And so, this time, the Reaver walks into the bar and says . . .

If I said I was growing weary of these ongoing Reaver attacks, no one would be the least surprised. It would be like me saying "I need more coffee" at any time between waking up and going to bed. Just a normal part of the day. Like General looking for an excuse to blow something up, Lily wanting candy, or Mister Smithers complaining about the dust. Again. It was just how it was.

After these last couple of attacks, I would have to talk to the Town Elders about what we planned to do. It had reached the point where they weren't complaining about the few Loyalists out in the desert or the occasional Raiders. All I was hearing about was the Reavers and how people were getting more angry than scared.

Something was drawing them here. Whether it was Lily, or Aurora, or the survivors from Blackburne, or even a grudge with us for blowing up their nest, I couldn't say for sure. It might well have been a combination of all those things. But the fact was there were getting more violent, frequent, and aggressive at an alarming rate.

Would we see the same sort of massive raid that had destroyed the Downport on Blackburne? It seemed unlikely. Last anyone had heard, the Reavers on Blackburne had spent a few days there after torching the Downport and eating anyone they could find, before attacking any nearby wasteland settlements, and then climbing back onto their boats and burning back to where ever the hell it was they'd come from.

Still, it was something I'd have to deal with. Along with everything else on the plate, including tracking down the Raider base, and getting time to talk to Admiral Leitner on the Independent flagship, Elindor.

A Mayor's work is never done. Was that the saying? At least there were people willing to cremate the Reaver corpses, and a visiting Shepherd was even willing to give them last rights. I know a few people who'd argue they didn't deserve it, but I didn't hold to that. Reavers may be horribly violent Berserkers, who perpetrated atrocities on innocent people, but they hadn't started life like that. I may not hold to the Shepherd's faith myself, but I can't grudge saying a prayer for the Ghost of whoever they were before the madness took them.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Into the dark places no one dare venture...

I try to be a good mother, friend, big sister, grandmother, aunt, leader, mentor, and soldier. It's not always easy and I don't always succeed. I have to wear several hats at once, and sometimes the colors clash in spectacular ways. Perhaps I wasn't cut out to be a mother, or grandmother and, technically, I'm not really either of those things. But they are both roles I fill. Roles I took on willingly and, while they can sometimes be difficult roles to fill, I have no regrets.

Sometimes, my roles overlap. And sometimes that overlap takes me into dark places probably left unvisited.

In this case, quite literally dark.

Very dark.

I'd been hearing rumors for a while that there'd been signs of excavations down in the deeper tunnels. I knew of the deep vein Lily'd taken to digging into for various rare earths and gemstones. It was a small vein, too deep to be commercially viable, but it was giving her raw materials and that was good.

But Lily's digging couldn't account for all the reports that had come in, and Lily herself had talked about seeing "the Cub" down in the deep tunnels. That meant Aurora was here. And Blue. But could she be responsible for the excavations? Even Krenshar had seemed surprised by the volume of rock being moved, and that led me to wonder about Mother Bot and her kin.

In either case, it meant going into the tunnels to find out for myself just what was going on down there. Unfortunately, that meant turning down help from several people. Belize, Charly, General, and Zade, all offered to go down into the tunnels with me. And in each case, I had to turn them down. It wasn't that I didn't trust them. In a firefight, I'd have been happy to fight alongside any of them. But where I was going, it would take stealth and experience in tactical recon, and that was the sort of thing I did best on my own.

If it was Aurora, then I'd want to talk to her alone. If it was Mother Bot, I'd need to evac quickly and quietly. In either case, it was something I would need to do alone. Help, here, would consist of being ready with heavy weapons on the surface in case I ran into Mother Bot and she decided to send her spawn back up the tunnels after me.

Lily took me down into the tunnels. She was the only one who really knew that section of the tunnels and she was the one person, other than Krenshar and Aurora herself, who could probably get clear of the machines if they came hunting. If they were here, of course.

