Changes of perspective

I have grown used to being surprised by things out on the Rim. It is the way of things. The simple life isn't. We can wish for it and try to achieve it, but it's not the way of the 'Verse. The 'Verse will throw you curves.

There's three things out here on the Frontier you know will give you trouble. Raiders trying to steal your shit. Reavers trying to eat you. And the Alliance trying to make your lives better by making your lives miserable.

When one of those inevitable things changes, you pause and wonder why. When two of them change, you look for a fundamental shift in the nature of the 'Verse. If all three were to change, I think I'd hang it up and go back to Ariel to drive a desk.

A thing and a half has changed.

The Alliance treating us civilly isn't actually that much of a change. After the fiasco with one of their company commanders griefing us for a good six months, officially under the direct orders of a covert operations commander, but unofficially because they'd gone Loyalist, and their real CO finally putting her foot down, things have been passable. Sometimes, actually, downright peaceful.

They'd even taken up arms on our behalf when the Reavers have been a problem. What I wasn't expecting was for them to proactively send a fire team to Hale's with the express intent of capturing a Reaver to interrogate it and find out just why they'd taken such a keen interest in our little slice of Heaven.

Yeah. That'll turn out well.

Other side of the equation was the Reavers themselves. They had been acting different recently. Actually landing on the surface to effect repairs? Not what we'd seen before. But that's why the Alliance was here now.

And damned if they didn't get what they were after. Don't know how they knew, which raises some other questions, but they managed to capture a Reaver who was on the surface and they managed to get some actual information out of it.

Rather than food, the Reavers were back on Hale's trying to recover some piece of kit they'd left behind when they were repairing their transport. A bit of searching and the Alliance fire team located it in one of the tunnels not too far from where the transport had set down: A big hunk of kit that looked like a cross between a locomotive's power pile and an over sized blender.

The Alliance team didn't know what it was either, and agreed to leave it with us so Sabrina could figure it out. Looked like her kind of kit too. A couple of arm thick power couplings that either fed power in, or sent power out, and a set of what might have been quick release couplers if they hadn't been as big as my head.

What the hell was it? Gut feeling said it was either the accumulator from a boat mounted weapon, or part of their power system. Either way, 'Brina would figure it out and we'd either make use of it, scrap it, or let the Alliance cart it off. Even if it was a weapon, it wasn't like we needed any Reaver built kit.

But damn. Two of the truths from the Rim were in doubt. Something was definitely not right with the 'Verse.

The one wherin the Reavers make it an all day event

I've said it before. I will say it again. Probably many, many, times. I don't like Reavers. Cannibal Berserkers never really get fun. Ever. They're not even fun when taken separately, Cannibals and Berserkers are each an individually bad idea. Together, they become the stuff of Frontier nightmares, political suicide, and low budget late night Cortex feeds.

I knew that cracking the nest out in Beetle's Baily wouldn't actually end our Reaver problems. Even with their losses during our two main attacks, we'd barely managed to take out twenty percent of their population. For Reavers, as long as there was one to go on fighting, they would go on fighting. We'd seen that proven out time and again, though, admittedly, they didn't always suicidally fight until the last of them went down.

This time was different though. Rather than sending in a load of them all at once with a few boats, they trickled in in two's and threes over the course of half a day. There had to have been twenty or thirty of them by the time it was all over.

In hindsight, it's hard to actually tell what happened. The first colonists terrified cry of 'Reavers!' ringing out across town was answered almost immediately by supporting gunfire from one of the militia. Within a few minutes, the first wave was dead, but that wasn't the end. In ones and twos, coming into town from several directions, the Reavers kept coming. Even Lily was taken aback by the ferocity of their attack. 'Not like before' she said. And it wasn't. These actually showed some tactics and skill beyond screaming and leaping to the attack.

Normally, with a raid, I stay out of the way and let the militia deal with it. More than one member of the Town Council has told me my role as Mayor is more important to the town than my experience as a soldier, but this time they just kept coming and the folk taking up arms were getting tired. I ended up killing one in hand to hand on my way up to the platform, and then two more from my perch up on the tower.

Navtrak caught at least one Reaver transport on the ground, but where the hell was it? That Alliance Lieutenant who'd taken up arms with us before, Otsuka, answered our distress call with his patrol skiff. But he couldn't spot it either. Probably because he was concentrating on trying to add supporting fire without damaging any of the buildings in town.

It was only later, after we'd started cleaning up the mess, that we were able to find out where they'd been - five clicks southwest of town in a sheltered ravine. The spilled lubricants and reactor coolant led us to believe they'd been attacking less for food, than to keep us away while they fixed their crippled transport.

