Another year goes by

The celebration of the New Year is strictly a calendar event. For no reason other than tradition, the Alliance officially still recognizes the old Earth that Was calendar. Never mind none of the worlds of the 'Verse were especially close to the old calendar. Different worlds. Different orbits. Different rotational periods.

Keeping the old calendar was convenient, at least. It gave a common reference period, even when the local cues were completely different. Still didn't make it any easier though when you were trying to convert calendar dates and such to local references. Since everyone, for the most part, kept local time wherever they were, it was sometimes a bit dicey keeping things coordinated. Like trying to call your mother to wish her a happy birthday, only to get the comms service because it's the middle of the night back on Ariel.

Considering the fanfare of last year's Year End celebrations, it's almost a surprise there's nothing in the works that I know of for this year. Not that I'm especially worried about it. Not being much of a social animal, whether I spend Year End at a party, with a close friend, or just alone in the Black doesn't matter so much.

This year, I would spend it with family. At least one of them. The one who mattered most right now. Though, uncharacteristically, I was actually missing other members of my frontier family. Lily was off on her Hunt. Aurora was . . . not acting herself. In fact, her behavior was more than a little disturbing. In fact, she was close to getting taken out behind the hangers for a brief lesson in humility.

Understand something, Tiny Dragon. Krenshar may be feeding you the 'Greatest warrior in history' line, and you may have bought it. But the fact remains I can still hand you your skinny little ass. Genetic predisposition and conditioning is no substitute for actual experience. Ask an Operative of the Parliament. They know.

I was honestly close to my wits end with her. Something changed. Something I can't put a finger on. But her spending much of her time with Krenshar, 'Daddy' as she calls him, didn't appear to be helping the situation any. He was a person, certainly. A good one at that, or so I wanted to believe. But he had no experience as a parent. How could he? Krenshar was a machine. Artificial intelligence in a robotic shell. The Ghost may be real, but that didn't mean he had any clue how to raise a little girl.

Part of me wanted to intervene. I had a vested interest in her development, but I'd agreed to give Krenshar's 'colony' as much autonomy as we could manage. Never mind the entire enclave was on land subleased from Blue Sun. x0x0 had her own reasons for giving them a sizable chunk of the land she'd leased from the colonial government, which translated to me and the rest of the town council.

Still. If things continued to deteriorate with her I'd have to step in and put a stop to it. Considering how she was treating me now, I couldn't see a trip behind the hanger making our relationship any worse.

Right now though, I didn't want to think about it. It was Year's End and I had a few minor preparations to take care of. Even if it was just me and 'Brina tonight, I wanted it to be a night to enjoy.

We may still be looking for a vacation, but at least we had each other.

According to tradition, the Yule holiday on Earth that Was happened towards the end of the calendar year during the Winter season in the Norther hemisphere. For many folk back then, at least if you believed the little history we had left, a "White Christmas" was something they looked forward to. Was hard to reconcile the calendars and the seasons of our homes now with that old calendar, but folks still tried. They still wanted a white Christmas even out here, where we were pretty much guaranteed a dry Christmas.

There's been a lot written over the centuries about what the holiday meant and to whom. Being raised with Buddhist and Shinto traditions, my perspective on these holidays was 'something my friends did'. I always understood, and enjoyed, the tradition of giving each other presents, but the religious aspects weren't my world. It was the Shepherd's Way. Where I could respect it, and those that followed it, it wasn't mine.

But it was the Way for several people who were very close to me. For them, I could celebrate this season. Share a bit of the good. The joy they felt in the midst of a chaotic 'Verse. The fact was, you could share folks friendship and good will regardless of religion. The holiday was a convenient reason to be extra nice to one another. If only for a little while.

That's something I can share.

Whether someone believes in the Shepherd's Way or not, it doesn't really matter. No reason we can't set aside our differences, if only for a day, and put some good in the 'Verse. Spend some time with friends. Spend some time with family. Have a kind word for a stranger. Lavish some affection on the folk you love.

Enjoy your holiday. No matter what the weather.

Calibration

Traffic in our part of space has been picking up recently. Strangely, perhaps, we've seen more boats in and out of the small colonies like ours, and MacLaren's Drift, since the incident with Sentry and Mikie and the loss of Caliban. Par for the course, perhaps. Though we're so far from either of those worlds that incidents there are more a footnote in the evening Cortex News report than a cause for increased traffic. Can't complain though. Some of them have taken advantage of the new maintenance platform, and more than a few of them have left some extra coin at Fooks. Would make more for landing and transshipment fees, that is if we charged much more than cost. Assuming anyone bothered to collect the fees in the first place.

Intel was still coming in, albeit slowly, from multiple points. Someone back in the Core was taking their sweet time with the analysis and dissemination of pertinent data. That, or they were ignoring requests from field commands. Again. Realistically, it was probably a combination of information overload and priority dispatch. There wasn't just one monolithic Intel unit in the Alliance. It was called the Intelligence Community for a reason. There were a lot of us. Local and regional law enforcement units. Military units for different branches, commands, even specializations within the different branches. SigInt and ImageRecon. Personnel. Criminal versus Military versus 'Government'.

And none of them talked to each other.

An exaggeration, perhaps. There was actually an entire unit, several of them in fact, who's entire job was to try and coordinate and distribute relevant information between the different Intel services. The problem was, not surprisingly, there was just too much information to handle and disseminate in a reasonable amount of time. And of course, there was still compartmentalization, 'need to know', and territorial conflicts to content with. Even though we were, at least in theory, positioned to avoid most of that, there were still insane logistics and uncooperative personnel to deal with.

Which meant I was still waiting for Intel requests to get processed and sent out my way. Tag never asked why I wanted to know anything. He never had. Even when I was a trainer and not a field agent. If I'd asked for information on something, it was never questioned. It was just taking longer than it used to.

The funny thing, perhaps, was that I probably had a better idea where Sentry, at least, was than anyone in the Core Intel community. Not that I planned to tell them anything about that. Though Tag did support my assertion that the Londinium nuke was a False Flag event and that how I handled the fugitives, if I found them, was at my discretion.

I was going to discretely pretend I didn't know where they were.

I'd even gotten an encrypted wave from Sentry the other day. He apologized for any risk he'd put the colony at when he'd been by with the injured JJ, and thanked me for reminding him of that very risk. You're welcome, Sentry. Though I'm going to skip sending a reply on the off chance someone picks it off. No sense putting him at further risk.

Thing was, someone had been paying attention to the feeds. Someone in Alliance command had spotted hum, but had also spotted him boarding a boat to boost off Hale's. The patrol that showed up a day later was a little more thorough than they had been in the past couple months, but they were still polite. Asked a few questions about the fugitives, then went their way without so much as overturning a storage crate.

Might have been the Blue Sun and KHI presence here, or a polite word whispered up the chain of command to back off, or maybe just Silvermane being rational about the whole situation. In any case, they didn't raise much fuss in spite of Sentry being spotted. Something I couldn't rightly complain about.

Still. While recent events didn't bode well for Year's End, there was always hoping it would get better.

Tis the season - somewhere

There are days that x0x0 honestly surprises me. With everything that's been happening over the last few weeks, between the trial and subsequent escape, the troubles on Caliban and the Replicants coming home to Hale's, and some more personal issues, it's been a bit confusing. A bit depressing on some level, truth be known. But x0x0's somehow managed to brighten the whole Gorram colony.

We don't really have Seasons so much on Hale's Moon, as an epicyclic change in ambient light and radiation. Our axial tilt was only a couple of degrees and our orbit around Kalidaza was close to spherical. While Penglai was in orbit around Kalidaza with us, as a protostar it wasn't any brighter than Bai Hu, a type A0, or even Georgia, a G0, in our sky. Our seasons, such as they were, weren't the usual cycle.

And it was always dry.

That didn't stop x0x0 from importing a fair bit of preserved greenery and decorations for the Yule season. She'd set it up to celebrate a season we didn't have, based on a calendar we didn't use, from a world that was lost to history, to celebrate a holiday based on events that may, or may not, have happened twenty one hundred years before the Exodus from Earth that Was.

Not that it mattered. It was awful festive and the townsfolk loved it. Even had people dropping in from nearby colonies to have a gander. There was a cynical streak in me that could see it as Blue Sun making nice in a public relations sort of way: Give the people something cheerful so they'll look the other way when Blue Sun did something that maybe they shouldn't ought to.

But I also knew x0. At least as much as I could. And I could see x0 setting all that up because she really did want the folk here to have a bright spot. Reminded me that this time last year, on the old calendar anyway, Sabrina and I were just getting together. Didn't matter that I didn't follow the Shepherd's Way, there was a reason to celebrate the season.

