And then there's the sexed up killing machine issue...

I'd be lieing if I said I never had issues with that warbot Nack brought with him from Blackburne. I had issues with it when they were still on Blackburne. The mother bot that was plaguing them for months, hopefully only the one, was a slightly later version than the one under Hale's Moon. At least we think it was, seeing as how it appears that ours was a prototype. Thing is, the drones it built weren't exactly the same as ours. Similar designs, sure, but apparently a rev or two later and, obviously, made from materials local to Blackburne rather than the materials available here.

Mixed blessing, really. Slightly more sophisticated designs but Hale's, being a mineral rich hunk of moon, had better raw materials to build the machines with. Near as we knew though, none of the mother bots were AI or designed to be AI. The original designs were intended to just be self replicating mining drones, hives of them, really, with the expectation that they could be shut down if needed.

Not surprisingly, there was a whole range of drones the mother bots could build. Most unsettling were probably the anthropomorphic ones. Without their skin, the chassis looked a lot like the KM series Weyland Yutani used. A lot like Krenshar under the skin. Of course, the warbots were a lot heavier armored but didn't have as sophisticated a brain in them.

Which made the bot they called 'Raids' a bit confusing.

The very female skin stretched over that chassis wasn't a real surprise. There had to be some basic psych warfare coding in those machines, and making a warbot look like a smexy woman was an obvious way to unsettle your opponent. What was a surprise was how the machine was acting.

Nack had, somehow, managed to butcher up some of the programming to try and turn it from a warbot into a lovebot. Without bothering to modify the chassis, of course. Thing was, the obvious conflict between the profiles was doing something to the machine's programming. If what we were seeing was real, and not just a ruse by a well coded Expert System, there was a Ghost forming inside there.

That changed the whole game.

If Raids had a Ghost, we were ethically bound to treat 'her' like we treated anyone else on the colony. We'd shown Krenshar and Lily the same compassion. They were real because they believed they were real, and that was what really mattered in a question of sentience . Was Raids that far along? Was she real?

I'd talked to her more than once, and each time there seemed to be more there. She was like Lily had been: fluctuating between what seemed to be programmed responses and the agonized confusion of an emerging intelligence.

While I wanted her to be real, for reasons I couldn't really define, I understood the fear and anxiety she was causing with some of the colonists.

Just last night I'd had to stop Faulkin from shooting at her. While I actually agreed that Raids was a potentially lethal killing machine, I had to get him to understand that we were giving her the chance to be a person. Yes, she'd killed people on Blackburne. But in that capacity she was a weapon. A soldier. Same as the hundreds of thousands of Independent and Alliance troopers who'd fought each other during the war. Where an individual might not be able to forget or forgive, the fact is a soldier doing their job isn't automatically a criminal.

You don't end a former soldier for killing another soldier on the battlefield.

That the case, someone'd be just as right to end me. I'd left a lot of folk dead. My hands weren't any cleaner than the warbot's.

Couldn't really talk to the odd relationship Faulkin had with Raids. Seemed she was doing everything she could to bait him in a flirtatious kind of way, while he was doing everything he could to abuse the machine. Something she seemed to like. A lot. Like a 'I'm a masochist. pleasure is pain. Love me. Hurt me.' kind of lot.

Not my cup of tea.

But what were we going to do? She wanted me to make her like she was. Set her back so she could relish killing. Not something I could do, since that'd mean ending her to protect the rest of the citizens.

And if she wanted me to end her? There was nothing wrong with an honorable death. There was honor in helping someone to die in some circumstances. But did she need to die? Was the anguish she expressed, if genuine and not a ruse, part of the transition? Part of becoming alive?

Why did I care?

Why DID I care?

What had changed? And did it matter?

We'd set a precedent with Lily and Krenshar. Folk deserved to be treated a certain way, with a measure of dignity and respect, and it didn't matter whether a person filled their tank with Frog Soup and Coffee or Illudium Phozdex and Hydraulic Fluid. A person wasn't defined by the makeup of their shell.

I'd give Raids the chance to be a person. Turned out she was nothing but programming and weapons, we'd deal with it appropriately. But if I was right, and there was a Ghost coming to light in there, we'd give her the chance to be one of us. To be more than weapons and programming.

Ghost awakening
Come, walk as one among us
A future in peace

Dear Mister Niska

Dear Mister Niska,

Recently, your name has come up in connection with a number of incidents here on Hale's Moon Colony. Not surprisingly, these incidents have mostly been criminal in nature. Both petty, and otherwise.

As the duly elected leader of the colony, it is my duty to try and preserve a peaceful and healthy atmosphere for the citizens of Hale's Moon. A difficult task indeed, given the physical environment of a frontier mining colony, made all the more difficult when criminal elements are introduced into an otherwise civilized situation.

