Page 25 of Max
He morphed the hybrid vehicle at several hundred feet into a flyer with a fully enclosed cockpit.
Falyn looked out over the landscape through a port window. Although she knew she was in the air, it didn’t seem so frightening with her arms wrapped around Max.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” she assured him, but she knew Max could easily tell she was still scared by the rapid rhythm of her heart. “Ready as I will ever be,” she added resignedly. If she was going to die, her last memory would be of holding the man sheloved.
Falyn sucked in a startled breath, realizing the significance of the thought that just popped into her head unbidden. She loved Max! It hadn’t been that long, yet she knew it was true. Smiling, she hugged Max more tightly as he set the craft into forward motion.
Rather than shooting down the mountainscape at high speed, he let the craft glide slowly over the tree tops. “This isn’t so bad,” Falyn admitted as she noticed. “It just feels like we are floating.”
“It’s slower than I usually travel, but I decided to ease you into it. We will get there in ten minutes instead of five.”
They touched down in Marcus Flats exactly ten minutes after leaving Falyn’s homestead. The town had one main street with side streets branching off it. Houses were spaced apart comfortably so that neighbors didn’t look into each other’s windows.
Falyn directed Max to the weaver’s house for their first stop. The weaver had a modest one-story home on a two-acre lot with one acre planted in cotton. Falyn had brought some bar soap, vegetables, and goat cheese for clothing she had already gotten. Max accompanied her when she went to the door to knock.
The older woman was slightly startled when she saw all 6’6” Max’s powerfully built form in his t-shirt, cargo pants, and ranger hat with the circled star emblem.
“Hi Millie, I brought you the goods I promised.” She held up a cloth bag. “First, let me introduce my mate, Max Steele. He’s a Federation cyborg ranger. Max, this is my friend Millie Fox.”
“Well, this is a surprise! When did this happen?” Millie opened the screen door. “Come on in and tell me all about it.”
Once inside, Falyn handed off the cloth bag to Millie, and Millie directed them to sit on the rustic padded sofa in her spacious living room. The room was divided into a sitting area and Millie’s work area. There were two different-sized looms and a spinning wheel with a basket of cotton beside it.
“I’ll be right back,” Millie said, heading for the kitchen. “Can I get you two anything to drink?”
Falyn looked to Max, who shook his head. “No, thanks, Millie. We just ate breakfast. We’re fine.”
Their hostess returned to the room, returning the empty cloth bag to Falyn. “So, Mr. Steele, what brings you to these parts?”
“The Civil Restoration Enclave of North America is re-establishing law and order in most of North America. The project's second stage is to restore the infrastructure needed to bring the standard of living up to pre-war levels. Right now, I have teams working on the San Francisco Bay area megalopolis.”
“Does that mean they are taking over?”
“Not at all. Do you have a mayor or a town leader?”
“We do, Kevin Gray. He just lives down the road from here. We elected him two years ago, and our town council---four people.”
“Any police or law enforcer?”
“We haven’t needed anyone until those four from out of town showed up trying to kidnap young women and boys.”
“Well, they won’t be bothering people here anymore. Max caught them and sent them off to jail,” Falyn told her proudly. She continued telling how they met, the shooting, and how Max repaired her horse’s broken leg.
Millie chuckled. “I can see why you fell for this guy. He’s definitely a keeper.”
“Oh, Millie, it’s not funny. I felt terrible when the gun went off. When I saw the blood where the bullet hit, I thought I’d killed him.”
“How are you still with us?” asked Millie.
“Cyborgs have metal alloy skeletons, including my sternum. That stopped the bullet,” Max explained. “I knew it was accidental.”
“Falyn is much too nice to shoot someone on purpose. She cries when she has to kill a chicken to put food on her table.”
Max just smiled to himself. He had already discovered how tender and caring his mate was.
“Back to the Enclave and your local government… If you have a town government, they will represent your town to the Enclave. They have gone back to the original Constitution of the United States with some revisions to cover our level of technology and the state of civilization.
