Rayford had had a number of ups and downs while retraining. At first, he was genuinely put off by the notion that he had to retrain at all; he had thousands of hours on a variety of multi-engine aircraft after all. After getting acquainted with the airship that was to become his, he changed his mind after a couple of training flights: aerostats simply behave differently, and with the extreme weather and inherent danger that yellow and red zones posed, reading the wind was a much more important skill than it used to be. After nearly crashing a trainer blimp on a power pylon and being nearly dismissed for it, Rayford decided that he had something to prove all over again, and set himself to work in earnest. Of course, he still came back to COT when he could; Kenny liked the company, the students thought that the new job was really cool - Rayford had missed that - and even the staff found that the Captain was actually interesting to have around, provided that it was in small doses.

"The only thing I don't like is the name, Perdix. It sounds a bit too much like perdition. But, apparently it's really bad luck to change the name of a ship, so I'm stuck with it at least until I own her outright."

"Where's it from?"

"Some Greek myth. The company's called Icarus, so that makes some sense."

"It's Daedalus' nephew. He was a healer." Cindy piped up, then went back to reading. COT had gotten significantly bigger, but Vicki felt that everyone - students and staff - should share at least one meal a day together. Since about a third of the students were not boarders, that mean making it lunch; recess came right after, to give people time to digest, and was a generally unsupervised time. In this case, it meant having some of the kids literally underfoot. Rayford made a point of passing by when he could, mostly to see Kenny, and sometimes that meant doing the occasional half hour of babysitting before getting back to training.

"She's been on a bit of a Greek mythology kick lately." Vicki explained.

"Oh? Is that a good idea?"

"Good for her memory. And she came in second for Bible story trivia last week."

Rayford smiled. Kenny had come first, which gave the pilot an excuse to take his grandson on a brief fly-along without it looking like he was playing favorites. That had been a fantastic afternoon.

"I want to be a Storyteller when I grow up!"

"Done with the whole astronaut thing already?"

"Yeah. I wanna see the Earth first. All of it!"

Vicki gently prodded the gangly girl to run along before settling her attention on Judd and Rayford again. The pilot was saying that he'd completed basic training, such as it was, and would start taking one of the training blimps out on survey and packet runs, since the company needed the extra cash. "If everything goes well I should be able to start flying the Perdix early next year. Chaim says he's going to want to set up some sort of retainer for the ship."

"That's pretty exciting! He's still having to help us out with salaries for now. I hope we aren't taking resources away from other Church projects..."

COT had been set up on a variant of the Montessori system; even years later, the Rapture had meant that there simply was a complete generational gap. High schools had emptied themselves out during the Tribulation, and would simply not be a thing for another couple of years. Vicki wasn't looking forward to it.

With the notable exception of Academies, boarding schools like COT were a rarity: COT itself was able to exist in its current configuration largely because missionaries going into yellow zones wanted to know that their kids would be well taken care of and receive a Christian education, or parents who had lost a spouse in the Tribulation were unwilling to remarry and felt that a boarding school would provide a better experience for their kids than a single-parent home might.

Judd and Vicki had to hire qualified teachers, of course, but it hadn't been particularly difficult to find applicants; Chaim had no problem with making sure Shelly got the retraining she needed to be able to teach effectively. Lionel had opened a workshop nearby, and occasionally came in to run a shop class.


Lionel and Tanya had decided to get married at COT, to the surprise of just about everybody on staff, who assumed that the two alreay had tied the knot. The ceremony had been relatively simple, with a selection of kids singing as the choir in the school's chapel and Rayford officiating in his shiny new uniform. The competition for singing had been fierce; getting upwards of two hundred kids of varying ages to sing in harmony was no small feat, and it was surely a minor miracle that the ceremony happened without a hitch given the young age of many of the guests. The couple had intended to honeymoon in the Holy Land, but difficulties in getting there had forced a last-minute change of plans towards Greece.

