Dragons don't cry

Lily is safe.

Where "Safe" is defined as "In no immediate danger, because the Reavers consider her one of their own." It would be a lie if I said this situation pleased me. But given what I know now, what I should have realized before, executing a recovery mission won't have the desired effect.

Oh, there would be the emotional, personal, satisfaction of doing something active to bring her back. But that wasn't the point. Keeping Lily safe was.

I knew there were only a couple of people who could control the Reavers, and one of them is effectively on ice. Which left Aurora. The Tiny Dragon, who the Reavers treated as their queen. Who else would think to have the Reavers capture Lily and take her away? Lily already had an odd relationship with the Reavers. Killing them with child-like glee when they attacked but still feeling comfortable on their boats. The scent, she said.

I don't pretend to understand how she, Lily, Mindo, Blue, and the Reavers all inter-relate. On some level, I do, but my understanding is incomplete at best. Though who but little Aurora would send Lily off with the Reavers to keep her safe?

But now the decision is made. For better or worse. I would accept the consequences of my actions, as I'd accepted responsibility for Lily in the first place. If I'd known then, what I knew now, I would still make the same choices. I might be a little mad myself for letting them into my life. Where others saw Lily as a grown, somewhat erratic, beautiful, demi-feline construct. I saw the child inside. I could barely wrap my mind around the being of Aurora, the child with ancient eyes, yet she was Lily's daughter. Legally, she was my granddaughter, emotionally my niece. She was the key to the future, but a future I couldn't quite see.

It didn't matter. They were my little girls, and I loved them both. The children I would never have myself. Karma made real.

Was this the 'Verse balancing my Karma? Imrhien set me free. Sabrina gave me a reason to live. Where they my trial? Karma balancing itself by doing something ultimately right not for myself, but for the 'Verse.

When I ran into x0x0 last night, I hadn't expected it all to turn out the way it did. She knows a lot about her brother's projects. No surprise there, really. But she knows a lot about Lily too, and why Mindo was doing what he was doing. I know it surprised her when I agreed to go to Firefly's with her. I was, at the time, still preparing to go recover Lily. Somewhere, I was sure, some CorpWatch tabloid would run some grainy still of the two of us sitting calmly in a booth together, in some backwater bar. Some speculative story about the granddaughters of two of the most powerful industrialists in the Core spending time together. And the story would be wrong. Probably more wrong then they could ever comprehend. But that was the way it went.

x0x0 was there for her own reasons. I was there to get a reminder of the people who's lives were affected by the actions, and reactions, on this little slice of Heaven. The people who I nominally lead.

Then Aurora showed up.

She'd changed. Looking a little older. Maybe six now. Longer hair, her skin soft like Lily's, but a patchwork of color like a rag doll. Her behavior was different. Very different. More like her mother. I watched her, while trying to convince Nack that pulling the motivator chip out of that warbot he'd captured on Blackburne was a bad idea. It needed to have it's power core yanked. Not just the motivator.

Stubborn man, our Mister Barnes. But then little Aurora reached out, and I took her hand and let her lead me from Firefly's back across town. She stopped at the new church, such as it was. A half round metal enclosure with a few pews and a place for the Shepherd to give his sermons. She didn't seem to care about the snippets of scripture on the wall, or the pulpit, or anything else, save the statue with the sheep.

She started to move again, quickly. Leading me on through town to the fountain, where she promptly dunked her head under the water for several moments. It brought back Lily's recent baptism and I understood what it meant when, later, upstairs in x0x0's building in the the Blue Sun compound, she asked me "Do I have a soul?"

Yes, Little One. As much as any of us do.

We talked, and I finally started to understand what I should have seen all along.

What had I gotten myself in to?

It didn't matter. I couldn't change it now, and didn't want to in any case.

Lily was safe. I knew that now. But what of us? What of the four hundred fifty odd people on Hale's Moon? There always seemed to be a storm brewing. Or perhaps the storm clouds never really went away. There was a storm coming, whether another wave in the same storm we'd been living through, or something new, didn't matter. It was coming and we would weather it.

We always weathered the storm. In some of the old mythologies, Dragon was the representation of Storm. Aspects of water. In the East, Dragon was more benevolent. In the West, it was more antagonistic. Different aspects of the same primal force. Like my little girls. We were Dragons.

And no matter how much they might want to at times, be it with pain, or joy, or the overwhelming knowledge of what was to come, Dragons don't cry.

The affairs of Dragons

The Reavers have taken Lily.

The Reaver attacks have been escalating again over the last couple weeks. Reason still unknown, though there's a gut feeling that it's somehow related to the new Blue Sun installation that's going in. Blue Sun wasn't responsible for the original Reavers on Miranda, of course. That was an Epic level boondoggle on the part of Prescott Pharmaceuticals, but Blue Sun, particularly Mindo, has taken an interest since.

