The Lonesome Ninja Mayor of Hale's Moon

Dilemma

2012-01-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

On Earth that Was, during the second stage of the 20th century's "Great World Conflict," cryptography and communications took huge leaps forward. One of the consequences of those leaps, especially where decryption was concerned, were occasions where leaders would have to ignore specific intel so as not to alert their enemies that their codes had been broken. The end result: civilian deaths because they weren't warned there were bombers on the way to paste the city they lived in.

It was a terrible position to be in and there have been numerous instances since of a leader deciding to sacrifice a target so as not to compromise an intelligence asset. It's not an easy decision to make, for various reasons. The ethical concerns are obvious. Unless you're a bit of a sociopath, sacrificing a civilian target is never a decision to take lightly. Even if you are a sociopath, there's the issue of people eventually finding out that you were willing to let them die so as not to compromise your intel sources.

I'd been following my adopted daughter's antics and activities for some time. I'd be doing it even if I wasn't a spook. I'm her mother after all, and she has a unique ability to find all sorts of very special trouble. Follow her had led me to keeping track of events on Al Raquis and events involving the Myrmidon Order - a quasi religious cross between a Monastic order and a conventional PMC ^*.

Lily had become quite impressed with one of the order and he'd welcomed her to come train with them and learn their ways. Somehow, he'd been some sort of impulse for K2, which, I admit, I didn't pretend to understand. Be that as it was, I'd reluctantly told Lily that it was OK and tried to get it across to Krakken, the Myrmidon, that I expected him to treat my little girl with the respect and care she deserved.

Not unexpectedly, that didn't happen.

She'd come back home, vowing never to go back to the Myrmidon. Which I was good with. What I wasn't entirely good with was the information she brought back with her. During my time monitoring, I'd found it more than a little difficult to get good Intel out of the Order and on the Order. What Lily brought with her was intel that they were planning to, at some time in the near future, invade Al Raquis.

That was entirely unexpected information, and, to be sure, it didn't make a lot of sense. My first instinct, after resisting the urge to laugh at the thought of a PMC, even a well organized and equipped one, attacking a well established colony, was to pass the information on the some local contacts on Al Raquis so the local military could be prepared for what was coming. Only Lily didn't want me to do it.

It left me in an awkward position. On several levels I wanted to test my network and see whether I could actually use it to make a difference. I hadn't chosen to become an information broker to be rich. I already had all the monetary resources I could need and then some. No. I'd done it because, ultimately, it was how I thought I could do the most good for the most people.

On a lot of levels I know the idea was flawed. It was very difficult to know, in my heart, what really was the best use for my information. What really was best for the thirty six plus billion people living in the 34 Tauri system?

Regardless, Lily's asked me not to intervene. Why I didn't know. But I agreed. For better or worse, I wouldn't warn the military on Al Raquis that an attack might be imminent. There were other things I could, and would, do if the situation escalated. But, for now, at my little girl's behest, I would let things happen as they would.

For better or worse
Warnings remain unspoken
My conscience heavy

* Author's note: I know the Myrmidon Order doesn't see themselves that way in the Dune campaign and other locations where they exist. However, this blog is strictly from the perspective of a player in the Firefly 'Verse. Hence, the adaptation to fit within the Canon of firefly. Here's a good starting point.

Signal, ever so faint

2012-01-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

I got a wave today from out of the blue. Well, out of the Black, really. While I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it means, I am quite sure of the source. AuroraBlue. The Tiny Dragon. My littlest girl. The message, such as it was, was little more than a series of faint clicks, but the pattern was familiar. Not unlike Lily's, though the signature was quite distinctly not Lily's.

Tiny Dragon didn't reach out to me often and I had to wonder what prompted the message. Was she in trouble of some kind on Al Raquis? Possible, but my information network there hadn't reported anything overly concerning. Not that it couldn't get past me. My information nets, while growing tighter, were still growing and I was still learning to properly parse the huge amount of data that was coming in.

Did she know about Sabrina? The message I'd received? That I was, again, the Lonesome Ninja? Entirely possible. A large part of her genetics had been carefully engineered for a specific purpose. While the exact purpose was still, annoyingly, unknown, it wouldn't surprise me to find that a touch of the Reader gene was in there somewhere. Genes, really. Plus structural changes and who, really, knew what else. It was possible she knew at an intuitive level that I was alone again and was reaching out to give some small token of comfort. It was also entirely possible that, assuming 'Brina's departure was the reason, she knew by entirely mundane means. More likely, really, given her intimate association with the Blue Man AI.

For all I knew, the message could be nothing more than "The weather is beautiful, wish you were here." But somehow that seemed a little too mundane. The fact that she's sent an audible message was significant in of itself.

The logical step from here was to check with my contacts on Al Raquis directly then, if they had nothing, go there myself to see how Tiny Dragon was doing. While I was following the developments with Lily and K2 and AuroraBlue, I'd been very hands off of late. Perhaps it was time to change that, though my interventions in the past never seemed to do much. Of course, it was hard to see any effect my actions would have in their situations. I was too close to it in time and space.

I also wasn't prescient.

Though . . . was anyone?

I'd give it another day or so to check with my local contacts and see if I could figure out why AuroraBlue had contacted me. If not, or if she didn't contact me again herself, I'd go to her. Even if it turned out to be nothing more than a sympathy call, it would be good to see her again.

Tiny Dragon calls
A faint voice, unexpected
Welcome distraction

The one wherein a Dragon cries

2012-01-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

On some level I am not surprised. When Sabrina took Elsoph up on his offer to come play in an R&D lab of her own, I'd had a gut feeling that she'd get wrapped up in being able to pursue her technical dreams. We'd stayed in touch, seeing each other, or speaking over a Cortex link, as often as we could, but on some level I knew the distance was a problem.

I hadn't realized how deeply she'd feel the loss of Hale's Moon, but I should have. She'd lost a home on Blackburne when the Reavers had overrun the downport. Even though she was living with me on Hale's by then, she'd felt the loss as had all the others who'd called that place home. The move to Dragon's Egg was even less comfortable for her than it was for me. Probably why she accepted the position back on the Orbital, then gone with it when Corporate made the decision to move it. We'd both called the Orbital home for a time, living on the boat docked in the lower hangar.

Now, she'd chosen to walk away. Not that I really blamed her. I even understood why she'd left me a Haiku to say good bye rather than having the a talk that would have been more painful for both of us.

Time has changed us much
I no longer have a home
Into the sunset

Part of me wanted to track her down and have the talk we should have had, while the rest of me knew and understood her reasoning. I had to remember that old saying: "If you love someone set them free. If they love you too, they will return." The thing was the variations in how that old saying ended. The classical "If they don't return, it was not meant to be." Or the more irreverent "If they do not return, hunt them down and kill them."

Most people who knew me would expect me to follow the latter interpretation of that saying, but I wouldn't. I loved 'Brina. I always will. But if our marriage wasn't meant to be, I'm willing to let go of it. I won't be happy to let go of it. But I am willing.

I just wonder if I'll be able to stay on Dragon's Egg myself. Lily and AuroraBlue have both been very mobile, but spending far more time on Al Raquis than on Dragon's Egg - a world I have extensive contacts on, but don't feel comfortable on myself. Simon's been away for weeks without even a SitRep to let me know his mission status, and the colony doesn't actually need me for anything. I have the house, of course, but other than Haley it's empty.

But that means Haley is the only one who can see the Dragon cry.

Inevitable.
Time and distance came between.
A hard driven wedge

I will not cast blame
Saying goodbye to my love
Even Dragons cry

Altered structures

2011-12-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

Colonel Corriene Silvermane had been the commanding officer of the 1st Marine Raider's for several years, with a brief gap while she recovered from an assassination attempt while on Hale's Moon. The Loyalist faction wasn't especially fond of an Officer that was not only good at her job, but generally opposed to abusing the colonies her unit was responsible for. She'd done a lot to normalize relationships between Hale's Moon and the Alliance forces in the region.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, depending on your perspective, Officers get moved around. No matter how good you are at what you do, or maybe because of it, you'll get moved to another position. It was only a matter of time then before they reassigned Silvermane to another unit.

I was actually happy for her, and for the professional relationship we'd developed. They'd promoted her to Brigadier General a couple months back and, now, reassigned her to a Divisional position as the Assistant Divisional Commander for the Marine's 4th Frontier Division, which the 1st Marine Raiders was part of. For her it was a full step up the food chain and, for me, I wasn't actually losing a resource. It was just maneuvering into another position.

The disadvantage for me, and us as a colony, was we didn't know yet how the new CO would treat the colonies in their patrol area. Silvermane would still have her influence from above, but she'd have her hands full and now had several other Brigade sized units to deal with in the Division. If the new CO turned out to be an mudak they could do a lot of harm before word came down from above to back off.

While I had their resume on my desk, along with their background, it was no substitute for actually meeting them. But when would that happen? Would that even happen? While I had official channels to work back up through, I wasn't going to reveal my Intel position to the new CO until I was sure it wouldn't compromise my own plans. The liaison, Lionheart, could recommend they speak to me as a representative of the colony, but that wasn't an official position. We had some makeshift law enforcement, but we had no established government. Yet.

That was something else I'd have to keep my eyes on. I knew folks feelings on my leadership were mixed. The folks who'd liked anarchy and the presence of pirates and smugglers weren't so happy with me. The folks who liked a modicum of safety and stability did. The inevitable trade off between competing factions. Thing was, I'd done what I thought was best for the colony then and I'd do the same now. Should it come to that. I'd make some noise about what I thought was best, but I wasn't the leader here. Just a colonist with a vested interest in keeping things stable. Seing how most folk here still gave the farmhouse a wide berth it wasn't much of an issue. Bram, and his lackey, I mean "Deputy," weren't giving me any issues either so, for now, it was business as usual.

But for how long?

Home for the holidays: Or not.

2011-12-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

I'm not fond of this time of year. Not the weather, because that's easy enough to change with a short shuttle flight. No, it's the social aspects of this period on the Old Calendar. When it was just Earth that Was, the calendar made sense. So did the holiday periods. The seasonal cycles were predictable and fixed. Since the dominant cultures for the last couple thousand years before the Exodus were in the Northern hemisphere, the "holidays" were winter holidays. A hodge podge of various cultures, all mixing together and distilling down to a set of social traditions that usually involved family and giving presents and stimulating the local economy by the purchase of same.

The holidays are depressing.

Winter is depressing.

I've been out on the Rim now for the holidays for the last seven years. Even before I went to Hale's Moon, and now on Dragon's Egg, I'd been out here. I was alone for most of those years, but 'Brina changed that for me. Unfortunately, this year wasn't one we'd get to spend together. Some sort of technical emergency on the platform, which I actually understand. She's the best they have and she came back out here to help run the place. This time of the year is only significant to us because we got together at Firefly's, back on Blackburne, this time of the year.

The girls were off-world, again. Somewhere. Actually, I knew where all three of them were. Keeping track was an ongoing test of my growing network. But I missed them. Not that we were a normal family. Or ever would be a normal family. Or even could be a normal family. It was what it was. Lonesome though it was.

Even Simon was off world for the holidays.

But at least Haley's around. If you'd asked me, well, ever, whether I thought a Beagle would be the most stable companion in my life, I'd have called you Baka. But here she was. Snoring blissfully away in her bed. Rescued from Reavers, in order to be a stable influence in a lonely Spook's tumultuous life.

Deep Black

2011-12-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

The situation on Dragon's Egg is becoming too unstable to continue with my plans. While I've still got a secure link to Saule Silencieuse, and my own Wave Equation on tap, the influx of PMC's and other unsavory types to Dragon's Egg isn't helping my situation. It helps that I've had the entire communications network jacked almost since I arrived, but it'll only be a matter of time before the Alliance takes notice of what's happening and increases their presence even more.

The farmhouse was an unlikely base of operations for me, to be sure, but it was what I had after the decision to move the platform. Though, in truth, Simon had built the place with me and my needs in mind. There was a layer of hull metal between the outer brick layers and the inner wood paneling. The windows were made from the same material they made spaceship viewports from, and there as a concealed fire suppression system built into the ceiling. Add to that a generator that had come out of an Alliance landing craft and more than adequate computing and communication stacks, and I was set. At least I had been set.

There were some things to be said for mild anarchy, of course. For one thing, it was much easier to hide an Intel operation when no one was sure what was going on outside the limited scope of what they could see. But anarchy was, by definition, unstable. And unstable wasn't what I needed for the kind of work I needed to do. So far, it hadn't been an issue. Maybe it was my reputation that was keeping people at bay, but even the Reavers were giving the farmhouse a wide margin. But how long would that last?

It appeared I would need to find a new base of operations.

But where?

Assuming I couldn't secure the situation on Dragon's Egg, of course. But what would that entail? There was a subtle push from several directions to establish some form of local government on the colony. That would actually suit my needs, provided it wasn't too intrusive. A few of the old Hale's Moon residents had approached me about reclaiming my spot as Mayor but, to be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted it. The social makeup of the colony had changed. The feel was different and I knew there were some people who'd actively oppose my leadership.
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That being what it was, I'd be willing to go with more or less any government the colonists decided to implement. If it became intrusive, I'd leave. Or, at the very least, move far enough from the settlement to declare independence from their government. So far, the nearest thing to a government was our self declared Sheriff, Bram, who'd been in the role on Hale's before we had to abandon rock. His authority was marginal without even a council, though if the Alliance made him a Deputy Marshall he'd actually be the local law. Though his deputizing Nick was probably a mistake. We'd have to see how that turned out.

Logistically, Surfer's New Paradise was potentially a good option. The local government was one of the most laid back in the entire 34 Tauri system and I was well familiar with the colony and its customs. It was also closer to the Core and better positioned than Dragon's Egg for my needs, also, the locals wouldn't give my girls any hassle when they came to visit. Honestly, it was a strong contender, but I was a little reluctant to place any kind of burden on my kinfolk. Even if Uncle Sobi wasn't biologically my kin.

