene to get ethanol. “It's not perfect but it's great for the flex fuel vehicles,” Bob said, holding up a beaker of the fuel he'd had on the floor next to his chair. “But ethanol is better than straight ethylene and it stores easier than methane. We can also export it to the other communities,” he said, eyes lighting.

“Whatever works,” Janet said with a smile. “I don't think we'll use a lot here. Mitch has set us up with hybrid engines, right?” she asked, looking from Mitch to Lisa and then to Paul and Sam. All four people nodded. “So, export for the most part,” she said smugly.

“Which means making tanker trucks to get it from point A to B. And that means better roads too,” Sam said. He turned to Mitch. “I've looked into your idea of a railroad. I think it's a bit premature considering each community is so small and only exporting so much. Maybe between here and Iron Village but even then...” he shook his head.

“I liked the monorail, but I thought about it too,” Vance said. “One clumsy sauropod or one of the Leviathans and...”

Mitch winced.

“Yeah, I'm not feeling it either,” Bob said, sitting back and putting the beaker down beside him. He placed his hands in his lap and twiddled his thumbs looking expectantly at Mitch.

“I think we're going to have to stick to the Australian and New Zealand model for now. Dirt and gravel roads, concrete where we can manage it. Bush planes too,” Mitch said slowly, nodding to Jacklynn. She nodded back. “I'm not thrilled about Paul and others being out in a convoy when a dino or alien predator pack decides to thin the herd though,” he said.

“Just imagine what they'd do to a train,” Paul said. “I have. Even with a cow catcher it's way too easy to derail a train. Throw in weather bending the rails, the occasional earthquake and it's a recipe for disaster,” he said.

“I get you. I get you,” Mitch said, surrendering. He turned to Sandra. “Moving on, how are your patients doing?”

She frowned and then took a sip of coffee. “Well, Arby and Gina are the only two still in intensive care. Everyone else I've kicked out, even the rehab people.”

“Did that pig stuff work?” Maggie asked.

“Pig stuff?”

“ECM,” Sandra explained. “Extracellular Matrix powder not something you soldiers dreamed up,” she mock teased, wrinkling her nose at the chief. “It's a powder made from the cellular matrix from pigs. We get the cells out and then grind it up and use it to treat wounds. If we get it in before the tissue scars and throw in a bit of stem cells for good measure, we have a very good chance of better healing. Even limited regeneration,” she explained to Bob and the others.

“I've heard of it,” the chief said, nodding. “I had a buddy who lost a chunk of his right thigh to an IED. They put that stuff and stem cells in the muscles to regrow it. It wasn't a miracle cure but he regained a lot of the muscle.”

“I heard a guy regrew his finger,” Paul said thoughtfully.

“The finger tips. The story about his regrowing his entire distal phalanx was an exaggeration,” Sandra replied. “It's great for muscles and skin. And of course we have the organ cloning,” she said, looking at Mitch. “I'm still on the fence about using it,” she said.

He shrugged. “Use the tools you have, Doc, even the experimental ones. We may need them in a critical situation later. Getting comfortable with them and learning their limits is important,” he said. She nodded.

“Okay, moving on,” Janet urged, looking at her tablet. “Supplies...”

------*------

While the base had meandered on all winter, Lisa and the factory crews had finished constructing all of the unassembled vehicles and tested them out briefly in between an emergency project. They had converted some of the trailers into dump truck trailers or fuel trailers, then Paul parked them for later delivery.

When all that was done they moved on to making new vehicles from aluminum and carbon fiber. Getting the molds to work had been a bit of a trial and error process, but Tao had gotten the right release agent to work eventually. After that they were churning out parts almost faster than the automated carbon fiber textile mill could churn out rolls of material. They completed four aircraft, six snowmobiles and four dune buggies in short runs until they ran out of material and parts.

“Now what?” Lisa asked, looking at Mitch.

“Take a break. Give everyone the day, hell, the weekend off,” Mitch said, shaking his head. They'd done wonders in his eyes, working daily on the various projects. “We can't do anything more until we get more chemicals for the release agents, resin and graphite for the carbon fiber,” he said.

“Not to mention the aluminum,” Brian said. Mitch looked at him. The teen shrugged. “We've gone through our entire stockpile.”

“Wow.”

“So you are just going to hand them over to the other communities?” Lisa demanded, hands on her hips. “And parts too? Fuel I suppose?”

“We'll see. I'd like to trade for them so we can make more,” Mitch said.

She eyed him. “You'd better,” she growled. He snorted. Apparently assembling the vehicles had been fun for her. He nodded.

------*------

Mitch nodded in passing to Bob and his understudy Giles as they worked their way along the corridors spraying. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Bob said in passing. Giles grinned at Mitch then went on behind his mentor. Mitch snorted and moved on.