The Peacemakers - pg2

          The Peacemakers - Awakenings
          Chapter 1
         
          The glint of a Star Hawk cargo shuttle streaking to orbit caught fourteen year old Chris Taggart’s attention through the window. Someday, he thought, that’ll be me.
          For now, though, he and his best friend Karl Benson had to finish putting the last touches on the land skiff and give it a test run if they had any hope beating Tommy Chiu on Saturday.
          “Hand me an induction spanner when you get a sec,” Benson said wiping sweat from his brow. Balancing the antigrav coils to levitate the craft to a meter height could be tricky, but Benson knew exactly what to do.
          Taggart combed through his tools. “Here you go.”
          “How are you doin’ with that solar foil?” Benson asked, maneuvering the spanner into the impulse control port and giving it a twist.
          “Just about done.” A sudden gust rattled the workshop doors. “Starting to blow a bit outside.” They needed wind to propel the skiff, but this was haboob season when fierce gusts whipped the desert into a seemingly impenetrable wall of dust and debris sometimes a hundred or more kilometers wide and several kilometers tall.