"We hope to see if we can get to the port of Ashdod from there." Air travel to the Holy Land had been all but impossible lately.

"Iannis and Amethea Risto have reclaimed an Orthodox church just outside of Athens, you can contact them if there are problems." Vicki said.

The Ristos' only daughter, Ekaterina, had just returned home after wrapping up COT's first semester as a boarding school; the Ristos had taken that time to reclaim the church from an Olympian cult that had been using it for things that Vicki didn't want to discuss with kids around. There had been no violence - narrowly - and Iannis had ended up shared their botanical notes with Chaim after a deal was reached. Tanya admitted that she was looking forward to seeing the Grecian peninsula's exotic fauna and flora, but was worried abot the locals. "Oh, the Classical Revivalists are harmless. How'd Amethea put it... they dress up in leaves and call themselves the Saturnine... An aging bunch of frat boys, tilting back goblets of spliced ouzo and calling it ambrosia."

Judd and Vicki had little desire to travel; Chicago was fast shaping itself to be the world's largest Christian-majority city, and the surrounding region - to which they belonged - was remarkably safe to be in, save for the yellow and red zones to the South and West.

"So, any luck with..."

Judd shook his head. His and Vicki's union had been blessed with a multitude of children in almost every sense, except the biological.

"You guys need a vacation. Just... take some time just with each other, you know?"

"The main issue is that we're still waiting for full accreditation, and if there are any issues, we want to be here to solve them."

"It's been a year without issues, you've graduated a couple of kids... bet they just waived it and forgot to tell you."

"No, it's still listed as pending. We check every day." Vicki sighed.

"I bet CATS is stonewalling you. And Tanya's got a point, you two do need a break." Rayford interjected, and continued in the gruff patriarch voice, "Come on you two, I want another grandchild."

The people at the table laughed. Rayford (and Chaim, on his occasional visits) had been conscripted to play this or that Old Testament patriarch for Bible story time at COT, more so since the pilot had decided to grow a beard with considerable success.

"Maybe after Lionel and Tanya come back."

"You know, Shelly and the others can run things without you for a few days. You've got to have faith in your crew, let them stand watch without you." Rayford had recently made his first overnight solo flights, and was eager to share the lesson he had recently had to relearn. Airships could carry twice as much as airliners and stay in the air for two weeks if they needed to, but moved that much slower, and inclement weather or other hazards often turned an overnight trip into a two-day affair. Rayford had heard rumors of air pirates in the Mojave, but chalked that up to bored steersmen having time to invent tall tales while rumbling above the desert.

"Care to take us anywhere, Captain Steele?" Judd asked.

"Actually, my first solo as Captain is to San Francisco. I'd love it if you could come."

The Bay city had quickly rebuilt itself as the de-facto capital of the Pacifican region after the recent earthquake and dessiccation incident in Los Angeles; it had restored its reputation as a crazy place just as quickly.

"Thank you! I was thinking someplace quieter, though..."

"Oh, it's a cargo run. You'll have the ship to yourselves, basically. I don't plan to sticking around Frisco any more than necessary unless you do want a few hours to play tourists."

"Is Kenny going to be okay?"

The boy answered for himself, having made his way to the table. "Sure! Sides, I already got a ride from Grandpa the other week, so now's your turn, that's fair."

Vicki smiled. With everything that had happened, she and Judd never got a proper honeymoon - they got married in Petra, and the siege had only ended with the Glorious Appearing. After that, there were evacuations to manage, and COT to build... Judd was looking at her. She nodded.

"Thank you... Dad. We'd love to come along."

Airships like the Perdix had been designed from the ground up to be modular: since the bill of lading left a bit of extra room, one of the cabins was attached near the stern of the cargo hold so that Judd and Vicki could tour the ship if they chose but have their privacy the rest of the time. The four former helicopter rotors mounted to the side of the envelope were beating the air lazily.

