Haze Gray 107
Danny relaxed as he taxied out. His second flight after his solo a complete success. Easy even. He smoothly followed the towers handling instructions, the signage making complete sense to him for the first time, and then thanked the tower when the ground handlers picked him up and let the tower fade to background heys.
Parked on the apron and shut down he smiled and thanked the ground crew when they brought the ladder after he opened his canopy. His wingman and he went through shutdown and post flight and he smiled as Maria ran over to the aircraft his wingman, wing person? Anyway, she had flown that over for Maria. Maria was doing the post flight on her baby. The pilot was smiling and chuckling as she heyed her answers.
Danny had already done this when he had taken delivery of the two Vought/General Dynamics/K 1602Bs the air station had built, and they were sweet. Super cruise all weather air superiority fighters. Even these two had the cannons and all the electronics for bombs and missiles. No ammunition yet, or rather now, that had taken some talking to get them unloaded. It had also generated a lot of heyversation and long faces. He suspected that conversation wasn't over.
Maria swooped over as he finished and walked toward the pilots locker room the crew chief had heyed at him about. He gave her a kiss and rolled his eyes at the wolf whistles and hey calls from the nearly all female ground crew. Maria gave them all glares and then a huge grin. Danny chuckled "Taylor ok?"
"Like you don't know Danny. So couldn't find space for your blond ice princess? To heavy for your lap?"
Danny nodded "And not suicidal surprisingly. Does her job and is a homebody from what the other ladies tell me. Shame. She is great at her job, she is going to move up quick in the organization. She's wasted on a entry level position. Even on being my PA and deputy. You ladies will have to find her somebody to terrorize."
Maria hmphed at him. "You are not so funny. We don't terrorize men. You, Kurt, Mr. Andersen."
Danny laughed "Jock is eighty-seven. I don't think he can be scared anymore."
Maria looked at him "Dolores Crane."
"Really? Dolores is damn near a hundred."
"Cougar." Danny blinked. The ground crew nodded. Maybe he blinked at the ground crew nodding. Maria pushed him in the locker room "Hurry, we can get breakfast with Taylor and Amy."
Haze Gray
Taylor sat up in a bed filled with young women "What the heck?"
Juggernaut sat up and stretched "Danny isn't here." She shrugged.
Taylor was puzzling that out while Amy got up with her hair in full on FFBH mode. The escorts and yeomen weren't having that so she and Amy got herded through showers and then having their hair and warpaint worked on as they fully woke up. As the procedure came with tea, coffee, and briefings, it saved time.
Maria breezed in with Danny and he got hugged and then passed around. Taylor led down to breakfast in the conference facility which had spilled out into the parking lot under another huge tent. The briefings never stopped. Well, eventually they did. Danny looked at Taylor "More people in Navassa?"
Taylor nodded and shrugged "But we didn't catch them? Local, State, and Federal did and just want them run through our interrogators? Or now that the Subs are here, or should be soon, the data run passed them? Hey, nice chunk of change for housing them until they are cleared or shipped back to the jurisdictions who want them though. Hundred bucks a head a day. Probably fifty bucks of profit per day per head in that. Full on empty down layer cake, not like we are short of room and the Fed is suppling guards.
Danny nodded looking at a tablet and moved on. Amazing how many people you could stuff in a layer cake. The hold up was apparently transportation for the ones they were rotating through while they bought K prison modular prisons? "Narrow boats. Huh. Have to ship these by train and truck, they don't really have enough power to go on their own hulls up the rivers. Though they are sort of lakes now. Maybe they could?"
Taylor shrugged "Small yards at the ports along the mouths of the creeks. It's a design they can knock out with the equipment they use for boats. Bass boats to work boats. Thousands of them on back order. Something called a a Reelfoot boat, it's a canoe with a prop on top of a skeg that has like a beaver tail, and really weird oars. One of our waterproof motors and batteries and a couple solar panels, like a one horse diesel for charging. Anyway, boats are popular." She shrugged "Most of the stores are getting a weaver and oven. Its pretty much an automated process. That will free the yards up to work on commercial boats, us, and a million dogs."
"Which are going to have to man, boat? Whatever, a hundred six boat flotillas?" Danny arched a brow.
Taylor shrugged "Drop in the bucket. A thousand more like though. We have more than quadrupled the miles of navigable waterways, albeit it may be narrow boats. The Corps of engineers had plans, lots of them. Hmm, well they are wide enough, barely, if the river dogs had to they could squeeze up them. Might just run up them and then go boat when they got to the action anyway.