Such as it was.

The Dry season.

Always the Dry season.

Was a good distraction though. Sentry and Mikie were still on the run. Or in hiding. Or something. Krenshar and his kin were still settling in, along with, it seemed, a fair number of folk who'd had digs on Caliban. Somewhere out in the desert what remained of the Loyalists, if anything remained of the Loyalists, weren't having a good time of it. And deep beneath Hale's Mother Bot and her young were still biding their time. Unless the thing had spontaneously shut itself down.

Ah . . . the holidays.

Breaking the Bubble

There are just some events that seem inevitable. When someone popped the nuke in Aberdeen on Londinium, there was no question the Justice Department would parade someone out in front of the public to take the fall. While the speed of the arrest and the people arrested were mildly surprising, the fact of the arrests and trial were anything but. Someone had to hang. Or get shot, as the case was to be, but still, inevitable.

Though, in truth, I'm surprised both Sentry and Mikie were allowed to escape. While Tag assured me he would forward what information our section could get, many aspects of the whole chain of events made little sense. Perhaps chain was the wrong analogy. More like a train. One event following the other like cars in a train, until the inevitable train wreck at the end.

I hadn't payed much attention to Mikie since she left Hale's with Cobb. We hadn't been especially close. The friend you'd ask to help you move, but not help you move a body. Still, I remembered well the incidents that led to their departure. There was a reason her escape from what seemed certain doom was less surprising, perhaps, than expected.

Was Sentry part of it too? I didn't know. Insufficient data. In any case, this game was being played at a very high level. Not exceptionally well played, either, if what I'd seen so far was par for the course. The only question was who the players were. Their game was obvious.

But not my problem.

At least until someone made it my problem. Which Sentry did when they brought JJ to our Infirmary after the Alliance attacked Shadow, Maclaren's Drift, Washtown, and a couple of other outlaying colonies, in their effort to find the fugitives.

Wo de ma he ta de fengkuang de waisheng dou. What were they thinking?

We were fortunate that no one appeared to be paying any attention to the security feeds from Hale's Moon. While I had a fair bit of intelligent filtering going on, keeping enough outgoing to not raise suspicions while still hiding a good deal from prying eyes, walking into the Infirmary with wounded in an Alliance attack was just asking for trouble.

I know he's gone to ground since. Possibly at the same 'sanctuary' Mikie's holed up in, but I really don't need them bringing the wrath of the Alliance down on our heads. Colonel Silvermane gets wind Sentry was here, there was no way we'd be able to keep them from sending down a couple Marine squads to scour the surface looking for them.

Blue Sun's compound, and the area x0x0'd subleased to Krenshar and his Replicants not withstanding.

Krenshar.

Another inevitable.

Truth be known I was happy to have him and his brethren back. On a Karmic level, I owed him a very subtle and specific debt. I knew when he'd left for Caliban to conduct his research he'd eventually be back here. It wasn't just that this was home for him, but that the situation on Caliban had been tenuous from the start.

Miranda was Reaver space. Such as was left of it. Another ten or twenty years, and they'd recolonize it. The Reavers would be gone. Attrition would do what the Alliance didn't have the stomach for. Entropy would win, as it always did. But until then Caliban, in orbit around Miranda, was just looking to be humped by the remaining Reavers.

The Alliance too for that matter. Once Krenshar's research got him working with them, in that particular field, it was inevitable they would put an end to his operation there. It just surprised me it had taken so long. Then, when they'd started to reclaim the little moon, it surprised me even more how long the Replicants and their friends were able to hold out before the Alliance finally had enough and cracked the dome on them.

Which brought them here. Here to a chunk of moon subleased from the ground we'd leased to Blue Sun. Their own colony, at least in name. I wouldn't interfere unless the interests of the colony as a whole came into question. Ultimately, I was more colonial governor than mayor. Not that there was a lot to govern. For the most part, aside from a few clusters of homesteads, our little town was Hale's Moon.

Ultimately though, that didn't matter. I wasn't here for the power or control. I was here because this is where I needed to be. Two years ago, it was just a place I was. Now it was home.

It was just a question of whether I could keep it, and the folk I shared it with, half way safe.

The expected verdict

It's been busy on our little slice of Heaven. Between x0x0 wrecking her Osprey and then turning out to be ok, the wreck in part a cover for her bringing Aurora home. Aurora herself making fleeting appearances, at one point making a comment about not having any friends because Krenshar taught her to snap their necks. And everyone and their brother crawling around our colony looking for some kind of clue to some kind of key to some kind of place that no one seemed to understand. It's been busy.

When you end someone you cross a metaphorical line. Once you cross that line, you can never come back. Most folk who've been across that line never look back. It's not so much an innocence lost, but the karmic weight of ending someone's span. In some cases it's not such a bad thing. Ending a Reaver is a kindness. Setting someone free from the madness. Ending an innocent is a different matter. It's the kind of thing a Shepherd'd say you were going to hell for, if you followed their Way. You took on that weight every time you ended someone's span. How much weight was on which side of the scale wasn't always so easy to determine.

I'd tried to instill in Aurora a respect for life, Organic or otherwise. I didn't want her to bare the same karmic weight I carried. If she chose it for herself when she was grown, so be it. But she was too young still, in spite of having knowledge far beyond her years, to cross that line. Only she'd chosen Krenshar as her role model, and Krenshar didn't have the same feeling on the matter as I did.

Seems I wasn't so good at this Motherhood thing.

Of course, that was personal. What wasn't so personal was the coverage the Cortex was giving to the Mikie and Sentry terrorism trial. I hadn't even checked the casualty count from Londinium when the first reports came in. I hadn't realized that the warehouse district in Aberdeen city was at the heart of an urban slum, so half a million dead wasnt' out of the question,

Was the kind of thing that left a knot in the pit of your stomach. It was the kind of thing that started wars, which was inevitably what the real perpetrator was after.

I had no doubt, at all, that this was a False Flag operation. The Dust Devils, the only faction in the Independence movement who'd consider popping a nuke on a core world, knew as well as anyone that the Alliance's urban poor were their best ally in the Core. Nuking them was the sort of thing a Hardliner might do. Would do. You'd foment a good deal of unrest in the Alliance population with the raw number of dead, and the fear and anger would override most folk's common sense when anyone who was Indie friendly protested they hadn't done it.

It was a good set up. Evil. But a good setup nonetheless if starting a war was what you were after.

The trial was for show. While I wasn't especially friendly with either Mikie or Sentry, history aside, they weren't bad folk. Neither of them were the kind of folk who'd resort to blowing up civilians to make a point. Military base, or a Cruiser? Maybe. An urban slum? Not a chance.

This was pure reflex reaction by the Powers that Be. Quick arrest and a show trial to make the public see just how powerful and unitized the Justice Department was, and then bury the real investigation under a few layers of red tape.

While I personally wanted to dig in and find out who was behind it, I resisted the urge. Not everyone in Parliament, the Military or Intel, were going to let this slide. Someone back there was investigating. Chances were they'd find the real culprit and quietly end their span. The public would think that Justice had been done, while Justice really was done behind the scenes.

Thing was, it wouldn't save Mikie or Sentry. They were as good as dead. Even if they somehow managed to avoid execution, there'd be folks hunting them down for the rest of their lives. Most Indie minded folk I knew hated the Alliance. But not a one of them considered blowing up half a million innocent poor acceptable. Either of them show their face on any of the Rim worlds, chances were pretty good someone would put a bullet in it.

Their only hope was being publicly vindicated, and even then someone was apt to take a shot at them. People were apt to believe that first report and act in kind. Either way, they were both likely to have a short span from here. Not something I envied.

Fact was, I had a measure of sympathy for them both. Didn't know Sentry's past well, but I knew Mikie had her share of history with the Alliance. None of it pleasant. Not that I could do much to help them. Though I had a gut feeling that some of the activity we'd been having around here of late was related to this whole thing.

Just being kept out of the loop. Plausible deniability.

Best I could do now was get a wave off to Tag and see if any of the Core units were on this. With all the compartmentalization, chances were he'd only be able to tell me a "Yes" or "No." If even that. Reality was there were probably several units looking into it, and none of them would know about the others.

There was more though. There were still some reasonable voices in Parliament. There were still some folk willing to listen to reason. It might take some time and favors, but there were still a few things I could do. A whisper in the right ear and maybe, just maybe, we could avert a war.

Butterfly wings flap
Voices of reason whisper
Dragon's gentle touch

Third time is enemy action.

