Second Chances (72 page)

“Besides, we can always make more,” Cassie said, looking at Mitch. “Right?”

He nodded. “That's the plan. But we're low on material. But with the compact track loaders and a steady supply of fuel hopefully the raw ore produced will double within a month. Or better,” he said.

“Allowing us to make more compact track loaders or other stuff,” Anne said nodding. “Okay, gotcha.”

“It's the chicken and the egg thing. All a balancing act. We need the compact track loaders to get production up, but we need fuel for it. We need the materials to make the fuel containers, and we need the materials for other stuff,” Mitch sighed. “For a while it's been a pain in the ass getting material for everyone. We're short on a lot of rare materials. Aluminum hasn't been a problem since we've recycled a lot, but it soon will be since we've depleted that stockpile. I'm hoping contact with the other communities will solve that,” he said.

“We'll see,” Cassie said doubtfully. “Somehow I doubt people are going to be interested in digging up some rare metal or something when they are trying to survive,” she said.

“Unfortunately true,” Sandra sighed. “Which reminds me,” she turned to Mitch as she shook her hair out and finger combed it into some sense of order. “Tina called me this morning; she wants a full infirmary. She's after me to get one of those scanners you've got, more med supplies, and well, more equipment.”

Mitch sighed. “Which means more stuff for surgical steel, copper, zinc, and other materials for casings and electronics...”

“We get it,” Janet said with a hand wave. “Oh, sorry lovey,” she said when she disturbed the baby. She went back to rocking her little boy.

“Is that...where's Tucker?” Sandra asked, looking around.

“Tucked out,” Cassie said. He fell asleep while you were having fun,” she said. “So his daddy carried him over to Frances and the daycare.”

“Oh,” Sandra said, sounding disappointed.

“Hey Mitch! What about that truck drive!” Sean said, coming into the doorway. Other kids followed behind him. “We've got the chores done,” he said.

“Okay,” Mitch sighed, struggling to get out from under his wife. She grinned at him, firmly remaining seated. “Um, help?”

“I demand a kiss for ransom,” she said, grinning. He chuckled and kissed her as he got out from under her. She tried to keep her advantage, but the momentary distraction of the kiss let him get to his feet. She wrapped her arms around him, but he caught her hands and kissed them, then her again. “Later lover,” he teased.

“Right,” she said.

“And I'm counting down the days until it's your turn,” he growled. She squeaked as he gave her a look then blushed as Janet and the other ladies chuckled. Mitch got to Sean and waved them on. “Revenge will be mine eventually...even if I have to go through proxy,” he said.

“Don't you dare!” She said, eyes flaring wide.

He chuckled, dodging a swat. “Come on brat pack, who's first?” he asked. Sean and the others shot their hands up. He snorted. “We'll figure it out when we get there. But no one tells Lisa or we're all dead meat,” he said down the hall.

Anne shook her head as the cavalcade of kids departed. “You two seem to be getting along well,” she said.

“Too well,” Cassie mock growled. “They are worse than teenagers I'm telling you!” she complained.

“It takes one to know one,” her mother mocked, smiling sweetly at her.

“Yeah well...” Cassie said, shaking her head.

“Well, we're good for the ice cream. Maggie's been busy covering the spring births. We've got tons of dairy products now, enough to export. Jeff and Walt have been busy; I think the two kids are getting about four hours of sleep a night!” Anne complained.

“They are resilient,” Cassie said. “They'll bounce back.”

“Yeah well, if not for the other help they'd drop. I heard Ducky's lending a hand with the more difficult cases,” Janet interjected.

“Good for him,” Sandra murmured. She'd lent a brief hand with a heffer with a twisted uterus that morning. It had been a pain in the...she shook her head. And messy. But they'd gotten it sorted out and the calf had even been alive. Maggie told her that was rare; normally the calf was dead by the time they got it untwisted.

“You seem more energetic. I mean...” Anne shook her head. “I had all I could do to keep my eyes open the first couple of days.”