I'd been pretty deep into the mines before. There were actually dozens on them spread across Hale's Moon, mostly within a hundred kilometers or so of the town. Most of the remote mines were shut down when Weyland Yutani had abandoned the colony, leaving the Replicant workforce, a handful of semi-automated mining vehicles, and a hundred or so Human miners without support. But the ones near town remained in operation, originally with Replicants and a few Humans supporting them, now almost exclusively with Human labor since WY came back and essentially stole our mechanicals.

But now I was going deeper into the mines than any of them were ever working. There was even a fairly obvious break point where the distinctive cuts of the mining machines stopped and the less well defined marks of something else became the norm. In some places, it looked like shaped charge tunneling, in others, literally, like claws.

Lily.

And maybe Aurora too.

There were also other signs. Some smaller tunnels that would have been an easy fit for Aurora, but a tight squeeze for me or anyone larger. They looked like air shafts, interlinking some of the natural cuts and fissures in the moon's structure. Except the cuts were wrong for one of the smaller tunneling machines, which made me acutely aware of just how deep I'd gotten.

Eventually, Lily brought me down to the area where she was working her little vein and seen Aurora nearby. It had been getting wetter the closer we got to it and, to my surprise, there was actually water pooling on the floor of the tunnel where she had been working. Deep penetration from one of the comet hits? Or maybe there was an aquifer down here that no one had known about? Regardless, this was where she'd seen Aurora. The cub. Who didn't keep me waiting long.

I don't know why, but Lily and Aurora don't seem to get along well. Where 'not well' is defined as expressing a desire to kill her for being bad. Be that as it was, Lily took off moments after Aurora showed up, leaving me alone with her deep in the tunnels.

Talking with Aurora is always enlightening, often complicated, and frequently confusing. Part Child. Part Elder. Part elemental force of nature. It was a lot like talking to my grandfather. She was far more than the result of Mindo's experiments, and much as I tried, I knew I could never really understand her. But it didn't mean I didn't love her, much the way I loved her mother.

She'd released Blue. Kind of. She was letting him come and go as he wished, which meant he was going somewhere. From what Aurora was implying, that somewhere was into the warbots that were still down here somewhere under the surface. If that really was the case, it was both reassuring and terrifying.

The war machines were just that. Machines. There was no Ghost in their armored shells. They were programmed to do a job, and that job was to kill people, replicate themselves, and kill more people. While they weren't that powerful from a raw computing standpoint, there was enough there to support a rudimentary AI. If Blue was spreading himself through their networked nodes, he could easily become the machines. While the thought of Blue with real firepower was a bit disconcerting, I'd grown to trust the free AI. I had faith Blue wouldn't hurt us, wouldn't turn those weapons towards us. It wasn't entirely unfounded, of course. Blue'd had multiple opportunities to do us harm and hadn't taken them. He had his own agenda, but it didn't appear to involve the extermination of Humanity.

But the machines themselves? How much of Blue would be left behind on their memory cores? Would supporting a powerful AI trigger a subsequent jump to sentience on the underlying metaframe? It had happened on a couple of university systems over the years. What if it happened here? As simple machines, the warbots would be difficult to fight. But there wasn't any ethical consideration. If they went AI?

Not something I wanted to contemplate.

She said he'd keep them from hurting us. I had to believe that. But she also said she'd seen seventeen of them down here. Lily said something about it too later. Three, three, three, three, three and then two more. But seventeen of what? Those little Wasp units we'd seen so many of? The semi-antro combat machines like the one Nack still kept in Firefly's? Diggers? Rollers? Buddha forbid, Seeders?

Aurora hadn't been specific, but Lily had been as clear as she ever was: fifteen of one model, two of another. I could only hope that neither of those models were Seeders.

Something doesn't feel right.

Things are changing. The feel of the colony is changing. Whether it's this new push for independence that first cropped up with Shadow's secession, and now being felt on other Rim worlds, or something else, I don't know.