It's a big 'Verse and people turn up missing all the Gorram time. It's the way things are. "Missing" is a relative term. Just ask any parent when they've lost track of their kid, even briefly. The folk out on the Rim tend to be of one of two types: Either the colonists or professionals who've found themselves a home and rarely leave it, or the folk who work in the Black and rarely stay in one place for long. Folk like that are, often as not, going to be 'whereabouts unknown' for extended periods of time.

Of course, none of that really applies when someone's taken from wherever they are by some level of coercion.

That sort of thing happens all the time. Fact of life. But when two of the folk you know get snatched the same day it's more than a little unusual. Of course, having a competitor of KHI's out here on Hale's, as well as a number of other Rim worlds, recruiting for 'security forces' a couple days before the incidents didn't give me the warm fuzzies.

I wasn't worried so much about the competitor. Like most of the major shipbuilding firms, they were competitive but played fair. That, and they weren't that big a player in KHI's markets. But the timing was still suspicious and the hiring had been referenced in the aftermath of the disappearances.

Honestly though, neither of the snatchings were much of a surprise. Sentry had a list of enemies as long as he was tall. With the sort of business he did and the company he kept, it wasn't much of a surprise. Folk on either side of the law were apt to want a piece of him and, technically, I couldn't blame them.

With Mikie, my first thought was "Wait. What? Again?"

While I doubted most of the folk living on Shadow now knew of her past, a fair number of us out in this little corner of the 'Verse remember well her being spirited off by the Alliance. What a lot of people didn't know was what happened in the aftermath of that incident. How the locals from Hale's Militia and a few friends raided the Sun Tzu to get her back. Or how the Operative in charge of the whole mess was found dead, pinned to the bulkhead with his own blade, after the rescuers had gotten clear. Except they never published the pinned to the wall part.

Now, it was possible that the two incidents were coincidental. Just a fluke of timing. Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Third time was enemy action. And there wasn't a third time. Until a couple days later when x0x0 went missing.

I was used to her coming and going fairly often, so it wasn't a big surprise when she called in saying she was coming to see me after landing. But then interrupting to say she'd been hit and was going down.

With a damaged boat on final, there wasn't a lot you could do except prep the rescue teams and hope the pilot could work a miracle. Which, in this case, seemed to be x0 making it to an escape pod and punching out before her Osprey broke up West of the colony. The rescue team got to the boat and prelims looked like she'd fired the self-destruct charges.

The escape pod made it clear and landed fairly hard not far from the Blue Sun compound, but when the rescue team got there the pod was open and x0 was no where to be found.

Now that was odd.

While it seemed unlikely, it was the classic 'third time,' which implied enemy action of some firm. But just who was the enemy? And what had x0 meant by "dropping off the girl" before her boat went down? They'd found a stuffed animal in the wreck, hadn't yet identified who it belonged to. Was someone after Aurora? Or was there someone else involved?

Hopefully, she'd turn up soon. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I'd grown rather find of x0x0. I didn't want to see her hurt.

The one wherein things go very wrong for Caliban

If there is an ass-end of the 'Verse, it would have to be Miranda. Until the Pax incident, Miranda had been the outermost colony in the Qing Long system, itself the outermost star in the 34 Tauri system.

The ass end of the 'Verse.

Nothing out there now but what was left of the Reavers and the few hardy folk who'd settled back into the research station on Caliban. Hardy souls. Most of them Human. All of them 'people', including Krenshar and the two hundred odd Mechanicals who followed him.

I knew why they were there. I'd known for a while. Why Kren had reactivated the installation. Why Lily and Aurora and others kept going out there. The implications of the research activities, whether I agreed with them or not. Wasn't my place to interfere except where it directly affected my girls. And, even then, I tried to stay out of the way.

But I knew it wouldn't last forever.

They'd had a fair bit of dealing with the Alliance since the beginning. There were things they needed to keep the installation going, and things the Alliance wanted from the research. It was a delicate balance though, and only a matter of time before someone tilted it too far to one side or the other. It wasn't a matter of if, but when.

Unfortunately, the when came sooner than any of us anticipated. From the Black Tortoise system, we were powerless to help when the call came in that an Alliance cruiser had moved into range and launched an assault on the installation on Caliban. The best we could do was monitor traffic and see if we could find any sympathetic transports willing to skirt the Alliance attack and evacuate survivors.

Krenshar and the Replicant Order would fight to retain control of the installation. He was stubborn that way. But he also knew that against the full might of a Cruiser it was a battle he couldn't win.

All we could do was hope. Hope the residents managed to escape without getting killed, or were well treated if the Alliance decided to take them prisoner. Hope Krenshar and his brethren didn't throw away their existence in a hopeless fight. Hoped they managed to salvage something if they took the better part of valor and evac'd the base.

It might be days before we knew what was actually going on out there. At least without going out there ourselves. But we did have an inside track on the Alliance Command structure. Whoever was in command of the attack wasn't the same person who'd been working peacably with Krenshar in the past, and there was a chance I could get more information through those channels.

I just had to hope it wouldn't be too little and too late.

Special delivery

There are times when the biggest obstacle to getting anything done is simply logistics. Take, for example, the logistics involved in deploying a modular maintenance depot. The depots, as a concept, have been around for at least two centuries. You pre-fabricate all the components you'll need to put together a small orbital platform with all the spare parts and equipment you'd need for servicing a broad range of small to medium spacecraft. You haul it out into some convenient and reasonably safe orbit, then assemble it on site into a functional compact orbital.

All it takes is the facilities to pre-fab the modules and a Heavy Lift spacecraft to haul it out to your designated orbit. For us, getting the modular installation was actually the easy part. Kawanishi Heavy Industries LTD already had a program in place to deploy modulars to strategic locations in the Border and Rim systems that were ill served by existing facilities.

Getting onto the short list was a matter of two waves. Getting the modular out here was a different matter.

Heavy Lift transports were big and expensive to operate. But they were also in demand and could usually be counted on to turn a steady, if not excessive, profit. Unfortunately, all of the big Company transports were booked weeks to months in advance. We had our refurbished modular facility. There just wasn't any transport big enough to get it out to us in a reasonable timeframe.

At least until General told us that someone had backed out of a contract for his Heavy Lifter, and he now had a big boat with an idle crew. And no, diverting the boat to Ariel would be no trouble at all and, in fact, would be a good chance for his crew to take a couple days leave on a Core world.

Murphy, it seems, smiles upon us.

Fortunately, there were some Company technicians available to help our crews assemble the modules when they deployed them in a high, stable, orbit around Hale's. The installation was, admittedly, relatively spartan as far as accommodations went. It wasn't even a new build, but one that had been decommissioned from a moon in the Georgia system. Still, it was fully restored, fully functional and, effectively, fully ours.

Sabrina was about as happy about with work as I'd ever seen her. We'd been talking about her taking over the technical direction and general management, if she wanted it, on the platform for months. It would be her baby. Closer to home and much, much, more to her liking. Much more to mine, truth be known. Was never really happy with her commuting off world, but even with our existing maintenance hangar there just wasn't enough work to keep her busy on Hale's.

That'll change now though. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the platform fully on-line, but at least it's here now. The orbit's a bit high to see it from the surface without a scope, but it's there now. A counterpoint to Blue Sun's field headquarters on the surface. And a place to slip away from what's going on here, if only slightly and not for long.

It is as it should be.

If not how it should have been.

Rogue Squadron

Alliance commanders on the Rim have a lot of autonomy. They need it. Even with Cortex relays and reasonably fast transports, commanders out our way are often operating on their own in sometimes volatile, usually unpredictable, circumstances. The isolation is why the Cruiser Captains and the Regiment Commanders for the units aboard can pretty much play it how they see fit out in the colonies.

There's a lot of variability in how they treat the civilians in their patrol regions. Most of them are pretty much ambivalent about it. Some of them are actually respectable folk and treat civilians, even Rimworlders, with a modicum of dignity. Command on the Sun Tzu's like that. But then there's the real qingwa cào de liúmáng commanders, like the sha gwa who authorized an attack on MacLaren's drift.

What the hell were they thinking?

All I could really do while I heard the comms traffic across both Civilian and Alliance channels was hope the folks on the ground were holding their own. Near as we could decipher was that some "Commander Peterson," from a Cruiser I hadn't yet identified, had dispatched a wing of attack boats to raise some hell on MacLaren's Drift.

Thing was, MacLaren's, like Hale's Moon, was in the Sun Tzu's patrol district. Whoever this Peterson was, he was out of his normal operations area.

It actually gave me a smile when I heard flight command on the Sun Tzu ordering one of their escorting frigates to break formation to go take charge of the situation. The IAV Marshal Iverson was similar to the IAV Abraham Sinkov that usually patrolled out near us, but was armed more as an Escort than a troop ship. Same hull. Different loadout.

