Drew’s back in town. Brenda wished she could really feel excited about it the way she ought to.
But it couldn’t change the fact that he couldn’t really come home, not as long as there was any question of pilots catching the diablovirus in one spaceport and then bringing it home to spread through the close quarters of a lunar settlement. Even if she took the kids down to Flight Operations to see their daddy, the closest they were going to come was seeing him through a thick moonglass window and talk over a glorified speakerphone. They could just as well FaceTime on her tablet and spare themselves the time and effort of going down to Innsmouth Sector.
Or at least that had been the plan. Instead, Brenda had gotten a call that there had been some problems with some of the air handlers up in Miskatonic Sector, and the crew needed someone slim and flexible to get into the plenum leading to them.
She couldn’t very well disappoint her dad, so she’d left the kids with a friend while she dealt with the latest emergency. At least the last two CME’s have shot off in the direction of Jupiter, so we’ve had a reprieve there, even if we are still under the solar storm watch.
Still, the work was pretty routine, and left her far too much time for thought. Like recollections of when she and Drew had first met, in those wild and crazy days right after the destruction of Luna Station. He’d been such a hero, trekking overland from a downed lander to get help for his commander, who’d been injured in the damage that had put them down there.
Her folks had been a little concerned about her getting involved with someone who was several years older. However, they hadn’t quite gone to the point of forbidding her any contact with Drew, just pointed out that she had three more months until her eighteenth birthday, and needed to remember that.
And then he managed to get a lander down on manual after the flight computer got corrupted in the cyber-attack, and everyone’s attitudes changed.