Given the ever-increasing precariousness of the situation, Reggie Waite had started having his various section chiefs check in with him on a daily basis. Nothing in-depth, just touching base on anything that had changed, but the last thing he wanted to have happen now was to get blindsided by something because the early signs were overlooked. He remembered too many times that sort of thing happened during the Energy Wars.
Hell, they even had reasonably good intel that a terrorist attack on a NASA facility was in the works. They were just so certain that it was going to be the Space Shuttle that was launching for a secret DOD satellite repair mission that no one stopped to think that an attack on Johnson would be just as disruptive to the mission as an attack on Kennedy.
Right now he was talking with Bill Hearne. Mostly about the situation at Schirrasburg, or at least as much as anyone could find out with the settlement completely quarantined, its spaceport shut down and even overland deliveries such as the Ice Train prohibited. But Bill was also in regular communication with family on the old home place, which provided a line of information on just what was happening on Earth.
“Of course you have to remember that Fred and the rest of the family are pretty much staying on their farms as much as they can. It’s not like they’re going into town and chatting up the clerk at the feed store who talks to the truckers who get the gossip on the CB or at the truck stops.”
“Completely understood.” The last Reggie had heard from his family, they were all hunkering down too. He just wished they could get some messages up here, but given Chris was career Air Force, contact with someone at odds with the Administration might not be a wise move. “And quite honestly, gossip and rumint can be as much trouble as benefit in uncertain times like this. I’m receiving multiple reports of wild rumors going through the settlement right now, and a number of the kids getting frightened, having nightmares, the whole works.”
Bill started to laugh, turned it into a cough. “I think you can count Flight Ops out on that front, Captain. With all the pilots isolated from the rest of the settlement population while they’re in, and under minimal-contact orders while they’re on missions, it pretty much cuts them off as a source of gossip.”
“True, but I’m thinking more on getting some ideas about what we can do to keep this stuff under control. I spent most of the Energy Wars either at the Academy, which was buttoned up tight for security reasons, or at sea, where shore leave was pretty damned rare for the same reason. But you were already an astronaut, so you would’ve seen more of the way rumors go through a civilian population.”
“It’s been a long time, and I was pretty busy with training when I wasn’t actually on a mission or doing support work for someone else’s mission. But I’ll talk to Alice and see what she can remember.”
“Thanks. Let me know tomorrow what you can come up with. We need to get this situation under control, and soon.”