Sand

In spite of living on Hale's Moon, one of the driest inhabited worlds in the 34 Tauri system, I don't really like deserts. Though, technically, Al Raquis is a different sort of Desert than Hale's. Correction. Than Hale's was. Where Hale's Moon was essentially a compressed hunk of gravel and rock, Al Raquis had the characteristics of a terrestrial desert. Dry, arid, and sand. Lots, and lots, of sand.

The world's local government was somewhat fragmented, with various families, guilds, clans, or whatever, vieing for control and claiming sovereignty over different parts of the colony. Like a lot of other member worlds, the Alliance influence was more in name than in deed with most of their interaction taking place through the leaders of different factions.

This was a mixed blessing for me. I'd have almost unlimited operational flexibility, but limited support resources. Not that I especially wanted support resources. I was going to recover AuroraBlue. It wasn't an official Alliance Op.

One slight advantage I had going in was that, legally, I had some precedent. Lily was, officially, AuroraBlue's mother and, legally, I was Lily's mother. Hence AuroraBlue was legally my granddaughter and I would have standing if it came down to it. That was assuming I needed to deal directly with local officials. Ideally, this would be a simple in and out. Find my little girl. Give her a hug. Get in the boat with her and burn for the Black.

Still. I knew it was very unlikely to be so simple.

Which meant my first stop, when I actually talked to anyone, would be with the folks I knew in House Zenobia. They'd not need to know my Alliance connection. They knew me as Hale's Mayor, and Lily's mother. That should be enough to at least make contact and see if they could give me some pointers on the local culture.

But . . . why did it have to be another Gorram desert?

Expedition

Whether or not I really have a place on Dragon's Egg is moot. When I originally arrived at Hale's Moon, I hadn't intended to make a home for myself. It was just a 'place'. Some place I was, that later grew to be home. I'd become attached to the people there before they elected me their leader. Then, I really had no choice but to stay.

Now, with the new colony forming on Dragon's Egg, they didn't need a Mayor. They didn't have a town to call their own. They looked to me for leadership now only out if inertia, not because they actually needed me in the role. And I was OK with that. I had a day job that involved leadership without having anything to do with being an elected official.

I'd make a place for myself on Dragon's Egg. Or, more likely, above Dragon's Egg.

In all honesty, I had neither the skills nor the desire to be a frontier pathfinder. Breaking in a new colony world wasn't something I was suited to. While I had the basic survival skills down, the thought of considering "bathing" a luxury held no appeal. Roughing it on an operation was one thing. Roughing it because it was simply how you lived was another.

I'd leave the actual colonization to others. The miners who'd relocate from Hale's were far better suited to the conditions on Dragon's Egg than I was. I'd help. As I had before. But I had other responsibilities.

Right now, my focus was AuroraBlue.

Finally knowing that she had, in fact, survived the destruction of Hale's Moon felt like a weight lifting off my chest. I'd kept that hidden. People who knew me at all knew I was . . . displeased. But I hadn't really let the hurt show. Now, I knew she was alive. Now, again, I had something to focus on besides work.

AuroraBlue was already a target of interest for several organizations in the Intel community, my own included. Keeping my personal interest in her well being out of the equation had taken substantial effort but had proven well worth it. Tag knew, but, then, his knowing was part of what had gotten me selected for my current role.

Now, she'd slipped away from our immediate space to Al Raquis. I had to assume she was following somehow in Lily's footsteps in pursuit of the Ardra AI. Why? That was something I might never understand. I'd learned to consider sentient machines "People" in the same respect that I considered other Humans "people." But I would never, really, understand what went through their minds.

AuroraBlue was completely organic. As Human as I was. Moreso, maybe. But she somehow had the ability to think like a machine. I'd heard several terms used to describe what she could do: Savant, Living Computer, Mentat. The term didn't matter. Unlike the handful of others who shared her intellectual gift, wasn't an accident of nature. AuroraBlue had been made to be what she was.

