Chapter 2: Bon Voyage

Three days later.

Time: Tuesday, May 14, 2047 8:44 AM twelve km north of Ft. Hood, Texas

Megan stood quietly watching Little Thunder from an adjacent stall. The mare was the finest Morgan horse Megan had ever seen and was about to produce her first foal. The birthing so far had gone without a hitch, and Megan was very pleased with the performance of her assistant Private Collins. Megan had dropped into a role of quiet observer almost an hour ago.

Her mind drifted back to the weekend. While she was at work on Sunday, Alvaro's party had apparently left the base and there was no indication they were ever coming back. Megan had spent the last two days working to convince herself that Saturday night was exactly what she had called it, one enchanting evening, nothing less and nothing more. "But this was different," a small voice inside her head insisted. Megan shook her head and took a deep breath. The voice was quieter now than yesterday, and soon it would be silent.

"Did I do something wrong Ma'am?"

"Huh?" Megan looked at the Private. "No, not at all. You're doing a fantastic job Derrick, flawless. I'm very proud of you." She paused for a moment. "I was just day dreaming about something else."

Derrick nodded and got back to the mare. "Won't be long now, a half-hour maybe."

Megan studied the mare and nodded. "I think you're right." She took another deep breath and looked around the barn. They had ample light. The large barn doors faced due east, and the morning sun was streaming directly in now. Megan would have wished it to be a few degrees cooler for the mare, given how humid the air was, but conditions weren't bad. She wondered if she should trust Derrick with the birthing and get back to her rounds.

"But it was different, and you know it was!" the soft internal voice persisted. "Love is so rare..."

"Shut up!" Megan's mind snapped at the voice. "Just shut up! You want to know something? He's probably married!"

"No!"

"Then why didn't he want to bed me?! He probably had some lingering guilt about his wife!"

"Search your memories woman! You know that's not true!"

"I probably should have asked him if he had children!"

"Megan, that's not what the evening was like! You are deceiving yourself!"

"Shut up! If it were love, he would have at least left a message! He would have found a way!"

The inner voice was silent.

"Aha! Got'cha! Now shut up!"

A military trooper came out of the communications room at the other end of the barn and ran up to her stall. "Dr. O'Connor Ma'am, the commander wants to see you immediately!"

Megan shook her head and wiped her wet eyes as she forced her mind to switch gears. "At his office?"

"Yes Ma'am, and he told me to stress the word immediately!"

Megan was a civilian, and her official employers were the Mounted State Rangers, not the military. Still, to refuse the order was unthinkable. She turned to her assistant. "You'll be okay Derrick?"

He nodded. "I'll be fine Ma'am, thank you."

"I think so too. You run into any trouble, page Dr. Campbell."

"Yes Ma'am, I will."

Megan stared at the man for a moment. He was not just her assistant. He was also a good friend. Megan snapped her body to attention and gave him a crisp salute. Derrick blinked and then stood and did the same. Megan then ran out of the barn. She unhitched her horse and galloped back to base.

It was usually a long wait for anyone to see the commander, but Megan was escorted into his office seconds after she arrived. His expression to her was very unexpected and it took Megan a few seconds to decipher it. She finally decided it looked like incredulous laughter.

"Don't bother to sit!" he ordered as his aide closed the door.

Megan stood obediently, still panting a bit from her gallop and her race into the building.

"Miss O'Connor..." He paused for a moment. "Megan, you've got a big decision to make and no time to make it. There's a jet at Houston taking off for Madeira at 11 AM today. Do you want to be on it?"

"Sir?!"

"I'm fueling the Cessna to take you there. But I need an answer now!"

Megan sputtered. "I did some reading sir, early on Sunday. I thought only Madeira nationals were allowed on the islands."

He nodded and then surprised Megan by laughing. "Girl, just a few minutes ago our State Department requested that I get you down to Houston to catch that plane, and they put the word request in quotes. You catch my meaning? I can't order you to leave, and I realize you deserve time to think about this, but..." He looked at her silently for second, and then the long ethnic friendship between them finally touched and softened his eyes. "Lass," he whispered in a Scottish accent, "yee'd be daft not to go."

A resounding cheer of affirmation echoed from Megan's inner voice. She cried out loud, "Agreed! Do I have time to collect my things?"

"No! Sorry. You'll have to say your goodbyes with e-mails from Madeira. I've taken the liberty of packing the bags from your quarters. You might want to use the time on the Cessna to prioritize your possessions. I have no idea what your weight allowance might be." He glanced at the clock. "Megan, to make that flight, you should be already in the air. You know where the runway is. Dismissed!"

Megan nodded and took a deep breath. She blinked away the tears in her eyes. "Goodbye Brian!" she half shouted as she turned and ran from the office to her horse. She galloped directly to the plane, her mount bucking a bit at the end from the startup sound of the loud engine. A maintenance man nearby was securing the hose from the fuel truck. Her flight was a single-engine propeller plane, and it wasn't until two minutes later as her plane was lifting off that she realized she had forgotten to leave behind her leather riding chaps.

Megan didn't recognize the man next to her, but he treated her with courtesy and seemed a very professional pilot. "This is a Cessna Skyhawk Ma'am, forty-some years old but very well maintained. We'll be cruising at 2500 meters at a speed of 225 kph, about as fast as this plane wants to go. Estimated time for touchdown in Houston is... 10:50 AM."

"10:50 AM?!"

He held up a finger to ask her to wait and then spoke into his microphone. "Roger Houston Control, I copy." He then turned to her. "Yes Ma'am. In another hour, we could have had something faster, but..." He finished with a shrug.