Maybe it's the increase in Reaver activity we've seen recently, when we thought cracking their nest out in Beetle's Baily would at least cut down the attacks. I knew that much of their increased aggression and madness was the result of Mindo's experiments, even if I hadn't made it general knowledge. That was a mystery probably left unexplored by the people who were just trying to live day to day in peace. The Reavers had their own agenda, even if they didn't realize they had an agenda outside of finding someone to eat.

The raids were really no worse than usual, and even the Loyalists and warbots had been quiet of late. The only thing I could look at and see change in was the population. We had the usual comings and goings to the colony as we always have, as well as the influx of refugees from Blackburne, and it was changing the dynamic of the colony.

It wasn't bad, it was just different. I could sit in my office and look out over the town and still see the same buildings and mostly the same people that were here when I first arrived. But sometimes it felt like I was looking out over a completely different place. Like my office had been dropped into another reality where things weren't quite how they were supposed to be.

I couldn't place my finger on it and that frustrated me. If I knew anything it was myself, and this vague feeling of 'not right' was very disconcerting. I thought of all the people I'd come to know here. Even the ones who were no longer with us. The ones I liked. Didn't like. Ignored. Loved. Respected. Cherished. All of them.

From the office, I could see it all and was glad my optics were dark.

To control one's self
Is to find internal peace
Dragons never cry

It always seems to come in waves. . .

Over the last six months or so, we'd gotten fairly used to various and sundry attacks on the colony by everything from rogue autonomous war machines, to Yang gui zi Raiders, to a seemingly endless stream of Reavers.

You'd think they'd get the message. All of them. Except maybe the war machines that weren't programmed to care, and the Reavers who were too kichigaijimata to care. But in any case, you'd think that Hale's would have gotten a reputation as a place that wasn't high on the hit parade of colonies that were easy to crack.

In the Core worlds, you'd find that maybe one in ten folk had a knife they actually knew how to use. Maybe one in a thousand had a legal firearm, at least on the planets that allowed it. Out on the Rim, the numbers got a good deal higher. On your average frontier colony, most folk at least knew how to shoot a scattergun if nothing else. Most households kept at a scattergun or some kind of long gun around in case of trouble, even if only one in a hundred kept a sidearm.

On the more "civilized" Rim worlds, places like Beaumonde or New Melbourne, with their relatively large populations, proper law enforcement, and enough of an Alliance presence that they didn't have their own militia, most folk didn't travel armed even if it was legal.

Truly "frontier" colonies like Hale's Moon had a whole different set of problems. Maybe there was a sociodynamic law in effect. Number of firearms per capita is inversely proportional to the total population, with some set of base values that an undergrad could turn into a thesis for their Political Science Phd.

Me? I just knew that, per capita, Hale's Moon had a lot of firepower.

And, being a mining colony, we had more than out fair share of people with access to, and the skill to use, high explosives.

Which made me just shake my head when we get attacked twice in the same day.

The first one was probably just some low lifes trying to make off with some cargo that wasn't bolted down. Ident on their Firefly and the navtrak vectors made it unlikely they were part of the group that'd been hitting us off and on for months. Which meant these guys probably hadn't gotten the memo that raiding our little slice of heaven was usually bad for one's health.

Surprisingly, they, I never did get an accurate count on the attackers, managed to make off with Emma, a colonist who'd just settled in a bit after the Blackburne refugees got here. Got a wave demanding ransom, but before anyone could respond to tell them to piss off, Jai and Gabe set out in a little skiff and managed to recover her.

What I hadn't expected was yet another Reaver raid later that same evening. Seems they kept it mostly to the West side of town, near where the water processing station fed the town, which meant I didn't have an opportunity to get involved. Just as well though. Can never seem to get the smell out of my clothes when I have to tangle with those maniacs.