Still, why were they so fierce? Lily was right. These weren't like the Reavers we'd encountered before. At least not within our limited ability to actually tell the difference. Where these some kind of 'other tribe?' Did Reavers even have tribes? It was obvious they had some sort of organization. They could cooperate with each other well enough to keep their boats in the Black and they'd never been documented attacking each other. But how were they organized? Who led them? Did they have leaders? Or was it just some kind of controlled anarchy that somehow worked well enough to keep them going.

How would we ever know?

All we could do now was count the cost. Eighteen wounded, four dead, for twenty two dead Reavers and an unknown number injured. If hadn't been for the militia being on their toes, the numbers would have been dramatically worse. Hell. Weren't for Belize treating the injured, it would have been fewer wounded and more dead.

Hated doing funerals, but for the Citizens, that's what we did. The Reavers? No funeral. Just a mass pyre down wind of town and a few sincere words for the men and women who'd lost their Humanity to the Pax. I didn't like Reavers. But they'd been men and women once, like us, and they didn't deserve the cards they'd been dealt.

I feel like I'm falling behind

It should be easy for me to keep up with this. Seriously. How hard can it be to find half an hour or so to say what's on my mind? It's not really a matter so much of being busy. I'm always busy. But recently, I've felt busy and tired. Just too much going on. More, it seems, than I had before I left the service. More, it seems, than I'd have if I went back to Ariel and took that Executive position at KHI that's been waiting five years for me.

I'm not leaving here, obviously. There's too much going on that could use my attention. I won't delude myself into thinking the colony and the people here wouldn't be able to get along right fine without me, but it's some comfort to think that folks are a bit better off because of some of what I've done.

At least Krenshar and Lily have both come back to Hale's. Not that Krenshar actually left. Just somewhere deep in the mines for a bit, taking care of something of his own.

Wish I could say we were done with the Raider problems, but that's not been the case. They've even been getting bolder. Or maybe more desperate. They went so far as to send a small team down to recover the one we'd captured while rescuing Belize. Not only did they manage to pull that off, they snuck back in later in a small shuttle we hadn't identified as theirs and made off with a a couple crate loads of badly needed medical supplies.

Up side was we could replace the loss without too much wait. Other up side was we had ident on another of their boats and more navigation data on where they were based. With a little work, Sabrina should be able to upgrade that over-worked recce sat of ours into a full fledged recon drone to go and check out the few spots that seemed likely to be their operating base. No guarantees is would work, but it was better than nothing and would save us risking anyone getting hurt on a live recon.

Working theory at this point was they were another Rim colony like ours, only in bad enough shape they'd been reduced to thieving to make ends meet. Would explain them concentrating on food supplies and the like, rather than conventional valuables. Only thing was, why risk banditry? Most folk out this way had too much home town pride to ask for help, but it was out there. Was that it? pride? Or something else?

Doubt any of us here will ever really know.

Disturbing thing though is the rumor of revolution coming out of Shadow. With the Loyalists and the Warbots already causing trouble, mayhap not openly, but trouble none the less, it didn't make a lot of sense for the Independent Movement to take up arms once again. Shadow was barely recovered enough for people to live on it. Didn't bode well for a revolution and secession from the Alliance.

Not that there was anything we could do about it. The Alliance Garrison on Shadow was under Loyalist control, and they were pushing the folk there in a powerful way. No surprise to see fumeiyo from the Loyalists. It was their Way. Just got me remembering a rumor I heard when I first came out to the Rim: that some factions in the Alliance were looking to push the Rim worlds hard enough that they'd rise up in another revolt.

Wonder if that was part of the Loyalist plot all along? Or are the Loyalists themselves just being manipulated by another layer hiding behind the scenes? Intel side of me wanted to know, but the rational side of me did not want to know anything more than I already did. I may have been raised to thrive in that kind of environment, but it wasn't what I wanted. Then, or now.

I just had to figure out how we could do our part. Not to fight. Hale's Moon barely had the resources to chase off a platoon of Loyalists or a Reaver raid. Fighting wasn't our game, nor our place. But we did have the resources, and the compassion as a community, to do what we could.

Fact was, at this point, the only request I'd gotten was to arrange a meeting between Colonel Silvermane on the Sun Tzu and one of the leaders of the Independents on Shadow. Seems they wanted to keep the Regulars out of it if possible, and I couldn't blame them. Couldn't be sure what she'd say or do, but the lady'd treated us right fairly after regaining command of the 1st Marine Raiders. Nothing in her dossier said she wouldn't treat fair with the folk on Shadow.

