No, really, this time my little sister actually -IS- hot.

If your boat breaks deep in the Black, your chances of rescue, separate from simple survival, can be anywhere from fairly good to not a prayer. The Core worlds maintained fully equipped Orbital Guard units that were specially equipped to perform rescue operations. Further out, most Alliance warships would render assistance if they caught a distress call.

Once you got to the Border worlds, systems like Georgia, things weren't quite so certain. Major colonies still maintained active safety patrols and your chances were good if you were fairly close. But when you got to the smaller colonies, all bets were off. Most of them would have someone on the ground who would boost on short notice to aid a boat in their space. Assuming anyone was awake in their tower when the call came in.

On the Rim, the situation was even worse. Lower populations. Fewer resources. Only a few worlds maintained active Rescue units. To make matters worse, some of the Alliance commands were known to ignore distress calls on the grounds they might be traps by pirates or Independent sympathizers bent on destroying Alliance naval assets.

Kind of like when, before my time, the folks based on Hale's Moon planted a bomb on the Sun Tzu. That sort of thing. Turned the Alliance right off on offering aid.

That's why getting a distress call, broad wave, from Lily, was so disconcerting. Out in our region of space, the nearest thing to organized rescue units were the few people who kept their boat fueled and warm on the off chance they needed to claw sky at a moment's notice. People like, say, me.

The call came in from the vicinity of Maclaren's Drift which is, fortunately, a short flight from Hale's Moon. But even with Wave Equation warm on the pad, it was a long dash to rescue a boat that'd apparently lost all power, navigation, and communication in the middle of the mayday.

In this case though, Murphy was smiling on our little girl. Cody, who'd taken over command of Raivenn in Duncan's temporary absence, had taken to keeping the aging Firefly warmed up on the pad. That meant he'd be there a lot faster than I would. Never mind the Matagi's performance was substantially better. Cody was effectively already there.

By the time I arrived, Cody'd managed to recover Lily from the crippled Reaver - well, ex-Reaver - boat and get her to the ground. The only trouble is she was hot. Not in the "My little sister is hot" way. More in the "Wow, your counter is ticking off the scale" hot way. She was hot enough that I had Cody grab some anti-rads from Raivenn's infirmary so I could dose him.

Lily, for her part, wasn't speaking. Didn't even act like she recognized anyone. She was, however, trying to get into any of the boats on the pad she could reach then trying to fire them up. She wanted something. Near as I could tell, the radiation wasn't affecting her directly. Being synthetic, she didn't need to worry about chromosomal damage though it was entirely possible the radiation was affecting her some other way.

Eventually she seemed to settle down, heading into one of the houses. Wasn't Cody or Imrhien's place, which made me guess it might have been where they'd been stashing Mindo when he was here. While I couldn't know for sure, there was some logic in her trying to find him. Like an injured child looking for a parent.

I didn't know. But I knew clearing the radiation from her system would take more knowledge than I had. When it came to Lily, though, there were few people I could even hope to turn to. Mindo was, distasteful as it is, the person most likely to know how to clear her system. The second most likely, I actually trusted. Which meant a dash back to Hale's to see what Uncle Sobi had to say about it. If anyone other than Mindo could fix her, it would be him.

Which left me trusting Cody to keep her safe while we tried to figure out how to keep her safe.

What'd I say about it not spinning down?

Yeah. Thought so.