Breaking the Bubble

There are just some events that seem inevitable. When someone popped the nuke in Aberdeen on Londinium, there was no question the Justice Department would parade someone out in front of the public to take the fall. While the speed of the arrest and the people arrested were mildly surprising, the fact of the arrests and trial were anything but. Someone had to hang. Or get shot, as the case was to be, but still, inevitable.

Though, in truth, I'm surprised both Sentry and Mikie were allowed to escape. While Tag assured me he would forward what information our section could get, many aspects of the whole chain of events made little sense. Perhaps chain was the wrong analogy. More like a train. One event following the other like cars in a train, until the inevitable train wreck at the end.

I hadn't payed much attention to Mikie since she left Hale's with Cobb. We hadn't been especially close. The friend you'd ask to help you move, but not help you move a body. Still, I remembered well the incidents that led to their departure. There was a reason her escape from what seemed certain doom was less surprising, perhaps, than expected.

Was Sentry part of it too? I didn't know. Insufficient data. In any case, this game was being played at a very high level. Not exceptionally well played, either, if what I'd seen so far was par for the course. The only question was who the players were. Their game was obvious.

But not my problem.

At least until someone made it my problem. Which Sentry did when they brought JJ to our Infirmary after the Alliance attacked Shadow, Maclaren's Drift, Washtown, and a couple of other outlaying colonies, in their effort to find the fugitives.

Wo de ma he ta de fengkuang de waisheng dou. What were they thinking?

We were fortunate that no one appeared to be paying any attention to the security feeds from Hale's Moon. While I had a fair bit of intelligent filtering going on, keeping enough outgoing to not raise suspicions while still hiding a good deal from prying eyes, walking into the Infirmary with wounded in an Alliance attack was just asking for trouble.

I know he's gone to ground since. Possibly at the same 'sanctuary' Mikie's holed up in, but I really don't need them bringing the wrath of the Alliance down on our heads. Colonel Silvermane gets wind Sentry was here, there was no way we'd be able to keep them from sending down a couple Marine squads to scour the surface looking for them.

Blue Sun's compound, and the area x0x0'd subleased to Krenshar and his Replicants not withstanding.

Krenshar.

Another inevitable.

Truth be known I was happy to have him and his brethren back. On a Karmic level, I owed him a very subtle and specific debt. I knew when he'd left for Caliban to conduct his research he'd eventually be back here. It wasn't just that this was home for him, but that the situation on Caliban had been tenuous from the start.

Miranda was Reaver space. Such as was left of it. Another ten or twenty years, and they'd recolonize it. The Reavers would be gone. Attrition would do what the Alliance didn't have the stomach for. Entropy would win, as it always did. But until then Caliban, in orbit around Miranda, was just looking to be humped by the remaining Reavers.

The Alliance too for that matter. Once Krenshar's research got him working with them, in that particular field, it was inevitable they would put an end to his operation there. It just surprised me it had taken so long. Then, when they'd started to reclaim the little moon, it surprised me even more how long the Replicants and their friends were able to hold out before the Alliance finally had enough and cracked the dome on them.

Which brought them here. Here to a chunk of moon subleased from the ground we'd leased to Blue Sun. Their own colony, at least in name. I wouldn't interfere unless the interests of the colony as a whole came into question. Ultimately, I was more colonial governor than mayor. Not that there was a lot to govern. For the most part, aside from a few clusters of homesteads, our little town was Hale's Moon.

Ultimately though, that didn't matter. I wasn't here for the power or control. I was here because this is where I needed to be. Two years ago, it was just a place I was. Now it was home.

It was just a question of whether I could keep it, and the folk I shared it with, half way safe.