And she was still my little girl.

If AuroraBlue was on Al Raquis, I would be on Al Raquis. Several of the Allinace's Intel services had assets in place on Al Raquis already. That would make my expedition to find and, if possible, recover Tiny Dragon somewhat simpler.

Though, even with support, knowing or otherwise, I didn't expect this to be easy. I just hoped I could complete my task before Lily woke up. I didn't want her to think her last close 'parent' had abandoned her if she restarted and I wasn't around.

I sent a message to x0x0 encrypted with her key and hoped she'd understand.

Finding our Dragon

She is so like her mother

Keep the coffee warm

Lonesome Ninja

Haley snores.

That she snores is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means my sleep is often interrupted by the sound of a snoring Beagle. On the other, it means I am not entirely alone.

I'm not sure why I'm feeling the loneliness again, though I suspect it's emotional fallout from the absolute destruction of Hale's Moon and our impending deployment on Dragon's Egg. 'Brina's sent condolences from Ariel, but has been so wrapped up in their projects she hasn't been able to come visit. I still see Imrhien, but she spends much of her time with the former Blackburne refugees. I suspect they're trying to find a good way to rebuild their bar on the surface of Dragon's Egg. There's something to that thought I find mildly disturbing, but I can't put it into words.

Ultimately, it's not my problem any more. I'm not the Mayor of Hale's Moon. There is no Hale's Moon to be Mayor of any more, and I sincerely doubt Dragon's Egg will be looking for any sort of official leadership for a while. Lionheart's offered their services where needed, but the Alliance's Department of State isn't exactly beloved by Hale's former inhabitants.

The dynamic has changed. New folk looking to join the colony. Old folk choosing not to come along, preferring the rocks or some other colony world to breaking in a new one. And here, all I find myself caring about is my girls.

Lily, taken to the surface by Cody for . . . who the hell knew? I knew in my heart he was doing it because he thought it was for the best. Main reason he's still drawing breath. That, and x0x0 suggesting that maybe having her on the surface might be safer if Lily woke up and went feral. No one'd get et' but Cody in that case.

Not that I wanted him to get et'. But it was an effort of will to not take him behind the figurative woodshed for absconding with my adopted daughter.

AuroraBlue was a different matter.

With confirmation she was alive, there was something separate for me to focus on. I'd probably never figure her out, but that was beside the point. She was one of my girls. That meant I would do what I could do.

Tiny lost Dragon

An ongoing enigma

Mother will find you

Making do

I was in something of an odd place. When I'd first come to the Rim, I wasn't looking for anything specific: just a chance to do some soul searching and find a way to be at peace with myself. I'd never expected the folks on the little colony I'd found to tap me as their Mayor. I hadn't really embraced the role at first, but it gave me purpose and gave them some stability. It didn't hurt that my intimate knowledge of Alliance Military operations gave us an edge when things looked rather bleak. In time, I'd come to like the role of Backwater Mayor.

Sure, if I'd gone back to Ariel and the corporate desk job waiting for me I'd have had more resources and more people reporting to me than I did now. But somehow that wasn't the point. Even when I'd returned to my Intel position, I'd taken my role with the colony seriously. On some levels, I needed them as much as they needed me.

Now?

Now things were very much up in the air. At least for me. Hale's Moon was no more. Dragon's Egg, as they'd taken to calling the new colony - even if there was already a world by that name orbiting Qing Long, was an entirely different environment. Anything resembling a government for the colonists was pure inertia from their time on Hale's Moon. To be sure, in the confines of Dragon's Egg Station, there was a need for some sort of order. But that was taking care of itself. Folk who'd been elders in the old Colony were still looked to for guidance here. And people who could, and did, take on maintenance and organizational duties on the station simply stepped up and did it. It was a cross between a commune and a refugee camp, with a bit of anarchy thrown in for good measure.