Good boat to deal with a flight of rogue attack ships.

Without being there myself though, I only had the confused communications traffic and the reports from the folks involved. Most of the damage seemed to be superficial. Some fires. A few craters. Bunch of broken windows. Not a lot of casualties. The attackers seem to have broken off shortly before the Iverson got into position, which was probably a good thing.

For their part, the crew of the Iverson offered humanitarian relief, but the folks on the Drift are an independent minded lot. Doubt they took them up on it. By then though, I'd turned my attention to the Alliance Commander who'd gone and stuck his nose in where it wasn't welcome.

With my re-established deep access, getting details of this 'Commander Peterson' wouldn't be an issue.

At least not for us.

Letters to the editor

Intel Section, interoffice encrypted communication.
Classified: YES
Level: TS+
Destination: 9-2-J CorSec.

Begin encrypted communications:

[Start Standard Header Block]
[Security Classification: SCI Delta ++]
[Special Compartment ID: F92R]
[Outer Algorithm Category: K2]
[Inner Algorithm Category: VV]
[Primary Encryption Key: 8e1a9964c26f8a2e4d083bb6b0728173]
[Signatory Encryption Key: 2f6aa1d4c96cb9378156eaa2ffdfe97c]
[End Standard Header Block]

Fr: Lt. Colonel S. Kawanishi - Field Operations
To: General L. Taggart - CorSec Command

General Taggart,

As you were no doubt aware it would be when you asked me to take this assignment, coordinating field operations is somewhat challenging when other Intel units in the region have not been informed of your position in their structure, or, in fact, of your very existence as an Intelligence asset. While I understand the need for operational security, it is a serious obstacle to me doing my job.

Over the last few months, I have identified at least three factional organizations operating across a fairly broad swath of both the Border and Rim regions. These factions all have direct interaction within my area of operational responsibility. Where they are acting openly as Alliance personnel, I do not have sufficient Intel to determine their line of demarcation with Justice, Intel, or High Command.

The broad operational territories indicate a disregard of jurisdictional boundaries typical of what we encountered with the Aegis Group and 22 Sigma in the period shortly after the war.

While I only have access to limited out-region resources, it appears that at least one of the groups is operating under the auspices of a local Planetary government. Additionally, there appears to be a measure of Hardliner influence. Unfortunately, the few assets I have here are already deployed within my OpSec area, which means either assigning me additional assets or tapping Major Lau's team, or someone from Ortega's group, to confirm that assessment.

I have not yet spoken to Colonel Silvermane of the 1st Marine Raiders regarding my position here. Though she has proven herself to be a competent and honorable officer, with openly Moderate leanings, I am reluctant to enlist her cooperation in my Intel capacity. I know you've read the previous reports involving the incident with the Loyalist Black Ops group. Given her less than stellar opinion of Intel Section, I believe it best to maintain my current relationship with her as a Colonial leader, rather than as an Intel officer.

The bulk analysis data is attached. Let the analysts earn their keep. They will probably be able to tease more information from the raw data than I could.

My regards to your wife.

-S

[MACHash: 951cefd3ca5cb6773251e773379ff26a]
[EOL]

Why do I feel so old?

I usually don't feel melancholy. There is simply too much going on to waste time with emotions that don't really add anything to the situation. But sometimes, even I find myself slipping into a state of mind where it is very difficult to maintain a bright outlook.

While getting Aurora home safe has been a bright spot in of itself I can tell she's not really happy here. She doesn't want to go back to Ariel to stay with my folks, in spite of the opportunities there she won't have here on the Rim. She's been spending time with some of the local families and going to the creche school but I suspect in the very near future she'll be informing me that she plans to return to Caliban.

Why? Why does she identify so strongly with Krenshar? How did she become 'Daddy's little girl' when he's not her father? I know why I care. I don't entirely understand why I care, but I know the reason for it. Something I will have to accept. Something that would have been much easier to accept before this remote little colony changed me.

Then there's Lily. The one who legally is my daughter. She's never been one to set in one place for long. Must have something to do with the sugar fueled fusion reactor in her butt. But now, with her running with Cody on Raivenn, I'm even less sure how to handle her. Somehow, she managed to clear the radiation that she'd been contaminated with. How? Who knew. Mindo, maybe. Murphy more likely. Fact was she wasn't shedding enough alpha particles to read by any more and I was OK with that.

Mindo. That guo cao de ben tiansheng de yidui rou. Part of me actually felt sorry for him. Pity for the damned. Pity for the mad. But we could trace so many of the issues we had out here back to his hakkyou. And here, x0x0 was going to bring him here for containment. Right in our back yard, in a specially prepared facility deep under the Blue Sun lab compound.

I can't ultimately blame her. He is her brother and there are some things he knows that are desperately important to her. But I'd be lieing if I said I was happy about it. x0x0 said herself she wasn't telling be everything they were doing in order to give me plausible deniability when, not if, it all came out into the light. But the fact was I needed to know. She wanted to protect me from the possible fallout of her experiments. I appreciated that. But she'd made herself a citizen of our little slice of Heaven, and I had just as much of a responsibility to protect her. I couldn't do that if she didn't keep me in the loop.

What was she doing down there? Those . . . things we'd encountered when getting JJ back out of the lab weren't what I'd expected to find. She told me later why she'd deployed them, but it spoke back to my needing to know.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand my relationship with her. I am genuinely fond of x0x0. I'm just not sure I'll ever how the two of us inter-relate in the grand scheme of things. Much as I might deny I have one, we each have our own agendas. There's overlap, I'm sure. Cooperation. But conflict? I hope not. I would much rather see us working on the same side of whatever the 'Verse throws our way than being at odds.

Though, I still had to wonder, what had they found down there during the excavation? Hale's Moon was on the small end of what the Terraformer's were able to work with back during colonization. Below a certain critical point, they couldn't establish the 'gravitational standing wave effect' that gave all the worlds of the 'Verse the same gravity: Earth Normal, maybe a couple tenths either side. Without gravity you didn't stick to the ground and, more important, you didn't old atmo and water. How'd it work? Not my field. 'Brina could tell you how the Terraformers set up the wave in the first place, but I doubted even she knew the physics behind the effect. She was Buddha's own Mechanic, but not a theoretical physicist.

Point was it worked. Hale's was terraformed. Had standard gravity. Held atmo. People lived here. Before the 'formers did their work though, it'd been a black rock like every other little moon in the 'Verse. Mass profile had it with just a small fraction of a G. No atmo. No water that wasn't frozen into the rock. No life.

There could well be something down there. Something left over from the early days of colonization that'd gotten lost in the histories., and subsequently buried by the 'formers. But Alien? Just was kyouki no hanashi. People'd been looking for non-human Alien intelligence since before we'd left Earth that Was, and no one'd ever found anything. Unless you counted Dolphins, Chimps, AI's and sentient machines like Krenshar, that is. There was a whole unit that'd been dedicated to investigating claims of alien artifacts across the 'Verse and they'd always come up empty.

There had been life, of sorts, in the 34 Tauri system when Humanity arrived. Something a bit like cyanobaceria. About as sophisticated as the pseudo-microbes they'd teased out of the soil on Mars, and from under the ice on Europa. Pure statistics said life was pretty common, but intelligent life was looking pretty rare on the cosmic scale. Ask an astrobiologist if "They" were out there, they'd give you a measured "probably." They'd also tack on a "but almost certainly not anywhere near close."

Which brought me back to what had they found down there? Almost certainly Human in origin. But if it was something from the Colonial days we'd be in for a whole world of annoyance. Not much more frustrating to deal with than an archaeologist on a field expedition.

Seriously. Rather have Reavers.

No, really, this time my little sister actually -IS- hot.

If your boat breaks deep in the Black, your chances of rescue, separate from simple survival, can be anywhere from fairly good to not a prayer. The Core worlds maintained fully equipped Orbital Guard units that were specially equipped to perform rescue operations. Further out, most Alliance warships would render assistance if they caught a distress call.

Once you got to the Border worlds, systems like Georgia, things weren't quite so certain. Major colonies still maintained active safety patrols and your chances were good if you were fairly close. But when you got to the smaller colonies, all bets were off. Most of them would have someone on the ground who would boost on short notice to aid a boat in their space. Assuming anyone was awake in their tower when the call came in.

On the Rim, the situation was even worse. Lower populations. Fewer resources. Only a few worlds maintained active Rescue units. To make matters worse, some of the Alliance commands were known to ignore distress calls on the grounds they might be traps by pirates or Independent sympathizers bent on destroying Alliance naval assets.