Some of the Blackburne folks, including Nack, got tangled up with them though. Apparently set a few fires over on the West side, and caused more than a few injuries but, fortunately, no fatalities.

I suppose though it's not entirely bad. It'll give Jai something to write about for her first column in the Herald.

Did you hear the one about the two Reavers, the bottle of gun oil, and the threshing machine?

I decided to not actually accept Gallagher's resignation. I still have it. Tucked in a desk drawer along with a number of other documents I keep around for moments, I know are coming, where I'll ask myself "what were you thinking" and really need to have the answer documented. But that's where it will stay for the foreseeable future.

He's not actually bad as Sheriff. Probably safer for the townsfolk to have him playing lawman than playing doctor, not that he was bad at it. Just had a bedside manner that scared children and a tendency to psychotic breaks - now, fortunately, in the past. It's just that Hale's Moon seems to have a curse on Law Enforcement, and Gallagher's pretty strongly opinionated when it comes to dealing with the Alliance. Not really a good combination from my point of view.

Real reason, though, and not one I'll probably ever let him know, is that Lily wants him here. I don't understand the emotional power that man holds over her, and I probably never will, but it's something powerful. In a case like this, where I could swing either way depending on my mood, I'm willing to give in to my little Mei Mei's request and keep Gallagher on.

Never mind she had me in the courtyard explaining the meaning of that little stone alter I've kept in place, and all the emotions that brought back with it. Fact was I loved Lily strong as I loved anyone. Not in the deep, passionate, way I loved Sabrina. That went the kind of deep you saw in eyes of folk who were In love as well as loving each other. It wasn't the desperate need I'd once felt for Imrhien, lust and hunger and need and knowing it was never going to be. Wasn't the sisterly, familial, love I had for Belize either The 'friends helped you move, while real friends helped you move bodies' sort of way. Lily was something different. I spoke eight languages fluently, and none of them had a word for it.

When I was a little girl, I remember sitting in Mothers lap so she could brush my hair. She had a look in her eyes I finally understand. Same look I get when I brush Lily's hair. It's that kind of love.

Lily wanted Gallagher to stay. In her own way, she loved him probably as strong as I loved her. And going by my own rules, there was no way I wanted to be in the position to be making her cry.

So Gallagher stays.

But keeping our Sheriff hasn't kept the Reavers away. It's like one of those comedic series of events. Saturday have a party. Sunday have Indies and Loyalists clashing in your skies. Monday have a whole slew of Reavers over for dinner.

I try and make light of it, but we lost some colonists this time. Can't make light of that in any context. This was more concentrated and violent than usual, even in light of recent attacks. And one of them was toting some kind of makeshift flamethrower. Not the sort of weapon you want to see in the hands of a Reaver.

Oddly, they do seem to be avoiding me even when I'm out in the open. That Aurora's doing? Or have survivors of previous attacks gotten word back that the little girl with the long knife isn't afraid, and will probably hand you your ass before you're done screaming.

The Reaver attack though, just led on to other revelations. Lily got talking about the mines, and the shiny metal and pretty rocks she'd found down there. Now, I knew there was a fair bit of rare earths, gemstones, precious metals, and what have you in Hale's crust. Weyland Yutani had set up here for a reason after all. It just hadn't been commercially viable. But Lily, it seemed, had found considerably more than we'd been aware of.

Thing was, it was deep. Really deep. "Mother bot and her replicated children" deep. Except Lily had never encountered the warbots down there. But she had encountered Aurora, playing with some sort of large block of ice. Ice? Crystal maybe? I didn't pry. Especially not where Aurora was concerned. But the last time I'd seen Tiny Dragon, she was talking about releasing Blue, and Blue would need a processing core capable of supporting his needs. Was that what she was putting together down there? A compact optical computer? I was probably completely off base with that train of thought. While I wouldn't put it past Aurora to do something like that, it struck me as more likely she'd set Blue loose in a large multi-node cluster. Say, maybe, annexing the engineering computer cores at University on Beaumonde.

