Steffi Roderick was at the settlement’s small library, talking with one of the resource specialists. Although as an IT specialist, she would normally do her own searches, today she wanted to touch base with someone who would have a different perspective — and some specialized knowledge.
She was just winding up the conversation when she realized that her son had come into the room. Although Howie was staying along the periphery of the room, quietly looking at one of the databases, she could tell he was looking for her. Call it a mother’s intuition.
Finished with her business here, she walked over to him. “Are you looking for someone, Howie?”
As he looked up at her, she was struck afresh by just how much he was looking like his dad as he grew older. Although he’d inherited her red hair, he was definitely showing that long Shepard face, the long-lipped mouth capable of a big grin.
“Just wondering what’s up with Dad. He seemed kinda upset when I saw him.”
“It’s hard to say.” Steffi knew she was temporizing, since she had a good idea of what had probably upset him. “He’s carrying a pretty heavy load right now, and that kind of stress brings out the Icy Commander.”
Sheps all seemed to share their ur-brother’s peculiar temperament, which Big Al’s contemporaries had called “mercurial,” but which she preferred to term bimodal. It alternated between two basic modes, “Smilin’ Al,” a sunny side famous for that big grin, and “The Icy Commander,” grim and always on the verge of flaring that notorious temper that Gordon Cooper had written about.
Right now, Steffi knew that her own people had been entering a lot of dirtside databases, trying to find out just how bad things were going on down there. And while they were working under command authority, it didn’t necessarily mean that the agencies whose systems they’d entered would approve of it.
Ever since the Kitty Hawk Massacre, Reggie had been doing his best to fight this battle as a military officer sworn to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” No matter how carefully he sought to balance things, there would always be those who saw him as a rebel for demanding accountability from the Administration.
Now Shepardsport was beginning to take on local and state agencies who were either grossly incompetent in the handling of the crisis, or were using it as a way to consolidate power and settle old scores. Which may well have just made the settlement and its commandant even more enemies.