Conversations with a different friend

Surfer's New Paradise was aptly named.  At least if you were a surfer.  The world went under several different names depending on which chart you were looking at.  Surfer's New Paradise was the local name and the one I'd always known.  Blessed with plentiful water, it had been half sculpted by the original terraforming team into over a dozen small continents and thousands upon thousands of islands spread out into long chains covering the world's surface.  Their major industry was tourism, followed by aquaculture, followed by a mix of other light industries, agriculture, and service businesses, in a distant third, through every other, place.

While they were, officially, an Alliance world, they'd weathered the war essentially unscathed, in spite of playing host to both an Alliance and Independent presence on-world throughout the war.  There just hadn't been any fighting.  At least outside the confines of any number of beachfront bars.

Even now, the Alliance presence was hard to spot and played almost no part in local politics.  That was, of course, just how the locals liked it.  How they'd always liked it, going back as far as the colony's founding in the early days post-Exodus.  How they managed to maintain their relative independence was a standing question, left unanswered for many, many, years.

Surfer's New Paradise was also, unofficially, known as the home world of the Clan MacDude.  Or maybe officially too, if the Clan had anything official.  According to Clan legend, they were the planet's first colonists, which was actually a fact.  They'd arrived en-mass from Earth that Was aboard a privately owned and constructed, at Clan expense, Exodus Transport, which was probably a fact.  Also, supposedly, the world had been custom tailored to their needs, based on tropical sunshine, lots of beaches, and excellent surf, which may or may not have been a fact.  Their claims to have invented grass skirts and surfing were, almost certainly, an outright lie.  To this day over half the permanent inhabitants of Surfer's New Paradise could trace their ancestry back to the original colonists, and MacDude was still the most common surname - even when it wasn't actually a person's surname.

It was also home to the one person I knew, in the entire 'Verse, who came close to understanding how my little girl, Lily, was put together.

Uncle Sobi.

Sobi MacDude of the Clan MacDude.  Adopted son of Clan Kawanishi.  Surf bum.  Bartender second to none.  Fashion nightmare.  And, probably, the best biochemist in the 'Verse.

Sobi and Lady Jade had settled, more or less anyway, into a beachfront house on an island a short skimmer flight from the planet's premier University in one direction, and one of the small but advanced technical centers in the other.

I wouldn't be able to stay long, but I needed to get his take on what was happening to my little girl and whether she was in any real danger.

Lily was growing organs, probably to transplant into someone else, but how she was doing it and what the toll on her system were still unknowns.  She would risk herself if she thought she was doing right by someone.  Whether they deserved the risk or not.  Of course,  I tended to worry about her more than she worried about herself but, as her mother, that went with the job.

Sobi went over the reports I had on her condition and what she'd been doing.  Gleaned from a number of sources, some unmentionable, they were of varying accuracy and detail.  Even then, I could see his concern. When he spoke, to try and explain what he thought was happening in terms I could understand, all trace of the usual "menagerie" of accents he normally spoke with was gone, replaced by newscaster-clear Japanese, Russian, or English, sometimes in the same sentence.

"I need to see her, Kiddo.  Not enough information here to know what's going on and we may not have a lot of time if she's breaking down."

"Aren't you teaching or something?"

"Tenured professor, remember?  And I haven't taken a salary in 16 years.  They'll give me leave.  I'll get Mullis to take my classes for a couple weeks.  Just tell me where to find her."

Which I did, as best I could.  Sobi only knew a fraction of what I was doing, but I'd get him updates en-route.  The only questions whether whether he'd be able to actually get her to sit still long enough to figure out what was happening, and whether he would, in fact, be able to figure out what was happening.

A complex problem
Sometimes you need the big guns
Tenured Professor

Conversations with a friend

I had been meeting with Corrine Silvermane for, well, a while.  Our relationship had turned from purely professional in our capacities as the leader of a frontier colony and the leader of the military unit assigned to protect it, to purely professional in other capacities as my position evolved, to one of genuine mutual respect and an honest friendship.  I actually liked Cory.  Our meetings since I'd gone back to being a Spook were somewhat less formal than the ones we'd had when I was Mayor of Hale's Moon and she was the C.O. of the 1st Marine Raiders.

Never mind the ancient rule that Spooks were never supposed to become close to their assets.  Cory was not a simple asset.  She'd become more than an asset when the Loyalists who'd infiltrated into the 1st Marines tried to assassinate her on Hale's some years ago and she'd put her ass on the line not just for her command, but for the people who called Hale's home.  She was a big damn hero, but not many folk were aware of it.