Fact was, things were ramping up. Again. What was it Aurora had said about my time coming? There was a lot going on, to be sure. The Reavers had been getting worse. The warbots had been quiet for too long. And now the Indie versus Loyalist conflict had come here as well. Storm clouds gathering on our horizon.

And us without our collective umbrella.

Peaks and Valleys: reduex

It's been a long, long, time since Hale's Moon's seen two major parties in the span of a week. First, Krenshar and Lily and Sabrina's 'birthday' parties Monday last, then the 'Friend's reception' Belize put on for me and Sabrina this last Saturday. More actual festivities in Fook Yoo's in a week than in any other week that folks here could remember.

Have to say they were both pretty spectacular parties. Very different themes betwixt them, but still right festive in all the best ways. Was nice to see people turning out to wish the birthday folks well at the first, and congratulating me and Sabrina at the second. Even saw General actually dancing in public, which was a pleasant surprise in it's own right.

Now, I'm still not a social animal. That hasn't really changed across the course of the week, but this party was part in my honor and I was enjoying myself. Dancing with Sabrina always took my mind away from the troubles of the day. But still, there was the twinge of a few people conspicuous by their absense.

I knew, as well as anyone, that stress, all different sorts of stress, could change how people looked at the world. We all faced it in our own way. Some turn in, others out. Same goes with friends. Some situations draw them together, others drive them apart. That in mind, I can't really blame some of the folks who didn't show up.

It didn't mean I didn't miss them being there.

But like most things 'round here it seems, we can't have us a solidly festive mood that lasts for more than one day. Worse, it seems that there's a roughly even chance that things will go all pear shaped about the time I get called away from town to deal with something in orbit or half way across the surface.

Once it started, I knew there was no way the new Independence Movement would stay completely away from Hale's. The colonists were of mixed feelings on the Alliance, but most of them seemed happy with the deal I'd worked out and weren't clamoring to declare us free and clear from any government but our own. We more or less were clear of any government but our own. Not because we fought for it, but because we negotiated for it and held up our end of the bargain.

Never mind there was still smuggling and arms deals, and Buddha knew what else, going on behind the scenes. On the surface were all legitimate mining operations, light maintenance, and cargo transfer. As long as we could hold that image, the local Alliance sector government would ignore us.

But maintaining our image also meant not looking like we were taking sides in the new Indie war that was trying to brew, and by not antagonizing the regular Alliance troops when they showed up for whatever reason. Be it dropping by on a routine patrol, bagging fuel, pursuing some kind of fugitive, or responding to what they might have thought was a colony in need of assistance.

I can't blame the 12th for chasing a Loyalist skiff into our space. I can, and do, wonder what the hell they're doing out this far from Shadow doing a patrol, but that's neither here nor there. They had a Loyalist in their sights and they splashed them where they caught them - here. Not just on Hale's, but spitting distance from the colony proper.

Shiny.

Unfortunately, I managed to miss all the excitement. Figures. Worse, best as I can tell, Lieutenant Xeltentat, the Alliance Officer Lily'd become friends with, had shown up and somehow tangled with Gallagher.

Not much of a surprise there. Gallagher had more against the Alliance than most folk on Hale's, so it was no wonder he'd have harsh words for one of their officers. Didn't mean I had to like it. Fact was, I didn't. Not one whit.

I'd worked my ass off behind the scenes to work out a peacable deal with Alliance Sector Command. I didn't need the 12th Air Cav, even doing something to our benefit, swiviling an Alliance sensor array our way. Worse, I didn't need our Sheriff, who's got the town's voice whether he knows it or not, riling the feathers of an Alliance officer who's been right civil with us.

Things would have been different if I'd been there, of course. I still would have have sent the 12th home, topped off from our tanks in thanks for splashing a Loyalist darkening our skies, but I probably wouldn't have Gallagher's resignation sitting on my desk.

