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