Lateral contact

There was one last errand to take care of on my way back to Hale's Moon. A brief meeting with a potential ally, someone with whom I'd already established a working relationship in a quite different context. There was some risk involved in speaking to her directly like this, but the benefits certainly outweighed the risks.

I sent the message, encrypted, through several relays:

Fr: Director, Intel Section, Rembrandt District.
To: Commanding Officer, 1st Marine Raiders, IAV Sun Tzu.

Colonel,
I need to meet with you to discuss recent developments in your patrol sector. I believe it is in our mutual best interest to meet away from either of our offices. This is an informal, optional, meeting. Should you chose to accept this request, please see the encrypted attachment for the requested time and location and come alone.

DD:IS

I left it unsigned, aside from the District Director: Intel Section tag. But all the codes would check out. It was a legitimate request after all.

One of the early problems I'd encountered when I'd first been elected Mayor of Hale's Moon was trying to deal with the local Alliance presence. No one at the time knew about the Hardliner's warbot project, or how heavily they'd infiltrated the command structure aboard the Sun Tzu.

It had actually taken a mutiny for Colonel Silvermane to gain full control of the regiment under her command, and in the time since things had been much, much, more settled in the region. There was a long tradition of field commanders having a lot of lee way in how they dealt with their missions. Loyalists had used that to their advantage on Hale's previously, and on other worlds, like Shadow. Too gentle to be well loved by the Conservatives. Too much a soldier to be loved by the Liberals. Moderates like Silvermane restored some balance.

But she'd been bitten hard by a Loyalist Black Ops unit who'd nearly managed to kill her on Hale's. It was probably only luck that the local Militia hadn't killed her themselves as part of the attacking platoon, but they hadn't. They'd bolted into the desert and she'd taken off to try and get reinforcements to recapture the Sun Tzu from the Loyalist mutineers.

While we'd established a reasonable working relationship, it was as a small colonial Mayor and de facto governor with the local Military Commander. Someone with more people cleaning the decks than I had colonists. Gaining her trust in this new relationship might be more difficult.

I'd picked a sidewalk cafe in a suburb of New Kasmir's capital city. It was conveniently on my course outward from Surfer's New Paradise and easily within shuttle range of the Sun Tzu. Neutral territory, as far as this encounter went, in an appropriate setting. I only had to order coffee and wait.

While I wasn't even sure she would show, it turned out I didn't have to wait long. I'd never seen Colonel Silvermane out of some sort of uniform. Not a bad looking woman, actually. Blond, early forties, about x0x0's build, though a little shorter. I almost hadn't recognized her in civilian clothes, except that she carried herself like a soldier. Some traits are harder to conceal than others.

"Colonel Silvermane?" I said quietly, getting her attention. She turned, recognizing me quickly and smiling pleasantly, though dividing her gaze between me and the others in the cafe. "Have time to join me for some coffee?"

She hesitated just a moment, taking another quick glance around the crowd before answering. "Mayor Kawanishi. A pleasant surprise. Perhaps a little later? I'm, ah, meeting someone."

I smiled and motioned to the seat across from me. "Yes, Colonel. I know. Please, join me?"

I could see the sudden realization that I was the one she was supposed to meet with, and the further realization that the woman she'd known as the Mayor of a small mining town was actually the local District Director for Intel. An unintentional cover. But she sat, our previous relationship evidently conferring a modicum of trust.

She ordered coffee when the young waiter came over, then turned her attention back to me. Looking at me in silence for a long moment.

"Colonel," I started, deciding to break the ice as it was. "I understand that you have well earned a distrust of Intel. But I hope you realize that, like Parliament and the Alliance Military itself, Intel is not a monolithic entity. There are factions even within the Intel community, and sometimes they do bad things to good people."

She raised a brow as if to say "Really? No shit." but said nothing.

"When the Black Ops unit attacked you on Hale's Moon, you stood shoulder to shoulder with the Militia and helped drive them off. Then, when you could have gone to ground, you took off in an under-supplied lander you weren't even entirely qualified to fly in order to call for help. You ended up saving the Sun Tzu from the mutineers doing that."