Lovely.

The gorram Hale's Moon Law Enforcement Curse strikes again.

Just have to decide whether or not to accept it.

Peaks and valleys

I've never been the most social of animals. It's not a secret, really. Never was. Most shindigs, unless I was with someone, I'd find myself off in a corner somewhere, sipping juice, or water, or coffee, watching people be festive and trying to predict who was most likely to get into a fight on their way home. Always felt like an observer rather than a participant.

Sabrina changed that for me, though I'm still an observer. Can't help it. It's part training, and part who I am. But now I'm with someone when I go to a party and it makes a difference. When the party's in Fook's, and Sabrina's one of the folks the part is for I have some actual reasons to feel festive and enjoy.

But I still observe.

I had to hand it to Charly. She'd done a right fine job decorating Fook's for the event. Even being a birthday party for Lily, 'Brina, and Krenshar. I guess Incep anniversary date would be more accurate for Kren and probably Lily too, but it still counted as birthday in my book.

It was good to see all the folks who turned out for it. Some there for Lily, or 'Brina, or Kren. But most there with well wishing for all three.

A lot of folks came over from the Blackburne Enclave, and Imrhien and Duncan made an appearance all the way in from Shadow. Shindig must have meant a bit for them to take time off patrols to come make a showing. Though I missed a few folk, like Gallagher and Leo. Would have thought they'd make an appearance, but something must have kept them away.

Only damper was the Reaver attack earlier in the day, quickly dealt with by the Militia, and the lone straggler spotted on the edge of town during the party. Also dealt with quickly. And then, of course, there was Ben.

Was one of the last faces I expected to see on Hale's Moon again. Ever. But there he was in all his glory, talking to Lily and folk around her, acting quiet and a bit contrite. At least he was being respectful. Well behaved even. Meant it was only a little damper on my otherwise festive mood, which a comfy night with my wife was able to restore quite nicely.

Still didn't mean I was shiny with him associating with her again. At all.

Unfortunately, that festive mood didn't survive the whole of the next day.

I hadn't seen AuroraBlue in a while. Too long, really. But I wasn't expecting her to bite me when she did see me again. Tiny Dragon. Sharp teeth. But an inoculation? Against being turned into a Reaver? How'd that work?

We'd known for a while that the predicted die-off rate for the Reavers wasn't holding. There were simply too many of them left, which meant there were new ones coming into existence. The 'new blood' ones we'd encountered historically, folk driven mad by a Reaver encounter, weren't numerous enough to replace natural attrition in their ranks. While they could breed, it wasn't bloody likely. First: there weren't many females in their ranks. Second: wasn't likely one of them could carry to term aboard one of those leaky, scavanged, boats they called home. Third: Reavers were made, not born, and without more Paxalon Hydroclorate, you don't have more Reavers - even if they did have the genetic predisposition to go batshit insane when exposed to the stuff. And Fourth: even if they were breeding, the oldest of them would be about Jin's age, and we hadn't seen any younguns in the Reaver ranks.

That meant someone was making the bloody things, and it was a safe bet on who that someone was.

According to Aurora, Mindo was making more of the things. Using a compound synthesized in what Lily used for blood. Making more so he could find a cure. But to what end? Why the hell make more of them? And a cure for what? A madness he'd induced in his victims? The original victims of the Pax were innocent people. Thirty million innocent people. Ninetynine point nine percent of them peacefully dead. That remaining tenth of a percent driven into the depths of madness to become Reavers.

And Mindo was making more of them? I'd told Aurora it was wrong to kill. In nearly every case, I believe that. Never mind the blood on my own hands. I've been dealing with that karmic balance for many years. It was little Aurora's hands I wanted to keep clean.

Unfortunately, there are times when there is no other rational choice. One has to die to save a thousand, ten thousand, more. Only Aurora believed it was Lily I would have to kill, not Mindo.