Kind of like when, before my time, the folks based on Hale's Moon planted a bomb on the Sun Tzu. That sort of thing. Turned the Alliance right off on offering aid.

That's why getting a distress call, broad wave, from Lily, was so disconcerting. Out in our region of space, the nearest thing to organized rescue units were the few people who kept their boat fueled and warm on the off chance they needed to claw sky at a moment's notice. People like, say, me.

The call came in from the vicinity of Maclaren's Drift which is, fortunately, a short flight from Hale's Moon. But even with Wave Equation warm on the pad, it was a long dash to rescue a boat that'd apparently lost all power, navigation, and communication in the middle of the mayday.

In this case though, Murphy was smiling on our little girl. Cody, who'd taken over command of Raivenn in Duncan's temporary absence, had taken to keeping the aging Firefly warmed up on the pad. That meant he'd be there a lot faster than I would. Never mind the Matagi's performance was substantially better. Cody was effectively already there.

By the time I arrived, Cody'd managed to recover Lily from the crippled Reaver - well, ex-Reaver - boat and get her to the ground. The only trouble is she was hot. Not in the "My little sister is hot" way. More in the "Wow, your counter is ticking off the scale" hot way. She was hot enough that I had Cody grab some anti-rads from Raivenn's infirmary so I could dose him.

Lily, for her part, wasn't speaking. Didn't even act like she recognized anyone. She was, however, trying to get into any of the boats on the pad she could reach then trying to fire them up. She wanted something. Near as I could tell, the radiation wasn't affecting her directly. Being synthetic, she didn't need to worry about chromosomal damage though it was entirely possible the radiation was affecting her some other way.

Eventually she seemed to settle down, heading into one of the houses. Wasn't Cody or Imrhien's place, which made me guess it might have been where they'd been stashing Mindo when he was here. While I couldn't know for sure, there was some logic in her trying to find him. Like an injured child looking for a parent.

I didn't know. But I knew clearing the radiation from her system would take more knowledge than I had. When it came to Lily, though, there were few people I could even hope to turn to. Mindo was, distasteful as it is, the person most likely to know how to clear her system. The second most likely, I actually trusted. Which meant a dash back to Hale's to see what Uncle Sobi had to say about it. If anyone other than Mindo could fix her, it would be him.

Which left me trusting Cody to keep her safe while we tried to figure out how to keep her safe.

What'd I say about it not spinning down?

Yeah. Thought so.

And then someone went and nuked Londinium...

We are home and Aurora is safe. Two things that give me nothing to complain about. But once things spin up, they always seem to take much to long to settle back down again. Take, for example, the terrorist nuke on Londinium.

Now, I can well imagine that when that little gem hit the Cortex news service, there were cheers on a couple of dozen Rim colonies. While Unification wasn't rejected by everyone out here, there were a lot of folk who thought, and still think, that the 'Verse would be a much better place without the Alliance meddling in everyone's affairs. Not that they actually had the forces to do much meddling out here.

Though, in all honesty, as I watched the reports I had my doubts whether the culprits had been, as claimed, Independent sympathizers bent on terrorism. For one thing, the 'Browncoat Resistance' seemed like something out of a bad tabloid. During the war, the Indies had never referred to themselves as "Browncoats." That was an Alliance Media construct. Just like "Purplebelly" was an Indie Media construct. They'd referred to themselves, usually, as some unit or another from some colony or another. They may have shared the uniform, at least sometimes, but they were independent.

The nearest thing the remaining Indies had to an organized 'resistance' were the Dust Devils. And they weren't inclined to nuke a civilian target on a core world. No. This had all the hallmarks of a False Flag operation. The fact that it was in a warehouse district, rather than, say, a major shopping district, spoke to someone wanting to keep casualties to a minimum while still making the point. Add an apparently made up 'resistance group' and it sounded more like another Hardliner black ops mission. One executed very close to home.

Not good at all.

Ultimately though, it wasn't my issue. Unless the investigation somehow led out here and I had to get involved in any of my various capacities, the whole incident wasn't my world. A fact of which I was eminently grateful.

Things that were my issue were taking care of Aurora, and trying to deal with Lily. Both of which could prove to be challenging. Take, for example, Lily's interaction with menfolk. In the past, there'd been some rather unfortunate encounters with men who'd taken a fancy to her. She just didn't have real good fortune in that respect. It didn't help of course that she had a figure that put mine to shame. I'd said more than once, "Yes, my little sister is hot. Thanks for noticing." And she was. A real stunner. But mentally, she wasn't what she appeared. Where she had an amazing intellect in terms of raw knowledge and straight logic, she had an emotional maturity that ran between five and fifteen, with occasional flashes of truly adult insight.

Normally, I tend to be a bit harsh with men who take a shine to her. A couple of them nearly ended up communing with a mine shaft, but it seems she's got one now who's taken a shine to her and seems to understand that she's not like the other girls he might have known. Fact is, Cody's the first boy that's not gotten the "You make her cry, and I'll make you cry." talk. He hasn't needed it. Unique in that respect.

No telling how that was going to develop. Though he's been honest with me and forthright. Even told me about them going to the Wastes and encountering something that said it was Blue. Only it wasn't. Which we found out when Blue made his presence known in my office while we were talking.

Blue had his usual unsettling affect on people who're not used to him. Gave Cody's little sister, Kitten, fits. Gave me a revelation about who'd arranged Aurora's kidnapping, too.

But that was neither here nor there in this context. Lily, and how she was reacting to Cody's affection was. It was hard. I know x0x0 said Lily didn't really have feelings, and maybe I was deluding myself when I saw them in her, but I couldn't hear her talk about love and how she felt and not believe the feelings were real.

Lily was real in every sense that mattered. That made her feelings real too.

Feelings I wouldn't have cared about when I came out here. And now, how my girls felt was more important than I wanted to admit. My wife, and my adoptive daughters. Very real. Very important.

More so than a Nuke on Londinium.

Belly of the Beast

In the belly of the transport, I was a ghost. Sabrina, as Archangel in her tactical control chair, was feeding internal diagrams of the boat to my head's up display, giving me a route towards my quarry. General, I was quite sure, was watching our target for any signs of change as I worked my way from an auxiliary maintenance hatch deeper into the ship's Engineering space.

The boat's Mechanic was somewhere in the Engineering space, but the resolution we could get from their onboard sensors was negligible. That meant I would be working my way through the boat the hard way: relying on instinct and training to find and eliminate the crew before they knew I was even here. By preference, I would eliminate their Pilot first, then their Mechanic. But my ingress through the maintenance hatch changed that.

Mother Dragon prowls
Silent hunter in the night
Unseen in the dark

The Mechanic was a skinny, somewhat greasy, young man, with a shaved head and extensive tattoos. He was sitting at the Engineering console, feet up, reading a glossy skin mag out of Londinium. With the low thrum of the boat's power plant so close at hand, he didn't hear me approach.

With the reflective surfaces of his console though, he did catch a glimpse. More confused than surprised or scared, he looked around to see who was creating the blurry reflection on his console. In a moment his expression of bored curiosity turned to one of shocked surprise. As the skin mag dropped from his hand, I lashed out, wrapping my fingers around his throat like a steel vice, thumb pressing on a pressure point beneath his jaw.

"I am here for the girl. Where is she?" My voice was barely above a whisper and, distorted by my helmet's comm system, it sounded androgynous. Androgynous and calm. Calm as death itself.

He gurgled something and I released enough tension on his windpipe to let him speak. "Don't got no girl here!" His voice was strangled, full of a combination of defiance and fear.

"Do not lie to me."

"No girl! I swear!" As he protested, his hand reached for a spanner on the console behind him. Though not unseen. He took a wild swing towards my helmet, which I quickly ducked, fluidly changing position. Pushing upward with the hand at his throat, I brought armored knuckles to the back of his head, tipping his head back painfully.

"You should not have lied."

Fragile bones will snap
Poor decisions have a price
You should not have lied

With their mechanic eliminated, I took a moment to patch into their Engineering console. While their internal sensors were as bad as Sabrina said they were, a direct patch gave us a better idea of the crew's distribution through the transport's interior.

"Looks like one on the flight deck, two down in the passenger section, and three more in the common." Sabrina said calmly. I knew she was nervous with me here in the transport alone, She'd said as much, but she wasn't showing it.

"Copy that, Archangel. I'll take the Common first."

General'd given me several strips of weld-tape on the off chance I needed it. The tape was childishly simple to use. Cut to length. Peel the backing. Stick it to one surface you wanted to weld. Peel the activation strip, and bring the other part you wanted to weld into contact. Fifteen seconds later the tap would activate and thermal weld whatever it was that the tape was stuck to.

