The one wherein things go very wrong for Caliban

If there is an ass-end of the 'Verse, it would have to be Miranda. Until the Pax incident, Miranda had been the outermost colony in the Qing Long system, itself the outermost star in the 34 Tauri system.

The ass end of the 'Verse.

Nothing out there now but what was left of the Reavers and the few hardy folk who'd settled back into the research station on Caliban. Hardy souls. Most of them Human. All of them 'people', including Krenshar and the two hundred odd Mechanicals who followed him.

I knew why they were there. I'd known for a while. Why Kren had reactivated the installation. Why Lily and Aurora and others kept going out there. The implications of the research activities, whether I agreed with them or not. Wasn't my place to interfere except where it directly affected my girls. And, even then, I tried to stay out of the way.

But I knew it wouldn't last forever.

They'd had a fair bit of dealing with the Alliance since the beginning. There were things they needed to keep the installation going, and things the Alliance wanted from the research. It was a delicate balance though, and only a matter of time before someone tilted it too far to one side or the other. It wasn't a matter of if, but when.

Unfortunately, the when came sooner than any of us anticipated. From the Black Tortoise system, we were powerless to help when the call came in that an Alliance cruiser had moved into range and launched an assault on the installation on Caliban. The best we could do was monitor traffic and see if we could find any sympathetic transports willing to skirt the Alliance attack and evacuate survivors.

Krenshar and the Replicant Order would fight to retain control of the installation. He was stubborn that way. But he also knew that against the full might of a Cruiser it was a battle he couldn't win.

All we could do was hope. Hope the residents managed to escape without getting killed, or were well treated if the Alliance decided to take them prisoner. Hope Krenshar and his brethren didn't throw away their existence in a hopeless fight. Hoped they managed to salvage something if they took the better part of valor and evac'd the base.

It might be days before we knew what was actually going on out there. At least without going out there ourselves. But we did have an inside track on the Alliance Command structure. Whoever was in command of the attack wasn't the same person who'd been working peacably with Krenshar in the past, and there was a chance I could get more information through those channels.

I just had to hope it wouldn't be too little and too late.