The other option was, of course, to settle onto the IAV Saule Silencieuse. I already had an office there, the crew was pleasant, if a little odd. Though who in Signals Intelligence wasn't? I was comfortable in the Deep Black. I'd spent a lot of time there, alone, when I went into semi-retirement the first time. But a Kamkamoss class Corvette wasn't exactly the best place to receive casual visitors. Her mission required a good deal of obscurity and having people flying out in unmasked civilian boats wouldn't make things any easier.

I could always move back to the platform. But there was still the matter of traffic and having less control over what was coming and going at the new location. No. That wasn't really an option, at least as currently deployed.

For better or worse. I was staying where I was.

Home is where your dog is.

A new location
A place to do my calling
Home's where your dog is

So then these Reavers show up . . .

2011-12-02T21:36:00.001-08:00

Aren't these guys dead yet?

Seriously. How long can they maintain enough of a population to remain a coherent group, let alone a measurable threat?

There were never more than about thirty thousand Reavers to begin with. While there weren't extensive surveys done, it was estimated that one tenth of one percent of those exposed to the Paxilon Hydrachlorate expressed the Aggressor response. With Miranda's population of around thirty million, there would have been about thirty thousand Reavers. That's it. Even if we double, or trebble the count, we're talking well under a hundred thousand of them.

To put it in perspective, that's between one and three Corps worth of Alliance military forces.

Sounds like a lot, until you realize the Army Group deployed in the Kalidaza system alone has more support personnel then there were Reavers in total. And that was roughly twenty years ago now. The days of Reavers raiding and pillaging have been on the wane for a long time.

Attrition's a bitch.

It doesn't help them that, contrary to some of the more insidious conspiracies, there is no evidence, at all, that the Reavers were an intentional result of the Pax. Everything anyone can find on the Pax indicates that the coverup of the incident was quite real, but the actuality of the aggressor reaction was an unexpected and tragic accident. In clinical trials, Paxilon Hydrochlorate was a mood stabilizer and mild sedative. What led Prescott Pharmaceuticals to suggest a massive scale airborne deployment on Miranda is still buried deeper than I've looked, but it wasn't an intention to create a small army of Berserkers to terrorize the Rim.

Even with the occasional "convert" and Mindo's crazy experiments, their numbers have fallen. They've had to. They die in combat. They fly ships that have marginal containment, which leads to more of them dieing. They don't breed. At least not that anyone's ever been able to document. The only children of Reaver rape-survivors I can find reference to were born normal. They didn't inherit the Reaver madness. It's Entropy at its finest.

The Reavers are dieing out, and have been since their were spawned.

So where the Gorram hell do they keep coming from?

With the recent attacks on Dragon's Egg, we can only assume their is either a Nest nearby or a mothership somewhere. Unfortunately, with the KHI Orbital redeployed elsewhere, we don't have anywhere near the array capability we once did. We'll find it, of course, eventually. But in the meantime, I've got to hope the colony can deal with the threat.

Dragon's Egg isn't Hale's Moon. We've got some skilled soldiers, but we don't have the well drilled militia we had on Hale's. Though, fortunately, the scale of the attacks seem to be smaller. Also, they seem to be steering clear of the Farmhouse. Maybe it's a few well placed shots from my long gun, or maybe they identify the place as mine and give it a wide margin. Either way, I haven't had to deal with them directly.

Though that may change.

Lily'd taken K2 with her days ago, but he was with her here on Dragon's Egg when the Reavers attacked. And, now, he's missing. Whether they have him or not, we don't know. Acting on their own, they'd have eaten him already. Acting on AuroraBlue's order? Different story. Does this tribe treat her as their Queen? If so, would she really send them here to get him?

Not sure I want to know.

But I will.

It's what I do now.

Little child of sand

Have the Reavers come for you?

Or unrelated?

Cubs

2011-11-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

I don't pretend to understand Lily, or Blue, or AuroraBlue, for that matter. It's not just that they are each, in their way, a construct. Unlike everyone else I know, they developed without the normal psychological development the rest of us share. They lack the long term learning and perspective that we learn through trial and error from childhood.

None of them were ever really children.

They are each, in their way, a sociopath.

Not that that is really a surprise. I'm a sociopath on some levels myself. It's why I'm so effective at what I do. But it does make things difficult. I've often said I've faced trials no other mother in history has ever faced. How could they? My adopted daughter is a synthetic life form. Not even really organic, though fully sentient. Her daughter is purely organic, but she's been through physiological changes that she probably shouldn't have survived and her mind is that of a Mentat: a Human mind that can think like a computer.

The new cub though? What do I make of him? Lily described him as being made from Sand and Electricity, and visually I wouldn't doubt he's a Synthetic. How? No idea. Given the developments in nano-fabrication and the influence of Blue, it's possible K2, as she calls him, really is made of Sand. Sort of. From sand would be more appropriate. A good high grade multi-mineral base with all the appropriate metallic elements available, and it might be possible. Might. As in, I can't entirely rule it out, but I haven't seen anything to say it's so either.

Synthetic or not, he was well behaved when Lily left him with me to tend. Spent almost the entire time curled up more or less asleep on the small bed with Haley, where Lily put him. Which, all things considered, wasn't such a bad idea. Haley's always been good around children. Pretty much from the day we rescued her from the Reavers, she's shown an even greater than average, for a dog, affinity for Younguns.

Part of me wants to know more about him, and another part doesn't want to think too hard about it. Mechanoids, like the infamous KM series, all require serious infrastructure investment to manufacture. There's a reason menial labor is still performed by indentured servants and the poor, rather than by industrial mechanoids. Autonomous mechanicals are expensive and complex to make, require skilled maintenance to keep in operation, and still generate a fair amount of fear within the general population. In most circumstances, they're just not economical. Not when you compare them to cheap human labor.

A synthetic like my dear Mei Mei is, functionally, a curiosity. Created in a lab by a brilliant, if insane, inventor, for a specific purpose. She is unique. Unlike the KM series or any of the other mechanoid models, there will not be hundreds or thousands of her coming off an assembly line. She is the only one of her kind and may forever be the only one of her kind.

Using nanotech under AI control to manufacture synthetics is a game changer. Potentially a terrifying one. But I'm not going to judge. I don't know enough about him. I will. In time. But for now, I don't. And I won't judge.

The question though, is whether I'll need to protect him from AuroraBlue. Lily's convinced my little girl is going to end her, and K2. Why? She can't say. Or maybe won't say. While I have my suspicions, I don't know for sure. There was a time when I thought I understood where it was all leading, but now I'm not so sure. Too many variables. Too many unknowns.

And my own emotions coloring the picture.

Energy and Sand

Machines as small as microbes

What now have you wrought?

And then someone blew up x0x0...

2011-11-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

There are dangers inherent in being highly placed in a large corporation. It goes with the territory. No mater how well liked a corporation is, someone out there will want to put some hurt on the top executives. Either for some imagined slight, or for kidnapping and ransom, or for political reasons, someone will want to do them harm. That's why most corporate executives have some sort of security force around them at all times. They need it. Even Grandfather has a couple of bodyguards.

When half the known 'Verse has a love/hate relationship with the company, like, say, Blue Sun, the problem is magnified. While x0x0's position in the company isn't as widely known as some, she is still functionally, vary, very, powerful. If they were a privately held concern, like KHI, with no shareholders to appease, her power would be unsurpassed. But x0x0's always been independent and, honestly, a badass in her own right. She's always taken a rather, mukanshin'na . . . unconcerned, view of her personal security. I've kept an eye on her, as I have on Lily and AuroraBlue. Unfortunately, I have been much less successful at protecting my girls than I'd like.

That being the case, it was really no surprise that someone would put some effort into hurting x0x0. While a package bomb seems like a crude, and, honestly, unsophisticated, way to attack, it can be effective. In this case, it was quite effective. The device made it through x0x0's usual checks on such things and the blast damn near killed her.

I wasn't in position to do anything about it at the time, but I've been following her situation ever since. Not entire sure I like the space she's in now, truth be known. But, for now, I will just watch. If someone tries to finish what they started, I'll hopefully be a step ahead of them. If someone tries to take advantage of x0x0's compromised situation, I'll have her moved beyond their reach. I've got substantial discretionary power in my Intel position. And, failing that, I'm still quite adept at performing extractions.

In the meantime though, I need to sift the data and find out who tried to hurt her.

It's there.

I know it is.

I just need to find it.

Bombs so very crude.

An amateur assassin.

Perhaps something more?

Web

2011-11-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

There are points in a persons life when everything suddenly comes into focus. Places and times where they realize what road they are on. It doesn't matter what road they might think they are on, or which they were on. They see the road they are on. It is in those moments they can embrace the path as it lies, or make a conscious effort to alter course. For better or worse, the choice becomes obvious.

Unfortunately, it's oft impossible to tell whether the choice, any choice, is for better or worse. Even when the choice has been made, it may be hard to tell for a while whether the choice made was the right one.

I've recognized most of those moments in my life.

But this one crept up on me.

Pouring over Intel analysis as I have done so often for the last couple years I suddenly realized how large a web I'd spun - to borrow a euphemism. Dragon's don't spin webs. But still. I'd positioned myself at the focus of a vast web of information. Originally as a way to protect my girls from being exploited, then simply continued because of inertia.

As a district officer I'd been given a great deal of freedom over what to do with the intelligence I collected. Much of it was simply passed on for later analysis. Some I acted upon myself, using the resources at my disposal or, rarely, taking a direct hand myself. Some I squirreled away because passing it up the chain would have consequences best avoided.

And therein lay the realization. Information was power. Even more than wealth, of which I had a passable supply, Information - raw knowledge - was power. Whether it was used for good or ill, or simply was, was separate from the information itself.

That, in itself, was no real revelation. It was more of a truism. What was a realization was that I'd been consciously making judgments about what information should get passed on or not, and why I was making those judgments. And the realization of the direct effects some of the passed information had had, and what the omissions had meant.

I'd been using information to subtly manipulate the Intel community, knowing, as I had pretty much since I joined the Intel community, that the community had subtly been manipulating me. Manipulating everyone. And now, the conscious realization that I could use that manipulation to advantage. Not for personal gain, though that was an obvious avenue, but to subtly guide events towards the brighter future I'd always imagined.

It was a frightening realization.

But it illuminated my course.

I had information. Vast quantities of it. And, by skillfully disseminating that information, by trading it, guiding it into the proper hands, or away from other hands, I could do far more good in the 'Verse than I ever could behind a command desk or from a high floor in a corporate tower.

Most of the contacts were already in place. It was a matter of expanding the network, casting a wider net, and, above all, being very, very, careful with how I used the power at my disposal.

It would have to happen slowly. Carefully. But it would happen.

It was already happening.

Only now, it was time to consciously move on what I knew.

Buddha help us all.

Knowledge is power

Vast web of information

Who am I to judge?

Surface

2011-10-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

I'd never planned to spend a lot of time on the surface of Dragon's Egg. I certainly hadn't planned to live on the surface. But that's where I am now. Not my original plan, but what kept me on Hale's Moon is what keeps me on Dragon's Egg. My girls are here, so I am here. Only now, I'm on the ground, rather than enjoying the view from three hundred kilometers up.

Contrary to what seemed to be popular belief, I didn't actually own the platform. Never mind it had the Kawanishi name on it. Never mind I was part of the Kawanishi clan. Never mind it was deployed to Hale's Moon at my request. The platform had been owned by Kawanishi Heavy Industries Limited of Ariel, with very favorable terms for the Hale's Moon colony it orbited. Unfortunately, with Hale's gone, the agreement went with it. We redeployed it to Dragon's Egg at my request, but, sadly, I couldn't make a good business case for keeping it there. There just wasn't enough traffic to justify keeping the modular platform in place. Not with a copious lack of trans-shipment opportunities and with the Blue Sun owned Dragon's Egg Station there.

The "request" from Ariel wasn't so much a request as a declaration that KHI "was going to move the platform to a more accessible and lucrative position in the Kalidasa system, and, if I didn't intend to relocate with it, would I be so kind as to remove my personal effects from the station so they could disengage the modules and move it on out." So that, in effect, was that. The orbital platform that had housed my base of operations was being moved.

Functionally, it was an inconvenience but not a major problem. I still had IAV Saule Silencieuse at my disposal. While the ELINT Corvette wasn't my ideal home base, it was both mobile and very, very, well equipped for its job. I could establish a secure uplink to the ship and have access to all the capabilities I'd need, and could operate from my office there when needed. Though that left surface accommodations.

Taking Simon up on his offer of a room at his farm solved that issue, at the cost of raising multiple eyebrows. With 'Brina gone as long as she was, and even after coming back remaining largely out of sight with work, people weren't completely surprised that I appeared to be spending time with other people. I'd had slept alone every night after all, but some companionship in bed didn't mean I loved my wife any less. Or missed her any less. The bigger surprise was that Simon was male.

Thing was, there wasn't actually anything between us. Simon's admonishment that I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen aside, my decision to take the upstairs room in his farmhouse was purely practical. The structure was sound, and easily reinforced behind the bricks. And there was ample room outside to park Wave Equation. Also, Simon's background as an Alliace officer was appropriate. And, not surprisingly, deeper than it seemed on paper.

So let the eyebrows raise. That I loved my wife wasn't in doubt with the one person who actually mattered in the equation. Our work schedules were still a point of stress, but we'd made it this far. She would understand my ulterior motives for settling on the surface.

Just so long as I understood them.

Rope

2011-09-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

AuroraBlue is alive, but not home.

Lily is awake and active and scampering over her new home on Dragon's Egg, whilst still somehow remaining more or less out of sight.

Uncle Sobi has graced Dragon's Egg Station with his bartending prowess, though I think the real reason he's here is to avoid watching his Clanmates use a re-purposed, but fully armed, Mech as a construction"tractor." That and Lady Jade wanted to visit some friends on the Rim.