It was a great way to seal a hatch behind you. Which I did. Getting back into the Engineering space through the primary hatch would be an exercise in futility. Or an exercise with a cutting torch. Either way, after placing a couple of surgical charges that would disable very specific functions, I left the Engineering space and sealed it behind me.

The common area was one level up from where I'd exited the Engineering space. Like most boats in this general class, it housed the galley, lounge, what passed for a recreation area, and in this case, a compact infirmary. It was where off duty crew and the passengers who didn't want to stay in their cabins would hang out.

On this boat, the "passengers" were usually locked in cabins that had been converted to cells. Though as far as we could tell, Aurora was the only passenger they had aboard.

From outside the Common, with a bit of audio amplification I could hear what sounded like a card game in progress. Two voices? Then three. Estimate was these were the crew's 'hired muscle'.

Like any crew on the Rim, they'd try and run as lean as they could and still get the job done. That typically meant two or three people who actually ran the boat. More if it was required. The remainder would be hired muscle to handle the 'cargo'. Might be a dedicated medic if they were dealing in Indentures, since letting people die cost them money. But often as not, there'd be no one worried about whether or not the cargo made it to the destination alive.

In silence, I moved back down the companionway to where one of the boat's cooling pipes routed across the a bulkhead. Taking one of the small explosives charges from its box, I stuck trimmed it down and stuck it to an exposed junction, then worked my way half way back up the corridor. "Archangel. Charge seven."

With a soft 'bang' the small charge detonated, opening a breach in the pipe to let a flood of water vapor spill into the companionway. Functionally, the breach was harmless but it should serve as a more than adequate diversion.

I could hear a bit of confusion from the Commons, then the gruff voice of what had to be their captain over the internal comms. "Hey, looks like we've got an alarm in Two Left. One of you clowns go check it out."

A moment's complaining and briefly arguing about who would go, and I could see a single figure entering the corridor out of the Common. A notch in the corridor to access one of the upper store rooms and the cloud of vapor hid me from view. Muttering under his breath about old boats and being 'the new guy' he neither heard nor saw me as he passed my hiding spot. In a moment, I moved from hiding behind him and coldly snapped his neck, catching his body as he fell, guiding his crumpled form to the ground in the little alcove in front of the store room.

Back in the Common, I could hear the other two growing impatient and within a minute I could see them stepping together into the corridor. Drawing the silenced .50 I half stepped from the alcove and squeezed off a round. The muscle on the right half spun as he dropped, the 21 gram round translating kinetic energy into an abrupt cessation of bodily function.

His partner turned in stunned surprise, looking at the falling body, only to turn back and peer into the vapor, half reaching for his own side arm. There was a chance he'd seen the slender black clad form in the cloud before the second fifty caliber round found its mark, ending his career as a Slaver.

Four down, two to go
Responsible for his crew
The captain is next

"Commons is clear, Archangel. Status?" I asked as I made my way carefully into the Common, stepping over the bodies of the two fallen Slavers. As I waited a moment for Sabrina to check the internals, such as they were, I grabbed the two thug's idents. Whether it led to anything or not, they would be worth getting.

"Still one on the flight deck. One and a half on the crew deck if the reads are right. No further motion."

I acknowledged and worked my way more urgently towards the flight deck. It wouldn't be long before the pilot started to wonder why he hadn't heard back from his crew.

Just outside the flight deck I paused. "Archangel, standby to disable internal comms." 'Brina didn't bother acknowledging aloud. Just a telltale on my heads up, showing the system was ready to do its thing.

"Go Hwong Tong! Where are you Buhn Dahn?" was mostly complete before the internal communication went static, then dead. A moment later he stepped from the bridge, weapon drawn. He must have realized something was amiss on his boat. Whether it was a simple mechanical failure that was getting out of hand, or an intruder.

A bit of both, really.

In a fluid motion I stepped from me spot next to the bridge door, slamming my elbow down into his weapon hand, sending it clattering to the deck as I spun in and drove my knee into his gut, sending him sprawling back into the cockpit in a heap. I'd taken a gamble on the position, but ninety percent of the Human population was right handed, making it a safe bet.

"Where is the girl?" I asked him as he looked up at me in stunned surprise, nursing his broken right hand. The tone was as quiet, calm, and androgynous as it had been with the Mechanic.

"Passenger deck. Second on the left. Ta ma duh! Who are you?!" He was trying to look past me down towards the Common, probably hoping for reinforcements that would never come.

I didn't bother answering his question. I just went on. "Good boy. Who hired you?"

He paled. I could see by his reaction that he was more afraid of whoever hired him than he was of me. "No. They'll kill me if I tell you!"

"And I won't?"

"Chwee Ni Duh!" he cursed, daring me to end him on the deck.

Captain makes his choice
Fear them more than the Dragon
Dragon kills quickly

Before leaving the flight deck, I checked their course to confirm what we already knew. Letting inertia do its job, the transport would pass within navtrak range of Muir in a couple of days. The empty crippled hulk should serve as a message to whoever had sent the Slavers after Aurora. If not? So be it. By then Aurora would be far away and safe.

With another strip of weld-tape I sealed the flight deck hatch and started working my way back through the transport to the passenger deck. If 'brina'd gotten a good read on the ship's compliment, there was only one person left guarding Aurora. One person between me and Tiny Dragon.

One last obstacle.

I'd been moving silently through the ship, being careful to stay to the numbers: checking for sensors, opponents, and potential places to screw up and wreck the Op. Against an unskilled target, it would have been easy to get overconfident and stray from training. With Aurora on the line, I wasn't going to get sloppy.

It was fairly obvious where the actual crew stayed and where their 'passengers' were kept. Cramped as the passenger accommodations were, I'd actually seen worse. In fact, they weren't much worse than some of the troop transports I'd been aboard during the war. Though the barracks had a proper head, and you got to actually leave your bunk.

With the enhanced sensors in my helmet, I actually had a good idea of what was on the other side of each of the thin, though strong, cabin doors. All were empty, save one. Two signatures inside. The ident was far from perfect, but it appeared to be one adult and one child. Aurora and a handler.

There was a fairly good chance that this last crew member was aware that something had gone wrong. The pilot's initial request, and second call to the crew, though interrupted, had been ship wide. That meant they were going to be more vigilant than the others aboard, and that was potentially a problem.

I crept up to the cabin door, keeping out of the way of the simple door cameras as I swapped out the magazine in my Fifty for a fresh one. Aurora's life might depend on the next few seconds, and I needed to make sure I was fully loaded.

We could easily kill the lights and shut down the boat's internal gravity, but any sudden change like that might be disastrous for Aurora. Not a risk I was willing to take. Which meant cycling the door and hoping I could get onto my target before they did something . . . regrettable.

I took a deep calming breath, centering myself, the Zen calm elevated to a point where the entire universe seemed to be moving in slow motion. The next few seconds were crucial, but I was ready as was humanly possible. "Archangel. Final target. I'm going in."

The door cycled quickly and I moved into position, half covered, weapon ready, shifting to assess people's positions in the small cabin. The scene that greeted me though gave me a moment's pause.

Aurora was standing a little uncomfortably as her 'handler' - a rather pretty thirty-something woman with a cascade of dark chestnut hair - was calmly dressing her in a child-sized EVA suit. Almost by reflex I drew down on the woman, but Aurora interrupted me in a small voice. "Mot. . . mi . . . Please? Don't kill her?"

The woman had already stopped what she was doing and turned to look at me, a half expectant, half resigned, expression on her face. "As you wish," I said softly to Aurora, then nodded to a chair over in the corner of the room where the woman quickly took a seat. "She saved your life." The woman just nodded, but said nothing.

Aurora moved next to me, taking the EVA helmet in her little hands. "Who hired you?" I asked the woman calmly, but she said nothing. While I could have pressed the issue, getting Aurora off this tub was more important at the moment than trying to extract information from someone who might not even have it.

"This boat is hobbled. You have power and life support to last a month, but no communications or maneuver. In about three days you will be within range of rescue. We will make sure you are found," I told her, putting my free hand on Aurora's shoulder and gently shifting her behind me.

The woman nodded faintly, remaining seated as Aurora and I backed out into the corridor and closed the door behind us. "Archangel. Target acquired. Moving to the starboard lock."

Wisdom of a child
Mercy to an enemy
A lesson learned well

Within a few minutes, General had soft docked Wave Equation to the transport's air lock and we'd transfered over. Safe. Five minutes later, we'd fired the last charges to thoroughly disable drives and communications, and were turned for the loop back towards Hale's Moon.