It was working. At least for the time being. It wouldn't scale. But, for now, it didn't need to. If there was a crisis people would either fall back to old habits and turn to the natural, or traditional, leaders for guidance, or it would devolve into real anarchy until the situation resolved itself and people settled into some new order born from chaos. It was the way it was.

Unless everyone died in a hull breech or something.

The other job was a different story. For the time being, I had no real office. There was no way I would be setting up on Dragon's Egg Station. I didn't have enough faith in its construction, or our benefactors, to trust it to be, or stay, functionally secure. I could, and probably would, move back into the offices I'd had on the KHI facility. But that would mean commuting between the two since the colonists wanted me here. Whether they needed me here was a different question.

Until I had a real office again, I'd be operating out of my home: Wave Equation. The boat was less than ideal, but I couldn't risk keeping Saules Silencieuse that close to the station. Besides, the Corvette's crew had their own missions.

Though, on a personal level, none of that was costing me any sleep. What kept me up at night was my girls. Sabrina, I had no worries about. I missed her, but she was safe on Ariel doing her own thing. Whether our relationship could keep going like this I didn't know. But that was a question that would sort itself out. Lily and AuroraBlue were the larger concerns.

With Lily effectively "shut down" all I could do was make sure she looked comfortable. It was odd. She used to sneak onto Wave Equation sometimes and watch me sleep. The boat's security system allowed it, and my subconscious identified her as "friend." Even asleep, I didn't find her a threat so didn't wake. I think on some level I knew she was there when she did it and took some comfort from her presence. Now, it was my turn. Sit with her in the middle of the night. Make sure she wasn't, well, deteriorating, I guess, and just keep her company. No idea whether she could sense me or not, but I hoped she somehow knew that she wasn't alone. Wasn't forgotten. Was missed.

AuroraBlue I had to compartmentalize. Lily had gone in search of her directly and I'd done some indirect searches myself, but we had no confirmation either way. She'd been deep in the mines, somewhere near Mother Bot, when Hale's had experienced the core rebound. None of us knew for sure whether she'd made it off alive. Mother Bot hadn't, which wasn't comforting in this case. I wanted to believe she was still alive. I needed to believe she was still alive. I just didn't know, and it hurt more than I cared to admit.

It was all I could do to keep that from showing.

And where was Blue? The big AI was a distributed system, but Lily had, evidently, convinced him to consolidate into a single system. Had he made it out? He hadn't said anything to me in a while, but that was nothing new. I was used to Blue being silent for days to months at a time. But again, I didn't know. It was possible Doctor Sinclair knew but I hadn't spoken to her in weeks either.

Time to change that.

Time to change a lot of things, really.

Just wish the changes were because of a course I'd set, rather than one chosen for me by fate.

Things always in flux

Recursive code universe

Changes expected

Rarely are things what they appear

"So what're you going to do now?"

Niki's question was expected. Sitting in Wave Equation's cabin, docked with the Dragon's Egg transition "station," or "barge," or whatever you wanted to call the facility Blue Sun had conveniently donated to the population of the former Hale's Moon, nursing some 18 year old scotch, she knew things had not gone as I'd planned.

In fact, the complete loss of the Hale's Moon colony was something I'd never considered.

"Do what I always do: roll with it and improvise until I can get back to a plan," I replied with more confidence in my voice than I felt. While I had no doubt about picking up the pieces and getting on with things, the loss of the colony changed more contingencies than I was quite prepared to deal with.

The core rebound and subsequent structural collapse of the oblate spheroid formerly known as Hale's Moon had happened quickly. Too quickly. While most of the colonists, and transients, and bar patrons, had managed to get off before the rebound, many had been forced to leave with only the clothes on their backs. Some had scattered in their own boats or aboard impressed bulk haulers, freighters, or boats that had come to the rescue. A fair number had wound up on the hastily commissioned structure Blue Sun was now towing into orbit around a freshly released world. Some, it seemed, were looking to stay behind, or go back when the time came, to try and set up a rock mining operation in the debris field that had been their home. That might even work out for them: at least once the field got stable and whatever was going to settle back by natural gravity did its thing.