For me, life is what it is. My girls are ok. Sabrina is back, though we still don't see much of each other and Simon is . . .Simon. I've learned more about him. Possibly more than I wanted to, though not more than I needed to. It has been a long time since a man has shown any interest in me, partially because, at least I'm told, I intimidate the hell out of people, but more recently because I'm married to another woman.

He is certainly persistent, though I don't think I could ever imagine myself living as a frontier colonist. That was, of course, assuming I wasn't already quite happily living my life. Well. Ok. Not always happy. There've been some lonesome spells in there, when 'Brina and I hadn't seen each other in months, 'cept over the cortex. And the frustration of dealing with the job folk knew about, and the job folk didn't know about. And being a mother. Kind of.

And then there's the amateur who thinks he's a professional: Nick. The only person in a decade I've actually seen annoy Sobi. If he were a tenth as good as he thinks he is, the Alliance wouldn't stand a chance. Which means, ultimately, he'll either come to grips with his own limitations or someone with a more violent temper than Old Guy will take offence and end his span. Given his abject disrespect? I may be me that does it. Though more than one person's told me to just let him take all the rope he wants.

I suppose I'll just have to see how things develop in the near future. I have things in place where they, mostly, need to be. The girls are ok. Rope is being payed out.

All is as it should be.

Not quite what I had in mind

2011-09-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

I am home.

AuroraBlue is not.

I can't say this all went according to plan, or the outcome was what I desired. But it is what it is and, ultimately, I determined the one thing I needed to determine: my little girl is safe. At least where "safe" is defined as not in imminent danger of being attacked my Reavers, captured by an Alliance biomedical research team, or dieing from exposure to hard vacuum.

I'd managed to track her to one of those fortress-like households the locals liked to build out in the desert, where Cody was already discussing something with the locals. It sort of figures that he'd have found her himself then not bothered to send me a wave to say she was all right. Though after his absconding with a sleeping Lily, I'm not surprised. Just another broken link in the chain of trust at this point. I've kind of gotten used to it. The number of people I trusted was dwindling back towards the point it was at when I first left active duty.

Lovely.

The locals were. . . a product of their culture. I'd read a bit of the colonial culture on Al Raquis, but dealing with it face to face was a different matter. It was plain that somehow Tiny Dragon fit into their local mysticism. It was also plain that they really had no idea what was living in their midst. While, under other circumstances, it would have been interesting to explore the depths of their local mysticism, at the time I was in no mood to have someone try and out-Zen me.

I was probably a bad person for them to be talking about "personhood" to. They had no idea that AuroraBlue and Lily had legal status as people because of the work I'd done. They didn't realize it was an insult, which was why I didn't take it as one. Though, ultimately, they were right about one thing. I wasn't going to force AuroraBlue to do anything.

I'd come to bring her home, but only if she was willing. Finding out that she was OK was more important to me. If she chose to stay, for her own reasons, I would accept that. Dragons do as they do. It is our way. Or something like that. Something had drawn her here after leaving the destroyed mother bot in the wreckage of Hale's Moon. Something about singing sand and the Ardra AI that Lily had been obsessed with. It was all tied together somehow, but I didn't have enough of the pieces to wrap my brain completely around it.

The trip wasn't a total disappointment though, for when I left the keep to call Wave Equation down to take me back off-world, AuroraBlue came down off the roof and bade me follow her into the desert. Eventually, leading the way to a small encampment sheltered against a ridge not unreasonably far from the manor house itself.

What she told me, relayed, really, since she still wasn't really talking, was something else I'd have to wrap my head around. A piece of a bigger puzzle. A piece of a puzzle I'd been putting together since I first met Lily and came to accept artificial life as every bit as "real" as the naturally organic variety. But it wasn't something I would dwell on until later. Until after I returned to Dragon's Egg.

After spending one night watching over my sleeping little girl.

Tiny dragon mine

The keys to great mystery

Held in your small hand

Understanding waits

For now I must let you sleep

Time remains to dream

The one wherein I cart around an extra couple kilos of sand in my boots

2011-09-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'd like to be able to say that within hours of setting boots on the ground on Al Raquis, I'd found AuroraBlue and safely spirited her away from that unending desert. I'd also like to say I'd brought peace to the warring factions on Devenporte and found a generic cure for both cancer and the common cold. Unfortunately, I couldn't say any of those things. All I could say, safely, was that the world had a certain arid beauty to it and that if I never saw another sand dune, sans beach, it would be too soon.

This sort of work wasn't my specialty. While I had all the required skills, I typically didn't string them together in a search and recovery Op like this. Normally, I at least knew where to find my target so the Op was more a matter of figuring out how to approach than the actual mechanics of finding them in the first place.

For the moment, I was avoiding pulling any of my 'official' resources into this. While Alliance Intel had resources on world, drawing on them would raise questions I didn't feel like answering. Fortunately, I had other resources I could tap here. While part of me actually felt a little bad asking Jai and her Zenobian friends for help, it wasn't really much of a stretch. Jai knew Lily and AuroraBlue and me. She knew it was personal, not professional. It was a favor from a friend and one I would repay when I was able.

Still, before I could make contact with them I would do some ground work on my own: checking out some of the local facilities and settlements to get a feel for the place and any hints I might find before setting off into the pervasive desert to try and find up close what I hadn't been able to find with Wave Equation's sensor array.

Unfortunately, it looked like the only thing I was turning up so far was a whole lot of sand.

Sand

2011-08-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-08T09:36:00.001-07:00

"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

2011-08-03T13:22:00.001-07:00

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.

Tactical insertion

2011-07-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

In theory, the plan was simple. I would go in and provide some low impact distractions that wouldn't produce a full alert, while Niki infiltrated the vehicle hangar and repossessed the stolen AR3. When they objected, she'd level the hangar on top of the other three vehicles while I upped the ante on the diversions. After that we'd evacuate and wait for pickup, which was already on station in orbit.

Of course, there were quite a few places in the plan where large fuzzy contingencies came into play. We had, effectively, zero support. While we would get some communications assistance from Saule Silencieuse, there wasn't anyone playing Archangel on this Op. And, while we had transport ready to pick up the rig when we recovered it, the boat was an unarmed civilian hire rather than a Navy drop ship. Functionally, this mission was entirely in our hands which meant improvise when necessary.

That was OK too. I'd dealt with improvised operations many, many, times. This would really be no different.

"Ready when you are," Niki said softly, surveying our separate planned ingress routes for the 5th or 6th time.

I nodded, confirming our communications links were good. "See you on the other side."

We took off in different directions with specific goals in mind. There were a lot of places where pre-planning hadn't been an option, but our general approach was to avoid contact as much as possible and try not to leave a trail of bodies in our wake. When Niki fired up the AR3 and started leveling the hangar around it there'd be enough wanton destruction. But we still weren't here to kill anyone. At least not specifically.

I'd already partially jacked the installation's comms, so we had a good idea what was going on. This time of night, the only people up would be a few guards and, possibly, anyone doing out doors testing on one of the rigs. They didn't do that often. Though, in our favor, unless they were refitting something, they usually kept the stolen AR3 fueled and armed. That would make Niki's job much easier.

She and I were able to keep track of each other's location using an encrypted comms relay. Nano bursts were difficult to track and, if you didn't know to look for them, easily overlooked even when they did nudge someone's detector's. That made it much easier for us to time our approaches and hold up when the other needed to reroute around an "obstruction" of some form: at least one of which wound up folded up, unconscious but alive, in a janitorial closet.

My job was, on many levels, the easier of the two. I had a lot of experience at avoiding detection in close quarters like this. Niki was surprisingly good, given her pure military background, but she'd have a tougher time of it getting into the hangar unmolested. The real tough part would be the startup sequence.

It took several minutes to fire up one of those big walker chassis. Much of it would be done without alerting anyone outside, at least if they weren't paying attention, that something was going on. It was only when the final power systems came on line that everyone in a 20 meter radius would know that the machine was about to come to life. When she flipped that last switch, she'd have about almost a minute and a half before she could start moving. The weapons would come on line almost instantly, and she'd be able to slew the torso, but she'd be stuck in the gantry until the legs came up and the cradle swung away.

That was when I'd have to work a miracle with their internal alarm systems. Because as sure as Lily liked candy, someone in that room would throw the alarm as soon as the AR3 came to life.

When the time came, I was well in position . I'd jacked into the installation's security feeds and managed to catch Niki on the screen as she deftly incapacitated one of the technicians and climbed into the AR3's cockpit. Whether the tech would survive the next few minutes, though, was a question I doubted either of us were going to stay around to answer or worry about once we were out of here.

A few minutes later, I saw the telltale motion of the motivators coming on line and the torso slew around the bring the guns to bare on the two partially completed chassis sharing the hangar with the stolen machine. The alarm started to sound almost instantly, but I was ready for that: silencing it before it could alert the base. Unfortunately, silenced alarm or not, there was no masking the thunderous racket of the auto-cannon lighting up to turn the other vehicles, and much of the hangar, to wreckage.

I altered the diversions: rerouting their communications and mucking about with their power, security, and everything else I could get into from my hide near their communications center. They had good systems, but they hadn't been prepared for this.

"Sea. Where's the fourth rig?"

There was concern in Niki's voice over the comm as she shouldered her way through the hangar door, the sheet metal not giving the forty five ton walker much resistance. Where was the fourth vehicle?

Between the sensor array in the AR3 and my patches to the installation's feeds, it didn't take us long to find it. Three miles off and closing at a run, one of the pilots must have taken it out for a joy ride as there wasn't anything specifically in the logs about it being out. Still, it meant Niki had a fight on her hands and I would have to start evacuating the installation now if I had any intention of making it out at all.

"Coming your way, Niki. Bearing 159 degrees, range about five thousand meters. I'm going mobile. Transport's inbound to the LZ. Just need to keep that rig busy for eight minutes, and we're out of here." Niki gave me a grunt of acknowledgement and turned her attention to other problems.

By the time I'd cleared the building a few minutes later, Niki and the other pilot had engaged. Even with the enhanced optics it was hard to follow the action in the darkness, but Niki's calm voice over the inter-vehicle freq was clear and calm as death.

"Son. You've got one opportunity to power down and walk away. Those gun ports aren't closed in 5 seconds, I'll end you where you are."

The other pilot didn't bother answering, but simply turned and opened fire.

Bad mistake.

From the records, Nikolasi Mombasa was the best pilot the unit had ever had. Now, I knew it was true. While I'd seen folk who were damn agile in a fighting suit, a suit was something you wore. The AR3 was 11 meters tall and 45 tons and Niki could make the thing positively dance.

It was over in under a minute. While her rig had taken some damage, her opponent was little more than a smoking crater. Not that either of us stayed around to watch the remaining fireworks. The installation had finally managed to muster some coherent response from their security force and had turned their attention to the escaping armored walker. Meanwhile, I took off in the opposite direction. While the transport would drop in to take the recovered AR3 back off world I had to get back to Wave Equation, which lead to a tense hour and a half cross country trek back to the hidden skimmer, and roughly the same amount of time back to my boat.

The post mission debriefing would be, at best, interesting. But it would have to wait. Right now, first priority was getting the transport and its cargo vectored some place we could stash it.

Plan comes together

New toys come at a great price

Will they be worth it?

Perimeters

2011-07-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

Businesses are all about the bottom line. When they're looking at developing a new product, or changing something internally, they do an extensive cost/benefit analysis to determine whether there'll be a payoff and, if so, when. Usually some bean counters will hash it out with whoever came up with the idea they're looking at, and they'll come to a decision that'll hopefully help the company. At least if they're a smart company, they will.

The security side of business is somewhat more complex. There, the cost benefit analysis isn't so clear. It's all about risk analysis. What's the chances of a given scenario happening? How much will it cost to defend against it? How much damage will it do if it happens? Which is more economical: accepting a risk and paying for the consequences, or spending the coin to keep it from happening in the first place?

From our vantage point overlooking what amounted to an abandoned industrial park, it appeared the company that had stolen the AR3's had chosen to skimp a little on physical security. Given the planet's situation, they'd been making a safe bet. If I hadn't taken an interest in the theft, chances were they could have gone out here for months, if not years, with no one being the wiser. "Catch the attention of a Dragon" was probably not listed on their contingency plans.

Niki and I had been keeping up surveillance for several days, getting to know the routine of the bored-looking guards and the limits of the perimeter security fencing. We knew where they had the cameras, where the blind spots were, where they parked the stolen AR3 and, it appeared, the two knockoff's they'd partially completed. We'd also, rather, I'd also, jacked into the communications system undetected, giving us everything we needed.

They did most of their mobility testing at night, away from prying eyes. They'd even done some live fire with the machine's on-board weapon systems, figuring, correctly, that even the auto-cannon wouldn't be heard in the nearest settlement some 50 kilometers away.

"So, what's the plan? The real plan. Besides finding the rig."

I hadn't been keeping Niki from my plans, so much as working out details as the information came in. "Overall? We go in, take the rig. Use it to secure the facility, then transport the rig off-world. You, obviously, drive the rig. Details? Still working out a few specifics. I'm still debating how to handle these Corpers. Other then that, our transport is inbound for Highgate, about 18 hours out. An AR3's obviously too big to lift out of here in the Matagi, and the Corvette's on station doing comms relay for us, so I ordered up some help."

Niki gave me 'that' look, frowning slightly. Smart lady. Intel and Black Ops experience. She knew there were things I'd left out.

"Not sure why we're doing this, rather than calling in a Commando unit to hit this place with a couple drop ships. Unless . . ." She let her voice trail off for a minute, looking at me with those intense, dark, eyes, before finally saying what she'd probably been thinking the whole time. "Unless you've got no intention of giving it back, or even telling SpecOps you found it. Steal the rig from the people that stole it. Question is, what're you gonna do with it when we're done here?"