The people of Hale's Moon knew.

I knew.

That would have to do.

Our usual meetings were at bistros or coffee houses chosen semi-randomly shortly before the meeting.  About the only thing that was arranged any time in advance was which world we'd be meeting on, as you couldn't swap worlds quite so easily as you could swap tea houses.  The amusing side benefit of the arrangement was that we were getting to sample the fare at cafe's neither of us would have discovered otherwise.  There were parameters, of course:  Reasonably secure location.  Easy ingress and egress.  Easily covered sight lines.  Clientele that we would fit in with.  Better then average ratings for food and service.  Nothing really extraordinary.

This meeting was at a sidewalk cafe inside a medium sized, trendy, Zocalo in Aberdeen's capital city.  It was a closer flight for Cory than it was for me, though she probably had more difficulty getting private time away from her security detail than I did.  Of course, not travelling with a security detail made it much easier for me by default.  Not that I hadn't considered having one, of sorts.  Even when I'd been Mayor on Hale's, the Militia Sniper teams that were stationed around the town had orders to keep an eye out for trouble whenever I was out and about.  They'd extended that protection to then-Colonel Silvermane, and Beth Lionheart, the Alliance Liaison officer when they were on the surface.  Not that we'd ever told either of them.

"You're looking well," I told her, settling in across the table from Silvermane.  It was true, actually.  She was looking well.  Not just dressed casually, and nicely, but she looked happier and more relaxed than I'd seen her in a while.

"Thanks, you too," she acknowledged, motioning the waiter over to order a locally grown sweet tea for herself and the usual double latte for me.   "Understand you and Simon are supposed to get hitched by the end of the year?  Congratulations.  Assuming it happens."

I had to laugh.  It was inevitable she'd hear about it, even stationed on a cruiser far from the little colony I called home.  But her observation was more or less on, as well.  An announcement didn't mean it would actually happen.  Though, if it did, I would make sure the General got an invitation.

"Thanks.  I'll let you know with enough time to make it."

As usual, our conversations started out with the normal 'catching up' conversation that would get people tuned out from the generically small talk of two women at lunch.  There was always some risk, of course, that someone might be listening in, but we weren't talking about anything that would be correlated to anything either of us were openly working on.  Imperfect.  But adequate for the current situation.  If we needed real security, we had it available.

"I talked to Taggart, you know," she dropped, shifting the conversation to business.  I had known, of course.  The fact of the conversation, at least, if not the content.

"I had, yes.  Anything good?"

"Could say so.  Was only the second time I've met him and we had a long heart to heart about what you're doing out here.  Filled me in on some of the details you'd been leaving out," she raised a hand to stop me from interrupting.  "Always knew there were things you weren't telling me.  Usually knew why.  I'm a field commander, not an Intelligence officer.  We live in different worlds.  I don't even want to know some of the details.  But we're both on the same page now, he and I."

We'd always had that understanding.  She'd known for a long time what my role was.  At least on the surface.  But I had kept her out of the loop on much of what I did.  I had to.  If she knew what I was doing, she'd be responsible for that knowledge.  It would have torn her between loyalties as an officer in the Alliance Military, and her personal ethics of doing what she felt was right.

"You and I have had an unusual relationship, Sea.  Even before I knew your background.  Always knew you were trying to maneuver this to a place where you could count on me without having to violate my ethics.  A fact I appreciate.  Probably more than I appreciate you saving my ass back over Hales.  Thing is, we both know what's coming.  Not a matter of if, but when."

She paused, taking a sip of her tea, then setting it to the side of the table so the waiter could deliver our lunch.

"The soldier in me, well, you know how I approach that.  Just wanted you to know, if you didn't already, that I'm with Taggart on this.  We'll have your back when it happens."

I had to appreciate her candor, and for forgiving me for leaving out as much as I had.  The fact was I needed Cory.  The 'Verse needed Cory, and people like her.  People willing and able to look long term and do what was needed when the time came.  People in positions to make a difference.

"Thank you, Corrine.  I appreciate that."

Taggart had given me free rein to do what I needed to do.  Technically, I was a Rogue Asset, but he'd buried my projects so deeply even the Alliance accountants wouldn't be able to find what I was doing.  While it helped that my project was largely self sustaining, I still had Alliance assets under my command and was, myself, still considered an asset.

It was just that I was looking at loyalties greater than the Alliance itself, on time scales probably greater than my own lifetime.

We do what we must
Alone, but never alone
It's good to have friends