It would be a somewhat longer flight home, seeing as we were trying to keep our wake quiet and we needed to get a wave off to Jai or Gallagher to let the authorities on Muir that "they'd spotted a boat that seemed to have lost comms and drives, and maybe they should look on this here vector about a rescue."

Finally though, it was done. Aurora was safe and we were one our way home. A little time to relax while Wave Equation burned a hole in the Black. Time enough to gather Aurora, and my wife, and the friend who'd risked his life to come help us, and read.

"The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette..."

Final approach

They don't know we're here.

Like most transports, their sensor array is essentially a heaping pile of gos-se. While not as bad as, say, the notoriously weak factory-stock array on a Firefly, they weren't much better. Their array could identify a planet without looking out the viewports. Sitting in their baffles as they coasted towards their next destination, Wave Equation wasn't even a ghost. She simply wasn't there.

"We ready?" I said calmly, looking out the front panels at the coasting transport less then our own length away.

General handed me a standard gear box, saying with a vaguely amused smile, "Ribbon charges and pinpoint breachers with command det fusing. Couple of flash bangs just for fun, enough demo putty to crack anything you find inside, and a couple meters of weld-tape. Can det them from your rig, or we can do it remote."

I nodded thanks, fastening the gear box inside one of the pockets on my suit after quickly checking the contents. The box itself wasn't compatible with the suit's thermal and optical damping properties, but the pockets on the suit were designed to take them.

"Ready, love," 'Brina said softly, giving me a kiss on the nose before settling into the second seat with the tactical console. "You know I get nervous doing this, right?"

"I know you do. Also know I wouldn't want anyone else in the Archangel seat." I replied, quietly reassuring her. While never formally trained as a tactical controller, she was damn good at it. Probably came from a vested interest in keeping my skinny ass alive. I gave her a tender kiss on the cheek and left Wave Equation's bridge for the airlock.

While both boats were tearing through the Black at a substantial velocity, relative to each other they were stationary. Unlike in those cheese Space Trooper shows they liked to show on the Cortex, the stars didn't go streaming by, there were no whooshing drive sounds, and everything wasn't lit up so the audience could see what was happening. No. It was silent and dark. Even thirty meters from the transport's belly, without my enhanced optics it was just a faint outline in the Black.

Gently kicking off from the ramp, I drifted across the Black to the stop gently against the transport's underside along her Engineering section. On the flight out, Sabrina'd identified the base model of the transport and refined her assessment as the boat drew within range of our long range passives. Like most Civilian, and quite a few Military, boats, she had weak points that could be exploited with a carefully placed charge. A simple limpet mine strapped to the hull in the right place could have rendered the boat a lifeless hulk, but that wasn't the effect we were going for. We wanted something more surgical. More precise.

That's where General's ribbon charges came in. They looked like a section of thin cord, less then half a meter long, sticky enough to stay attached to a target, but not so much they got stuck to your gear with a pinky-nail sized detonator on one end. There was a way to do a timed 'prime and forget' detonation, but they were intended for command det. Even armed they looked inert. "What, you want people to know the thing's gonna go off?" I'd heard General say once.

That's our boy.

I carefully wrapped two of the ribbon charges to the spots 'Brina had identified for me on their drive section, before moving across the hull to wrap a third around their main antenna coupler. With a single command we'd be able to cripple the ship's main drivers and her communications array. They were hobbled, dead, and mute. They just didn't know it yet.

A few minutes later and I'd maneuvered back down to a maintenance hatch towards the front of the Engineering section by their ground service ports. From here, I could jack into their internal communications system and effectively give Archangel a view into our target.

"Archangel. Patch complete." I said calmly, watching my own Head's Up displaying technical feeds from the transport's onboard service system. Unless they were a couple or orders of magnitude better than it appeared, they still didn't know we were here.

"Gotcha. Looks like six? No. Seven people aboard. Their internals are luh-suh, but you look clear to enter." I could hear Sabrina keeping herself calm. She was worried. It was natural. Archangel was a tough role. You had to care for your asset, but still remain detached enough to send them into harm's way. 'Brina didn't like me going into harm's way, but it was what I did best.

"Copy. Going in."

In the silent Black, I cycled the transport's maintenance hatch and dropped into the belly of the beast.

Point of no return
Buddha, in your great wisdom
Show their souls mercy

Clawing holes in the Black

Upon Jai, ten'on. Blessing of Heaven. She stumbled into the boat that was transporting Aurora at a small transit and refueling station in the Blue Sun system. A stroke of luck. Karma shining on us. More then that, she'd managed to get the ident code from the transport's pulse beacon. It was probably forged but that wouldn't matter to our mission. We knew their boat. We knew where they were and where, roughly, they were going.

Within minutes of Jai's last wave - she'd been keeping an eye on the boat until she got a little spooked and backed out for safer ground - General and I had mounted up and gotten a wave to Sabrina to meet us on the platform. It would take only a few minutes to soft dock to the platform, let 'Brina board, and turn and burn for the small Corper way-station where Jai'd spotted Aurora.

I plotted a course for us that would bring us into position without making it apparent we were on an intercept, or even out of the Kalidaza system. Gravitational slingshots are your friend, especially when you want to back into an area without lighting up the 'Verse with your drive flares.

Catching the transport itself wouldn't be a major issue. Jai'd sent me a vid clip of the boat and Sabrina identified it at a glance. Model. Yard of origin. Power plant. Drives. Capacity. Performance. All at a glance. Given the usual budgets Slavers expended on their boats, the chances of them being able to get away from us or even see us was slim to none. We couldn't afford to be over-confident, but Wave Equation should be more than up to the task ahead of us.

During the many hours it took us to burn across the Black from Kalidaza to Qing Long, we got ready. General'd brought along some raw material for custom explosives. With his demolitions expertise and Sabrina's mechanical knowledge, we'd be able to surgically disable that boat without affecting the crew. At least until we were ready to affect the crew.

Jacking into the remote Navtrak stations was my job, which would let us find that transport and vector in on them when we got close enough that it mattered. As far out as we were, we couldn't really set an intercept vector until we know for sure where they were. That was something that would take time. The inevitable consequences of lightspeed. It would also be my job to slip aboard that boat and extract Aurora when the time came. Extract any other captives we found aboard, for that matter.

Jai hadn't been able to tell how many people were being kept aboard the transport. It wasn't a large boat. Maybe eighty meters nose to tail. Considerably bigger than a Matagi or my old Corsa, but smaller than, say, a Firefly, or Stevedore, class transport. But still big enough to have a fair sized crew and a hundred 'Laborers' stuffed in the hold. Assuming you didn't care about your passenger's conditions, which Slavers usually didn't.

For now, all we knew was there were at least a handful of people aboard with Aurora, and we'd know more about the transport's compliment when we got closer.

When we got closer. We would deal with them then. If there were innocents aboard, we'd set them free. If not? It would just be me and the Slavers. Either way, there could be no question about the outcome.

Aurora would be free.

And the Slavers? The Slavers would end. Alone. In the Black.




Patience Little One.
Mother Dragon comes for you.
You will be home soon.

Target acquisition

Slavers are an unsavory lot, operating in a gray underground on the edge of the Law. While slavery is officially illegal on any world of the Alliance, there are a few technical exceptions. There's 'Indentures', where a person basically becomes a contract slave for a set period of time. Sometimes the terms of an indenture make it hard to actually complete the deal, which can leave some folk in that state for years. Same goes for some work contracts. Get hooked up in the wrong contract, and you might find the company literally owns your ass.

If a Slaver is particularly slick, they deal in those sorts of contracts. It lets them skirt the edge of the law and, possibly, avoid complications with the Federals. But most Slavers aren't very slick, and conditions on some of the Rim worlds are such that slavery is still tolerated. In fact, on some colonies, it's an accepted way of life. That's the kind of world Slavers like to ply visit. Worlds like Botany Bay.

When Jai stopped by the office to tell me she'd talked to x0x0 and knew Aurora'd been taken, I couldn't say I was surprised. With all Jai's travels on her trading runs, she'd could turn out to be a valuable asset. She had a fair number of contacts of her own that didn't overlap mine or x0's.

I am a patient woman. I started training in martial arts almost as soon as I could walk. I learned self control and self discipline. When I was a soldier, I was trained, amongst other things, as a sniper. Snipers are precise, patient, killers. Self discipline comes with the territory. Patience comes with the territory. But the waiting was killing me.

The 'Verse is a big place. Finding a little girl in a big 'Verse wasn't going to be easy, or exceptionally quick. But the longer it took me to find her, the more likely it became she'd be hurt. Or worse.

I had to be patient. I had to be disciplined. But I was also preparing. Wave Equation was ready to boost on a moment's notice. Sabrina and General were ready to mount up on equally short notice. When the time came, we'd be ready to go.

