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.