But the why, at the moment, wasn't my concern. Getting Lily back was.

The last Reaver attack was larger than expected and I've still got to go through the after-report, but the only detail I actually cared about was that they had somehow managed to capture Lily and had gotten back into the black with her.

How? I didn't care. She hadn't gone willingly. Nearly a dozen Reaver corpses in the courtyard were mute testimony to that. But they had gotten her. Alive, last anyone saw. They had taken her back with them to their lander, and they'd clawed sky back into the Black. Into the Black, where I could track them.

In the old stories, it was said the most dangerous creature in the 'Verse was a Mother Dragon protecting her children.

We will see if it is true.

Androids gone wild

I knew it was only a matter of time before the Machines came back. They'd been too quiet for too long, and the hope that they'd spontaneously shut themselves off was optimistic at best, laughable at worst. No, mother bot was still down there, somewhere, biding her time or running her program, or whatever she was doing, until it was time to come back up topside and try and kill us all.

What I hadn't counted on, was them adapting their designs to co-opt units we had in use already on the surface here. Sneaky little Chou san ba. Copy one of our designs, and she can do recon without anyone being the wiser or launch an attack and make it look like something went wrong with our own kit. Curry aji no unko ka unko aji no curry ka docchi ga ii? We are so humped.

Krenshar'd put some target drones together from spare parts and scraps he'd found in the yard. Since he is a thinking machine, he put them together so our militia would have something better to train against than static targets and the occasional pop-up. While we had been getting a lot of practice with Reavers of late, Reavers were pretty limited as far as combat training went. They screamed at you and tried to grapple, then tried to eat you. Kren's drones were pretty limited, but they could imitate various tactics to give the militia something to train against. Unarmed, they were essentially harmless.

Unfortunately, they were also apparently easy for mother bot to replicate.

Zaogao.

While many on the Town Council know about Mother Bot and her carnivorous Baby Bots, we hadn't made it general knowledge. In all honesty, we didn't have enough conclusive evidence to say for sure there was a von Neumann warbot under Hale's Moon. We thought there was, and there was a lot of secondary evidence. But no one had actually seen the thing. Except maybe Aurora and, in this context, she didn't count. That, and we didn't want to get the population in a panic.

Unfortunately, swarms of cheaply made knock-off's of Krenshar's target drone, itself a cheaply made copy of a KM Series mechanoid, were going to panic the town. There had to have been over 50 of the damn things. We had most anyone who could shoot pouring fire into the waves of walking robots that were trying to beat people, buildings, vehicles, and anything else they could reach, into submission. I went through five or six mags of .50 ammunition, and another couple boxes in the long gun myself, pouring supporting fire in on the rampaging machines.

Only problem was they looked a lot like the target drones people were used to seeing, which themselves looked a good deal like Krenshar. Before the fight was even over, I was getting rumors that some of the townsfolk, mostly new arrivals, were saying they thought Kren was behind the attack.

They didn't know about mother bot, of course. And they didn't know about the history of Kren being manipulated in the past, or the precautions we had in place to keep it from happening again. They were just citizens voicing their concerns. Problem was though, the Herald picked up those concerns and ran with it. That gave some of the otherwise neutral citizens cause to doubt the decision, after the Replicant Revolt, to live in peace with Krenshar and his now-departed brethren.

Watashi no hobākurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu.

When I asked him directly about the bots, he said "Yes, Miss Seana, I designed the target drones. But I did not attack the town. Those were not my drones." Pulling apart some of the wrecks showed they weren't built quite like the ones he'd designed. Close, but a copy, not the original.

It gave credence to his words, not that I needed it. Krenshar wasn't in the habit of lieing to me. If he had attacked the town, he'd have said so. Probably something like "I'm sorry, Miss Seana. But I am going to kill all the organics now." Fact was, Kren wasn't behind the attack.

Which left Mother bot. Which meant we might be in for some very interesting times in the very near future.

Only up side was the knock-off target drones weren't actually combat machines. Most of the damage they'd done was from brute force pummeling things, and they'd done at least as much damage to themselves as they had to the town. No real consolation to the injured, and with Belize off-world we were a bit limited on medical expertise.

The structural damage we'd be able to fix easy enough. But how long would we have before Mother sent her next wave our way?

Unplanned parenthood and other facts of life

From what I remember, from what I've witnessed, from what I've seen, from what I've read, Motherhood is supposed to follow a somewhat orderly progression. Children grow up in a more or less linear fashion, passing through various stages of maturity as their minds and bodies grow from 'Screaming infant' to 'Surly Teen.' At least that's how it's supposed to work.