My communications installation on the surface? Gone. My techs had hastily pulled out what they could and slagged the rest, not trusting a simple Epic Catastrophe to do the job. The Mechanics on the KHI modular maintenance facility had their own problems. While it was in a stable orbit regardless of the gravity compression, there was no telling how much crap was going to get flung their way by the rebound. Since it wasn't intended to actually move as a unit, they'd quickly uncoupled the modules and pushed them out of harms way - trailing the Dragon's Egg station on their way to the new world.

That meant my operational base would be Saules Silencieuse or Wave Equation as needed. At least until we could get the KHI orbital back together and I could get my communications array's back in place.

My own operations were secondary though to the immediate needs of the colony. I was currently Mayor without a Town and, for the foreseeable future anyway, but they were still looking to me for some guidance. Once we reached the new colony, all bets were off. Without a town, they wouldn't need a Mayor, which meant I'd probably be out of a job. This wasn't my station, either, so I wasn't in a position to put down roots here. In fact, I had some nagging doubts about this entire situation. Nothing I could put my finger on yet, but it had me a bit on edge.

"Things will work out, Niki. They always do."

She laughed softly, finishing her scotch. "Seems to. For me though, with the rig stashed safe, it's back to coaching Lacrosse. You know where to find me if you need me."

I did. And suspected I would.

I wished I had it so simple.

There was too much happening at once, but I'd get a breather soon. A chance to step back and look a the big picture. A chance to refocus on the things I genuinely cared about. Like my girls.

The one wherein the Terraforming experiences an Epic Fail

Hale's moon had always been borderline as far as terraforming projects went. The mass profile was such that it could undergo compression to get a solid 1 G surface gravity, but it was very, very, close to the minimum mass to remain stable. In fact, it was so close to the minimum stable mass, that it didn't take much to upset equilibrium. Something like, say, a large autonomous mining machine digging a little too close to the transition layer between the normal and compressed strata.

It was likely we'd never know exactly what started the spontaneous disequilibrium, but once it started there was essentially no way to stop it. Even if we'd had working terraformers the chain reaction would run its course. Hale's Moon simply had too little mass to remain stable in it's artificially compressed state. The compressed core was starting to rebound against the mass of the upper strata and, like it or not, Physics was going to win the argument.

What that meant for the colonists was nothing short of catastrophic. The solid body would more or less tear itself apart. While not a massive Cortex Video style explosion, the core rebound would turn the upper strata into the equivalent of jello. With that, would come destruction of anything built on the surface, collapse of anything dug into the ground, and serious damage to the atmosphere. Once things were stable again, it was unlikely there'd be any usable biosphere left. Hale's Moon, for all intents and purposes, was dieing. And dieing quickly.

The only up side, if there was any up side, was that it wasn't happening over night. There was more than enough time to evacuate the colony before the core rebound completely demolished everything on the surface and made the moon itself too dangerous to occupy. Between the two orbital stations and passing ships that came to the colony's aid, the evacuation went far more smoothly than anyone would have expected.

But the emotional cost to the people forced to leave was tremendous. The feeling of loss was almost palpable. These were people who'd survived attacks by Reavers, Raiders, Rogue Alliance, Pirates, Smugglers, normal Alliance, revolutionary robots, and an environment barely able to support life. They were survivors. Hardy and hale. But even they couldn't win out when the world they called home itself turned against them.

So here I was: back from a recent mission to find myself in charge of a forced evacuation and the Mayor of a town that no longer existed.

Lovely.

But all was not lost. Not by a long shot. There were several potential places to resettle. From a newly opened world that'd just been released from terraforming, to some unsettled spaces on established worlds in the Kalidasa system. The details would come. The important part was the colonists had gotten off without a lot of injury and we'd have a place to go.

But . . . damn.

Not what I'd expected to come home to.