“I've been through a pregnancy before,” Sandra said. She smiled at Cassie. Her daughter wrinkled her nose at her. “It gets easier the second time around. Believe me, after her I was sore and walking bow legged. All I wanted to do was get pampered and bond with her. And she was up every hour or two to be fed,” she shook her head.

“I was nervous,” Janet said. Anne nodded.

“Yeah, I forgot the pain and a few things, and yeah, I'm older, but I'm not as nervous. Again, second time around. I'm not sure if it is more than that. I do know Tucker is different. He's a week old and already sleeping for four or more hours a night. He eats a lot, and he's putting on weight. I thought he was constipated but he's just packing it on and developing faster than he should,” Sandra admitted. “Like all the other native born kids.”

“Yeah,” Janet said. “I remember my niece and nephew. They took months to get out of the infant stage. These little tykes seem eager to grow up too fast,” she said.

“I'm not sure what's going on, or if we can do anything about it, if we even want to,” Sandra said. “I'm just glad we're having shorter pregnancies. Their development will have to be closely monitored though.”

“Agreed,” Anne said.

“So what else is going on?” Sandra asked.

“Jacklynn's got a plan. When this compact track loader is done, I mean the one for Evan in East Village, she wants to take a couple of the planes and scout east while Sam works his way over there to deliver it,” Anne said, looking at Sandra. “She wants Sam to bring in a couple tanks of fuel too.”

“I don't know if Mitch will go for it,” Sandra said thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she said, shrugging. She rightly decided that Anne had been put up to the task of priming the pump for the proposal by Jacklynn to see what Mitch would say. She was pretty sure he'd go for it; he wanted to find the other communities. They all did.

Mitch was big on getting the human communities into contact with one another. She agreed, though she wondered if everyone shared his viewpoints. Probably not, which would be interesting. She wasn't sure if she was looking forward to being a flying doctor. That bothered her a bit; too much could go wrong in the air. She blinked when she realized Anne was still talking.

“Candy said once they have the compact track loaders done and a set of attachments for each, Mitch wants them to make more aircraft and vehicles with the plastics and carbon fiber the textile mills and plastic extruders are churning out. I think she said something about a couple more drones too if they can swing the electronics,” Anne said wrinkling her nose.

“I thought they were going to make more bots?” Cassie asked. Anne looked at her. “Arby told me that,” she mumbled, citing her source.

“That's Arby's wishful thinking right now,” Anne said with a snort. “We've got enough people. And no,” she held up a hand, “Before he or you or anyone else says anything, no we're not making bots for export right now. The electronics are too complex. That is straight from Mitch,” she warned. Cassie closed her mouth and then nodded. “We're still not there on electronics,” Anne explained.

“But we're getting there on other things,” Cassie said. Anne nodded. “Food for instance,” Cassie half asked, half said.

Anne smiled. “Ivan's got the first crops up. He said he may even do an early harvest next week if they keep growing the way they are growing,” Anne said. “Between him and Hejira we should be good for replacing what we've sent in the convoys and sent to the Mountain Village. Give us two more harvests, and we'll be in the black for the rest of the year.”

“Good,” Cassie said with a nod. “That means I can have an extra helping of ice cream too,” she said smugly.

“I'm going to have a scoop on the Dutch apple pie I baked this morning with Jean,” Janet said. Anne and Sandra immediately demanded a slice as well. The ladies took off to rescue the pie from the fridge before some scalawag found it and made off with it. Knowing Mitch as they did, he'd head to the kitchen to butter the kids up after they were done with the rides.

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

With the regular runs between Copper Town and Capital Base under control by Jamal and Angie, Jacklynn decided to expand her theater of operations. Since Mitch didn't want to build larger cargo aircraft just yet and heading west had come up dry, she hit upon another idea.