The Colonel let out a wry chuckle. "Almost died out there doing it too," she said, reaching up to take the coffee as the waited delivered it.

I smiled faintly, taking a sip of my own latte. "Indeed. But someone came by and transferred enough fuel and atmo that you could survive until a rescue boat arrived."

"Yeah, saved my bacon. But . . . wait. . ." She paused, looking at me more intently. "That was you? But why? Intel Section wanted me alive?"

"No, Corrine. I wanted you alive. You put yourself in harm's way for the folks on Hale's Moon. Folks that'd likely have killed you as part of that squad. You earned a lot of respect that day. Even more when you tried to make amends for the Black Ops fiasco afterward. I was just the Mayor then, still on inactive reserve. I topped off your atmo and aux power because the Rim's better with you leading the 1st."

She took a long drink from her coffee, still looking at me intently. "I suppose I owe you my life then."

I shook my head faintly. "No. I would say even after that, the people of Hale's Moon are still in your debt. I was just partially repaying it. And, as for now, I asked you here to talk because we may find we need each other in the near future. I wanted to try and allay at least some of your feelings about Intel." I looked up, smiling "We're not all irredeemable bastards."

"So, what do you want?" She asked after a moment to ponder what I'd said.

"Nothing. At least not yet. I wanted to talk to you away from, well, everything, because I wanted you to know my position out here. You're a good soldier, Colonel. I've read your record. You do what's right, whether it's expedient or not. I respect that. A lot. Like you, I've got a lot of leeway in how I do my job. I'm hoping we'll find ourselves working toward the same ends."

She took another long drink of her coffee, considering. "I'll consider it . . . Mayor?" Her laugh was actually amused, not forced. "You've done right by your colonists, but you know my opinion of agents in general. You'll understand if I'm going to hold on an answer."

"Yes, of course. But, since we're here anyway, let's at least enjoy the afternoon, no?"

I knew full well it would take more than one meeting over coffee to convince the Colonel that we really were on the same side, but this was at least a start. She was at least pleasant company. The revelation of my role in Intel changed our professional relationship, but there was a time that we'd need each other. It was just the way of things.

Hopefully, the new relationship would be a productive one.

A few things randomly considered

It was an interesting situation, explaining Anna to my parents. She couldn't be AuroraBlue, no matter that she looked like a toddler aged version of the young girl I'd sent to live with my folks. My explanation was truthful, in that I was watching after her for a friend, if omitting some crucial facts. Father accepted. Mother? Not so much. But she didn't pry, and was willing to accept that any child traveling with me was probably safer than that same child back on a small mining colony on the Rim.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay long. We had to get back to Hale's Moon and take care of a few brief errands on the way. I would have liked more time with 'Brina and my folks but sometimes other duties get in the way of what we'd like. At least Anna got to spend some time on the beach.

The first detour would be Surfer's New Paradise. In the past, Sobi'd handled the acquisition and delivery of both coffees and various quality alcohol's and beers to Fook Yoo's. He'd always managed to keep a good supply on hand to supplement the teiren beer, and what passed for scotch, that'd been available before.

While Fook's was still a Bar and Grill, competition from Starstruck's and Firefly's for the coffee and whiskey crowds made the place more Grill these days than Bar. Though he'd never said anything about it, I knew that was one of the reasons Old Guy had left. That and, I suspect, Lady Jade. She'd never really taken to life on the Rim and I couldn't blame her for wanting to go back a a more hospitable world like Surfer's New Paradise.

But this detour wasn't just to say hello to my uncle and Jade, and pick up some supplies for the station and my personal stash. Sobi was still the best biochemist I knew. At least the best sane biochemist I knew. If anyone could give me insight into what was actually going on scientifically with everything we'd been dealing with, it was him. At least where Anna's biology was concerned.

That would take time though. More so even, since he wasn't actually going to to any poking or prodding of my little girl. In fact, he ended up taking her out with him on a long board in knee-high waves, riding the board like a Kayak so he could hold her. Jiji, teaching Tiny Dragon to surf, as he'd taught me so many years ago.