Whoever had taken Aurora had made a grave, grave, error. While it was entirely possible that the "Slavers" were merely contractors for some Corporate or Alliance interest who wanted Aurora for their own ends, I didn't really care. As soon as I knew where she was, I was going to get Aurora back.

It didn't matter who they were.

They would never know what hit them.

The one wherein the Mayor decides to hurt people who desperately need it

I don't like Slavers. I really, really, don't like Slavers. I consider them less savory than, say, Reavers and Ministers of Parliament. Worse even than Lawyers. That's how much I dislike Slavers.

In the aftermath of Lily and Cody making a mess of Krenshar's labs on Caliban and the other assorted issues to come out of that, I'd had my hands full. We'd already had Cody picked up here on Hale's by an under cover Federal, who bypassed our land lock and subsequently hooked up with a patrol boat. We got word a couple days later that they'd taken him out near Caliban, where he was promptly busted out by some friends. Who? No idea. Well, that's not really true. I had an idea. A fairly good one. Just wasn't going to say anything about that or probe into the facts much.

But what the hell was it with the recent interest in Caliban? It was like when I first came out to Hale's Moon, and they had the Sun Tzu station-keeping smack in the middle of the colony's primary approach. That and the First Marine Raiders making regular, ill-planned, under-strength, attacks on the colony. It never made sense. Even knowing that Weyland-Yutani had been doing some testing on the KM series out here, it was hard to fathom a full scale cruiser like the Sun Tzu. Hell, if it really was Weyland-Yutani who'd weaponized the von Neumann drones, it made even less sense to have a cruiser on station.

Knowing the research Krenshar was doing out there it doesn't make sense to have that much random traffic and comms chatter. Covert research like that needs to be kept hidden, and having everyone on the Rim making quick flights to the ass end of the 'Verse does not keep the profile low. I genuinely worry that all the extra traffic's hurt his research more than it's helped. Still not sure I agree with his assessment of Lily and Aurora, but I've got no doubt he believes he's doing right.

But I digress.

I wasn't sure where Cody had gotten off to. In some ways I didn't care. Though I was sure I wasn't thrilled with another federal showing up on Hale's nosing around. Paid me a courtesy call, as per protocol, then got all cagey about just who he was looking for. Given the sort of folk we get dropping by, could have been any of a dozen people they'd be wanting as a 'fugative.'

The Federal put me in a less than pristine mood, so when x0x0 came by to give me some intel on Aurora I was both elated and very, very, annoyed. Did I mention my attitude on Slavers?

Aurora in the hands of slavers was not something I wanted to contemplate. 'Brina was with me when x0x0 gave us the news, and she was as adamant as I was, though calmly so, that we would recover her ourselves.

It didn't matter where she was, or where she was going. We would find her. We would find her, and we would bring her home. If anyone tried to stand between us and her they would know a new definition of pain, though only briefly.

When Sabrina, Belize, Td, and I had recovered Imrhien from the Feds on Persephone, we'd made a point of not hurting any of the Alliance personnel. They weren't evil. Just doing their jobs. They didn't need to die.

Slavers are evil.

I set some feelers in motion to try and track down the Slavers. We didn't have a lot of intel, but we didn't really need a lot. I had contacts all of the Rim well before restoring my commission. Even without the considerable resources of that specialized slice of Intel Section, getting an idea where they were and where they were going was just a matter of time. That we would find her was not a question. It was only a matter of time.

While my feelers ran their course, I started working through the hypothetical scenarios. Most of them involved a small, intimate, team. All of them involved a trail of bodies. Sabrina was a given. Archangel. My lifeline. Backup? Few people out here I trusted with our lives in that role, which made General the obvious first choice. Assuming he was willing, of course. If not? If not I would worry about it later. Same if it looked like I needed a bigger team.

But now. . .

Now it was find Aurora.

Fear not, Little One.
Mother Dragon comes for you.
We protect our own.

The one wherein I blink, and many things change

Two days. Less really. Two days for the shape of the universe to change. It wasn't, of course, that melodramatic. But from my perspective it elicited a string of muttered curses in about eight languages. All of which could be summed up to "Wait. What?"

I know all to well that things can happen very, very, quickly. Sometimes too quickly to react to in any kind of sensible way. Or even to react to at all, when events are taking place too far away to be a part of.

Caliban, in orbit around Miranda at the ass end of the 'verse, is far enough out that it's hard to keep track of what's happening there. But that doesn't stop word getting back to me when things get strange.

I don't really have enough information to properly summarize the aftermath of Lily and Cody setting fire to Krenshar's labs. I know he'd set a bounty on them both, which Jai subsequently collected. That didn't make a lot of sense and later knowledge clarified the situation, including Lily's "marriage" to Cody.

All part of Lily's plan. An elaborate plan, well executed, that went completely unlike it's original intention. I'm sure they never intended for Krenshar to turn himself over to the Alliance. Or for him to be 'rescued' from being returned to Weyland-Yutani by something involving Blue Sun. Blue Sun, in this context, almost certainly meant x0x0, which begged the question of what interest she had in Krenshar and what had she done to arrange his release?

I have a feeling I'm going to be figuring out the aftermath of this for the next several weeks. I know Cody and Lily are safe, since they made it back to Hale's to explain what happened. At least from their perspective. The marriage, not surprisingly, was not just one of convenience, but one of illusion as well. Technically, they'd never been legally married.

A bit of a relief, that, actually.

The immediate questions I still had regarded Krenshar, x0x0, and Aurora. Kren I knew was back in the station on Caliban. x0x0? No idea. Aurora? Worse. Also no idea.

That left me worried.

I don't like being worried.

When it absolutely, positively, has to get there. . . eventually

Rumors have a way of taking on a life of their own. It's actually the stock and trade of several branches of the Media, and several Psych Warfare units have made their reputations in the business as well. With few exceptions though, the best rumors have just enough of a grain of truth in them to make them sound plausible. Those are the ones that need to be followed up on since they are potentially the most damaging.

The rumors out of Caliban had that feel. I knew Krenshar. I'd had faith in his being a real person for a long time and, deep down, I believed that person was good. There'd been a few incidents that made me doubt that, recent rumors out of included. But every time I'd had reason to doubt, a bit more digging had shown one of two explanations. Either he was under external influence which, in some cases, over-rode what he wanted to be doing. Or it was a matter of perspective. Krenshar always, always, did what he thought was right. Only, what appeared right from his perspective might not appear right by ours.

I finally did what I should have done when I first got wind of him reactivating the labs on Caliban.

I called him.

The wave from Caliban about the fire, and Aurora's wave shortly thereafter looking for transport off, had me concerned. The fact of the matter was disturbing, but not especially surprising. Lily had somehow convinced Cody to come help her wreck the labs. Evidently, she'd seen the 'parts jars' and thought Kren was cloning Aurora, selling her in pieces to the Alliance, and not cutting her in for a piece.

Did I mention my Mei Mei was sometimes a little unstable?

Krenshar explained what he was up to, and why. Including his belief that Lily and Aurora were both "broken." By his reasoning, they were both supposed to be hybrid synthetics. Part organic, part artificial life.

His entire purpose for being on Caliban was to try and fix them. When he'd interfered between Lily and Blue Man, he'd put a wrench in Mindo's carefully choreographed operetta. Regardless, he believed that they were both going to die if he didn't manage to get it sorted out and find a way to bring them to the hybrid state he thought Mindo had planned for them.

Was he right? Were they supposed to be hybrids? I didn't believe so, but then he'd done more direct research than I had. There were, however, two people who knew the truth. Mindo himself knew what he'd planned. At least I hoped he did. There were a few points where it looked very much like he'd lost control of his effort to play God and there was no telling how close reality now was to what he'd intended.

There was, of course, the issues of Mindo not being exactly fond of me, and his propensity for bending the truth to suit his needs of the moment. Or, more simply, he was a liar and didn't like me. I wouldn't hurt him though. Much as I might want to. Needed to set a good example for the girls, after all. The fact was, even if x0x0 gave me access to her brother, chances weren't good for me getting the information I needed out of him.

Which left Blue.

If anyone knew how it was supposed to have come down, it was Blue. But would Blue tell me the truth? I didn't even know how to describe my relationship with the Blue Man AI. I just hoped I could trust him to tell me the truth.

Probably. Though it would mean tracking him down enough to talk to him. He's said he's always here, which technically he probably is. He's just not always paying attention.

For most of the folks on the Rim, "Peaceful" means no one is shooting at you. By most folks standards, Hale's Moon's become a very peaceful place.

They don't know the half of it.