Part of me wanted to laugh. She was right, of course. I wasn't giving it back to the ADG or letting SpecOps know we'd recovered it. "Question is, what are you going to do with it after we're done, Niki. I'm not qualified to drive it. But no, we're not giving it back, and I'm not telling them we have it. I've got my reasons and I'll explain them on the boost out of here. But I'm going to ask you to trust me on this, ok? I know your reputation and I respect it. I just need you to trust me until we can get the rig out of here."

She just looked at me for a long moment. I could almost see the gears turning over as she decided whether or not to keep trusting me and whether she could take me if she decided this was all a bad idea. "Our deal holds, Niki. You can walk. Now, if you want. No coercion, no threats. I don't play that way. We do this recovery, I'll read you into the rest of it. After that, you don't want to play along any more, you can still walk. Hell. If you don't agree at that point, we can hard land the rig into a rock somewhere and make sure no one gets it. So you still in?"

"I'm in. I think you're crazy. But I'm in."

Plans come together

Crazy is as crazy does

All for a good cause

Back on the ground

2011-06-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

With a population of less than three million, Highgate was the third most populous world around Qing Long. The entire subsystem had a population of under twenty million, a third of which lived on the system capital of Meridian. Which made Blue Dragon, the star's other common name, by far the least populated star of the five that made up the 34 Tauri system. In contrast, the metro area around the Alliance capital city on Londinium, had roughly twice the population of the entire Qing Long system.

It hadn't helped that the Miranda incident had cost nearly all of that world's three million people. The thirty thousand odd "survivors" had become Reavers, who'd gone on to kill countless thousands more in the years since through the Rim and Border worlds. While the Reaver threat was active, and the Alliance was actively denying they existed, the population around Qing Long had dropped even more as people evacuated for more densely populated worlds. Or, at the very least, moved from remote communities that the Reavers could easily target into the major settlements.

That had left entire towns abandoned. With the Reaver threat abated, those towns became prime grounds for squatters of one form or another. Smugglers. Pirates. Political refuges. Communes. People trying to get away from active civilization, but not so far away that they were completely out of touch.

It was also a near ideal place to set up a clandestine research center. Ready made infrastructure. Far enough from the center of things to glide under the radar. Close enough to population centers and resources that you didn't have to bring in absolutely everything from the outside.

That was what brought us to Highgate.

Tracking down the transport with the stolen AR3 had been a challenge, but we'd done it. Fortunately for us, they hadn't bothered with extensive secondary precautions at the abandoned industrial complex they'd chosen as a remote base. Also working in our favor, they were close enough to Highgate's main city that we could do fly close enough to the facility to get a basic recon without arousing any suspicion. We were just another boat on final for the capital, rather than an ELINT boat doing a preliminary pass on a target.

There was still work to do on the ground before we could attempt an infiltration, but we knew where we were going and had a good idea what we would face when we got there. Now, it was ground work and arranging a transport of our own.

If we pulled this off as I intended, we'd be coming home with some very expensive kit.

Back into the Black

2011-06-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Anyone looking at the modern Alliance Military structure, from Infantry on the ground to the Cruisers in orbit supporting them, would think Electronic Warfare was a lost, neglected, art. For the most part, the Alliance relied more on throwing people at problems than technology. After all, people were cheap. For the cost of just the electronics package on my Ritter&Lau, the Alliance could equip a whole squad of line infantry. If you threw in the cost of training? A single well equipped sniper cost more to put in the field than an entire platoon.

Pound for pound, the sniper was more effective. But to the Alliance bean counters, losing one sniper meant the entire investment was lost, whereas losing, say, two fire teams, just meant the platoon was weakened. It was a lot cheaper to replace a few lost infantry than to train and equip a replacement sniper.

The view may not have been especially popular with the men and women on the line, but it was certainly practical. Which led to the lost art of Electronic Warfare. Top shelf equipment was anything but cheap and it took a well trained crew to interpret the results. Intel was important, to be sure, but when you didn't care about loses and your primary enemies were backwater colonists who were lucky to have rifles, let alone encrypted FTL comms, you could afford to skimp on the EW suite.

I wasn't in the mainstream military.

Electronic Warfare ships were a wildly mixed lot, based on a variety of hulls with an even larger variety of specialties. General purpose ELINT boats like Saule Silencieuse, for example, had a different mission and, thus, a different load out than, say, an Early Warning Picket or a dedicated communications monitoring ship. The differences lay as much in crew specialties as differences in antennas and signals processing equipment. Fortunately, a creative crew could gather quite a bit of information from a target regardless of what their arrays were originally designed for.

The Corvette's EW officer contacted me shortly after we cleared Beaumonde's traffic control area. Between intercepting navigation beacons and the ELINT Corvette's own arrays, they'd managed to identify and track the transport through two more stops before losing it to the deep Black between Kalidasa and Qing Long.

"They shut off their pulse beacon after the last port, but we were able to track their power plant signature until they got out of range. Our navigator worked out the probable destinations given their known course. Qing Long's navigational net is incomplete but we'll update you if they come across the net."

I thanked him, then signed off. Qing Long, Blue Sun, was the most sparsely inhabited, most distant, star in the 34 Tauri system. The isolation was a mixed blessing though. You were far from prying eyes, but you were also far from resources and support, and travel times could become tedious.

"You play chess, Seana?" Niki asked after I set course and filled her in on our destination.

"I little. Though I suspect I'm about to be schooled on the finer points." I had to laugh. Even with Wave Equation's performance it would be a long flight, but I could think of worse ways to spend the time than learning chess from a rated master.

Could think of better ways too. But that was neither here nor there.

Recruiting

2011-06-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Nicolasi Mombasa was a compact woman, maybe 5 centimeters and 3 kilos bigger than I am. Short curly dark hair, dark eyes, and nearly as dark skin. Quite pretty, in a rugged, athletic, sort of way. We were much alike on some levels, from a lethality out of proportion to our compact size, to a military background neither of us publicly acknowledged. But we were also very, very, different.

Since leaving the service some years ago, she'd settled on Beaumonde and taken a job at a Tier II university as a Lacrosse coach. Kind of like me taking a job as a small town Mayor. No one would really look too deeply into that buried military background. Her affiliation with the university was, outwardly, the hook I'd used to arrange the meeting, claiming the local KHI parts warehouse was looking to get some advertising and good will by sponsoring the uni's Lacrosse program.

It was a thin cover, but plausible: something she'd see through but would hold up for the uni and anyone who asked.

"Miss Kawanishi, why are we really here? This isn't about new equipment and logo jerseys for the Lacrosse team."

She'd taken roughly fifteen minutes to get to the question, doing an excellent job of staying with her new identity the whole time. I smiled cheerfully and slid another couple of flimsies over to her across the table to join the list of gear and logo jerseys we'd been talking about. She gave it a cursory glance, then looked back over, trying to hide her recognition.

"Unit insignia and part of a tractor on a pallet? Not sure I understand."

ADG9, " The Chessmasters," were nearly as obscure as my own final unit had been, and their unit insignia was the kind of thing that showed up on Cortex shows about elite military units that were usually nothing more than rumors. Overall, the Advanced Defense Group was its own animal in the military. A combat evaluation unit specializing in exotic hardware, they tested new equipment and developed tactics to utilize it if it looked promising. The Chessmasters had been formed to test some very specific equipment, which was what had brought me to Beaumonde to meet Niki Mombasa.

She was doing a good job of concealing her reaction, but I could still tell what was going through her mind. I'd have been thinking much the same thing: how much does she know, and will I have to kill her? Not exactly a comfortable situation but one I was familiar with on either side of the table. It went with the job.

"Captain Mombasa. Let's just skip the rest of the game, OK? We're on the same side. At least were. I'm hoping we will be again. Give me a few more minutes of your time and, if you don't like what I have to say, we walk away. You go back to coaching Lacrosse and I try to find someone else who can do what you do."

"What is it exactly you think I do? And why the . . . ?" she replied, motioning to the images, deciding to not try and kill me for the time being.

I smiled faintly. She wanted to know ow much I really knew about her, the unit, and the piece of equipment on the pallet. All questions I'd be asking myself if our positions were reversed. "Captain, I know you recognize the unit insignia and the vehicle. At least by type."

She paused, then nodded towards the image. "Core of an AR3b. Minus the manipulators and legs. I'd guess it was Buskirk's rig from the partial markings, if Buskirk's rig wasn't in a warehouse. Where was this taken?"

"That was taken two weeks ago at a loading facility on Notterdam. Got loaded onto a small transport and shipped out here to the Kalidasa system, but it's not the only one that's missing."

She looked at me curiously for a long moment, then frowned, obviously not liking what I was implying. "Most of them got shipped back to the Fab when our mission ended and they idled the Chessmasters. They mothballed a Lance worth. Eight rigs."

"Yes. Four of them are missing from the warehouse. Dessault-Nissan can account for the rest of the ones that were returned, but there's four AR3b's on the loose. And you know the kind of threat that poses."

The AR3b "Archer" was, more or less, an anthropomorphic Roller. Based on a rough terrain construction vehicle, it had legs rather than tracks or wheels and manipulators for moving equipment. Unlike its marginally useful civilian kin, the AR3 mounted anti-personnel armaments, auto-cannon, and enough racked missiles to level several city blocks. As a military weapon, they weren't especially useful. More expensive and easier to hit than a Roller with the same firepower. But for pure shock value? An Archer shouldering a house out of the way was a good deal scarier than, say, a pack of Reavers.

"You're here because you want to get them back. I get it. But why me? Why not Buskirk or Sandoval?"

"Buskirk and Sandoval both have more covert operations experience than you do, true, but you've got as much experience piloting one of these things as anyone alive. Besides, Buskirk's on Sihnon and Sandoval's with another ADG unit. Who, I might add, doesn't know about this. Leaves you as my first and best choice for this recovery op. So. Are you in? You can say no, Captain. No threats. No coercion. You say no, I head to Sihnon and see if your old CO will come."

I'm sure her decision was made as soon as she realized why I was here. Lacrosse coach or not now, she was still a soldier at heart.

"I'm in. And call me Niki. Not active military any more so rank's don't matter. Just need to grab my jump pack and let the Uni know I'm taking some leave."

"OK, Niki. My boat's at the municipal pad. You be ready in eight hours?"

"I'll be ready in two. Just wonder where we're going."

Where we were going? First step was easy. Saule Silencieuse to get a final destination for the transport. Then? Then we would see.

This is what they pay me for

2011-05-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been neglecting my duties, even if the Colony usually manages to run itself. When it doesn't, Genni's stepped in to deal with things in my stead, or she's passed them on to Lionheart so the Alliance Liaison will actually earn her keep. While Hale's Moon is still, technically, under Martial Law, the fact is they haven't even been sending more than two man patrols to make sure things are as they should be. Why are we still under Martial Law? No idea. Something lost in the bureaucracy no doubt. We just ignore the mandate unless it suits us, and go on with our lives.

I've spent what time I can with family. Lily's constant curiosity and AuroraBlue's constant, well, confusing behavior is all I can say sometimes. Brilliant child. Or not-child, as the case may be, but she can be near impossible for me to figure out. Love her dearly. Will till I draw my last breath. Her and Lily both. But I won't claim to really understand either of them. Least not completely, or even as well as I'd like.

Lately, my 'other' job has been keeping me busy. The job I can't talk about, and only a handful of people even know exists, but takes an inordinate amount of time, and keeps a godawful lot of data flowing across my desk.

It was a conscious choice. I could have passed on the job, but then the data would be flowing across someone else's desk, and the spooks gathering the data would be reporting to someone else. Someone I probably wouldn't trust and would have to end at some point. So here I was, doing the other job.

Here, being a cafe on Beaumonde.

I'd seen a lot of data come across my desk since I started the position, but it was very rare that I found anything that would drag me out of the office to take it on directly. This was one of those situations. I'd found something that, potentially, tied into issues I'd been dealing with on Hale's Moon for far too long, and I'd come to Beaumonde to talk to the only person I considered a likely source for good information.

The question, of course, was whether she would even show up, and whether she would talk to me if she did. If not, this particular situation could become very . . . complicated.

Bucket full of Crazy

2011-03-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Owl once told me of a belief the North American First People's had on Earth that Was. How they revere the Mad as Spirit Touched. Other cultures had similar beliefs. Unfortunately, or, maybe not so unfortunately, the Mad were rarely revered on the Rim colonies. Maybe Beaumonde, or one of the other high population worlds, could afford the luxury of coddling the Mad. Small time operations like our little slice of Heaven couldn't.

But that didn't stop us from getting our share of Crazy.

Sometimes by the bucket full.

Lily called him Stig. Or "The Stig," as the case was, based on some character from some Cortex feed out of Londinium that she liked. One of her "News" shows. Another offworlder, in my office, talking a bit crazy. In this case, some selective amnesia and a delusion about being married to me. At least that was how he started off. The married part vanished quickly, in part, I suppose, from not wanting to get shot for trying to push the issue.

While it may have been a while since I'd spent time with my wife, I wasn't too keen on someone, anyone, making the claim they were married to me when they weren't. I also wasn't too keen on folk coming into my office armed, and not being willing, or able, to take off the full coverage EVA helmet they were wearing. Just didn't sit right after the last stranger who walked into my office.

Thinking of which, neither Gallagher or any of the locals had any insight into who the man was or where he'd come from. Just another enigma in the series. A long, long, series. Which didn't seem to have any sort of end in sight.

Lily didn't know anything about either Stig or the guy in the freezer. But she did need a favor, something about recovering some information from an Alliance officer. She made me promise not to ask why she needed it. I made her promise not to ask how I was going to get it.

It seems that Major Siamendes had some images that Lily needed. While I could, probably, go directly and acquire them myself, I had other options. Considering how much additional pain the Intel position was causing me, it was time I exercised a minor abuse of power in order to benefit my kinfolk.