One more errand, with plenty of time to think en-route.

Watching Anna grow so quickly was a little unnerving. While this incarnation, if you will, wasn't maturing as rapidly as the original, she was still growing a good deal faster than a normal Human child. Mentally, I was sure, as well.

How much like the original was she? How much did the Nurture side of the Nature versus Nurture equation come into play? The form was the same, but the environment was so much different. There were people taking an active part in trying to raise her this time. Good people. I knew Cody'd take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. He thought of himself as her Pa. Genni and Sam treated her as one of their own when she was with them, and there were both right fine folk.

I tried to treat her the way I thought a mother should. But I can't imagine I was all that good at it. I didn't seem to have a very good Mother instinct, regardless of how I felt inside. I guess time would tell on that. I don't know if AuroraBlue had ever thought of my as anything more than her legal guardian. If even that. Her mind was just something I could never get a good handle on.

Even now, Anna spent lot more time toddling in the mines than she did around people. She was never entirely alone down there. She stayed away from any of the active tunnels where the miners were, but there were still eyes on her. If the eyes stopped seeing, someone would go in personally to see what she was up to.

Engineered to be perfect or not, the mines were not safe for an unobserved toddler.

How will she grow up now? I don't really know. I'll try to guide her to wisdom as I did before. Give her a sense of morals, of ethics. The self discipline that came with The Art. But her destiny was something greater than I could see. A dream I couldn't bring into focus, and probably wasn't meant to.

One last errand though, before I got back to Hale's Moon. The way things were shaping up, I could see needing some allies in non-standard places. The person I needed to see already was an ally, even if they didn't realize it. At least, not specifically my ally. But they'd proven themselves honorable and willing to do the right thing even when it meant putting her own life at risk. Good qualities in a soldier.

Just hoped she didn't still have a deep seated distrust of spooks.

Burning holes in the Black

I had not intended to be going back to Ariel just now.

I certainly hadn't intended to be going back to Ariel with little Anna trying to reach for the controls from a booster seat in the passenger crash couch on Wave Equation's flight deck.

And I definitely hadn't intended to be taking a couple of bio active canisters back to Ariel to put into a secure stasis unit at a well hidden location.

But that was where life was taking me at fairly close to Wave Equation's maximum burn. The bright side, at least, would be spending a little time with 'Brina, interrupting her technical tutoring at uncle Elsoph's hands. Considering her natural skill, there were few people in the 'Verse who could actually elicit a "wow, shiny. I hadn't known that." from her. Elsoph was one of them.

Anna was along because I thought it safest for her. While the threat was vague at best, I didn't want to put Genni and Sam Foxtrot in harm's way in case things did become more Wu Toh Wu Now than it already was. There was a bit of irony in that, considering my first real meeting with Genni involved her shooting me.

The canisters, the reason for this full burn flight, were an acquisition of x0x0's. The first was something she'd acquired in the lab on Caliban before the Alliance collapsed the domes there. The second was acquired in an Umbrella Corporation research lab operated by one Mercedes Celestalis, who'd been loosely in charge of the installation. Specifically, it was some kind of biological payload intended for Lily and Cody that none of us intended to let out of suspension until we knew a good deal more about it. Given Umbrella's reputation in circles that actually had some clue as to what was happening, it seemed prudent.

KHI had had even less to do with Umbrella over the years than we had with Blue Sun. They were a customer of ours, purchasing various stock or semi-custom spacecraft, but not a major one. Not a real surprise. A couple of our small utility transports were quite popular. Blue Sun at least produced some commodity life support systems that probably 80% of the ship builders in the 'Verse installed in one boat or another.

Umbrella? Not so much.

Like a number of other companies medium and small, and parts of larger companies like Blue Sun and Wayland Yutani as well, the prima facie reason for their existence was because someone somewhere in the government wanted them to exist to provide special services. Sure. There were other, publicly acknowledged, benign, products that the company was "known" for. But that wasn't really why they existed.

In some circles, Umbrella was best known for its bio weapons division. They were actually another likely candidate for "stupid enough to try and weaponize Reavers" based on the original Pax work by Precott Pharmaceuticals.