Just hoped that my having a few discrete words with her wouldn't raise too many questions. Wasn't the sort of trouble I needed right now.

Comings and goings

I know that nothing ever stays the same. We are dynamic creatures living in a dynamic universe. As the universe evolves, we evolve with it. Changing. Ever changing. The people and places we know changing along with us. Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is just change. And sometimes. . . Sometimes change is something we wish we could undo.

Gallagher's come back to Hale's from where ever he's been for the last month or so. The townsfolk seem to have forgiven the misunderstanding that led to Lily being tried for Murder, and nearly sending Hale's and Blackburne into a shooting war. I'll have to sit down and talk to him at some point and see where he's been. Up side though is he's going to concentrate on doing forensics to support local Law Enforcement. Not that we have a lot of complicated crime, or even an official sheriff these days. Belize will remain our doc, which is fine by me.

Owl's decided to move to Hale's and take over our hydroponics building. Was a little odd running into her back on Blackburne a few weeks back. Weren't exactly close, but we'd gotten each other through an Op gone bad and we've both mellowed in the years since.

Down side is Lily, Aurora, and Krenshar have all taken off from thier homes. Aurora being gone is no great surprise. She's only weeks old, but she's no toddler in spite of her form, and she's already managed to knock a working mini-skiff together and gotten out into the Black.

She's not Human. Not not-cat either. She just is. I see so much of her mother in her, yet there's so much more. It's like being in the presense of an elemental force of nature. She doesn't scare me, but she's far beyond my experience. Just liker her mother.

Lily. Mei Mei. Off in the Wastes again, this time out with Leo. At least I have no ill feelings about who she's travelling with. He's a good man and I trust him not to hurt her. I just wish she'd stayed here with us. More, I hope she finds her way home.

And Krenshar. Our resident artificial life form. Where are you? Gone to try and recover your brethren from wherever they were spirited off to? Somewhere deep in the tunnels hunting for Mother Bot, or on some other mission of your own? Wish I knew. It feels wrong. You were a fixture here back before Weyland Yutani abandoned the colony years ago. Just doesn't seem right to not feel your presence around town.

I'm still here though.

Sometimes feels like I always have been.

And even with the comings and goings, I'm not alone.

The Raiders return

We've been dealing with Raiders for a while now, but we've finally been able to determine that there's at least one recurring group that's been coming to hassle us. May be that we're a little better equipped than some of our neighbors, that that we're well equipped, except in medicine and machine tools. Whyever though, they've taken an interest in us as a favored port of call to set down for a spell and steal shit.

I wasn't in the town proper when the Raiders set down the other day, but I heard about it not too long after they took off. Seems one of the transport pilots who'd been nosing around earlier in the week had been scoping out more than a place to move cargo. Seems they were after something a whole lot more important to the Colony: Our doctor.

Word had it they'd managed to capture Belize without spilling blood, which was good. At least the no bloodshed part We'd had them on navtrak in and out, but rather than clawing for orbit in their little shuttle, they vectored off to the East where it looked like they settled back to the surface some three hundred kilometers from town.

Given the size of their skiff and the soot in their exhaust plume, I figured they were setting down outside of town to wait for pickup from a bigger boat. We'd already seriously damaged a couple of their boats during previous raids, so it made sense to bring in something short range and land the more valuable transport out of harm's way.

Sure enough, Lily managed to find their skiff set down out near an abandoned cargo storage building that dated back to the original Weyland Yutani mining expedition days. There were only a couple of them holed up in there holding Bel, so we scrambled who we could get and had a go of it.

The fight was harsh, but fortunately brief. Bel would have her work cut out for her when we got back to town, but we managed to take down both of the Raiders without killing anyone. Including them. Unfortunately, we lost track of one of them before we evacuated - probably crawled into one of the cargo boxes before we took of - but managed to get the other one back to town. Bel patched him up and we stuck him in the single Jail cell for the time being.

Something still nagging me about these Raiders. The fella we captured hasn't said much, but there's more to this than just thieving. Thieves don't go after a doc, even if they were talking about selling her. The things they've stolen haven't always made sense either: leaving valuable goods behind to take food and bedding? That's not common thieving.

Be that as it may, we had Bel back, and a prisoner to question. Gentle like. Even with the Raiders, we were going to act civil. We'd shown those Purple Bellies and Loyalists we were civilized folk, in spite of living on a mining colony. Weren't going to stop now. Not while I still called Town Hall my office.

