Weddings and other complications

Two days.

What is that old saying about not having enough time to do everything you need to get done?  Tak mnogo sdelatʹ i tak malo vremeni , chtoby sdelatʹ eto.  Simon's return to Dragon's Egg, not long after my own, has set things in motion I hadn't quite been prepared for.  Not that I couldn't adapt.  It was just some unexpected details.

The wedding was actually the simple part.  Never mind I hadn't quite gotten what I was hoping for.  I finally understood just why he'd been so reluctant to take me to bed.  At least for anything but actual sleep.  While we had quite different views on casual sex, as any of the Companions I'd enjoyed over the years could attest, I couldn't actually fault him for it.  He was a good man.  A Spook like me, but still, deep down, a good man.

The ceremony here would be small.  Not quite a drop in on New Vegas, but close.  The Shepherd would officiate and we'd have at least one official witness.  Not that the legalities of it would be in question.  We could deal with that with a gesture or three.  There'd probably be another one on Ariel to satisfy my folks, much like the last time.  Only this time I'd be wearing the dress.  Simon's Grandmother's wedding gown, in fact.  Evidently on its way and already recut for me, though I have to wonder how much fabric got sliced out.

Doesn't help that I'm the average size of a ten year old girl.

Except for the curves.

Seemed likely that whoever was around would come to see the event.  While I wasn't much involved with the local goings on, there were still a fair number of folk who remembered the days on Hale's Moon and some of the colony elders still considered me amongst  their number. For better or worse, I was still part of the show.

Only thing I wouldn't want was those Cerberus ass clowns providing "security" at my wedding.  Last thing I needed was some combat happy mercenary making a nuisance of itself.  If I wanted actual "security" I could have a platoon of Alliance Marines as an honor guard, complete with a Brigadier General giving them their orders.  Or maybe a ranking Diplomat or too.  That'd be right amusing:  "Sorry.  Your services won't be required.  We will have actual soldiers in attendance."

The timing, of course, was the sticking point.  Or, rather, why we were on the two day timetable.

It seemed there were a few problems with trying to glean important information from the seas of my feeds.  Especially when the one entity that could hide things in the streams was making an effort to do just that.  It was something I'd well known Blue was capable of and, on some level, suspected he was doing.  At least in some circumstances.

The why of it I was yet to fathom. Unless I had grievously misjudged the big AI, he wasn't doing hiding some of these actions to hurt me.  In fact, given his previous actions, it seemed that if anything, he would be intervening to protect me.  But from what?  Or, who, rather.

Whatever was going on tied back to Lily.  That much I learned quickly from Simon's tour of x0x0's comms hub.  Whatever was going on, x0x0 was redressing the feeds between Lily's continuous transmissions and who, or what, ever was receiving them.  It was a relatively complex rouse and, for the time being, I didn't know who it was directed to.

That it was hidden from me attested to x0x0's own technical skills and Blue's intervention.  Though Blue himself was a product of x0x0's considerable technical skill.  When it came to AI, certainly, she was a good deal better than I was.

The who, though, I would deal with in short order.  With x0x0 herself out of action, Simon wanted me to step in and take her place - massaging Lily's feeds so whoever got them continued to find them, and thus her, useful to their needs.  Never mind that Mindo was dead, and his project dead with him.  Never mind that Blue himself, and x0x0, knew Lily's feeds were hoarked.  Someone was interested.  And as long as they remained interested, Lily would continue being.

Two days.

Two days before we'd gotten hitched, the 'interested party' was back to looking at these feeds, and Simon was back to an Op.

Coincidence?

No.

Not in our world.  Things like this don't just happen.  They happen for a reason, and someone was behind the scenes pulling the strings.

That was fine.  Soon enough I'd know who it was.  But, in the mean time, I had work to do a a wedding to attend, and a wedding night to show Simon just what he'd gotten himself into.  Just needed to get a few things from my boat and to set up a couple of tightly encrypted, and obfuscated, cross feeds of my own.