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.