Wanting Forever

Part 1

It had been a year since her last vacation. A long year. And it was going to be a while longer before her next. But in Effone Pacifica's world, work came first. Always. Vacation could wait.

While she hurried along the busy, tree-lined street toward the hotel where she'd be staying for the next two weeks, a dark shadow fell over the area. Effone looked up with a small smile. She recognized the ASPECT airship passing overhead as the Tempus, the sister ship to her own, the Chronocon. At over 750 feet in length, it would be a while before the silvery-grey behemoth passed and allowed the sunlight to again reach the immediate area.

With the loss of sunlight for the moment, temperatures dipped, and Effone tugged her jacket closed. A cold front was blowing in-the breeze, tinged with the looming bite of dropping temperatures, pulled tendrils of hair from her tight braid. It was a minor annoyance she'd correct once she reached the hotel, but for now she allowed the strands to fly. Professional appearance mattered as long as maintaining it didn't slow forward progress.

She stopped to wait while a solar train whooshed silently by in front of her on a street-level track. When given the chance she preferred to walk, unlike the people packed into the train.

Effone hesitated after the train passed. The wind carried the smells of nearby bakeries and restaurants. Smells she longed for. Fresh bread, cookies...and then the whiff of an open grill. Someone was grilling fresh vegetables. Effone allowed an internal groan when she forced her feet forward. Good food was not plentiful in her line of work. But for the next two weeks, while she was attending special training, there would be time after sessions were done for the day. She'd be back.

Effone took another sniff of the air and then put it behind her. Instead of being in a warm, sandy location with her crew, she was back in Northspace-the capital city of the Northeast Quarter. In a little more than fourteen hours she'd be in a room full of the best of the best from her own company as well as their sister company, SCION, the seafaring version of ASPECT.

The invitation to the training event had been a surprise. Third-level airship captains like Effone didn't get invited to joint training. That honor was usually reserved for Firsts and Seconds-captains who had much more time on the job than she did.

Her superior, Admiral Kaine, told her that she'd gotten the spot because the captain who was supposed to attend broke his leg in an avoidable accident. When the spot came open, Admiral Kaine immediately recommended her.

Effone took another deep breath when she passed a chocolate store, but she didn't go in. Of all the things she was glad weren't lost to history after the last war, chocolate was on the top of her list. She knew from her studies of history in school and at ASPECT Academy that most digitized information survived, including a surplus of cat videos and slow-cooker recipes. Books, however, were largely burned or otherwise destroyed. And, now that she thought about it, she'd never seen a slow cooker, either. The bounce back from utter destruction had been sluggish for several decades, over a hundred years, but it was speeding up. Technology progressed daily.

She glanced down an alley as she passed and caught the view of a makeshift shelter. In this area it would be gone by midnight-moved a few blocks away. It was still representative of the distance they had to go as a society. Homelessness and hunger were problems, but the racism and xenophobia had lessened, at least according to her history books. Half her executive staff were members of minority groups, and she, as captain, made it known that she took incidents of intolerance seriously. Maybe that was why it wasn't a problem on her ship.

She turned another corner and could see the top of the Northspace Grand Hotel peeking over the other buildings. Northspace was home, or some semblance of it. She had no living family that she knew of, and when she was back between assignments she lived in a fairly basic hotel catering to ASPECT employees. This time, however, ASPECT was paying for the hotel-and it was nice. The Northspace Grand stood a mile outside of the ASPECT mooring yards in a newer section of the city. After months at a time on the airship in her cramped quarters, a hotel of any type was pure luxury. The Northspace Grand took that luxury to the next level. The heated floors, the power showers, a large bed with a real mattress...it was going to be hard to go back to the relatively harsh conditions on her airship, the Chronocon.