For me, motherhood isn't working out that way. I can start with the fact my adopted daughter had four parents, two of whom departed off world shortly after we signed the papers that made us one big unconventional family. At least with regards to our mutually adopted kid. That left me and 'Brina as Lily's remaining parents. Given Sabrina's off-world work load, the parenting falls mostly to me.

Not that I actually mind. I've taken on a lot of responsibilities over the years, but very few have felt as right as taking on legal responsibility for Lily. I'll probably never be a real Mom, at least in the biological sense, and I know that's something I've noted before. I'm not even sure I'd want to be a real mom. While I am, in a lot of ways, "the stable one," I'm also not exactly in a place in my life where raising an infant would be a good plan. It's not being selfish to say that having a child would interfere with my life. While I would, undoubtedly, the fact is that the life I lead isn't really conducive to raising a child from scratch.

That's probably a large part of why adopting Lily was the right thing to do. I'd thought of her as my little sister long before I drew up the paperwork to legally adopt her. Why? That might be the one question I'll never be able to answer.

When I was in the service, helping people wasn't something I really did. There was a period in my life where I classified people into three categories. Asset, Target, and Furniture. Those days were long gone now, and on some fundamental level I think Lily being in my life was the 'Verse giving me a chance to balance my Karma.

Sabrina was the 'Verse's reward for what I'd balanced already.

I could see in Lily both a mother's pride and joy, and her worst nightmare. Case in point. Several, really. With the intellect to rival the best university professor, and a maturity level that fluctuates between that of a five year old and someone in their early teens, depending on context, there are a lot of situations that lead to behaviors that just aren't what you'd expect from a child.

Lily doesn't really understand sexuality. Not at a level that I can actually explain things to her. Never mind her having a child of her own. Lily's not exactly organic, and what semi organic girl bits she does have are subject to dynamic changes. Most of the time, she's got the anatomy of a Brandy doll. But none of that stops her from mimicking some of the behavior she sees other girls doing. Like, say, pole dancing. All the boys, and some of the girls, to be fair, see, is my little Mei Mei on the dance pole moving with a natural grace that I'd be proud of if I moved that well.

Since she doesn't quite comprehend why the menfolk are so mesmerized when they watch her, things sometimes go down paths she shouldn't be taken down just yet. Like lap dancing and kissing.

Perfect example: Other night I'm snuggled in with 'Brina, getting a bit of well deserved intimate time with my wife. Airlock cycles and I hear the familiar sound of my Mei Mei on deck, and a couple moments later she's pouncing on the bed. Barely had time to get a blankie over 'Brina, before Lily's asking if we want a lap dance and explaining that a couple of the menfolk were encouraging her down that path.

Now I remember walking in on my own folks when I was a youngun. Couldn't have been any more than five. And in that moment, she was acting the little girl. 'Cept for the lap dancing and giving me and 'Brina a kiss tat wasn't exactly what you'd expect from a little girl.

Don't think 'Brina found it as amusing as I did. But I remember faintly hearing Lily say "They both loves me" with a happy tone just before she dashed off.

The other 'not what you'd expect from a youngun' from her recently was her cornering the Shepherd and getting herself baptized. Now, I've never followed the Shepherd's path. Nothing wrong with it, mind you, but I was raised with a mix of Buddhism and Shinto traditions. But given how much emphasis Lily's placed on being "A real girl" I can see her wanting the Shepherd to say his words and acknowledge in his church she's got a soul.

I could have told them that.

There's been a ghost in that shell longer than she herself realized. She's been a "Real Girl" as long as I've known her. Just sad that some folk still question that. Shepherd or no. Baptized or no. She's as real as anyone else walking this little slice of Heaven.

That's also the kind of existential question I think every child asks at some point. Maybe she just needed it reinforced that she's as real as I've been telling her she is. Maybe, sometimes, you need to hear it from someone other than your mother. Or big sister.

Vertical parallax alters perspective

The control tower over the main landing pads gives a commanding view of the town and its surroundings. It should. That's why it's there, at the top of the main cargo lift for the elevated pad over Fook's. It was a favorite spot of mine. The vertical separation gave me a good perspective on the whole town and, when needed, gave me a good perch from which to use the long gun.

From the tower, I could see the area off the edge of town to the East where Blue Sun was building a new installation. Supposedly, it would be the Corporate Headquarters, but I found that doubtful. If Blue Sun was anything like KHI, and as a Corporate entity I was sure they were quite similar in that respect, they would need considerably more space and personnel than they could possibly get out here on our little slice of Heaven. Hale's was just too bloody far from anywhere important, and lacked the resources and infrastructure, to support anything as resource intensive as the headquarters for a huge multi-world corporation like Blue Sun.

The fact that x0x0 had recently taken control of the company and was moving her own offices out here not withstanding, the Blue Sun installation was much too small to serve as anything but a base for her personal staff. Her staff, and the science team they'd sent out to study the "phenomenon" that was AuroraBlue. Aurora. Blue. And Lily.