I had to admit, x0x0's information about this Mercedes woman was a bit . . . irritating. If she had actually tried to clone Tiny Dragon, it meant she, and by extension, Umbrella, had possession of certain genetic material that I wasn't comfortable with them having. x0x0 was convinced they couldn't get a viable clone from the Aurora base, since Aurora, separate from AuroraBlue, lacked a soul.

While that was a bit metaphysical, the fact, or not, of a Ghost, didn't change the genetics of the Shell it lived in. If they had that genetic material, I would make sure they were relieved of it.

But that was something to deal with later. If they did, I would deal with it. While both Cody and x0 seemed to think the corporation was too big a target neither were fully aware of my own abilities, let alone the resources I could bring to bare in such a situation. While I didn't want it to come to that, there was little doubt of the outcome if it did. I didn't look forward to filing the after mission report.

At least I might get time to take Anna to the beach while we were here.

Truth and Fact are not the same thing

People often misuse Truth. The only place where True and False are entirely, and unquestionably, black and white is in Mathematics. When you start applying it to Law or, even worse, Politics and Religion, Truth takes on a whole new set of meanings. None of which have the clear precision of a mathematical proof.

Part of being in Intel was taking assorted Facts and distilling them down into something that resembled the underlying Truth. If there was, in fact, one to be found. Sometimes the supposed facts had to be correlated before you could tell if it was actual fact, or just a steaming pile of gôu pì.

The ongoing Ardra issue is a good example of parsing some sort of truth from what appear to be contradictory facts. The Intel I had was fragmented, in some cases indicating a "living but unknown" person, in others suspecting an automated device of some kind. A few considered Ardra to be a fully sentient AI, possibly with military origins. None of the sources seemed to have a complete picture.

Jai had put a Doctor Qui in touch with me. Supposedly, he had knowledge of Ardra's origins. According to him, Ardra was part of a failed experiment in Quantum Consciousness that had been mothballed 20 years ago. Perhaps more to the point, he claimed that the personality fragment, or however it could be defined, Lily was carrying, was actually nothing more than a program designed to link semi-autonomous drones. Hardly AI at all. In fact, by his description, Ardra was nothing more than a fairly sophisticated Expert System that suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Much of what he said didn't mesh well with the Intel I currently had. He seemed surprised that Ardra existed at all, which meant it was possible he had no idea the project had been reactivated. Given the 20 year span, it was possible there'd been a number of breakthroughs that let Ardra achieve a good deal more than he'd been aware of. It was also possible he was well aware of Ardra's current situation and lieing through his teeth.

I could throw some Intel resources at it, or possibly tap into the building Justice information surrounding Ardra. For the time being, I was simply going to take it as potential data points and make careful note of the source. His interest in just how Lily had acquired the information was another point of interest. I could have sent him to Cody, but given the kid's extraordinary skill level at Bullet Catching I was more than a little reluctant. If this was a veiled attempt to glean what I knew, which was considerably more than I'd let on, I was just as happy to keep them in the dark.

The one thing we did agree on was that it would be good to get Ardra out of Lily.

Speaking with x0x0 shortly thereafter gave me even more information, much of which conflicted with what the doctor had told me. x0x0 had a good deal more information on the project, including the source of the Ardra personality.

She brought up a few other individuals who appeared to be involved, several of whom I'd look into using my own Intel channels. But, by x0's telling, Ardra was hardly a failed AI. She was still a living mind and was having a measured effect on Lily. Which brought us both back to finding a way to get Ardra's personality matrix out of our little girl. Where Doctor Qui just wanted to purge it, x0 and I were leaning more towards giving it a home. Assuming we could convince Lily to let us, x0, really, as she was better equipped for it, transfer the Ardra personality from her to a new host.

How hard can it be?

At least x0x0 had something for Anna. A big Doberman, that wasn't entirely a Doberman. Genetically or structurally. Toby was a right fine specimen , if, as x0 said, not entirely real. Considering how Anna enjoyed playing with Haley, who was quite real, she'd probably have a ball with the big Dobi.

At least someone would get some fun out of this.