If Raymie had been around to ask, Rayford definitely would have looked the part; Icarus didn't have much of a dress code - most companies didn't these days - but favored the nautical theme. All Rayford was missing was a pipe... which Lionel promptly handed him, before driving the car back; he'd be back to pick Vicki and Judd up.

"Oh, it's a bubble pipe, you put the soap and water in here, and there's a little valve... Kind of a ship-warming present, we figured. Or is it too silly?"

"No, I love it!" Rayford promptly put it in his mouth before taking a Polaroid with his adoptive daughter and her husband. Behind the three, deckhands were loading up the ship with various material, mostly construction fixtures. Chicago was steadily losing its city center skyline to reclamation and export, but that worked well for the people living there.

"Would you two like to be on the bridge for takeoff?"

Judd and Vicki assented enthusiastically. The Perdix cleared the rooftops surprisingly quick for her size; Rayford told his crew to reel in the mooring lines and angled the rotors forwards slightly towards the west. "We're going to go around the ion storm, climb up past the Rockies at Two Ocean Pass, and then head south!"

Judd remembered reading about the unusual geographical feature at Nicolae High, where it had been marked as endangered due to climate change. "Will we be able to stop there?"

"If we make good time, I don't see why not". Rayford had come to enjoy the freedom that came with operating a flying vehicle that could afford to make an unscheduled stop like that. "What is truly miraculous is that the site survived the global earthquake, the Parting of the Waters only moved a few hundred feet when the mountains returned. Now, Icarus is a bit shortstaffed on chefs, so since this isn't a passenger flight, we didn't bring one. So we're going to-"

"-sit back while I cook." Vicki interrupted. "We've been running a whole school, Captain... Dad, cooking for us and five crew shouldn't be a big deal whatever you've got left in the galley. Which way to it?"

Vicki got directions and climbed up a ladder, with Rayford nodding approvingly. "You're a blessed man, Judd Thompson."

"We're a blessed family, Captain Steele."

"That we are. There, takeoff maneuvers complete... would you like to take the wheel for a bit?"


Vicki and Judd found the gentle vibration of the generators and the lulling of the envelope as it swayed gently in the tailwind to be extremely soothing; the modular cabin had been put offset in the cargo bay, and came with a porthole. Behind and below them, the changing shape of Chicago flew past, a thousand white-yellow lights showing a city once more prosperous; further in the East, the sky was already dark, with the stars starting to come up, competing with lightning bolts to poke the darkness.

"I can see my house from here" Judd said. Vicki held his hand, smiled, and put a finger in front of his mouth.

The next morning, the crewman coming on the forenoon watch - Icarus used the Royal Navy system - stopped right short of knocking at the cabin door, notcing the "Do not disturb" sign. Captain Steele told him to try again once they got closer to the pass.

"I rather think they've been otherwise occupied. One knock only."

Hans acknowledged. He'd gotten the measure of his current commanding officer; earnest, but a bit of a stick in the mud. Best to not make raunchy jokes. Captain Steele had told the crew that anyone who wanted to discuss Yahweh or Jesus with him on downtime would be welcome to - not a big surprise in Chicago, the city was fast becoming a Christian hub - but hadn't been pushy about it. Could have been much worse, overall. Two Oceans Pass was a safe route from the elements, but he'd started hearing stories about other dangers... It'd be a hard day's work. Him and Osman took a few seconds to pray on the catwalk before he relieved her.

"Mighty Aeolus, ruler of the winds. We thank you for blessing us with your presence. We honor all your work, storms or breeze..."


Shelly was surprised by a loud knock at the service entrance; no deliveries were scheduled to come in.

"Good morning. My name is A. E. Pessimal. I'm with the Custodial Arrangement of Telecommunication Systems..."

Oh, great.


Author's note: In the first two or three books, Rayford clearly buys into the aura of glamour that airline pilots used to have, decades after this stopped being the case - this leaves him with an easily bruised ego, even after his personal redemption. Maybe in this world he can find some professional redemption as well :)