"Every twelve meters, or say nearly forty feet, of elevation difference they want a set of locks too, so the streams start say six feet deep, for the narrowboats, about twenty for the regular barges on the minor rivers, and end up at least forty feet deep by the downstream locks between the levees. So, we can store a nonillion acre feet of water. Or the Corps can. Probably won't have to worry about sea level rise anymore." Amy gaped at her, mouth nonillion, then spluttered when a Kpad got shoved in her face. Danny was laughing.
"Big money for leases to the Coast Guard though. Probably more than a hundred flotillas. The Navy wants some too. I bet we are going to see a Navy National Guard before long. Brown water Navy style of a thing.
"Canada, Mexico, all of South America, Europe. Good thing the pups like to work. We'll see how they like to travel. The Front as well. And that's with Tess's machines."
Danny nodded "And if you have to take over China and Russia?"
Taylor shook her head until her hair flew out straight "Oh hell no. Most I am going to do is evacuate noncombatants. So, under eighteen and over say sixty-five, and those who are disabled. The rest of them can figure it out."
"And then you swoop in and take it over." Danny poked at Taylor. The news media were being pretty shitty with their speculation.
"Nah. Alina and Meili can run that if they want to. Might license them the methodology and machinery though. Then my kids won't have to eat their veggies because kids in China and Russia are starving. Even though we are doing better with buy in from local farmers. They tell us what has worked for them in their areas. The geniuses quantify it, then we experiment with tillage, seeds, and fertilizer. Some of these guys are running recipes for fertilizer and seed that vary over the course of an acre of ground. Damn weather doesn't help. Though putting the barns for the animals, at least, underground seems to work out. Give us a year and we could probably feed them.
"The animals make it interesting. Tons of food and water in, Sand for them to lay on. Poop, milk, eggs, and meat out. Along with all sorts of leather, sausage casings, everything really, even the sound grenades. Well poop, meat, and stuff from the hogs. Nobody wants to milk a big momma pig. They are mean. Chickens or turkeys either, they are just silly. Have to have dual redundant lights or they all run jump in a pile. Which is weird because the lights are turned off for 'night' for whatever season they are supposed to be in.
"Turns out sand is the long pole in the tent as my chief SeaBee tells me. Sand of certain types anyway, the kind that packs together well for concrete. I think we can build a thing to mine it and buy like all of Chad and be fine. Senegal to Eritrea and north on the African continent are sand, it can't all be bad. Something about most desert sand isn't jaggy and won't pack because its wind eroded? Remember going to pick up sea glass? That was smooth, wouldn't water erosion make it smoother than wind? Got to study some more. I think he's yanking my chain. Plus we kind of melt it in to ceramic so who is the rest of it for?
"Anyway, we recycle the bedding sand. Smooth is better for it I guess. Helps it stay fluffy for cow beds." She shrugged. "We just wash the poop out with recycled water. Then we put the poop and water on the fields where we grow the corn for silage and whatever for haylage. Soybeans and wheat fix nitrogen so they don't need it. Cotton gets lots of it. Then we feed the cotton seed meal back to the animals. Soybean meal, corn meal after its used for alcohol production and the oil pressed out of it, the cotton seed and soybeans get pressed for oil too. Bit of a closed system. We sort of take like percentages out for food and fiber."
"Although in California we poop everything. Subsurface low application rates. Most of the warm areas. The cold areas we can poop when its still cold and, on the surface, as well as subsurface. We even did some sugar cane after its first cutting in Florida. Stuff went crazy. So now we are pooping everything on Hispaniola too. We got a bunch of layer cake bound dairies. Belfair, cross between a Jersey and a Irish Dexter cow. Cute, Bulls aren't so mean. Lots of butterfat, less milk fever. Smaller too. Good for the islands. All the outdoor crops get the poop. The hydroponics bays get the water from the sand washdown."
Amy got in while Taylor was taking a breath "Can we talk about something other than the benefits of cow manure at breakfast?"
Taylor grinned "Chicken poop?"
"Taylor! Imma make your cows poop acid or something." She glared at Constance who had dived in her pad and was showing her an assay of cow manure against an assay of a certain farm's fertilizer needs.