On the management of priorities

I've always been relatively good at multi-tasking. There are quite a number of tricks you can use to divide your attention into manageable increments and then distribute them across the tasks you need to accomplish. The main trick, after identifying all the tasks on your plate, is prioritizing them so the right ones get done in the right order. Usually a fairly straightforward task.

My personal world was really divided between three main sets of priorities that more or less matched my roles in life. Family, which included 'Brina and Lily and AuroraBlue and a few select individuals I'd be willing to take a bullet for. A few years ago, it wouldn't have been very high on my list. I didn't have that kind of family a few years back. Considering there was a time folk didn't think I even had a soul, having a family to care about was a bit of a change.

Then there was my duty as a soldier: the career that never really lets go. Very few people knew what I'd done during my military career, and fewer still knew that I'd returned to it. Voluntarily? Not entirely. But I still felt the same sense of duty that drew me to the service in the first place and, in truth, I could do the 'Verse more good on the inside than out.

There were times when those first two divisions clashed. Usually something involving my little girls. No real surprise there. Especially considering their relationship with Blue Sun and how deeply embedded Blue Sun is with the Alliance power structure.

The last priority, though not the lowest, is my duty to the townsfolk on Hale's Moon. They probably had no idea what they were getting when they elected me Mayor. The joke's always been they thought I'd do the best job at dodging bullets. But it turns out I've done OK as their duly elected leader. Being groomed for an executive position when I was a kind, and a subsequent military career, probably had something to do with that. But the fact was I'd taken a shine to the folk here. Yes, I'd had more folk reporting to me when I was in the service. And if I'd gone into the family business, I'd have a departmental budget that could more or less buy Hale's Moon. Point was, I took my role here very seriously. I tried to do what I thought was best for the people here, rather than myself.

While Lily's involvement with the Ardra AI had been taking a lot of my focus of late, there were other issues that were climbing up the priority scale.

We'd had our fair share of dead bodies crop up over the years. Between mining accidents, raids, Reaver attacks, Alliance assaults, and rampant killing machines, most of the folk here had gotten so the sight of a dead body was only a might disturbing and not something to cry home to Momma about. More than a little sad if it was someone you knew, but it'd been a fact of life.

But this last series was different. These weren't combat casualties or accident victims. These weren't the bodies of folks we knew. These were, near as we could tell, complete strangers.

They weren't Reavers. The bodies didn't have any of the usual signs of self mutilation, radiation damage, or anything else characteristic of a Reaver. The bodies, before and now, had been butchered and, in this case, skinned. More macabre than we were used to. It was the sort of thing Reavers would do to their victims. Except there was no sign these bodies had been, well, cannibalized.

The Shepherd had buried the first victims while Gallagher had taken samples off world to try and get some kind of identification. Same would probably happen with this second lot.

Problem was, the townsfolk were starting to get a bit spooked. I was still letting Gallagher as Sheriff and Cody as his Deputy handle it, but if they didn't start to see results soon I'd have to do something. Given the history we had here, we could be looking at anything from a serial killer snatching victims off passing boats, to some rogue research lab dumping off failed experiments. Either way, people were getting a might uncomfortable.

I'd already had Cody step up observation of folk visiting town off passing boats. We had a fair bit of traffic these days, and it wasn't uncommon for 15 to 20 percent of the population to be transients at any given time. Made things a bit more difficult to track.

Of course, we had the security feeds in all the usual places, and I'd had General lay in a few more in places folks wouldn't expect or think to look. Might not be entirely fair to our Sheriff's Office to keep them secret, but we needed results.

If they couldn't get them, I'd only have two choices. Either bring in someone who could, or deal with it myself.

Didn't really fancy either choice, actually.

The view from above

Hale's Moon is not exactly the prettiest of worlds from orbit. It's a largely gray ball of rock with large patches of brown and smaller patches of green. There's virtually no surface water, and what little there is is usually transient. It's dry, dusty, and not especially inviting.

Yes. I do ask myself why I call it home, but always come back with the same answer: the other people who also call it home. That doesn't stop me from wistfully dreaming about a long vacation on the beaches of Surfer's New Paradise or in the forests on Ariel. Both, worlds far more pleasant to see from orbit.