From the tower I could see the whole construction site. At least the parts that were above ground. There was a distinct possibility that there was more being built under the installation than we knew about. Even with x0x0's reassurances that everything was above boards, I knew that there were internal factions within Blue Sun that might try and hide things even from her. Given the levels of tech they had access too, it was possible they could hide extra construction from the rock imagers we'd trained in the general direction of the build, and Wave Equation's sophisticated ground penetrating sensors.

It was just the way the game was played.

I had to hope x0x0 was being straight with me. She was very difficult to fathom, even with my experience and professional training. She'd given me no reason not to trust her, but until I knew more I would have to be vigilant. If all went well, and the 'Verse was smiling on us, something truly good could come out of this. If not? If not, I would do what I could to do right by family and the colony.

Family. Here. On a little moon that adopted me more than I'd adopted it.

To the West, near the enclave where most of the folks from Blackburne had settled, I could see the combination coffee house and pet store Lily had opened. Starstrucks. Cute name. Cute place. It might put a dent in Sobi's coffee sales, but I doubted he really cared. He'd been the first to sneak half a kilo of quality beans into my hands, telling me to give it to Lily as a present.

Seeing it, from up in the tower, filled me with a sense of pride. It was Lily's store. Her project. Seeing it succeed filled me with the kind of pride I didn't take in my own accomplishments. I'd told her I was proud of her, but from up here, now, I felt like I hadn't made it clear enough. The contrast between the Blue Sun installation on one side of town, and the little coffee shop on the other, just brought it home.

Contrast. Perspective. Parallax.

From up here it all looked so right. But I knew it was changing. It was always changing. For better or worse, I couldn't know yet. All I could do was watch, analyze, and try to guide things in a direction that would be good for the people who trusted me to lead them. For my friends. For my family. For this adopted little slice of Heaven.

Up here, alone in the tower, watching a world change.

Foreknowledge is a terrible thing

I knew this was coming. One way or another, I knew Blue Sun would be back on Hale's whether we wanted them here or not. Mindo dropping his little 'projects' on us assured that. Never mind I'd adopted one of those projects as one of my own, and legally had some level of responsibility for another. Hale's Moon didn't want that sort of corporate investment.

On the surface, there were some real advantages. They were as solid a corporate employer as KHI, or General Products, or Ling Standard, or any of a dozen others that came to mind. As long as you weren't living in a Company Town, having a big corporation employing local talent was a "Good Thing." That was why I'd been trying to arrange for KHI to set up a remote maintenance facility out here for months. And, as far as most of the 'Verse knew, Blue Sun was just a massive company with divisions that sold everything from flash dried coffee and protein packs to modular life support units and handheld Cortex links. They weren't evil. They were just big.

Only a handful of people knew about some of the corporation's more nefarious dealings, and even those mostly spoke to expediency rather than malice. They were a corporation, and very few corporations worried about ethics when the bottom line was involved. It was the nature of the beast.

But I knew this was coming in one form or another. With Lily and Aurora here, and Mindo's second generation"created" Reavers, it was only a matter of time before whatever Biowarfare division he'd been playing with took an interest. The fact was, Blue Sun had put boots on the ground off and on for months. No one obvious, of course. That wasn't their game. Just passing travellers and occasional brief visits to gather Intel on the situation. Whether they thought I didn't know, or didn't care that I knew, didn't matter. They'd come, they saw whatever they saw, then they left.

I suppose I should be happy that they were being up front about it this time around.

x0x0, like her brother, was still a bit of a mystery to me. It was obvious she had no real love for her family. If what she told me was true, and given reputation and a bit of Intel, I had no reason to doubt, she was in a very precarious position. She'd come here, openly, holding Blue Sun to a deal that was surprisingly favorable to the Colony, ultimately, because of AuroraBlue.

It still felt like I was being railgunned into this. Whether I wanted them here or not, they would be here. If I hadn't been willing to work with x0x0 and allow the known installation, they would have just set up something clandestine. While I could have fought them off for a while - the crowbars I'd prepared for Mother would work just as effectively against a bunker - I didn't have the resources to hold them off indefinitely. x0x0 was right. While I could make a clandestine installation very expensive, eventually they would manage to take me out.

Dragons are not immortal.

So it was done. x0x0'd been forthright in giving us a favorable deal up front, and we'd come to an agreement between us. On a personal level, the whole thing made me very uncomfortable. But as a Frontier Mayor, I'd probably managed to do right by the colony. The Blue Sun installation would be above boards, and there was no doubt we could use the coin. Some of the folk here might even enjoy working for one of the largest conglomerates in the 'Verse, and I couldn't blame them.

I just wouldn't like it.