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.