Chapter 24

Zeus

We flew into our new home later that morning. 'Our new home' was a bit of a stretch. It was a construction site on ten acres of high desert that backed up to a canyon of sorts, at the bottom of which was a dried up creek bed. The canyon wasn't very deep or wide, but it looked like a canyon to me – or at least a decent exit point for an escape tunnel.

In addition to the workforce, with their assorted collection of old, dusty pickups, there was Io's H2 with attached camper. The double-wide that served as Midnight's and Ramon's residence while their house was being built, was also on the ten acre site.

Officially, it was a ranch. If we ever raised anything except a barrel cactus or a prickly pear plant, I'd be surprised.

The trailer had power and telephone cables leading out to the highway, some six or seven hundred yards away. The houses, when all the buildings were completed, would be almost a mile from the road. They'd still be 'in sight' for some crafty Native American with eagle eyes, but, effectively, they'd be a dot on the horizon from the highway.

There was an interruption in our flight from the combat site in Mexico, of course. We stopped at a ghost town in New Mexico and parked the King Air. You know how the Green Hornet worked out of 'an apparently abandoned warehouse' in the comic books? This was a 'really abandoned town.' Before we left the Beechcraft we did a detailed wipe down to erase fingerprints.

Afterwards, we began to put the ultra-light back together. Once again, we had to assemble the tiny airplane in the light of the moon and stars. We were better at it, this time, because we'd done it before. This time we had one part extra and one part missing. Clearly, we weren't meant to be midnight aircraft assemblers.

Arti still wasn't talking to me. Oh, she was polite and communicative in terms of the task at hand – whatever that was – but she wasn't talking to me. I hoped that with the passage of time, her anger would settle into merely severe annoyance, and that would somehow become toleration. I didn't know how long that was going to be, though, since I couldn't get anything out except 'I'm sorry' before she cut me off.

I finally asked her if she intended to be mad at me forever.

"Yup," was her answer.

The ultra light had come to a stop near Midnight's trailer, around mid-morning. We'd had to dodge around the cables that were Midnight's life line. Neither he nor Ramon were in residence, at the moment. Ramon was at one of the clinics, or the hospital, most likely. Midnight was at 'the site.' It was the new underground computer facility, where Io was going to sit and rule the world from an unused salt mine.

We unassed the GT500 and began carrying the stuff over to the camper. Everything fit in easily, except Arti's bruised ego.

"So I didn't tell you until we were in the desert! Get over it, already! I had a lot of decisions to make in a short time. That was one of them." I said to her.

"You know that works with SEALs," chipped in Martinez. "So you're thinking that it works with girls, too?"

She wants to be a team member. She should learn to act like one, I 'said' in my head. I can't pussyfoot around all the time. Besides, I already apologized ... many times.

"Hey, it's your life. I just thought we ... YOU had something special going here. I don't want to go back to the fear and paranoia that ruled the roost for the last decade."

You think I don't? But there's only so much change I can do at once, I thought in a resigned way. I said I screwed up. I apologized. I apologized for treating her like a team member, who's taking orders from me.

"Yeah. That's how we did it in the service, all right. But you're not in the service."

There's only so much I can do by myself, Master Chief.