Megan nodded and bit her lip. They were not an Air Force base and the cost of aviation fuel was so astronomical, she still couldn't quite believe she had her own private flight to Houston. And whether she made the connecting flight to Madeira or not was totally out of her control. She decided she was not going to worry about it.

"Ma'am?"

"Yes lieutenant?"

"The commander asked me to tell you something. He figured he might not get the chance himself."

Megan nodded expectantly.

"The commander hosted some talks between these foreign diplomats and our State and Defense Departments."

Megan nodded again.

"The commander didn't attend the talks himself, but he said he noticed one curious thing. I take it you had dinner with a guy named Alvaro Lopes?"

"Yes, that's right."

"The commander said he held the most junior diplomatic rank of the group, some sort of science advisor. But he also thought it might be this Alvaro guy who was running the show from their end, just by watching how they interacted with each other. You know what I mean?"

Megan was silent for a moment and then replied, "Yes, I do."

The pilot nodded and got back to his flying.

Megan settled back into her co-pilot chair and tried to relax, her mind in deep thought. The engine was loud but once they reached their cruising altitude, the sound became more bearable as the pilot reduced throttle to 80%. The plane leveled off and began to fly at its top cruising speed. Megan read their heading on the dashboard as a few degrees east of southeast. They were flying directly to the Gulf coast. For a while it seemed they were also flying directly into the sun, but then some dark clouds blotted out the glare. A few minutes after 10 AM, Megan stretched and unsnapped her harness and turned to the empty seats behind her. Across the seats lay two traveling bags that had been taken from under her cot at her quarters.

It was everything in the world that she owned. Almost all the items were clothes. There was one shoebox for everything else, pictures of a family she hadn't seen in years, a thousand dollars of useless bills in various denominations she was keeping as souvenirs, a small purse with $73.48 in the new script that represented her life savings, her birth certificate and citizen papers and diplomas. Under the papers her eyes caught the letter her older brother had written her as he lay dying during the Portland water poisoning attack of 2043. It occurred to her she had not read his letter since coming to Texas. How had she allowed that to happen?

The pilot was talking quietly to Houston Control, in a voice that seemed infinitely calm. After he signed off he turned to Megan. "Ma'am, you see those dark clouds ahead? Houston tells us we have a bit of turbulence coming up. You might want to put your harness back on."

"Yes, thank you lieutenant." Megan closed her bags and settled down. "Turbulence indeed," she thought to herself as she clicked herself back in and gazed at the swiftly approaching blackness. "But nothing like what's in my stomach." She stared through the windshield at the churning thunderstorm and tried not to shiver.

The George Bush Intercontinental Airport at Houston was a ghost of its former glory. Megan guessed it had no more than few civilian flights a week. Commercial air travel was in its death throes due to the price of oil, and there was continuous debate in Congress whether to phase out the massive subsidies and let the civilian aviation industry collapse completely. It was no surprise then when Houston Control gave the Cessna immediate clearance to land.

They were buffeted by rain squalls and fierce cross winds all the way down, and then the pilot made a landing so gentle that Megan didn't even realize they were on the ground. They taxied for a few moments after braking, and then the pilot let out a loud whoop. Megan thought at first he was celebrating his perfect landing, but then he said hoarsely, "Oh Lordy, look! Now there is one piece of sweetness!" Up ahead through the rain a large and very sleek looking jet was appearing.

"What is it?" asked Megan. She stared in wonder at the sharply tipped wings.

"A Bombardier Global Merchant! Looks like their last model too, from the 2030s. This side of Mach-One Ma'am, this is as good as good gets. Forgive me if I drool for a while." He gazed at the jet. "Look at the size of those engines!" he whispered in awe. "Combined thrust of seventy-six kilo-Newtons. That sweetness can lift!"

Megan gave him a quick smile. "Permission to drool granted lieutenant. So that's my plane, huh?"

The pilot nodded slowly as he followed a ground crew's signals that were guiding his Cessna. He finally taxied into position about forty meters from the port wingtip of the jet and then the person outside in the yellow slicker raised his two red-glowing wands into an overhead X. The pilot cut his power and the Cessna's engine became silent. "A pleasure flying with you Ma'am."

A group of people were running up to their plane. Megan turned to thank the pilot but then her door opened and she was hustled out into the drenching rain. She barely remembered to grab her two bags. They made a mad dash across the tarmac and then her escort left her as she completed her final run up a slippery stair ramp to a portal just behind the pilot cabin. The jet door closed and sealed behind her seconds after she entered. Megan felt a gentle shift in both the cabin pressure and the plane as they began to move. She shivered for a moment in the cool dry air, a marked contrast to the swampy air outside.

"Welcome to Madeira, Dr. O'Connor. My name in Cintia." a young Spanish-looking woman in a crisp uniform said to her in greeting. She appeared to be about Megan's age.

Megan stared at her without comprehension. She decided to try humor. "Oh? Did we land already?"

Cintia smiled. "This jet has diplomatic rights. You entered Madeira sovereign territory when you walked through the door."

"Oh. Sorry."

Cintia gave her a brief shrug and then a kind smile as she looked at Megan's soaked clothes and riding chaps. "You'll be able to shower shortly after take-off. But for now you'll have to strap in. We should be getting our final clearance as soon as we taxi into takeoff position."

Megan stared at her. "Shower on the plane?"

"Uh huh. This way please." Cintia led her to the ultra plush nine-passenger cabin area. Megan was in awe of the spaciousness. There was over two meters of head room where she stood, and the seats were arranged 3 x 3 with a single center aisle. There were two men and two women sitting in the front that Megan did not recognize. They gave her brief nods to acknowledge her presence. Then Megan's eyes lit on Alvaro. She flashed him a timid smile.