But that wasn't the view I had. While I didn't have an actual office aboard the Orbital to call my own, the single big office going to 'Brina, I'd staked out a personal 'quiet spot' on the center deck in front of the big reinforced observation dome.

The view really was spectacular. The dome was so large that, curled up on a bean bag, it felt like you were floating free in space. Kind of an ideal spot to let myself drift into the stream of consciousness thought process I needed to sort out far, far, too much information.

Research into Artificial Intelligence had a long and rocky history. The farther back you looked the sketchier the details got, but there were fragmentary records that went back even before the Exodus from Earth that Was. Expert Systems, to differentiate really intuitive assistance functions and user interfaces from truly Sentient systems, were commonplace. My own Nora project in college could pass a Turing test, but wasn't actually conscious. Nora was sapient, after a fashion, but not sentient.

There were philosophical debates laced through the research. What rights would a sentient machine have? Would they be treated the same as organic "people." Could you own a sentient machine, or would it be slavery? Did Humanity have the right to create independent intelligence? What would happen when the Singularity came and our synthetic children started to design their own descendants? Would Humanity become obsolete? Would we go to war? Would we coexist, or would we merge into something else?

My own personal feelings on the matter weren't hidden. People were people, regardless of whether they were flesh and blood or metal and plastic. It was the spark, the Ghost, that made us what we were. The shell didn't matter. To me, Lily, Krenshar, Blue and Raids were all people. Each a form of artificial intelligence. Artificial life. Individuals in their own right.

Or were they?

Lily often claimed she wasn't really sentient. Her behavior was just the result of a complex program. While neither Krenshar or Raids had started out as fully self aware machines, but had shown degrees of sentience that rivaled any organic I knew. They'd gained the Ghost Lily claimed she didn't posses.

Not everyone shared my view. Many thought war with our artificial children was inevitable. Given the existence of self-replicating combat machines attacking at least two or three known worlds, the view wasn't surprising. They were the same machines that had spawned Raids and had killed more than their share of folk. They were real. They were now. But the attitude was as old as the Exodus.

Someone had once written "Thou shalt not build a machine in the likeness of a Human mind." The origin of the quote was obscure, but the implication was clear. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Sentience were a Bad Idea®. My ideal of peaceful coexistence had been a minority viewpoint for a long time.

Lily's interaction with Ardra had changed the equation for me. While I'd known there were multiple AI research projects spread through the 'Vere, mainly in academia and corporate circles, the revelation of Ardra brought how just how complex the issue was.

Humans didn't get along with each other. We had thousands of years of history to show that. Would machines be any better? If the war machines gained sentience, would their genocidal mission against organic life become the driving force for all AI? Or would they side with Blue, who had his own agenda but wasn't bent on our destruction? What about machines like Krenshar? He'd been unstable since I'd known him, swinging between genocidal tendencies under outside influences to risking his own existence to save members of the colony. Would he side with the benevolent war machines or the benign Blue?

The Singularity might be closer than anyone realized, or it might still be generations off. The only thing I could be sure of was there was a lot going on behind the scenes. No one seemed to know the whole picture and, the deeper I dove, the more complex the picture became.

From here, feeling like I was floating in open space above Hale's Moon, I could almost . . . almost . . . bring it into focus.

The one wherein various paths are seen to converge even when it's not apparent

There are days when I really wish I didn't know some of the things I knew. Or couldn't see the likely outcome of certain courses of action, or interactions of others. There's days when I can just imagine what it would be like to be, say, a Krill farmer on Surfer's New Paradise. It wasn't necessarily the safest job in the 'Verse, but you know what to expect from life. You didn't have the same mix of stress vectors that I had. You had the ocean and the Krill. Simple, really.

But now, after several weeks of relative quiet, things were once again warming up on several fronts at the same time.

