Aerospace II - The Island Cycle

Aerospace II - Breton Force

Aerospace II : The Island Cycle

Breton Force

Gordon Best

Year 2045 (This is a totally fictional story. I have not been consulting with Mi'kmaq peoples, nor do I know their intentions.
If they have ambitions to go to the planets, then all power to them.
But I have not talked to them about it. I am not native, but British background.
I did live in Cape Breton for four years back in the 1970s. -- author)

Chapter One : Double Bell

My family name is Bell. Dad says that we are not related to Alexander Graham Bell. But I don't trust the old guy. He is just too smart for any four people and has the energy of four. We are related to the MacLeans of Cape Breton. He did inherit some property before I was born. He has some government connections, but I don't know if they are legal.

My name is Ava. My father's name is John. We are from Ontario and the big TO. But my father had this dream about moving back to Cape Breton and the highlands of his grandparents, an island he had only visited once when he was ten.

My father is a stock trader. He is so good at it, that he now spends all his time on his real interest, which is aerospace. He has a space tug plane, he and his many technical experts are working on in secret. Somehow he got permission to build an airfield up in the highlands. The runway is over four kilometres long.

Here he has a house and several hangers. One hanger has his business jet and two duo prop eCessnas that I use. Another has the tug plane and a third has the Skylord shuttle, which dad does not think I know about. Actually there are two shuttles, both under repair.

I remember the secrecy of the moving of the shuttles in. I heard the ruckus that night, as a bunch of men moved the planes up the fire roads onto the airfield. Those men had british accents.

But I guess one of the cats is out of the bag.

My boyfriend, Joseph from over on the Eskasoni reserve, and I were coming out of the convenience store. Ready to get back in my car, when a loud noise made us look up. There was the tug plane flying very low over the reserve. Its huge engines making a loud whirring noise like a Rolls Royce motor should.

Rolls Royce made the engines, but they were never shipped to Boeing. Somehow my father has a few and the parts to repair them. They are the biggest engines that the company has made.

I called the tug plane the Seagull. Its long dripping wings and slim body just gives it a bird like character. I want to fly it and I think dad is going to let me. But its main purpose is for lifting the Skylord shuttle. I figured that without using too many brain cells.

Joseph said, "So that is the beast. It is an odd bird. Lots of power. You got to tell me about it."

But I had told him nothing so far. He knows where I live. He knows I fly my own plane. He has gone up with me in my plane. The Margaree Airport is not far from my dad's airfield. That is where Joseph is learning to fly. I am too young to be a teacher, but I have a commercial license. It helps when you start flying at 14.

That is when dad and I came to Cape Breton. We have a summer house not far from the Bell Estate (that is Alexander Graham Bell). But from the beginning of that first summer, we were hardly there. My dad, John Bell, is a go-getter. He was building that Aerospace field right off the mark. I got involved as his gopher. It has been a real trip.

Mom did not want to live in the wilderness. She likes Toronto and it is a great city. I told her I was going to hitchhike up the 401, if I had to, to be here. She finally gave me up to dad. I visit there sometimes, but any love is over between her and dad. Dad said I would be hitchhiking down the 401, because I was going down river. That is how a Cape Bretoner thinks.