Two planes, both carbon fiber Cessna 400 models, and a couple medium-sized drones were flown to the southeast to stage through the abandoned village's landing field to refuel by Sam's road crew, then they flew on to East Village. Once in East Jacklynn and Giles staged drones from there with a minimum crew of locals for support. The drones spiraled out as the road crews finally arrived in East Village with their crude dirt road.

Over the course of a month, they found several abandoned drop sites along with three other towns in the area. The northern most town they discovered was smack dab in the middle of the savannah. Jacklynn couldn't understand how the people had survived there for so long. They'd taken to making their homes from sod like the sod busters during America's mid-west colonization time period. She managed a round trip flight there with Evan and found the community of forty people was made up of Asians from Malaysia, Thailand and other countries in that part of the Earth. Only a few spoke English. They were glad for the contact. Evan promised to send a road crew out with trade goods as soon as possible.

The second town they found was the same distance away from East as the Asian village, but southeast of them around the bend of what Evan was now calling a bay or sea. When they went there they found the people were polite and from the American Midwest. Hardy folk like the Asians, they had set up in the savannah but had mixed wood, sod, and rock to form a fortress. They had a lot of grain and were eager to trade it for other goods.

Once they were certain there were no other communities in the area, Jacklynn followed Sam's crew southeast around the bay. Sam planned on running a road to each of the communities, just leveling and mapping a dirt road for now. Once they entered the American village, they paused to get acquainted.

The people there were polite, but they were all sod busting farm folk. They were hardy; all farmers and hard workers ready and a bit eager to make contact. Jacklynn had Giles fly two injured people to East Village to be staged for a trip to Capital Base and the infirmary there.

Sam's crew expanded on the wind turbines the people in the village had cobbled up. They had a few solar panels; at least one family had come from Greensburg, Kansas. He set up a long range radio transmitter on a hill nearby so they could contact East Village.

The village was small; they had dug into a steep hillside and surrounded the perimeter with a palisade wall of rock, metal and wood. Outside that was a moat. They'd used the last of their fuel to cut moats around the perimeters of their farms and pastures.

What surprised Jacklynn was how hardy the people were and adaptive. They had embraced domesticating the local dinosaurs. The aliens were left alone; it was reasoned by the Dawsons that they were poisonous. Clay Dawson was the local leader; his wife Ema was a nurse and their only medic. She spent a lot of time on the radio talking with Doctor Ventura in East Village as well as Claudia, East's domestic manager.

Ema seemed the nervous sort; she was rather pathetically grateful for the contract with the other communities. Apparently she had been after her husband Clay and some of the others in their community to pull up stakes and relocate to a more defensible location in the mountains just east of them. Clay, however, had flat out refused to do so and resisted all talk of folding in with one of the other communities. “Here we are, here we stay. This is our home,” he said adamantly, cutting off further discussion.

Once the novelty settled down and people began to settle down into their normal routine, Jacklynn took the plane up for a search of the area. She didn't have long; Sam was planning on returning to base the following day. It sucked, but she had to follow. He had her supply of fuel.

In the air she spotted the usual terrasaurs and four-winged things, along with a few alien fliers she didn't have time to recognize before they were out of sight range. But just before she was about to turn back north she saw a tiny dot. In the clear afternoon air, the dot resolved itself into a familiar shape. She eagerly scanned the guard channels and tried to make contact.

They connected with Dunn's group; it was an ironic meeting up in the air between aircraft. They waggled their wings, then flew in formation talking and gesturing between aircraft for a few minutes. Jacklynn had a bit of trouble understanding Jesus Salazar, but she liked Irma's quick wit. Unfortunately, they couldn't talk for long due to their fuel situation. They did promise to try again when the weather permitted a week later.

When the Salazar pair returned they were ecstatic and shared the news of the contact with the community. Irma whooped, shouting it from the top of the plane, getting people to cheer in response. Colonel Dunn was at first put out over being found first, but at least his people didn't stupidly lead them back to base. They did trade radio frequencies though in their excited chatter.