It made me think of a story from a history book. During one of the early Global Wars, the English had cracked a military code used by the Germans. At one point, they intercepted a plan to bomb a town in the countryside. Warning the town would save people, but would have revealed that the code was broken. Their leader chose not to warn the town, keeping the secret of the broken code, dooming hundreds to death. But in the end, they were able to keep decoding messages and thus save thousands more.

Was that the sort of choice I'd been given here? Kill the artificial life I'd come to think of as my own little sister, in order to end the scourge that was the Reavers?

No.

Unacceptable.

There had to be another way, even if it meant not killing Mindo. Yet. Besides, Xoxo had gotten Imrhien's help in sequestering Mindo somewhere on Shadow, which put him temporarily out of reach.

I'd let this go too long, letting the situation grow complicated while I was concentrating on other issues. The Loyalists and the war on Shadow were important, but so were the Reavers. And these people were family.

From what I'd learned, Aurora was planning to release Blue to keep Mindo from getting to him, however that worked. Lily was, if Aurora was right, going to get increasingly violent as the compounds in her body churned out more of Mindo's Reaver-juice, which would make protecting her all that much harder. And we were going to be dealing with an increasing number of Reavers, making this problem a much higher priority.

There wasn't a lot of information at this point. Aurora said my time was at hand. Perhaps it was. Perhaps not. Either way, we would be ready.

Measurements of temporal reference points in a dynamic system

Keeping track of time in a dynamic orbital system is relatively easy. Nothing moves fast enough for relativistic effects to be noticeable, so setting a reference clock with picosecond resolution is practical. At lower resolutions though is where you have problems.

It isn't that people can't resolve time on different scales, it's that our temporal references are all local. We can understand that one day on, say, Murshan's World, is nineteen and a half standard hours long, or that a day on Ariel is closer to twenty eight hours. When we're living there, we adapt naturally and it's just normal. It's when we have to call our friend on Murshan's from Ariel that things get confusing. They were a couple hours off the last time you called, but now it's the middle of the night.

Different rotational periods give different lengths of day. Different orbits give different lengths of year. Sure, there's a standard day and a standard year for a standard calendar. But our bodies can't track that. Our bodies track the changing cycles of day and night, and maybe the seasons if we're paying attention.

That makes it really hard sometimes to remember people's birthdays. You know when it is on the standard calendar, but sometimes you're not thinking on the standard calendar.

Lily, of course, doesn't have these temporal problems. She knows what day it is, where, when, pretty much anywhere. She also knows when it's her birthday. If that's really correct. Lily wasn't exactly born, so much as created. What defines her birthday, I'm not really sure. First breath? First coherent thought? It doesn't matter. The anniversary of her birthday is marked on the standard calendar, which is sometimes hard to track in Hale's Moon years.

Still not an excuse for most of us forgetting just what day it was.

It took a little while to figure out what Lily was upset about when she said she wanted to be 'Emaciated' - emancipated, really. I know she'd been hurt by Td and Imrhien going their separate ways and leaving the family in function, if not in spirit. That just left me and Sabrina on Hale's, and with Sabrina's off-surface work, Lily didn't see much of her. I had to think that was contributing to her feeling neglected.

But I did remember, if not right away. And like in the song, which several of us sang to her, we did want her to be happy, and were glad she was born. Or created. Or whetever. What mattered was that her birthday mattered to her, and we did, at least after a fashion, show her that her birthday mattered to the rest of us too.

I love you, little Mei Mei.

Even if I'm sometimes bad with dates.

News, news, and other news.

I must be getting jaded. I was more concerned with seeing Lily back on Hale's Moon than I was in dealing with the latest band of Reavers to try and make a mess of our little slice of Heaven. Sure, there was the deeper concern over what was causing the increased number of raids and the Reaver's growing savagery - if such a thing was possible. And there was the revelation that Lily's 'Daddy' Reaver was, evidently, none other than Mindo himself.