Using the secure link, I sent a message up my own food chain that would, very shortly, trickle back down Pepper's food chain, to her, with orders to turn over the information to someone up her chain of command, and to delete any copies of it. The data would get passed up a couple more layers, over a couple of silos, and then back down to me. All "above the boards." Where "above" translated into the deep realms where Intel liked to do what it did.

Getting the data back this way might interfere with Pepper's investigations into x0x0, which was something I ultimately didn't mind. Had never been entirely comfortable with that in any case. As for why Lily needed the information, I was curious, but I would also keep my promise.

My daughter needed it. In this case, that was enough.

Buckets of Crazy

The Mad play by their own rules

So we join their game

Prognosis

2011-03-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

It might have been better if I'd simply killed him.

People have asked my why I carry the fifties. The large bore round means they don't have a lot of capacity and the charge means they kick like a mule when they fire. The weapon could break a big man's wrist, let alone that of a 41 kilogram woman. Of course, I'm stronger than I look and I don't miss often so I'm willing to trade ammunition capacity for stopping power. Plus, a lot pf practiced mated with a good recoil compensator makes up for my size.

Most times, when a man takes a .50 round to the chest, he winds up in the morgue. This time, he got to the infirmary before he bled out Problem was the half inch slug made a mess of his chest. Lungs, heart, liver, a bunch of other organs I'd remember if I had to play field medic again. The doc wasn't so sure she'd be able to save him given the resources we had available, which meant putting him on ice.

Stasis wouldn't cure what was ailing you, but it'd keep you from dieing of it whilst the medics figured out how to cure what ailed you. In this case, lead poisoning. The medlab on the Sun Tzu, or one of the bigger hospitals on a world that considered itself a Colony, rather than a glorified mining settlement, would be able to patch him back together. Except the Alliance wasn't willing to resurrect my attacker until we knew more about him, least not without my pulling strings I didn't want to pull. We could ship him off world to one of the big medical facilities, but then we'd have to deal with outsiders wanting to know why we were leaving a guard with him.

Which left stasis.

Wasn't the ideal solution, but it would have to do for now. So far, we hadn't turned up much on the man in the box. History and the like, yes. Motive? Nary a clue. Had a strong sense that the Sabine he'd talked about wasn't the Sabine I knew here on Hale's Moon. Which led to a number of other possibilities, all of which we'd have to pursue. Each one of which made less sense than the one before.

Who knows. Maybe it was something Niska tossed out there. A bit of attempted payback for sending a couple of his Orokana hito-gumi home in body bags. Didn't seem likely, but it would be easy enough to check.

For now though, it was back to business.

Thankless

2011-03-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

You never quite get used to being shot at. As a soldier, and a field operative, I'd faced quite a few rounds directed my way. Since coming out the Rim and settling on Hale's Moon, I'd probably faced more gunfire per annum than I ever had when I was on active duty. Between Reavers, Raiders, Alliance Loyalists, and warbots, we'd seen more flying lead than in a rad-shielding foundry.

Usually, the flying lead isn't in my office. Not that I was entirely surprised to have a visitor come in, act peaceful, then draw a piece on me. Thing was, unlike the old office in Town Hall, there was only one door in or out of my new office and the side and back walls were made out of the same material they made spaceship viewports out of. Once I triggered the locks, the only way out was for someone on the outside who had the codes, that'd be Genni, Gallagher, Lily, and the captain of our Militia, to unlock it from outside, or for me to manually do it myself. Not something I was likely to do under duress.

While this wasn't the first time someone's waltzed in and pointed a gun at me, it was the first time someone's done it saying they were delivering a message. Odd thing about it is I only know one "Sabine" and don't recall there being any bad blood between us. Subject to interpretation, of course. Might be someone planning to shoot me as a message to her, but that made not a whit of sense either. The man had the air of someone who know their way around a firearm, but not that of a trained assassin. If he had been, he'd never have selected my office and certainly wouldn't have let himself get distracted enough to let me draw my sidearm.

Being curious about why Sabine would send someone to shoot me, I tried to get him to back down. Fact was, there was no way back out of the office through the locked door and I'd already tagged the silent alarm to Genni. She'd have either the Sheriff's department, or the Militia, or both, here shortly. If she didn't open the door herself and shoot the man in the back with a scattergun or that old .45 she was so fond of.

Guess he either didn't care about getting out alive, or thought he was somehow going to shoot me and still get out of a locked room. Either way, he hadn't counted on me being able to move as fast as I can, especially when someone's got a gun pointed at me. His round missed. Mine didn't. My cushion, though, would never be the same.

Neither would his chest.

We got him to the Infirmary as fast as we could, but the prognosis is dicey. Not sure whether he's going to wake up or not, or live if he does. Be a shame if he dies too, seeing as I'm at a loss to why he was really there. Officially, the Sheriff's office would investigate the incident. Gallagher had some strings he could pull to find out what was really going on, as could I through my other contacts.

Just another reminder how thankless this job can be sometimes. Any of them, really. Public, private, or otherwise.

Message at gunpoint

You underestimate me

Lesson learned but once

Big damn snake

2011-02-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

Lily's back. Consider it a right good thing too, but some part of me feels . . . I don't know how to describe how I feel. Distant, maybe. Not by choice. There was a time in the not so distant past when I would have been the one, boots on the ground, recovering one of my own. Now? Now I've got so much information flowing across my desk that I can barely focus tight enough to nudge someone else in the direction I should be going myself.

Does success as a Director level asset require failure at a more intimate level?

No. It shouldn't. It doesn't. I've got my finger on the pulse of half the Rim. The failure is being unable to pick out a single thread from a tangled web, not a failure of intent or will. I see the forest. It is just hard to keep sight of individual trees, even when they are what is most important.

What is most important to me? On a deep personal level, it's my girls. All of them. Daughter, sister, mate, friend. Role doesn't matter so much. Probably why it feels like failure to have not been the one bringing Lily home. Or not knowing half the time, in spite of the tracking, what AuroraBlue's up to. Not seeing Sabrina face to face in far, far, too long. Not being able to help x0x0 recover from whatever she's going through. Probably something of her brother's doing.

What I hadn't expected was the first time I see Lily after she gets back, is when she stops by to bring me a present. And, by present, I mean the carcass of a 30 meter long snake. At least the head. That's all she could drag into the office, leaving the rest of the body to trail out the door, down the hall, down the steps and out into the street. It was that gorram long.

Didn't even ask how she got it in, or at least for the moment, where she got it. I strongly suspected it was related to the snakes that had bit x0x0 and caused her discontinuity incident. Snakes didn't get this big. Not even on Blackburne, which had plenty of altered life from all the radiation damage. No, this thing was something else.

What'd it eat? Horses? Gorram thing was big enough to make cattle it's primary meal, and Hale's Moon simply didn't have enough large life to support a predator this big. Wouldn't even go into how something could grow that big in the first place. Close as I could find in the records were a couple in the 10 to 12 meter range, with rumors of ones approaching 16 meters. But 30? Here?

I had the carcass hauled off and put into cold storage in one of the old underground bunkers we used for warehousing sometimes. Need to get someone with a good deal more experience to look at it than I had, but I'd still have tissue samples stored some place safe. Chances were this big ass snake hadn't grown up on Hale's. Given it's bigger than record size, chances were it wasn't even a natural creature. Seemed like it was either released from, or escaped from, a lab somewhere.

Now that'd be a surprise.

I'd know more soon. But, for now, Lily home safe was what mattered to me most.

And then they had a party . . .

2011-02-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

Life on Hale's Moon seems to have several distinct states. There is "calm," in which life is life, people go about their business, and the only explosions are intentional and originate in the mines or with younguns blowing off steam. There is "bad," in which the explosions are either unintentional, or are intentional and accompanied by swarms of flying high velocity projectiles. And then there's "weird," in which case something is happening that just leaves you scratching your head. Like, say, robot revolutions and the like.

It was rarely entirely in one mode or another, and Weird for some might just be normal for someone else. But that's the nature of life in general. For me, it could easily swing through all three main modes in a single day. It was something I'd grown accustomed to. Hale's Moon was some kind of vortex that drew improbable events into it's shallow gravity well with abandon, so you got used to it or your lived somewhere else.

Which said a lot about the folk who moved here voluntarily.

Firefly's Bar had been a going concern on Blackburne for years before they had to abandon the Downport and former citizens had scattered across the Rim. Nack and his kinfolk had chosen Hale's Moon to relocate, along with quite a few of the others who'd called Blackburne home. Which meant bringing Firefly's with them in spirit, if not form, and with the long running bar, the traditions and parties and many of the folk who'd made it what it was.

Firefly's would always have a special place in my heart. I'd met 'Brina there and it had been where we went to dance together for most of our relationship. I'd made other friends there too, some of whom I'd grown quite close to. Good memories. And a few sad ones. Plus getting shot at, or shot, more than once, but that was another matter.

I had to admit though, I felt a little under-dressed at the anniversary party. Everyone else had shown up in formal wear, or at least their Sunday Best. Me? I'd hadn't much time to change between dealing with my duties and arriving at the party, so I showed up wearing my usual leather pants, jacket, silk top, and gunbelt. I was comfortable mind you. Just felt under-dressed for the occasion.

I didn't stay as long as I might have liked. Got a chance to talk to Nack a spell, see x0x0 and her newly adopted Catherine, and even a few minutes to give AuroraBlue a bit of motherly affection before Cody called her away to home, being a tad late for a youngun. Couldn't say I was thrilled to see her go, but I didn't let my annoyance with Cody show. He was trying to help Lily raise her and I couldn't fault him for the effort. Hell, it seemed he was having better luck than my own folks had trying to raise her on Ariel.

Still, didn't have anyone to dance with, 'cept Imrhien, who already had a full card, so called it early.

On the weird side, a couple days after the party, Catherine and Kasuko were talking in my office while they thought I was distracted with something else. Hadn't quite gotten a handle on Kasuko yet. Nice girl. Pretty. Intelligent. Working as some sort of hacker for one of the small time Pirate operations that sometimes stopped by for fuel and food. Obvious she fancied me, though she knew I was hitched.

Thing was, she was trying to teach Catherine to hack on a small wearable computer she had. Little thing. Not unlike my own Deck, but an uprated Civilian unit, not a milspec black box. I heard her saying something about breaking into the portable I kept on my desk. At first blush, it'd look as easy as it was. It was supposed to be as easy as it looked. Nothing more than the usual commercial grade ICE you'd find on any world in the 'Verse.

Except it wasn't. Not really. Be interesting to see what she tried, if she tried, and how long it took her to figure out that there were several layers between that front end and anything interesting. My systems had been built by professionals, to stop professionals. More than professionals. My systems had been hardened to make it difficult for even an AI to get in, though just how effective that was remained to be seen. It wasn't like Blue and I were playing war games in the back room.

At least not any more.

Would have to see how x0x0 reacted to Catherine learning the art of exploitation. Assuming, of course, she did learn about it. I'd keep my eye on them for a spell. Nothing obvious, but it wouldn't do to let x0x0's little girl get in trouble, or to get careless around someone who worked for a small time pirate. Wouldn't do at all.

Discontinuity, and other processing errors in an organic mind

2011-02-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Caitlin's still dead. I hadn't missed my annual memorial to her last month, but it had been more private this year than in years past. Not that my ritual was ever public. But this year I'd recovered the candles set out to her memory. With the Raidsish and the Mercenaries episode still consuming much of our attention, I'd had to keep it brief. It wasn't the first time. It probably wouldn't be the last. But even on a battlefield, I'd found time to honor her memory. This was no exception.

It just, kind of, was.

Frozen memories

Forged in undieing passion

Loss, unforgotten

Though, now, other issues were on my plate.

Like, for example, x0x0 being bitten by some kind of snake and having a fairly substantial discontinuity incident. Gallagher seemed to find it funny, but to me it was hardly amusing. Though he said he'd suffered a bite too, and had also been treated with the anti-venom. Thing was, if what Gallagher said was true, the snakes were some kind of leftover from one of Mindo's experiements. So even in death that hiretsukan was causing us grief.

I couldn't kill him again, unfortunately, at least not that I was aware of. But I could put some resources into keeping x0x0 out of harm's way. She had enough enemies that one of them was bound to try and take advantage of the situation, and, at this point, our paths were too intertwined for me to let something happen to her.

Though, keeping her from doing things to herself? That was more difficult. As demonstrated when she brought Catherine into the office and asked me to draw up adoption papers for her like I had for Lily. Only, I wasn't a lawyer and she wasn't in the right head space to be adopting some orphan because she saved her when she'd been snakebit. Only thing was, Catherine said she had a brother somewhere. Reminded me a bit of Cody's missing sister, actually.

Problem was, x0x0 was too agitated to let me run it through Legal at KHI headquarters on Ariel, so I was left to write the papers up myself, with the agreement we would work it out with Legal if it ever came down to it. Only thing I could think of, knowing she wasn't quite in her right state of mind, was to make one notable mistake. It'd be easy enough to correct, or be a way for her to leverage herself out if it came down to it. I omitted a few specific words: "being of sound mind and body."

Might not be enough, but it'd have to do. If she still wanted to make the girl her heir after she got her head sorted out, I'd point out the flaw and get it rectified. If she didn't? We'd find an amicable way to make good by Catherine but still let x0x0 get her life sorted out. Truth be known, when I talked about my girls, there were times x0x0 was one of them. A bit like Lily, x0x0 was at heart a little girl trapped in a woman's body. Couldn't prove it. But there were times it was clear as crystal.

I did what I could for my girls. 'Brina, Lily, AuroraBlue. Even Haley. And, at times like this, x0x0.

The one wherein Lilybell goes missing. Again

2011-02-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

Lilybell is missing.

Again.

