Aloha

In this era of private sector billionaires taking over much of the work in space from governments, Brian Gilcrest left the US Air Force to work for one of those billionaires, Carson Welch. However, incidents in Afghanistan including injuries while working for Carson have left Brian on the outside looking in, he now taking any scraps of work even remotely related to space. It is one of those jobs that takes him back to Hawaii, his old stomping grounds. That job is to organize a traditional Hawaiian blessing for a pedestrian gate Carson is building in association with a rocket launch facility, Brian's responsibilities including negotiating with the native islanders for their participation. To ensure things go smoothly, the Air Force, who have negotiated a separate deal with Carson for him to launch a satellite to improve such things as wireless services, has assigned Captain Allison Ng, a space geek and one-quarter native islander, to be Brian's "shadow" for his entire stay in Hawaii. Brian's return to Hawaii is bittersweet in being reunited with his old girlfriend, Tracy, who he has not seen in thirteen years when Brian left Hawaii, she now married to one of Brian's old colleagues, John Woodside - Woody - the two who have two children. Regardless of the sparks of both a positive and negative kind that still exist between Tracy and Brian, there is trouble in the Woodside marriage largely due to Woody's unusual means of communication, which Tracy sees as no communication whatsoever. As Brian goes through his work, he and Allison start to fall for each other, in part due to their shared love of space and island life. Things have the potential to go off the rails with Brian's job and his burgeoning relationship with Allison when Carson's true long game comes to light within certain small circles, the issue being who knew of that long game and if they did anything either to support or thwart it.