Lily's involvement with Ardra, another AI it turns out, similar to Blue but running from a very different codebase, was only getting more complicated. Lily was, near as I could figure, supporting a backup of Ardra in her own mind. Never mind whether it made any sense or not. I'd learned that estimating Lily's capability based on what I knew of technology was futile. Degree in applied tech from Feynman not withstanding. She was just that far outside anyone's experience.

She'd acquired some data from Ardra that, according to Tillery, was exactly the information Major Siamendes was looking for. Where my own search implied that Pepper wasn't exceptionally interested in Lily as part of her investigation, having information she was interested in was likely to have her circling back our way.

Just when you thought you'd dodged the bullet.

It didn't help anyone that Lily was highly mobile. I was just as likely to get a wave from her coming out of a relay at Persephone as I was to get one from down the street at Fook's. And, of course, Cody officially asking her to marry him. Giving her an engagement ring at least. Only trouble there being Lily not having a real good grasp on the concept of Marriage. One of them would have to adapt, though I knew Cody was looking to provide my little girls with something that resembled a normal life.

Not that normal had a firm definition, or there was much of a chance of either Lily or AuroraBlue finding it. It's just how it was going to be. Some find greatness thrust upon them. Some just fall into it. My little girls were made for it. It's not really a choice.

Lily's only real problem was a lack of understanding of the concepts the rest of us grew up with. She had the wisdom of the ages looking out through the perspective of a child. Simple turns of phrase we took for granted were taken literally. Like keeping someone in your heart. She wouldn't get the emotional metaphor, and would be half panicked by the thought of someone being stuck physically in her chest. How do you teach that? How do you compress the knowledge gleaned from a normal childhood into a form she could understand and assimilate?

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only issue to crop up recently. No. Add to this and the evidence of another Reaver tribe moving in, the possibility that someone was using Hale's Moon as a body dump.

Over the last week almost half a dozen corpses have turned up, mostly neatly bagged and left out where they could be found. First thought, that they were Reaver corpses or kills was ruled out by the first forensic evidence. At this point though, the Sheriff's office didn't have a second thought. Just the hope that calling in a regional Forensics team from Angel would find out who these unfortunate souls were.

The Shepherd's asked to say prayers for the fallen and conduct a proper burial. Given the state of the bodies, it looks more like we're cremate them but keep some samples for the forensics team. Cody put it pretty well when he said the bodies were getting pretty ripe, even kept on ice.

This was one I would let Gallagher and the deputies deal with. General was going to help me conduct a little out of band surveillance as well, but this was really the reason we had a Sheriff in the first place.

I'd left enough bodies in my wake over the years. I didn't really feel like cleaning up after someone else's.

Special Compartmentalized Information

Intel isn't a normal world. The Intelligence community is filled with a broad range of people, from field agents and their handlers to technicians and analysts, diplomats, managers, politicians, instructors, bodyguards, the works. It ran the gamut. The only thing they had in common was that none of them had the whole picture.

Intel assets kept secrets. Even from each other. It was referred to as Compartmentalization. Assets had a view into their little part of the Big Picture, but were often blind to even the existence of other parts. It was all about secrets. Learning them. Keeping them. Trading them.

I'd lived in that world for many years, my designation changing depending on my assignment and role. Special Asset: Tactical. Special Asset: Technical. Special Asset: Regional. Different titles for different roles. Each seeing the Big Picture through the window of a different compartment. Different levels of detail covering more or less area of a much larger whole. Each allowed to see more or less of the picture.

As a Regional asset, the 'permission' was somewhat broader than it had been before. Everything in Intel was on a Need to Know basis and now I had a much greater need to know.

It didn't mean I necessarily wanted to know.

I'd known of Major Siamendes, out of the Special Investigations Unit, for some time. She'd been involved in some investigations that came out our way and had done the courtesy of paying Colonel Silvermane a call aboard the Sun Tzu. She appeared to be a skilled and dedicated officer, and even reasonably likable for someone from Justice.

Justice, like the Media, had had a long and mixed relationship with the Intel community. Justice was all about revealing Truth in order to enforce the law. Intel was also about finding Truth. Except Intel's interest in Truth was using it to advantage, whilst keeping it secret and making sure other people didn't find their special truths.