It's not the first time, though the circumstances seemed a bit unusual. At least for her. When she's gone missing in the past, there was usually something very complex going on involving Reavers, AI's, or some kind of unmentionable research. This time, it seems she stacked her boat. While that would be the usual way for someone to go missing out here, it's not for her.

An Alliance patrol found parts of her boat, then one of our local folk found the rest of the wrecked hull. Cody himself brought me a chunk of log Lily had left behind for us to find, though whether she was consciously thinking "us" when she wrote it is something we'll have to find out later. When that would be? That would be the hard one.

We'd gotten a ghost on Navtrac. Someone had picked Lily up and spirited her away, and the signature was very familiar. A distant image, classified by an Alliance recon skiff, of a large boat spotted in the area confirmed the suspicion of just who, or, more correctly, what, had picked up Lily after the wreck.

Reavers.

Only, on some fundamental level, they weren't Reavers. We'd seen this boat before. A large converted transport with distinctive markings. It had been Lily's home at one point. It had also been Mindo's home during some of his experiments, and the crew of Reavers weren't. Not in the way we'd come to know them. More like . . . experiments gone wrong rather than victims of an experiment really gone wrong. We were never sure of the origin of any of them, of course. But there was a fair bit of evidence to this bunch, at least, being the results of Mindo's intentional manipulation rather than survivors of the Pax on Miranda. If "survivor" was really the right term to apply. Victim was probably more accurate.

Mindo's experiment coming back to haunt us wasn't a good thing. Mindo himself was dead, or at least "half way to Paradise Beach" as the saying went. That his legacy was still out there causing us problems wasn't a pleasant thought. If it was them, Lily was safe. More or less. She had some kind of special place with them and that group had never shown an inclination to do her harm in the past. Now? Unknown. But it seemed likely the pattern would hold.

Since they'd managed to get clear of any of the Navtrac hubs we could jack in to, we'd effectively lost track of them. I suspected they were either going to a new nest carved out of a rock somewhere, or rendezvousing with their tribe, or flotilla, or however they organized themselves, deep in the Black. In any case, there were some resources I could throw at the problem. It would be another good test of Saule Silencieuse's capabilities. While she was designed specifically for the ELINT role, her sensors were better than anything short of a dedicated recee boat. I'd hand the assignment to her Captain and let him worry about the details.

The only question now: why?

Child of Science

Answers the call of the past

Present close behind

Assets inbound

2011-02-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

The quite after the "Raidsish and the Mercenaries" incident has been good for the colony. The citizenry is a lot more comfortable walking the streets without having to worry that some trigger happy off worlder, or sadistic killing machine, isn't going to have a go at them on the street. Not to say that the colony didn't still have its issues. But, compared to people being fearful for their lives, arguing about who's drawing too much power from the colony's fusion plant was minor.

Even Lily's somehow being married to the young man, Lynx, he went by, was more of a 'nod and smile' moment than it perhaps should have been. Lily's outlook in interpersonal relationships was, shall we say, unusual. While she had a vast store of knowledge, she still had a curious lack of integration between the knowledge and her own experience. Probably had something to do with her being synthetic, without the usual 'growing up' period the rest of us had to come to grips with what society considered normal.

Lynx himself was just barely too young to deal with the situation on his own, being a ward, somehow, much as Lily herself was my ward. His guardians, somewhat surprisingly, were Tillery Woodhen and Pepper Siamendes. Though perhaps no less strange a guardianship than Lily's having, technically, four legal parents. Though, in practice, I'd filled the role of primary parent.

There was the worry that Lily would, again, feel the very real emotional pain that came with finding out she wasn't actually married. But I would deal with that when it happened. I've said, and thought, numerous times, that no parent in history has had to deal with the issues I have in "raising" Lily and later AuroraBlue. Be that as it was, when the time came, I would do for her what my mother had done for me when I'd had my heart broken as a girl: hold her close, let her cry, and just love her for who she was.

In the meantime, I would deal with the man who'd come to my office.

We'd first met years before, when he was the Tactical Officer on the Destroyer Escort IAV Chiang Mai and I was a ground force 'special asset' assigned to Intel, shortly after the end of the war. We'd spoken a bit then, but hadn't really become friends. The Chiang Mai was built to support the kind of operations I'd been assigned to, but the Navy, Ground Force, and Intel parts of the crew tended to stick to their own.

When I read the IAV Saule Silencieuse's duty roster, it actually took a moment to realize I knew her captain. And, now, he was here in my office making a courtesy call while his command finished her shakedown.

"Lady Kawanish, I am at your service," he started by way of introduction, giving me a polite bow. I remembered his distinct speech pattern: Soft spoken formality. Very proper. Always enunciating clearly. No contractions.

"Captain Hawke. Welcome to Hale's Moon." Outside my office one of his crew, a slender, vaguely effeminate man, was speaking with Genni. Neither of them were in Alliance Navy uniforms.

"My thanks. I wished to contact you directly before Saule Silencieuse finished her current mission. I understand you will be transferring some of your resources to us, yes?"

I nodded. He wasn't an especially large or physically imposing man, but he still had the air of command I'd recognized on the Chiang Mai. "That's the plan yes. A backwater colony like Hale's Moon is a mixed blessing for our sort of work, and it's been a something of a challenge to keep our Intelligence operation here concealed. Your ship should solve a lot of that."

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before replying. "Yes, it should. We can have a transport bring your equipment up at any time. In the meantime, you are welcome to inspect the ship at your leisure."

I would, to be sure. The Kamkamoss class was new and packed more ELINT and signals processing equipment than I'd ever had available on the Orbital or here on the surface. Not counting Blue. But there was still a transport's load or two of gear I'd want to transfer to the Corvette.

"Thank you, Captain, I will. Now, here is what I will need to bring up . . ."

Priorities

2011-02-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

While Ravish and the Mercenaries had been taking up a disproportionate amount of my time, I'd still been keeping my finger on the pulse of operations in my section. My situation was, to say the least, unusual. Enviable, actually, in many respects, in that I had the freedom to pursue whatever leads I thought relevant with very little oversight and even less accountability. The frustration with the position was having so many possible leads.

There were many places where my leads and interests overlapped, especially where they concerned x0x0, Blue Sun, my girls, the Machines, Blue, and the other AI's, of various levels of sophistication, that were known to exist. The issue was one of prioritization. Was the interaction between AuroraBlue and the Machines more important than Lily's obsessive pursuit of the Ardra AI? How did those priorities compare with the Hardliner, Loyalist, factions still active in Parliament and their machinations in the Rim sectors? There were the corporate operations to consider, with the ongoing interplay between Blue Sun and Umbrella and others. Each had their own agenda and potential long term outcomes.

Earlier in my career, it had been very easy to focus. I had a narrow field of view with a great deal of magnification. What I saw, I saw with perfect clarity. But I only saw a tiny part of a much larger picture. Now, I could see much more of the big picture and had the resources to focus in on any area within my sight. It was actually somewhat daunting. It became a question of prioritizing, since there were many, many, noteworthy happenings within my field of view.

Problem was, I was juts one woman. I could direct some assets into different areas, but which areas?

The easiest choice would be: "That which most directly affects myself and the people I care about." On many levels though, that would be the selfish choice. Easy, to be sure. But selfish. To be honest, part of me wanted to be selfish. I wanted to find a way to give Sabrina and my girls the best life I could. Keep them safe and happy. Not sheltered, as that wouldn't suit any of them, so much as in a position to do what would make them happy. If I could give them that, I'd have succeeded as a Mother and a Mate.

It was a choice I couldn't make. I couldn't take the selfish easy choice, no matter how tempting it might be. I could see too much of the big picture. I could see too many wheels turning, some of which threatened to grind the future to dust. It wasn't in me to stand by and not do something. Especially not when I had the resources, and ability, to do something about it.

But what? It was often easy to upset another's plans. The trick was upsetting them to achieve the outcome you wanted. Which meant considering that upsetting one person's plans would inevitably alter others and cause a whole cascade of change, some of which could be worse than what you were originally dealing with.

It was foolish to act without a plan. And I could not plan without a goal. But I had a goal. Too grand a goal, perhaps. At least for one woman with limited resources. But Buddha help us, I had a goal.

Butterfly wings beat

Wheels within wheels turn

Storm set in motion

Stories untold

2011-01-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

"Not like you to not have a plan, Boss," Genni said, looking at me over a cup of coffee. We'd been talking about the aftermath of the Mercenary incident, with Ravish ending and Raids taking off for the badlands to do, well, whatever it is she planned to do with the kit she acquired from her dead sister. If a machine like Ravish could be said to really be dead, and if Machines really had siblings in the way we meant them.

"We had a plan, Genni. Me and Raids. The Mercenaries just pitched a Gorram wrench in it," I replied, more amused than annoyed. The fact was, there were only two important outcomes to the entire affair. Ravish's reign of pain ended, and Raids getting the chunk of core I'd promised in exchange for the intimate secrets she'd turned over to me. We'd reached the desired outcome, so I was good with it.

"So, what was the plan?"

The plan. It had been a simple plan, really. A trap designed to get around how evenly matched the two killing machines were at their cores. One on one, it would have been difficult to call. But it wasn't going to be one on one. Raids would have help. The trick was deploying that help in a way Ravish couldn't quite predict.

"Won't hurt to tell you now, eh?" I laughed, refilling my coffee. "It was supposed to have gone like this . . ."

* * * * *

I'd narrowed my selection down from nearly a dozen potential nests to a more manageable four. None of them was ideal. That was an intentional decision. Ravish was already aware of the nests the Militia had selected and was doing a fair job of keeping out of their sight lines. She had to know there were better snipers on Hale's Moon than we had in the Militia, so would be looking for the most likely nests from which a Sniper could take a shot. There were multiple nests with overlapping areas of coverage and accessibility, so her job would be to calculate the most likely sites and act accordingly. By settling for a less than optimal nest, I'd increased the odds in my favor. Increased the likelihood she'd guess wrong.

The wave from Raids was simple. "It is time," was all she said.

I had fifteen minutes to get the Ritter&Lau 599 and settle into whichever nest I'd chosen for the shot. Raids herself wouldn't know exactly where I'd be. Only the area she'd need to get Ravish into in order to be in my line of fire.

I wouldn't even know which nest until I'd flipped the coins. Two coins. A pair of platinum coins grabbed randomly from my desk. Four possible outcomes. Decided as they landed one after the other. Heads. Tails. Binary 10. The 3rd nest of four.

The route to the nest was circuitous, avoiding lines of sight whenever possible, breaking them as quickly as possible when they couldn't be avoided. Imperfect, of course, but it would reduce the chance of Ravish seeing me and figuring out where I was going before I could get in position. Once there, it would just be a matter of letting Raids flush her quarry then taking the shot when I had it.

Simple in concept. Rather more difficult in execution.

Patience was a virtue. Especially for a sniper. It could take hours, days even, for your target to be in your sights. You couldn't get bored, distracted, aggravated. You had to maintain focus. To wait patiently until the time was right, then settle into the zone. Mind and body ready to take the shot. To end a life.

Or, in this case, to put a single hypervelocity armor piercing round through one of two vulnerable spots on an otherwise hardened killing machine.

Time passed slowly as I waited for Raids to engage her foe. I had a passive link to the town and Militia security feeds. When the two fighting machines engaged, I was ready. We'd designated several areas Raids could lure Ravish where I would have a line of sight and be able to take the shot. If Raids had tried to force Ravish into one particular area, she'd have known she was being herded; known it was a trap.

Our preparations might have been excessive. Against a more common target, I'd never have bothered with so many possibilities. But Ravish was no common target.

I tracked the fight through my heads up, switching it off to look through the 599's scope when they finally came into view. The scene was like watching . . . like watching something from a Saturday morning Cortex combat vid. The two machines were almost too fast to follow. Bladed extension arms flashing as they tried to get an advantage over the other.

Through the scope, time slowed. My heart rate dropped. 70 beats a minute. 60. 50. Breathing slow and regular. I was nearly three quarter's of a second's flight from my target. It wasn't simply a matter of being able to put the shot on target, but finding a moment when I knew where she'd be three quarters of a second later. The scope could calculate an impact point based on environmental conditions, but it couldn't predict the motion of two Machines locked in melee combat.

But I could.

A pattern to their movements. Conscious or not, there were certain actions that triggered predictable reactions. Raids knew what I needed to make the shot. Perhaps she was giving it to me. A flash of blade. Feint. Counterfeint. Parry. Then a moment of clarity.

Between heartbeats, my finger squeezes the 599's trigger and a round rips out of the rifle. The inertial compensator keeps the recoil from breaking my shoulder and the muzzle where it was. Ravish was in motion even as the round covered the distance between us, ballistic trajectory intersecting the path of a moving target. My heart beats.

Ravish's backup core is, technically, an easier target than her primary, and the round impacts dead on target with sufficient kinetic energy to punch a hold through her shell and the armored braincase beneath. She reacts instantly, but it's not fast enough. In the moment it takes Ravish to react, Raids has used the opening to drive a razor sharp tungsten spike full force into her sister's primary core. My heart beats.

It's over.

Ravish's power core is still hot, and there's still motion in her actuators, but both of her processing cores have been destroyed. The killing machine is dead. Raids looks at my position, inclines her head in thanks, and rips the components she's been promised from Ravish's crippled chassis, before clearing out.

By the time I make it back from the Nest, the Militia has secured the "corpse" for our own needs. As far as I'm concerned, we can turn it over to Raids when we've made absolutely sure it's finally, and permanently, dead.

All according to plan.

* * * * *

"Except it didn't work out that way, Genni. The Mercs threw a wrench in the works. Same outcome, of course, which is all that really matters."

"All that matters, yeah. I hear ya, Boss. Must have been disappointing after all that planning to not get the shot though."

"I admit a little. But I'm still happy to have that gorram machine out of our hair."