How could that be possible? It made some sort of twisted sense that he'd created her for his own agenda, but how could he walk amongst the Reavers unscathed? If it was true, which I had little reason to doubt, but no first hand evidence to support, then Jackal's assertion that Lily's 'Daddy' was one of the handful of surviving 'Cured Reavers' was wrong. Or a fabrication. Not that it mattered. Assuming Mindo was Daddy Reaver, as well as Daddy Creator, was a game changer. I'd considered him quite the Ebanashka since I'd known him, while this pushed it over the edge to kuso baka yarou.

At some point, someone would have to end him. If not me, then possibly Krenshar or his sister Xoxo, or Lily herself. That was if Tiny Dragon hadn't already decided his fate. She was tied into this herself, of course. AuroraBlue, the Tiny Dragon. Magomusume. L'avenir.

Lily had been acting a little odd since her return. Odd for Lily, that is. I could only hope there wasn't even more going on than I could see.

The news that caught my attention though, was an article posted out of Shadow on the Cortex News Service. A press release, of sorts, by the commanding officer of the Independent's 12th Air Cav unit. There were some good people in that unit. Brave. Dedicated. Perhaps a bit toppyoushimonai, but who wasn't out here.

I'd understood when they'd thrown off the Loyalist hardliners who'd been riding Shadow like an over-worked mule. Even declaring independence and seceding from the Alliance I could understand. But assembling a fleet and openly challenging any and all comers to come put them down? What are they thinking?

I knew their "Admiral" Leitner had spoken with Colonel Silvermane of the 1st Marine Raiders, the Alliance unit assigned to our slice of the Black. Near as I could tell, it had gone well. But Shadow wasn't in the Sun Tzu's patrol area, so his discussion with her was more of a formality. While I hadn't seen the transcripts, I'd dealt with Silvermane directly, studied her, and her career. She'd be reasonable with them. Deploying a fleet, though, was bound to catch the attention of High Command and the Parliament.

If the orders came down to reclaim Shadow, she'd follow them. If she was true to her record, it'd be as peaceable as possible. Ask them to stand down. Deploy a company or so to show the flag, then let the colonists get on with their lives. About what she'd done for Hale's Moon. Except she hadn't bothered to show the colors. Just left us to our own devices with a promise to stay out of our hair if we didn't make too much trouble.

Only, there was no telling who'd get the order. The Alliance commanders had a lot of autonomy once you got into the Border and Rim worlds. Not all of them were as keen as Silvermane to treat the Rim Worlders like Citizens. If High Command dispatched the IAV Copernicus, Ark Royal, or Drake, instead of the IAV Sun Tzu, they could be playing a whole different game. Some of those commanders had a measured dislike for the folks who called the Rim home.

I knew Leitner had a lot of confidence in his command and the folk under him. He had a right to it, too. But one of the line Cruisers had almost as much firepower as the entire Independence movement could muster during the closing days of the War. If the rumors were true, they had some sort of ace in the hole. But what? That plasma weapon Podwanger and his crew had captured from the Loyalists? It was impressive, yes, but too short ranged and unwieldy to pose a real threat to a capital ship. Fusion weapons? That would be suicide. Using Fusion or even Fission weapons against a Cruiser would only guarantee an overwhelming, unrelenting, response.

And suppose they did manage to take on a single cruiser and win. What would they do when three more showed up?

I had to hope I was reading more into that press release than was actually there. Chances were they were trying to make just enough of a show of it so the Mainliners would see them more as an ally against the Loyalists than a threat to the Alliance itself. Hardliners aside, the Parliament could afford to let Shadow secede for now, then negotiate reunification later.

But if he was really trying to start another War of Independence? Buddha help us. Nothing would galvanize the Parliament to action more than a frontier world sowing the seeds of open rebellion. Worse, that was exactly what the Hardliners wanted. They wanted another war. Something that would build their power base.

Maybe I should talk to them myself...