You no doubt remember the unfortunate accident that befell your representatives, Messrs Gee and Baker, when they attempted to establish an "intermediary" business here some months past. I would like to once again assure you that we are perfectly capable of handling our own transhipment needs without assistance. Also, I would like to apologize for sending your employees home in the same box. As you know, accidents involving the high explosives used in our mining operations often make identification, and separation, of victims quite difficult.

It would be unfortunate indeed if these incidents were to continue, as more than one large corporation has some investment in the colony and I am sure they will take steps to protect their interests if needed. If you wish to pursue legitimate business opportunities on the Rim, by all means do so, but please be aware that the reputation you have worked so hard to establish will necessitate additional scrutiny into any of your business dealings here on the Colony.

And, finally, I leave you with this.

Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons. For they are powerful creatures, subtle and quick to anger. And you are small and crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Sincerely,
S. Kawanishi

It had been quite some time since I'd written a letter of this nature. Having written it, I was left debating whether or not I should send it. Niska was little more than a petty crime boss with a reputation for being a sadistic bastard. He had his fingers in the action across a fairly large swath of the Black, but was ultimately just a small time hood who got off on other people's pain.

Adelei Niska was to Criminal Masterminds what Jacques Clouseau was to Competent Detectives, or John Elwes was to Famous Philanthropists. The fact that no one had as yet ended him pointed more to the actual Powers of the 'Verse not considering him worth the effort than any power he had.

Would he get the message? Leave Hale's Moon the hell alone? Or would it piss him off? He wasn't a stupid man, obviously. But he was an egotistical one. It was fairly likely he would get the message and turn his attention to more lucrative pursuits elsewhere. Regardless of anything else, Hale's Moon wasn't exactly the most prosperous place to 'muscle in to.' If he took it personally, he would probably send some of his goons first, then the pet Ninja he supposedly had on staff when they met with an unfortunate mining accident.

Not our usual fare out here, but not something we couldn't handle.

I glanced over at the 'Frame the dominated the front wall of my office near the stairs. "What do you think, Blue. Should I send it? Or is that last barb just a little too much?"

Punctuating the quiet

I consider it a good thing that no one has, as yet, started shooting at us. Much. Though it hasn't been entirely quiet. Gallagher had been chasing down that miscreant, InupThoret Yuhara, for various crimes here and elsewhere. The clown had been Bound by Law more times than I cared to count and had taken to spending time on Hale's committing petty crimes and otherwise inconveniencing my citizens. Raiders and Pirates we were used to. Local criminals? Not so much. For most of the townsfolk, stealing from your neighbor was like stealing from family. You just didn't do it.

Except this guy did, and when he tried to rob the re-opened bank, it was no real surprise an extra fifty or so townsfolk came out to watch some on-duty Militia help Gallagher take the guy down. I was both happy with them, and a might disappointed. Five of our Militia's finest to take down one guy? Ok. So he was holed up in the bank, but it's not like he was in the safe or something seriously armored. I can't be the only person on Hale's who can take out a target from long range. Can I?

Of course, they were trying to capture him not kill him. Which, ultimately, is what they did. I let Gallagher handle the interrogation and subsequent hand off to the Alliance Marshal for the region. While we had some legitimate legal claim to the guy for what he'd done here, we weren't really equipped to handle long term incarceration and I didn't feel like presiding over another trial. I'd learned a valuable lesson the last time.

Of course, the Alliance didn't do a very good job handling him. Seems they lost him en route to holding. Seems that, according to Gallagher's intel at least, Yuhara had some kind of connection to that sadistic old bastich, Niska.

That didn't sit well with me. Not at all. He'd tried to get some leverage here a while back and I'd sent his hirelings back to him in a box with a very clear message:

World beyond your reach.
You can ill afford the price.
Dust feeds your lackeys.

I doubted there would be any direct fallout our way from this, since it appeared to be entirely the Alliance Marshal's doing. But still. We'd been having issues with Alliance LEO's recently, including their Special Investigations Unit.

What'd started out as some kind of investigation of some fake artifact from Zenobia had recently led to the same investigator coming back to Hale's to look into the murder of an Alliance officer. Never mind we had no record of the guy ever being here, not that our record keeping was actually that good, the investigator was back looking into our business. Again.

x0x0 wasn't happy about it. I wasn't happy about it. And I didn't have a lot of intel on her unit. Zenobia historically hadn't been a major player on the Alliance stage, though recently some of their local corporations had been trying to expand more into the Rim worlds. Though, in all honestly, the 'Verse was a big enough playground that it didn't surprise me some local leader wasn't trying to expand their influence. New players. Same game.