Truth be known, I was. No one knew, except Raids, and now Genni, what we'd had planned. No one knew I hadn't gotten the kill. And it was OK. No one needed to know. Even if I had made the shot, I wouldn't have told anyone the details. It would have just been another thing I did behind the scenes.

It was, after all, what I did.

Hidden from glory

One single priority

Only that matters

Cleaning up

2011-01-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

There are times when I consciously choose not to use certain resources at my disposal. While I had sent a few waves to very specific people after the Mercs got into conflict with Ravish and the town, I'd chosen not to pursue them with my own special resources. There really didn't seem to be much point in actively seeking revenge. I didn't hold the entire unit accountable for the actions of two specific members, which ultimately meant there were only two I would actively concern myself with. Should either of them come across my sights, I would end their span. But the rest of the unit could go in whatever passed for peace in their world.

The one that shot AuroraBlue and their leader, who's ultimately responsible for the actions of those under their direct command? If our paths crossed, they spans would end. It really was that simple. The how of it would be detailed should it ever come to pass. It would be humane, of course. I would not gloat over shooting a child, or, in this case, a miscreant. I would simply kill them humanely and efficiently.

Better than either would get if they showed themselves on Hale's Moon again.

Too many people here with large weapons, high explosives, and grudges, for them to get away unscathed. But that was the nature of a small community like ours. Not everyone got along with everyone else. There were some rivalries that were old and deep, but they were between folk who called Hale's Moon home. When outsiders upset the community as a whole, folk would set aside their differences to deal with the problem.

Two Mercenaries against a town? Maybe they'd win in a Cortex vid where they were the heroes. But they weren't the heroes here: they were the ones who got blown up at the end of the show to the cheers of the audience.

I was more immediately concerned with how the incident had affected AuroraBlue. She'd recovered quickly, both from the shot itself and the Rage she'd acquired from Ravish. By the time she'd come to me on Wave Equation, she was more 'confused child' than 'threshing machine with feet.'

Dragons know their own.

With the Mercenary issue off our plate for the time being, and Ravish no longer an issue, I could turn my attention back to other issues. Raids, for example. She'd taken some core components from her fallen "Sister" for purposes I had not seen fit to ask about. I had my suspicions, but I'd also chosen to treat Rads as one of us. That implied a certain level of trust. A certain level of respect. A certain level of privacy.

As I'd told others, if I was wrong I would rectify the mistake. But I didn't believe I was wrong. Raids was a fully sentient being with a right to self determination. I could suggest, offer guidance, mediate, moderate, and otherwise show her what was considered appropriate for a Sentient living amongst other Sentients. But it wasn't my place to force her into compliance.

We'd know in time, I was sure, what Raids wanted with the chip. I had to hope it was something that completed her transition to a fully free sentient. If not? We'd know, eventually, and figure things out then.

The recent incidents had put my focus off both the new Corvette and the research I'd asked Doctor Sinclair to do for me. All things I would have to catch up on, especially considering they were intertwined at some level.

For the moment, I needed to talk to Blue. And x0x0, for that matter. But mostly Blue. I had a fair idea what had happened to AuroraBlue and how it tied into Sinclair's research, but the big AI was probably the only one with the knowledge base to confirm my suspicions.

Assuming he'd answer.

Unforeseen outcomes: Or why I still don't like mercenaries

2011-01-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

It's over.

It didn't end how we planned it.

But it's over.

There'd been quite a bit of flexibility in the plan to start with. There'd had to be, since we didn't know exactly when or how the confrontation between Raids and Ravish would go down. The two machines essentially knew how the other would think, but, that being said, they were each doing what they could to not walk into the other's trap. There were times when the situations were so evenly balanced, so hard to judge an actual advantage, that you really did have to roll a die to decide which way to go. This was like that. The 'die' might have been some kind of quantum switch deep with in a sentient machine's core, but it was a random factor just the same. We could figure out the most likely paths, and be ready to shift onto whichever one came up when it happened.

The Mercenaries added another measure of random chance to the mix. Not because they were evenly matched with their opponent intellectually and the only way to avoid being predictable was to add a random element. No. They added a random element because they were in way, way, over their heads, but thought they were in control. And that's the problem with the Stupid and the Batshit Insane. They do things you don't expect, leaving you altering plans on the fly in order to deal with a situation that's turned all Chòu shǐ.

Things would have gone down differently if Raids had been on the ground and I'd been in the nest, but she wasn't, and I wasn't, and it all happened very quickly. Surprisingly so. But in the end, Ravish was no more, Raids had the chip, and the Mercenaries were no longer a factor in our day to day operations.

That last was fortunate. In taking out Ravish, they'd injured AuroraBlue. Details were sketchy, but somehow she'd gotten up after the attack and gone a bit Rage herself, injuring several people before eventually ending up in Wave Equation's small cabin, curled up on a bunk under a blanket.

Lily confronted the Mercs over it shortly after the fact and, again, the details were a little sketchy. All that was absolutely clear was that the core of the Merc unit had evac'd after getting their asses handed to them by a somewhat annoyed not-cat. Which was probably better than they would have gotten had they been caught on the ground by an equally annoyed Mother Dragon.

They were gone. For now. Though returning would be a bad idea. The Militia and townsfolk were ready for them if they came back. While the Alliance wasn't exactly our closest friend in the 'Verse, they'd been informed of the Merc unit that had, essentially, turned on the citizens of the town. They wouldn't be too keen on seeing a heavily armed unit on Hale's Moon that wasn't authorized by the local government. Which they weren't. I'd seen to that.

For once, the 1st Marine Raiders would be more than welcome to expend some ammunition on our behalf.

There were also a few other things they'd encounter, should they try and get back into the business. While there were undoubtedly some factions within the Alliance and its fractured Parliament that would still see them with favor, they'd find that in some, quite powerful, circles, they were personae non grata.

It was a big 'Verse, and they could probably hide if they stayed away from civilized worlds. But their actions had started some big, heavy, wheels turning. They would have a hard time not getting ground under them.

Soldiers of Fortune

Cowards prey upon children

Your days are numbered

The trouble with Mercenaries

2011-01-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

I've said it before. Mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, guns for hire, what ever you want to call them, have their place. People willing to take money in exchange for fighting under someone else's flag is a tradition as old as history. They are not a new phenomena. They're not even an uncommon phenomena. During the war, the Indies made extensive use of mercenary units since it was often easier to higher a complete unit than to try and raise one of your own.

There were multiple problems with mercenary units, of course. There have been instances of them turning on their employers, executing a coup d'état and taking over whatever hapless colony had hired them. There were instances of mercs being summarily executed by the local army after an operation was over, obviating the need to pay them for their services. There were examples of a victorious adversary treating the mercs like criminals or terrorists, quite unlike the regular military. Or, in some cases, the mercs changing sides in the middle of a fight because they got a better offer.

Since the war, the mercenary business had seen a rather precipitous decline. Mostly, they'd gone to more legitimate or small scale prospects. With the Alliance's tendency to outsource security on a lot of Border and Rim colonies, there were quite a few units that had converted from Military to "Security." The results weren't always stellar.

Then there were the units that were hired by private interests for internal security, body guard duty, or whatever else they were being paid for. Again, not always with with spectacular results. Or, perhaps, not always spectacularly good results.

We'd had mercenary units on Hale's before. I hadn't liked it then either. Each time, whoever hired them hadn't done so to augment our existing Militia. They'd done it for their own reasons and, while the results hadn't always been bad, they had always caused friction between the mercs and the local militia and law enforcement unit.

Seems "Ask the local authorities first" never crossed their minds.

I had a fair idea who'd hired the unit on the ground now, which I would confirm one way or another in short order. But their presence complicated things. While they'd but a few impressive dents in Ravish, they'd also attracted the attention of the Alliance regulars.

That, I did not need.

I'd already gotten a message off to Colonel Silvermane that the mercs weren't ours. They weren't here in any sort of official 'with the blessing of the Colonial Government' capacity. If it came down to a confrontation between the mercenaries and the Marines, our Militia would stay the hell out of it.

I hoped it didn't. But, from my perspective, the mercs were more trouble than they were worth. If it came to a fight with Ravish, they'd be in the thick of it, giving the Milita more trouble getting a clean line on their target. If it came to a confrontation with the Alliance, I could just hope whoever Silvermane had on the ground wasn't of a mind to ignore collateral damage and just deal with the issue.

Whoever hired them would get a talking to. But that could wait. I had more pressing matters to hand.

Clarity

2011-01-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

I am ready.

I spoke with Raids briefly last night at Firefly's, letting her know I was ready when she was. Whether our plan played out as intended or not, I would do my part. The 599 was sighted and I'd ranged three favored nests that would each give me the shot. Which one I took would depend on conditions at the time and I wouldn't make that decision until the last possible moment.

Usually, a sniper would pick on preferred location and nest there. Under normal circumstances I would have done just that. But these weren't normal circumstances. This was my home. Over the last few years here I'd learned all the best vantages, all the nests, their sight lines, limitations, advantages. Some of the spots were known to others, of course. I'd trained a couple of the Militia sharp shooters myself and given them some favored locations.

But I'd kept a few to myself as well.

That knowledge also gave us an advantage if anyone tried to play sniper games with us. There really was nothing better than local knowledge in such a situation. Should it ever come to it, our counter-battery fire would be quick and lethal. Should it ever come to it.

For now though, I had but one target in mind. With the 599 and its specialized ammunition we'd be able to take Ravish down for good.

Now, if the new Intern would only stay out of harm's way.

I hadn't actually intended to take on an Intern in the Mayor's office. There really wasn't much Mayoring going on, and Genni, as Vice Mayor, was actually doing most of the work. I was the Executive decision maker but I wasn't involved much in administering the colony. Worse, perhaps, It seemed likely the Alliance would make some declaration that our semi-formal local government wasn't really officially sanctioned and then find a way to impose "oversight" on our "underprivileged" colony.

But Lanie had come in, fresh off the boat, asking for work, and I'd been a bit too distracted to say "No." So now Genni and I had an Intern. She was young, bright, cheerful, and, sadly, likely to get shot the first time something dropped in the pot. Thing was, she'd be a good person to put between us and Lionheart. Fresh and cheerful, she didn't have the background on the Alliance's interactions with the colony the rest of us did.

Might work out. Might not. Could at least hope she didn't end her span before we found something more permanent for her to do around here.

Right now, I had more pressing matters on my mind than keeping an Intern out of my hair.

Through a snipers eyes

With infinite clarity

I see your span end

Exploring issues of Trust though the scope of a high power rifle

2011-01-11T13:33:00.001-08:00

The arrival of my new Ritter&Lau 599 brought with it a basket of mixed emotions. While the weapon itself was a work of art, at least to the eyes of someone who appreciated the delicate, lethal, precision of an R&L sniper rifle, it was still a device with one, very specific, purpose: to take a life. Though, in this specific instance, my target wasn't technically alive. Also, some would argue, the 599 was more of an anti-material weapon than an anti-personnel one.

Not that it would be any consolation to whatever I hit with it. With the amount of raw kinetic energy the slug would carry, concentrated into the slim point of the depleted Uranium core, the round would punch through my target's armor and into the electronic brain within. Shortly after I pulled the trigger, the war machine known as Ravish would end its span.

That was, if all went according to plan.

On some levels, it probably seemed odd that I was reluctant to put Raids at risk in order to terminate Ravish. Some thought I was Baka for accepting her into the colony's citizenry in the first place. I'd even had suggestions of turning her over to Ravish, or just ending her ourselves.

None of those ideas would fly, of course. Most of the folk here, after a little suspicion, accepted my judgement and treated her as one of us. Even now, the majority of the townsfolk were behind her. Though, some of them were suggesting that mayhap, our resident warbot should be the one going toe to to with the invading warbot. Seeing as how they were evenly matched and all, and would have the Militia on her side.

I'd already hit on that idea and Raids herself volunteered to go toe to toe with her sister as soon as I even mentioned her being in harm's way. And that's where the trust came in.

I'd had a fair idea of how her class of warbot went together from the research we'd done on her when Nack still kept her as a trophy in Firefly's. I'd done my calculations on the shot based on the known target size and armor thickness, figuring the strongest materials Ravish was likely to have been built with. What I hadn't known was that her series had, effectively, a backup brain box. That she told me about it showed a level of trust that was, ultimately, gratifying.

By telling me about the backup, she was trusting me with a weakness. Also trusting that I'd be able to make the shot when she got her sister out in the open. She'd take one in close combat, I'd take the other with the R&L. In return, I promised her salvage on the fallen twin.

There was still a chance the Militia or one of the more combat worthy locals would take Ravish down permanently before we could, but I didn't care so much. I'd already gotten word to the Militia leaders to not even touch the chassis until I'd cleared it and, under no circumstances, to turn it over to an Alliance patrol. Not that we'd be able to stop an Alliance patrol on the ground from pulling rank, but that'd just mean I had to keep my promise through a back channel.

And if that didn't pan out?

Well, that'd lead to an entirely new pursuit.

OOC Side note: This is the 200th entry in the Lonesome Ninja Mayor's blog.

A labor of love
Chronicle of a long arc

Two hundred entries

Five Nine Nine

2011-01-09T15:01:00.000-08:00

For at least the last two hundred years, the finest high power rifles in the 'Verse have been made by one company: Ritter&Lau. They are legendary for accuracy and reliability and have been the premier choice for competition marksman since, well. . . Since they started making rifles. R&L has also made a line of military spec sniper rifles that, while not quite as accurate as their competition models, are some of the best that have ever taken the field. The sniper variant trades a fraction in accuracy and stability for even greater reliability and robust construction.

The milspec ones also, perhaps surprisingly, cost a good deal less than their competition models. But they're still a good deal more expensive than the more common weapons deployed with most field units. Thus, an R&L only went to the most lethal snipers or special operations units. Or, more rarely, to a soldier with a good deal more money then brains. And in that case, they'd usually opt for a competition model.