Danny looked at Constance's pad "That's a crap load of nitrogen." Amy turned her glare on him "Uh no pun intended. Weren't we making nitrogen out of oil, or gas?"
Tess shrugged "Gas, and flare gas, but we are working on the thing so farmers who have animals can use their methane off their lagoons to make it. Sort of the same technology as emission reduction on cars. We are working on collectors for vehicle exhaust too as with platinum group catalytic converters and once they are up to temperature, they make ammonia and nitrogen compounds. Side benefit they can run generators while they do it. We are getting spark ignited heavy engines together for that and will have to run a test somewhere. Then it will only be the farms without animals who need to buy fuel rather than harvest it off their lagoons.
"Then we make gas out of gas." She frowned then waved airily. Danny chuckled.
"That isn't even the exciting thing, we found the source of most of the microplastic in the oceans, Its in creeks. Apparently, the runoff from roads carries tons of microplastic from tires into streams every year. We are mining the heck out of it in streams and creeks. We don't really need oil except as a lubricant anymore, we are extracting the useful plastics and making fuel out of the rest. Oil for us now is mostly feed stock, and we are still capping seeps in the deep ocean. That plus all the clean up work and we won't drill a well until, well it will be a long time. With ocean water providing the other parts of the feedstocks from filtering it for micro plastics we have enough we are selling raw feedstock to other chemical and plastic producers.
"That lets us do even more of the Corps plans and put in catchment and filtering."
Danny nodded "By the trainload. 30 million pounds at a time, over a hundred million for your barge tows. Hence the railroad and bargemen's unions jumping in. Which is good as those guys know their businesses. Ships and trucking we had already. Machinist and steelworkers as well, electricians and operating engineers too. All the trades.
"With the AFLCIO getting nuked by the government for corruption like they did when The PRT thinkers got working on it we are just now getting back to an umbrella union like that. Somehow I got stuck with it. I'm trying to weasel out. Plus, its international now and I don't know Spanish and Portuguese."
Maria grinned and shook her head one seat down from him. The girls all snickered. He frowned "What?"
Taylor tried her innocent face "Nothing, we're going to find Wendigo!" The girls all disappeared leaving the adults blinking. They unfroze when the boys started showing up. It was damn early on a Saturday after all. The boys felt a little extra rack time was exactly what was called for. The ones the girls hadn't had under tow anyway.
Haze Gray
Meeting Wendigo was a bit frustrating until Rachel showed up with her dogs and those two stuck themselves together at the hip, In the middle of a pack of dogs that more resembled a sea. The other girls blinked at each other as O+&O- chortled. They chortled more and the girls glared, then trotted around rounding up busses and trucks and took off going somewhere? O+ sighed. O- nodded "They get that age and off they go." The SP chief watching them face palmed. Then she heyed up a bunch of trucks, jeeps, buses, loaded a lot of Troops, Marines, and Sailors, and they were off in pursuit. Helicopters and Super K Dash flew overhead.
Half the news trucks wound down mast and chased the security element. Kearney got a bit of a parade and air show when the Tomcats and Intruders cycled aloft with the Warthogs. The carriers riding through town shooting pistols like it was the wild west was new.
The phone network of Kearney got a bit of a workout as the local tracking network got fired up. The network finally turned up the very recent sale of twenty thousand acres just outside the northern limits of town. Mr. and Mrs. Jensen. Their children had been killed by the Nine along with the rest of their family several years ago when the kids were up in Dakota visiting family, and they were getting on in years. They ran four thousand head with all hired help. Even with those robotic milkers it was a tragedy. Though maybe not so tragic now. What with a dock going in and it probably getting one of those ICE stations? Help might not be so hard to find around here soon. Some courses of action were evaluated and the scouts, the fourteen- to eighteen-year-old daughters, were launched toward the Jensen's. Twenty minivans full might have been overkill but this was important.
Jennifer Saunders, our intrepid reporter from yesterday, looked at Mr. Jensen and grinned. Karl Jensen snorted, "Your mamma then. Can't keep secrets in a small town. Hope they bring muck boots."
Jennifer grinned some more and the first of the convoy stopped along the road leaving the drive clear and the people from it walked up the drive. Karl nodded "Girls a giant. That's the one right Jenny? Taylor Hebert?"
Jennifer nodded "Yep, the dark haired one in front."
