Power Lines

SpaceBase occasionally still rumbled underfoot, as if to remind everyone that Petaybee planet was by no means pacified. The riders from Kilcoole village had kept well to the wooded trails farthest from the steaming, freshly thawed river, now merely rimmed with ice like a frosting of salt along the top of a glass. Several times on their journey, the planet shook and shifted, as if telling them of the urgency of their mission, but by now the Petaybeans calmly accepted the planet s new mood.
 
Major Yanaba Maddock, Intergal Company Corps, Retired well, mostly retired, anyway looked around at the faces of her lover and her new friends and neighbors. Their own mood was both happy and expectant as they dismounted in front of the SpaceBase headquarters building. Clodagh Senungatuk, Kilcoole s healer and one-woman information center, dusted her divided skirts while her curly-coated horse gazed impassively as flurries of its freshly shed hairs floated on the unseasonably warm air.
 
Sinead Shongili, Yana s own beloved Sean s sister, assisted Aisling, Clodagh s sister, from the saddle while Buneka Rourke held the reins of her Uncle Seamus s and Aunt Moira s horses as they dismounted. The churned mud that formed the roads at SpaceBase was dotted with stones and boards and pieces of metal to be used as steps. Hopping from one of these to the next, the party of Petaybeans made their way into the building.
 
They all had such high hopes for this meeting, Yana thought, almost with irritation. Personally, she hated meetings. Always had. Most of them provided no more input than could be contained in a two-second burst on a comm link. Waste of time, ordinarily. She took a deep breath and neatly tucked in the shirttails of the uniform blouse that Dr. Whittaker Fiske had suggested might be the politically tactful costume for the occasion. Partisan as she was, she was the most neutral person attending the meeting. While the company she kept announced her leanings, the