A moment to breathe

I would like to be able to say that everything in the 'Verse is calm right now. That the colony is thriving. That peace is settling across the Rim worlds like a big fluffy afghan. That the Alliance has decided to leave the outer worlds to their way and is offering nothing but humanitarian support and anti-piracy patrols.

I can't.

While Hale's Moon is doing pretty well for a frontier mining colony, our food supplies are barely managing to stay ahead of our slowly growing population. The cargo transfer business is picking up, but it's still barely enough to keep a handful of people working full time. The mines are still in operation, but only just. With the Replicants recalled, never mind Weyland Yutani gave up any legal claim to them when they pulled out, there's barely enough Human miners left to keep the C tunnels going with the handful of mining drones we still have.

We're making it. The folk here are a hardy lot and they've always managed to see the bright side of things, even back when the Alliance was taking an undue interest in the colony. They even threw a little party when we finished the first stage of redecorating Fook Yoo's. Abandon a cargo here, and someone will find a use for it.

Belize has been keeping folks patched together between the Reaver attacks and our own recent actions out in the Baily. I think we get more medical supplies smuggled into Hale's than we get foodstuffs these days.

One advantage we've had out here for a long time is unlike a lot of Rim worlds, we've got enough spaceworthy boats to keep the supplies coming in and a top flight Mechanic keeping them that way. Don't have to deal with third hand smugglers or all the Gorram go-betweens that take their slice on the majority of worlds out here. Not a lot of organized crime here. At least not since the last time someone tried to set up a racket here and got sent home to his boss with a Haiku stapled to his forhead.

A criminal life
Wasted aspirations die
Stay off of our moon

I'm sure they got the message, since they haven't tried again. Fact is, there's not enough here to make it worth their effort. Oh, I know. Criminals don't really care about that. Profit is profit. But a gang leader who wakes up to find half his gang apparently reached the end of their span one night while he slept, won't be making trouble for anyone.

Sometimes though, I wished our problems were that simple. While we put a dent in the Reaver's little nest out in Beetle's Baily a good two thirds of their forces are still floating out there. Alliance command aboard Sun Tzu knows it, but their own policy will keep them from actually doing anything about it. Just like the bakabakashii Loyalists still camped out in the desert, or the tunnels, or wherever they've taken up residence this week. Won't accept amnesty. Won't just go off and die.

And then there's the warbots. Haven't heard anything from them in a while now, except the occassional flier - Wasp, they called them on Blackburne - but I know it's still down there somewhere in the tunnels. We don't have the forces to go in after it. Don't have the manpower Blackburne had to take on theirs, but we've got our own methods. Sabrina's got her virus, which may or may not work depending on how effective the ICE is, and I've got a couple crowbars ready. Doubt even Blue managed to get an inkling of that. Just not sure when that problem is going to rear up again, or how we'll finally deal with it when it does.

Maybe though, before things get worse, we'll get a chance to dash home to Ariel so Sabrina and I can officially get hitched. I'd like to bring Belize along to hit up the medical facility at the Yard, but I'll need to make sure 'Brina'll be up to sharing the boat for the ride. Kind of like having a chaperone.

We'll just have to see.

The one wherin things go boom and the Alliance acts nice

Organizing the colony for something that would pass as a military operation is like herding cats. In some cases, almost literally. The folks here will pull together just fine when it all drops in the pot as Reavers, Raiders, and Alliance alike have all found out at one time or another. But plan an operation? That's a concept is as alien as fresh made sushi at Fook Yoo's. Sure. People talk about it. But actually do it?

In the days since we'd first taken on the Reavers on that rock base they'd found I'd worked with General to figure out where to place the charges to have maximum effect with minimal waste. He's good with explosives. As good as any of the miners. But he likes his booms big, so keeping it down to a manageable and portable load was the challenge.

While we were planning the best way to crack the rock, and convincing Lily that it really was in everyone's best interest to do so, she was keeping an eye on the place, augmenting our little recee sat with her own trips out to check on the place. Not surprisingly, the Reavers came back and started to restock within a couple days of our leaving so our net gain on the first attack was just some dead Reavers. Worse, morning we'd planned for the operation, she reported she'd seen little AuroraBlue up there on the rock.

Having the Little One up there on the installation would complicate things immensely. The original plan called for just coasting in quiet, deploying a couple of people who know how to handle explosives to blow the airlocks inward systematically. Add a few charges to burst the tunnels where they were close to the surface, and we'd be able to clear the rock without having to risk anyone in close quarters with the Reavers. What we should have done in the first place. But Tiny Dragon made that impossible. Now, we'd have to go in, make sure we could get her to safety, then blow the base. That meant confronting the Reavers who'd reclaimed the rock and that just didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling about the Op.