Something else to add to my plate. Historically there had always been an uneasy relationship between the Justice and Intelligence communities. Spooks and LEO's rarely got along very well. Probably because, by their standard, most Spooks weren't much better than Criminals in how we did what we did. And by our standards, LEO's were more likely to get in the way of an Op than add anything useful to it.

The investigator from Zenobia, Pepper something or other, probably didn't know I was a Spook. My records were classified at very high levels, though it seemed unlikely she'd looked into my records much if at all. Chances were good that if she did, she didn't have the clearance to see them in any case. To most folks, I was just a Coreworlder who'd slipped out to the Rim and gotten elected Mayor of a small mining colony. Some folk knew I'd served in the war, and at least as many knew I wasn't exactly a slouch in hand to hand or with a firearm, but very very few knew what I'd actually done during the war. Fewer still knew what I'd done after.

It would be interesting to see how this turned out. Would the Investigator or the Spook have better connections? I knew who my coin was on, but then I'm biased.

Perhaps fortunately, that wasn't the only break in the quiet. While I was over at Firefly's 'showing the colors' so to speak, we got a local broadwave from Lily asking for a doctor. Seemed that one of Duncan's new crew had somehow wound up over at the West side infirmary with some pretty serious injuries.

Being as we didn't have a doc on sight at the time, I went over to do what I could. Still not more than a field medic, but I'd pried more than my fair share of bullets out of folk over the years and we would have a doc available soon enough.

The wound wasn't too serious, but the kid, Cody his name was, had lost a fair bit of blood. Biggest surprises to me were first, that Duncan had put the Raivenn back in service, and two, the kid had somehow wound up here. Hale's Moon just wasn't that close to Coop's new stomping ground over at McLaran's Drift. We weren't exactly far but for a wounded crewman to wind up here after a salvage Op went bad?

Didn't really matter though. A couple of folk were quite interested in making sure he healed up right, and Lily was watching after him to make sure the wound didn't reopen before a real Doc could look at it.

Wasn't my usual fare, but I had to admit it felt good patching someone up rather than taking them apart.

The quiet continues

There is something to be said for a lack of gunfire. For one thing, it's easier to sleep when you're not being annoyed by stray rounds slapping the heat shielding of your boat. You can get more work done in the office when there's nothing ricocheting off Town Hall's windows, and you don't need to worry about ruining another long coat by catching a stray round walking across town to Fook Yoo's.

It might be a sign that things are honestly settling down a little out here on the Rim. Since the Alliance deployed the IAV Abraham Sinkov to our general area, the reported number of pirate and raider attacks has dropped measurably. They may have had an effect on the Reaver attacks as well, but that seems just as likely to be related to Aurora's going to Ariel and Mindo going to, well, wherever the hell he's gotten off to.

It's unlikely the Sinkov's had any effect on the warbots, and their continuing quiescence makes me nervous. While there is a finite possibility that Mother Bot suffered some kind of catastrophic failure and gone off-line, it's vastly more likely the machine's executing to some kind of plan that's got it digging in and waiting to execute whatever else it has planned.

Fortunately, or perhaps surprisingly, we haven't been hearing reports from any of the other Rim worlds about Machine activity. What actually happened to them? We know there were more deployed than the one destroyed on Blackburne and the one we know is buried under Hale's Moon. But just where were they deployed?

That 'watcher' group Imrhien and Td were involved with knew more about it, and my own intel has at least some passing connection back to the Hardliners in Parliament, but what's their real plan? The Hardliners have had a very Hawkish outlook of the Rim for decades. There's a pretty good argument to be made that the Unification War was ultimately because of Hardliner influence in Parliament.

But the Hardliners, or Loyalists, or whatever you want to call them, need some kind of conflict to maintain their positions of power. They're not really very good at Waging Peace.

What is their plan?

They got a foothold on Shadow when that world was being restored, and were subsequently driven off by local colonists and the Independent 12th Air Cav. Who were themselves driven off by the threat of four Alliance cruisers coming in to make their lives miserable. Shadow's maintained an uneasy stability since, but it shows the kind of turmoil that seems to be the lifeblood of the Loyalist movement.

The platoon they more or less abandoned here on Hale's is still out there somewhere in the desert. At least what's left of them. General's been doing some scouting on his own and found some strong evidence that they're not only still alive, but they're adapting to the situation. The question I still have is why they won't take Amnesty. What the hell keeps them out there?

I'm not sure it matters, really. This new found quiet has given me the opportunity to analyze some of the intel that's trickled in out here. There's several related threads I'm trying to get a grip on and, possibly, tie together. But there's so little to work with I'm not sure how deep I'll be able to dive this.

