It's just another day ticking off the clock. . .

New Years is a formality, really. A date on a calendar. Technically, a year is defined as one complete orbit of a world around its primary. Since each world has its own orbit, each world has its own local new year. But for the official calendar, the one most people use for accounting and holiday purposes, the year is 365 calendar days of 24 standard hours each. Which means "New Years" is based on a common reference so all the worlds in the 'Verse can celebrate on the same day. Though usually at a set local midnight for whatever the world's local rotation brings up.

I'd planned to spend New Years with my friends at Firefly's, since there was no way I was going to get back to Ariel to spend the night with 'Brina. I did actually manage to spend part of the night there. Saw most of my friends here. Got to watch Imrhien dance on stage, and Kari on the floor. And even AuroraBlue there, dancing with Cody.

But it wasn't going to be.

One of the down sides of my new role was the fact that I didn't really get much of a 'night off.' Genni was my assistant, but only for my official duties as Mayor. She wasn't involved in my Intel work. She couldn't be. While I trusted Genni with my life the nature of my work was well outside her experience and comfort zone. Plus, her unconcealed Indie sympathies made her involvement with that sort of work impossible. That, and it would put her and her kin at risk. Something I wasn't willing to do. Not for the sake of having someone to cover my official paperwork.

Which meant that when an Op went bad on my watch, I was the one they called for advice, or approval, or fire support. Sometimes literally. In this case though, the need wasn't literal so much as tactical. Advice on getting someone's ass out of a surprisingly hot fire before they got burned or, perhaps worse, compromised the larger operation they were part of.

When an Op went bad.

Like it did New Year's Eve.

I'd approved it weeks before. Simple with an excellent Risk to Reward ratio. Just a second story job to recover some information on a "resource" we were interested in. Nothing fancy. But even on simple operations things could go wrong.

That was why an Operator had their Archangel. And why Archangel had me. Not that I could get involved literally, but sometimes another set of experienced eyes on a problem could see a solution where it was thought none existed.

It wasn't enough to save the Op, but it was enough to save the Operator.

For a New Years Eve gone otherwise bad, that was really all I could ask.