Then the Alliance showed up.

Not too long before we were staged to take off we got a wave from an Alliance Lieutenant off the Sun Tzu. Otsuka his name was. Asking for permission to set down to grab a bite, something to drink, and use the facilities. Timing wasn't so good for us, but Silvermane had kept her word and the Alliance patrols of late had been downright polite, if still a bit skittish around us "colonials". Otsuka was like that. Polite, well spoken, didn't give anyone any grief, and even left a tip when he left.

Problem was, Lieutenant Otsuka was out in a recon boat doing a solo patrol to check out the reports of "unusual activity," never admit to Reavers, out in Beetle's Baily. That could put a real dent in our Op. Since I'd sanctioned it from the Mayor's office, it was technically legal. But we hadn't bothered to tell Regional what we were up to and an actual Alliance Military presence at the installation would make things dicey as to who'd be in control. Technically, Lieutenant Otsuka told us to back off, we'd have to if we wanted to stay shiny with the Alliance out here.

Couldn't be helped though. I couldn't call off the Op whether I wanted to or not at this point. Not with Aurora out there. Couldn't take the chance of the Alliance somehow getting their paws on her, or of her getting hurt with the Reavers. Not that they were my biggest worry. If she was anything like her mother, she could walk amongst the Reavers and be treated as one of their own. Not sure whether it was her scent, or just her presence, but unless it was the thick of battle they'd leave her be.

We did a quiet approach to the rock just like we had before. Only this time, in addition to a couple of small Reaver transports like last time, the Lieutenant's recee boat was soft docked on the main platform.

Shiny. Just shiny.

Half figured things to get real bad real fast. Except they didn't. In fact, they turned around the other way. For the life of me I never expected an Alliance Regular to offer to cooperate with a local militia op like ours. 'Cept that's exactly what he did. Offered to take up arms and fight alongside us against the Reavers.

I wished we'd been able to execute to plan though. Having to fight the Reavers on their own turf wasn't my idea of a fun Op. After the previous engagement, they'd be ready for us. Run in, blow it from outside, leave, would have been perfect. But this time we didn't just have to get in and plant the charges, we had to get in, find AuroraBlue, convince her to come away with us, tranqs were not an option, even if some people wanted to, then blow the base. All that without getting 'et.

Not surprisingly, the fight was tough. Tougher than last time. Belize had her hands full patching people up when the Reavers got the drop on them. While we managed not to get anyone killed, it wasn't the overwhelming victory we'd had before. Fact was, we probably got lucky last time around. Caught the Reaver's B team taking a siesta, because this time around it was ugly.

I had to hand it to the folk who went in with us. Leo, Jubal, Thoth, and the rest. Fighting as hard as they could, knowing little Aurora was down there and had to come out alive. Belize tending the wounded. Lily managing to find her daughter down in the midst of all that chaos. Me, jacking the station's comms then sneaking down past the Reavers to set the charges with anti-tamper sensors on them.

By the time I worked my way back out, I figured Lily'd be able to convince AuroraBlue to come back with us. Only, it wasn't working out that way. She wanted to stay, and I couldn't let anyone tranq her so we could just carry her out. Which meant I had to go back in and talk to her myself. Twice. Since the first time she decided to go out with Lily, only to head on back into the rock for whatever reason she had.

The second time, I found her with a couple of Reavers. Just . . . talking. Talking to Reavers. Telling them they should probably leave, because we were going to blow up the rock. Telling them that they weren't going to assault Hale's in retaliation. Talking to them like she was their gorram Queen. And damned if they didn't listen.

A couple of them gave me the eye when I stepped out of concealment to tell Tiny Dragon it was time to go. She told them to leave me be, but my cold glare had stopped Reavers in their tracks before. Seems even a Reaver can still recognize 'If you approach me I will kill you, and you will have no say in the matter.' She agreed to come out with me this time, then when we were saddling up to depart, she loaded into Lily's boat.

Only, when we got back to Hale's where I was buying a round of drinks for all involved, including our new Alliance friend, she was no where to be seen. Lily said she'd loaded her up, then the little one hopped out and went for some kind of small craft of her own. Punched out into the Black in a skiff no bigger than an escape pod. Well clear by the time I saw the charges go - the little Recee sat doing its duty one more time - but once again lost to us.

Damn.

Just damn.

At least I was able to keep my promises. We cracked the rock to keep the Reavers from using it. Managed to get everyone home alive, if not uninjured. Kept my promise to Sabrina that I wouldn't get hurt. And got AuroraBlue out alive and safe.

Just wish she'd come home.