Outland by Kristin Keppler & Allisa Bahney

Author:Kristin Keppler & Allisa Bahney [Keppler, Kristin & Bahney, Allisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636791555
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2022-07-01T22:00:13+00:00

Chapter Ten: The Offer

Kate

I have spent the entire day poring over personnel records and trying to figure out a way to help Privates Silva and Miller. It’s hard to focus. I’m desperate to know more about the blast on Malmstrom and who, if anyone, was caught in the crossfire. After reading the same line over and over for the fifth or sixth time, I drop the file on my desk and rub my eyes. The only thing that seems to settle my nerves is knowing that Dani wasn’t at the base. Instead, she went after my mother near Ellsworth.

How did my mother know Dani might be in the area? She said the radio would reach about five hundred and fifty miles from Offutt Air Force Base. That’s a rather large circle for her to be in. Though she did say someone else may be on the other end, which may mean that she’s even farther out than that and just has a contact within that parameter.

She could be anywhere. I really should’ve asked where she was hiding.

I try to focus on the reports, something I can control, instead of something I so clearly can’t. Scanning the names of all of the soldiers who have requested early retirement, discharge, and transfers, I try to find a pattern. The problem is, there’s not much here. It’s unsettling to say the least. Over the past five years, fewer and fewer requests for transfer or discharge have been granted. Only two soldiers that I can find and they were officers way above Silva and Miller’s rank. Not one private has been given such permission.

Looks like discharge isn’t an option. And transferring them somewhere else isn’t on the table either. Who knows where they’d be sent and what they would be asked to do? I knew this was a long shot. But it seems the NAF is more short-handed than I previously thought. They can’t afford to let anyone go, and my hope of helping them is quickly deflating.

I’m exhausted. My eyes feel dry and tired, and I’ve unbuttoned the top buttons of my jacket so it doesn’t feel as suffocating in the now stifling room. My hair is unwashed and falling out of the pins used to hold it in place at the base of my neck. I must look like a disheveled mess.

Turning down my heater, I switch over to skim the reports Rodrigues has been working on regarding the drones. Her notes are immaculate, using her research from Malmstrom and referencing the supplies that arrived this past afternoon on base, I know the general will be pleased.

With that read, I go over her update about sending out messages to several locations regarding the transfer of leadership to the NAF. There has been no reply regarding any of them but no pushback either.

“That’s a start,” I mumble to myself. The more cities and townships that willingly relinquish control to the NAF, the better. I wonder if Dani is residing in one of them. Staring at the piles of files spread out across my desk, I groan.

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