Chapter 10

I’m from the government and I’m here to help I awoke sometime later, and I really didn’t care when it was. Apparently, Mary had won the contest to stay in bed with me this morning because I woke with her acting as my body pillow. She had one leg between mine and she was nestled into my chest as my arms encircled her.

When I moved, she leaned her head up and kissed me.

“Thank you for this morning,” she said quietly. “We all missed you terribly while you were gone and we were frightened just thinking about something happening to you.”

I just nodded and held her, realizing that no words were needed.

She soon disengaged and rolled out of bed.

“I’ll go get breakfast while you get dressed,” she said as she ran naked down the hall, grabbing a jump suit from a peg beside the door.

I headed to the restroom and took care of my morning routine before dressing. I then headed to the control center to catch up on what was happening after my little stunt yesterday.

Interestingly there was no mention of satellite skimming, nor of the explosion that followed. There was however a cryptic note that had arrived the day before from Space Command asking me to confirm my personal id frequency code.

In response, as we had been trained to do, I focused my antennae on their satellite and pulsed my frequency with my personal code.

A moment later, a video call pinged on my display.

I stared in shock at the face on the screen, as it was a ghost from my past, my commander from the Air Force, back when I was flying drones for them. After my sister had been killed in a senseless terrorist attack by the State, I had joined up and quickly became one of the better drone pilots, likely from all those video games I had played as a kid.

“Commander!” I exclaimed, “What are you doing on here?” I blurted out.

“Hey Tom,” he replied, “Good to see you too! I hear you are still doing some pretty incredible work for us. That was a nice bit of flying. I watched the radar and had a feeling I knew who was piloting that craft. Then they told me it was you!”

“Gotta pay the bills and you guys own the launch facilities for our resupply!” I replied sarcastically.

“About that,” Jim replied, going all serious, “We have a run scheduled for tomorrow and I was going to hop a ride to come see you if that was alright?”

“I’ll be here!” I replied. I wanted to ask why he was going to take a trip to Lunar Base but I knew better than to ask such a question over the channel, even a military grade encrypted one.

“Great. It’ll be good to catch up on old times!” Jim replied.

I nodded and after some closing pleasantries, we closed the connection. Now what to do about the women! Did I trust Jim enough to reveal their presence and how the State was involved in their plight? I stewed on this as I reviewed the processor logs and planned when it would need to be maintenances with the additional people in the hab.

Mary brought in our breakfast, gruel loaded with blueberries that had further ripened. They were so delicious and I realized they had been worth the trouble of getting them growing. Atop the grain gruel they were absolutely wonderful and my mouth watered at the taste of them.

“We are going to have a visitor in a couple of days,” I told her, knowing that she would coordinate with the others. I’m going to need you to hide in the greenhouse until I find out what Jim is wanting and whether I can still trust him.”

Mary nodded. “Whatever you need Master. We are all here for you.” She replied and bowed her head, her conditioning was indeed deep seated even if the drug was just a fantasy.

“We’ve got a few days, but please make sure that we’ve got the place cleaned up and ready for him, making sure that there are no signs that anyone besides me is living here.”

And then we ate. I was certain that Mary had questions, hell, I had concerns and questions. A Commander with Space Force doesn’t make house calls just to say hi and catch up with ‘old friends’. We weren’t even that close when we were in the service together. Long hours locked away in a control booth had a way of getting people talking, shooting the shit to pass the time. So, while we knew each other pretty well, I wouldn’t say we were close.

But despite the questions and concerns, Mary just ate her breakfast and when we were done, she gathered our utensils and carried them off to clean them and deliver the message to Karen and Xina who were already at work in the greenhouse.

With the trio of women managing the greenhouse and the daily chores around the habitat, I focused on two projects. First, I needed to do some maintenance on the processor and the power reactor. Then I needed to check the repairs on the ship and work on the salvaged solar arrays and other bits I had gathered on my skimming run.

The next couple of days passed quickly. I was able to integrate the additional solar panels into our array. I even managed to add the batteries from the State satellite. While most of it was scattered across the lunar surface in small bits and pieces, a sizable chunk of it had landed in a nearby crater. This chunk included the battery and after going over it thoroughly, I added it as well to our battery capacity.

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

Skimmer

Lorn Skye

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