Facts really. Truth being a subjective thing and all.

Unfortunately, Justice often took a back seat to political expediency, or Intelligence Security, as the situation dictated. It was all about what the Powers That Be felt were most important. And, for most of them, that was keeping their secrets secret.

Our worlds had never really collided, until now.

While I'd heard of Ardra before, most of it was associated with Al Raqis, orbiting Zhu Que somewhere. Since most of my immediate concerns involved things happening here around Kalidaza, I hadn't payed a lot of attention to what was going on in the space around Red Phoenix. I wasn't entirely sure who, or even what Ardra was. AI? Cyborg? Something else?

That was until Tillery came by to talk. He'd been working with Major Siamendes in his role with the Cortex News Service. He'd come to me because somehow Lily had gotten wrapped up in all this. Something about downloading Ardra's database, which implied "she" was more machine than organic. Duh liou mahng. Why am I not surprised?

I trusted Tillery. He was a friend first and a reporter second. Which made it all that much harder to not tell him how this was going to have to involve me. But if Pepper's investigation was circling towards Lily, it meant I would have to get involved. Being Lily's adoptive mother made it a moral requirement. Being an Intel officer made it . . . complicated.

Tillery's other news I would address later.

My initial approach would have to be minimal impact, with the associated minimal risk. Gather information through Intel channels and let Tag know there was a potential situation I might need to take care of. It would set up the option of having the investigation diverted at higher pay grades than mine.

I wanted to avoid having to say anything directly to the Major. The less she knew about my position in Intel the better. For all our sakes. If I was lucky, she would come and talk to me as Lily's mother, which would give me another avenue to gently ask her to leave my family out of it. A powerful family name had its own weight that I could possibly leverage just enough to keep yet another branch of the Alliance Government taking an interest in my little sister.

For now, there was a lot of data I needed to gather. And quickly. If Ardra was somehow tied back into the Machines I sure as hell needed to know about it, even if she wasn't a direct threat to Lily. I would talk to Pepper when the time came. Or maybe not. But either way, it seemed my little girl had gotten into another sort of mess.

Problems unforeseen
A Mother's work, unending
Too many secrets

Where do they keep coming from?

The first inkling I had that there was another Reaver attack was when one of the Orbital's techs came to tell me NavTrak had detected a small boat coming in hot. No pulse beacon. No transponder. No contact with Flight Control. But their engines were running open, no containment, and they were on a fast approach vector that would have them on the ground in a matter of minutes.

In fact, by the time I got wind of it, the chatter from the surface was that the town was already under attack. Though, fortunately, the Militia was quick to assemble and the Reaver boat was pretty small. Probably no more than eight or ten of them total on board.

There was no way I would be able to get down to the surface in time to join in the fray, but I could direct the Sappers to take care of the grounded Reaver boat. It seemed it was a lesson they never quite learned. Hale's Moon wasn't a typical unarmed, ill prepared, Rim colony. We were small, yes. But roughly one in four people were in the Militia, and we often had folks visiting ready to take up arms. Plus, being a mining colony and all, we were never at a loss for "things what go boom," as some of my friends would say.

Near as I could tell from the after reports, the Militia managed to take out four Reavers on the ground and the Sappers got their boat. All that for no fatalities, and only a couple of major injuries, including Nack who caught an arrow through the leg.

When I did finally manage to get back down to the surface, I ran into x0x0. Her opinion, based on their markings and behavior, that this was a different tribe than the one we'd been dealing with before. Given that their boat had approached from one of the few shadow's in our NavTrak coverage, I couldn't be entirely sure where they'd originated so couldn't add that bit of data to the equation.

There was still a lot of speculation about how the remaining Reavers organized themselves. They'd seemed to have some kind of tribal organization, but who really knew? AuroraBlue, at one point, might have. But we never gleaned the Reaver's secrets from her. Mindo maybe? Possible, but again not someone we were likely to get useful information from. Functionally, we could work with the tribe concept and leave it at that. Which meant that, if x0 was right, we were dealing with another small integrated group who'd probably be working and attacking together.

And learning the hard way why Reavers fared poorly against our Militia.