Taylor strolled right up and introduced herself shaking Karl's hand. They got right to business as the farm flooded with people. Lisa looked at Jennifer "Probably won't get an interview. She wants him to run her farms out here. Teach her people. At least get it all set up. Him and his wife were both teachers forty years ago. Did you know? Probably taught your grandparents. Retired and came back to the farm and built it into this for his kids and their kids. Then the Nine got that idea about Indians. Well, the Nine are dead now. The Protectorate finally cleaned house. And well, here we are. It will always be the Jensen place, even if he doesn't take the job."
Jennifer chuckled looking at Taylor hugging Ruth Hunts Nightly Jensen, or getting hugged by her, while Karl watched and smiled that weather beaten smile most of the farmers around here got at a certain point. "You're one of the Subs, all thinkers I hear. What do you think the chances of the Jensen's not staying are?" Ruth had Alina now.
Lisa laughed "As one of my sisters would say '0.0 repeating'."
Haze Gray
Jennifer watched as the girls, all the girls not just the ship girls, and the troops with them, who had dived into work immediately, including their 'black gangs' who had scampered down their legs and then grown to full sized walking to the machine sheds, passed through the buffet line of hundreds of covered dishes that had appeared in the arms of women from Kearney and the surrounding farms.
It was all 'Just to help out Ruth.' Who didn't need the help, having all the commissary chiefs talking to her and issuing orders to mess deck's.
It was, hilariously, turning into a competition between the local ladies and the mess decks. Even the Subs commissary people had gotten in on it. Subs famously having the best food in the Navy was apparently no joke from the little huddles of local women taking notes from Sub cooks while the other Navy cooks rolled their eyes and grudgingly nodded.
She grunted. It was great food though. She was so going to have to run ten miles tonight. Or help clean stalls, grind feed, milk and bed down four thousand cows again. Holy crap what a lot of work, even with the machines helping. Full cows were hurting cows too and no woman wanted to leave them hurting longer than necessary. Boobs really sucked sometimes. Two hundred and fifty milking robots helped but there was always some kind of issue that needed dealt with. The Jensen's normal crew of fifty was supervising teams of ten in a milking parlor bigger than most cow barns. The cow barns were huge. You could probably park an Alaska class in each of them.
The second milking of the three a day milking had been amazing, and an amazing learning experience. Of course, Taylor learned in seconds and made zero mistakes. The cows loved her too and used her for a scratching post. It was hilarious. Taylor could never be a farmer though. She already loved the cows and was meeting the calves after lunch. She would never sell the steers; she would keep them for pets.
Jennifer had to chuckle, ten thousand pet steers in a few years. Could you imagine? She looked at Taylor eyeing her excellent steak sadly and giggled. Karl patted her on the back. Jennifer had to turn her head and laugh. Maybe Taylor could farm. Karl looked sad too.
All through the morning the news crews had followed Taylor and Karl in Karl's pickup as close as the security allowed, and the networks got in agriculture, machinery, safety, and financial experts and the commentary battles raged as Urban America got an education in where their food came from.
Karl had a chicken operation, egg and meat, a hog operation, corn, soybeans, wheat, and cover crops as well as a few hundred acres of peas which he was planting on his worst ground trying to build up the soil. Taylor had spent some time in a combine and a grain cart as well as driving a grain truck hauling wheat to the bins on the yard while working on the peas. This afternoon she was going to work up some ground, limited tillage, and then no tillage some wheat. Maybe rye? Barley? Something.
Karl was impressed as Taylor was like a sponge with perfect recall and he was having the time of his life explaining everything.
Tess, the geniuses, and the machinist mates, along with the aviation machinist and gunners' mates were hip deep in the equipment barns and operations. They weren't alone as Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines pitched in wherever they could.
Alina and Meili were glued to Ruth. Ruth to them a bit as well truth be told. They both got lessons in farm bookkeeping and gardening in the afternoon. Ruth had a five-acre garden patch, a utility tractor and all the implements of her own. Plus, an orchard, another five acres. About two thousand fruit and nut trees of all different varieties but mostly apple. Alina frowned and asked, "Why so many different kinds of apple trees?"
Ruth smiled "We all grow different. Some of these won't like it here. Some will, the ones that stay and flourish I keep. The ones that don't, I let them go." Alina nodded. Ruth grinned "They make great wood for the smokehouse." Alina scowled and Ruth cackled. The takeaway from today was if it didnt make money it didn't get to stay on a farm.