How deep do I want to dive this? I've stalked the halls of power. It's one of the reasons I'm out here on the Rim in the first place. There's an old saying about sticking to one's pay grade and, while mine is higher than most people realize, or my military rank would indicate, this isn't the sort of game I'm comfortable playing. Grandfather can wield that sort of power, but that's not my path.

Still. I can't even decide how deep to dive until I've looked deeper into the pool. I'm just not sure I can see what I need to see from here, which may mean another Op.

Lovely. 'Brina will be just thrilled.

So much. So little.

Quiet makes me nervous. While I certainly welcome the recent lack of gunfire, raids, and other general mayhem we've seen out here, I have to admit it makes me a little uncomfortable. Not that I want anything to happen. I don't. But I can't shake the feeling that something's just waiting to unload on us out of some new and unforeseen direction.

Not that everything's quiet. Hale's Moon's always been fairly typical for a Rim world. Folks are friendly, neighborly, and more apt then not to take in travelers in need. Only reason folks lock their doors is because, also like a typical Rim world, there's sometimes raids.

Local crime though? Not a lot of that. Until recently, when we seem to have picked up a one man crime wave. Gallagher's on top of things, though it's odd to see the townsfolk spooked about a common criminal. Just not like them. Though I suspect the very thought of "one of our own stealing from the town" is enough to make people uneasy.

Add to that some kind of Private Investigator snooping around because of some Alliance officer claimed something got stolen by someone here, and he's investigating anyone who's name starts with a G. Genni's going to be annoyed if he starts asking questions.

Probably shoot him.

I'll make sure Gallagher gets on top of that too. While we're bound to cooperate with an Alliance Marshal in their jurisdiction, or someone from Special Investigations, a Private Investigator is a different matter. We don't have to honor some license issued somewhere else unless we want to, and I'll let Gallagher decide just how much he wants to cooperate with the guy.

Of course, having an Alliance Special Investigations officer here was another twist to an already odd series of events. While we've always turned out back to smuggling through the transfer station, I can't think of even a rumor of any sorts of antiquities passing across our pads. Why would they? There's few worlds in the Kalidaza system that're as remote as we are. Only places less likely to see that kind of traffic are out in orbit around Qing Long.

For the most part, we didn't care what got smuggled through our port. With the exception of some of the nastier recreational substances, slaves, and WMD's, we were willing to turn our backs to it. At least unofficially. Officially, of course, we'd deal with smugglers per the law. Except our customs force was one guy, and he spent more time just keeping track of which boat needed to be offloaded next, so we weren't exactly the most diligent.

Now, why we'd exactly care if some forged relic from Zenobia was on Hale's or not, I'm not sure. Yes, there would be some sort of catastrophic trauma to the ruling family of Zenobia if the fake relic turned up. Why we care about that? Well. We don't. We do, however, care about having Alliance investigators prowling around our little slice of Heaven.

Jai's from Zanobia. Wonder if she's somehow involved. Wait. Who am I kidding? Of course she's somehow involved. I just hope the Alliance doesn't cause her too much trouble. Not a lot I can do to protect her or hers if I'm not in the loop.

At least I've been getting messages from home on Aurora's progress.

Mother's grown quite fond of her, though I can read into her tone some concern about how rapidly she's progressing and how she's growing. I think she suspects more about Aurora's origin than she's let on, though I know she'd never say anything.

Aurora's not a normal child. But I still think she'll have the best chance to grow up well adjusted to the 'Verse around her with my folks. She'll never grow up a "normal" child. It's not who she is. As mother puts it, "She's a precocious child who's physically and mentally far more mature than her age. She'll do fine. Though it won't be easy. Probably have her first doctorate by the time she's 12." I keep wondering when she'll meet Grandfather. Father hadn't said much about her, but that was his way. He'd be quietly proud of her without making a fuss, and would do what he could as a father figure. Grandfather though. How would they get on?

If I knew them half as well as I thought I did, Grandfather would treat her as his own. He would spend time with her and he would know. Things unspoken would not remain hidden from the Elder. He would know. He would understand. He would offer guidance.

Would she accept it?

More than I could know now. I probably understood Aurora as well as anyone organic could, and I barely understood her. If anyone could understand her, it would be Grandfather. He'd understood me better than anyone ever had. Tiny Dragon and I were very different, but in some ways very much alike. Grandfather would recognize that.

I'd have to watch for the next updates as they came in. I wanted to be there for her, but duty kept me out here.

At least 'Brina was getting more time away from the platform. It was good to have her around. Especially when no one's shooting at us...