Me? I'd been rather fond of both of my Ritter&Lau 415's.

The R&L 599 could be considered the 415's big brother. It used a similar 'big charge pushing a small round' concept that made the 415 so lethal, but used a longer 20mm auto-cannon cartridge in place of the 415's 20mm base load. At a bit over 1200 meters per second, it's 13mm, 685 grain round generated around 32000 joules.

Like the 415, the round had a dead flat trajectory and could punch great gaping holes in targets a solid three kilometers off.

I just hoped the new 599 arrived in time. And, when it did, I hoped I would be able to get off one clean shot. It would have to be enough. Enough to punch through Ravish's armored brain box and put an end to the machine's attacks.

Assuming, of course, the Sappers didn't get to it first.

Standoff

2011-01-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

It was only a matter of time, I knew. With Raid's "sister" on the surface, somewhere, looking for her, it was more or less inevitable that we'd encounter each other. I just hadn't especially expected it to be in Fook's, interrupting my coffee.

The Militia preparations for dealing with this other machine were ongoing, but we'd already managed to get one sharp shooter in position manning the anti-armor rifle. Thing was, 'sharp shooter' was being generous. There were a few people in the Militia that were damn good shots with a long gun, but very, very, few people on our little slice of Heaven were trained as a Sniper. With people needing to tend to their families and day to day life, we could only afford to keep a few of the best shots manning the gun on rotation.

There was also the matter of position. Over the last few years here on Hale's Moon, I'd scouted out all the best firing positions. I knew where they were, what coverage they had, how easy they were to spot from a distance, how much cover they gave against counterfire. But we weren't positioning the anti-roller gun for me. We were positioning it for the few men and women who'd have to take a spell with it, which had a whole 'nother set of requirements.

We'd set them up with a good deal of visibility, positioned so anyone, or anything, trying to attack them wouldn't have an easy time of it. The spot was ideal for the needs at hand, though not the spot I'd have taken myself. Personally, I'd be another five hundred meters back. But that was me. Any of the folk manning the gun could make a nine hundred meter shot on a man-sized target. But that was the difference between someone who was a good shot using a good rifle, and a trained sniper. At that range, with that gun, I could have taken Ravish's head off with a called shot to either eye socket.

But I wasn't manning the gun.

The machine knew how to move through cover, I gave her that. Had to assume she'd spotted the weapon's position and made some effort to stay out of their lines of sight. Just hadn't realized she'd be able to make it to Fook Yoo's front door without being spotted and shot at.

I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. A metallic green glint reflecting off a window a moment before she appeared in the Fook's open front door. My fifty was already to hand and half way drawn before she spotted me, and raised what looked like a modified Assault Rifle in my direction. We had our weapons on-target within a few milliseconds of each other, muzzle to muzzle across the gap between my place at the bar and her spot in the doorway.

At this range, the HVAP rounds would, most likely, punch through her shell and make a mess of the brain box inside - the only place I was reasonably sure would take her down. Assuming they actually punched through. And that she didn't shoot first. But she had to have seen where I was targeting. Had to have realized I knew where to shoot her to make it count.

"A silver mechanoid of appearance similar to this unit is known to me in this community. Where is it?" she asked in a soft, sultry, voice I could have mistaken for Raids in tone, if not in inflection.

"Not in the habit of giving up my citizens to an assassin," I replied calmly, finger steady on the trigger, aim point dead on the machine's brain box.

"Very well. You have no more usefulness to this unit."

I could see a change in her expression: a vaguely disconcerting smile that said 'I'm going to enjoy shooting you.'

Not if I shoot you first, ikeike.

Only . . . we didn't. A heartbeat before I squeezed off a round, and, I was sure, several would have come back at me, Fook Yoo's blast doors slammed down between us.

"Ya'll ok, Miss Mayor?"

Bruin Wells had been out of sight, getting some fresh food for the buffet, and shut the blast door when he saw the machine he'd heard about with a gun on me. Level head on that man, to be sure.

"I'm fine, Bruin, thanks. Just need to get more eyes, and more guns, on that Gorram machine."

More eyes - and a bigger gun.

Can't say we weren't warned

2011-01-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

She warned us, Raids did. And I warned the townsfolk. Got the Militia to prep their favored demolition charges and the anti-roller ordnance, though, being miners, they were more comfortable as Sappers than Snipers. Loaded up my fifties and the long gun with HVAP rounds, since the squash heads would just be an annoyance to one of those fighting machines, and went about my business.

Wasn't in a mood to go hunting. If what Raids said was true, and I had no reason to doubt, the green hulled machine would show up here. Ravish they called her.

And show she did. Being wrapped up in a meeting with the IAV Saule Silencieuse's Captain, I wasn't in a position to add anything to the fight. They filled me in after the fact, though, being Mayor on paper only these days, there wasn't much I could do besides talk to the wounded in the Infirmary and relay my dōjō to the families of those that fell defending the colony.

You'd think that a seasoned Militia would be able to take on one lone machine. They'd drilled and trained and knew how to shoot and blow shit up. But they weren't really trained to fight an opponent like they were facing now. I wasn't even sure how I'd take her on one on one if it came to it. Give me a fighting suit, and we'd be evenly matched. But I didn't have a fighting suit. Best I had here was my synthetic sapphire weave and a Thermoptic oversuit. I could survive a fight, one on one, but win it?

Maybe. Only maybe.

The locals had managed to drive Ravish off, damaged but still functional. Which meant after a bit of down time, she'd come back repaired and probably gunning for whoever'd done the most damage to her last time around.

Next time, they'd have taken the warning more seriously. But it would still be rough. If Raids had a personal nemesis in her "sister" we'd have to think hard on a way to settle the score. I'd accepted Raids as one of us after she'd chosen to follow our Dao. Her sister here wasn't so flexible and I'd no qualms about ending her span.

Assuming we could.

Violence becomes you

Mechanical nemesis

We stand against you

Did you hear the one about the chiropractor and the autonomous killing machine?

2011-01-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

There is an ancient legend, I mean a really ancient legend, like three thousand years ago kind of ancient legend, about a girl who opens a bottle and lets out a genie and with the genie all the evils of the world. Or something. I'm probably mixing legends, or metaphors, or, possibly, both. But the lesson of the ancient legend, or parable, is the same regardless. Once something's known in the world, out of the bottle so to speak, there's no way to put it back in.

Humanity learned that with nuclear weapons something like six hundred years ago, but forgot the lesson. We learned it with the use of expendable fossil fuels, which, ultimately, led to the Exodus from Earth that Was. We've forgotten that lesson too, but, since there weren't any fossils in the 34 Tauri system from which to make fuel, we haven't quite managed to do the same damage to our new home worlds.

Yet.

But the bottle genie metaphor is appropriate to another field of science. A field I dabbled in at University, and, for the last few years, have taken a more than passing interest in. Seeing how Artificial Intelligence has become a fairly important topic in our day to day existence. No surprise, really, given we've seen more advanced AI out here at Hale's Moon than I did in my entire span at Feynman.

When Raids, or resident reformed warbot, tracked me down at the new transport hub, I knew something was up. She didn't show emotions the way a Human would, or even Lily, who was arguably neither Human or Normal, but she did show emotion of a sort, and the emotion she was showing primarily was concern.

It appeared that one of Raids "sisters" had been spotted on Hale's. One we'd encountered before, actually. One who hadn't broken free of the original "sadistic killing machine" programming.

Raids was, justifiably, concerned for the locals. evidently the machine'd been lurking around, talking to people, asking about Raids, for a short time already. The machine had Xià de fèihuà some of the locals that had seen it, and they in turn had turned a wary eye towards Raids herself.

I couldn't really fix that. Can't change a person's mind for them. But you can talk reason with them and shed some light into an uncomfortable darkness. You could also warn the militia, break out the anti-material rifle, and get Raids the raw tungsten, cobalt, and other elements, she needed to optimize her war hull should she and her sister face off.

That I could to.

I could also look into just why a killing machine sourced from Blackburne would be here, looking for one of its sisters. There was something going on behind the scenes. Was sure of it. And I even had a good idea where to start looking for answers.

Assuming the green killer fembot didn't kill us all before I could.

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

2011-01-01T19:42:00.000-08:00

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.

They're sending me a present?

2010-12-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Yule season, for me, has always been more about spending time with friends and family and exchanging gifts than anything else. I know there are quite a few deeply held religious traditions tied to the season, but the key word there is Season. The oldest traditions I've seen in the texts all revolve around the Winter Solstice on Earth that Was, which were only relevant in the Northern hemisphere. Perhaps more important, they were only relevant in Winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, on Earth that Was. Even with the massive scale geoengineering and terraforming projects made so many worlds in the 34 Tauri system habitable, the seasons on any given world rarely matched the old Earth calendar.

Which doesn't actually change most of the religious beliefs associated with calendar dates, or the calendar traditions of getting together with friends and giving each other presents. It's just that "Yule" and "Winter" don't coincide for a large fraction of the people in the verse.

Some of the folk I knew have already started exchanging presents. Lily gave me a pair of hand made mittens, and I got some lovely jewelry from Gray. Quite the surprise that, but much appreciated. There's others, of course. Like the set of custom machined extended fifty cal mags Genni Foxtrot gave me. Which, while quite practical, just shows how well we've come to know each other.

It's the ones you never expect that give you pause. Like when your Commanding Officer sends you a wave to tell you he's "sending you a present."

"I trust you're well, Lieutenant Colonel," Taggart started. Semi formal, which always meant he had something 'special' to talk about.

"Of course, General Taggart, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Respond in kind, of course. I was actually a little curious. We spoke usually once a week over a secure link. Keeping each other appraised of developments above and below each other's respective pay grades.

"I've been looking at your situation reports. All good. Just a little uncomfortable with nesting your operation on a civilian station."

He was right, of course. While I had multiple levels of control over the station and could isolate my own office and communications stack from the KHI operations, there was still a lot of civilian traffic. Someone was going to notice something. I'd noted it myself, but there weren't a lot of options available to me. The surface might be a little easier to secure, but there wasn't a ready made facility I could repurpose to my needs. Not since my needs had grown past what I could easily shoehorn into a safehouse.

"I've got a solution for you," he went on. Maneuvering closer to the point of the wave. "You're familiar with the Kamkamoss class Corvette?"

I was, actually. The Kamkamoss class was a dedicated ELINT ship. The hulls and drive sections were built by Kawanishi Heavy Industries, while the ELINT surveillance and Communications suites were sourced from several very specialized vendors. The Kamkamoss was as hard to spot as an ELINT Matagi, but carried a good deal more kit. The difference between a large lander and a small warship.

"IAV Saule Silencieuse has just finished her shakedown cruise, Sea. Hull number four. I'm sending her to you. Crew's still getting sorted out, but her mission will be under your control. She'll augment the capacity you've already got in place there and will give you a lot more capability than that little Matagi of yours can muster. Details are inbound with the next secure update."

"Thank you, General. This is . . . unexpected." Which was an understatement. While it wasn't unprecedented for a sector chief to have access to an asset like this, they were usually deployed as needed with a self contained crew. The section chief would request the asset and get it only if Command felt it was justified. Then, the asset would remain under her captain's control. They'd execute the mission and move on to the next. To put one of these boats under my direct control?

Completely unexpected.

"Thought you'd like that. She's technically a district asset. You'll have to deal with requests from other commands, but her Captain'll be direct report to you."

"Thank you, General. Don't know what to say."

Taggart chuckled softly, a warm smile on the screen. "Merry Christmas, Seana. "

"Thank you, Tag. And you."

Yup.

Completely unexpected.

Built entirely from exotic materials and improbable numbers.

2010-12-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

True to her word, Professor Sinclair, Tawny as she insisted I call her, came through with the mathematical models I'd asked for. What I hadn't expected though, was the sheer volume of data she'd produced based on the information I'd given her. I could understand part of the information she'd sent me but a good deal of it went considerably over my head. Not that much of a surprise. While I'd studied a good deal of math, a Master's in Applied Technology only had to go so far. This stuff? This was so abstract I doubted more than a handful of people in the 'Verse knew how to interpret the raw data.

"Hello, Miss Seana. I know there's a lot of data here to go through, but if you look towards the back of the analysis I put together a chunk that explains it in layman's terms."

Uh huh. Where Layman's Terms is defined as Engineering Undergrad level mathematics. Though, were most of the leading analysis was considerably beyond my knowledge, the compilation at the end was something I could follow. At least, with a bit of effort and reference to a couple of the texts I'd used half a lifetime ago.

"I'm sure you'll figure out what it all means. Though you did ask me to be clear. What it all boils down to is that on a purely modeled basis, the von Neumann Machines have sufficient complexity to support an Artificial Intelligence that could easily pass for sentient. But you know that, 'cause Raids is sentient and she runs on one of the Machine's high end cores."

I could hear a tinge of excitement in the explanatory overview she sent along with the data. More than a tinge, really. More like the almost giddy tone Uncle Elsoph took when he got to talking about one of his research projects.

What was it about genius that made them . . . odd?

"I made Blue promise not to tamper with the data or my message." For a moment, her voice took on a stern tone, like she assumed the big AI was listening in, which he probably was, and she was subtly reminding the big AI to keep his promise. "As you know, there's several different architectural models that can support AI. Raids and the KM series known as Krenshar are both hardware-centric platforms. Oh! I'm sorry. I heard what happened. It's always sad to lose someone like that. There's a distributed model as well, like Blue uses. Blue's kind of everywhere at once. There's advantages and limitations to both models, but you know that too."

I could see that in the diagrams. Raw computational capacity, versus computational speed, versus resiliency, versus survivability, versus latency, versus the minimum platform capabilities required to support machine sentience. All in a great deal of detail.

"As you can see from that last set of diagrams, the Machines have more than enough raw capability to support both hardware-centric and distributed node architectures. I know that's kinda scary and all, but take a look at that last probability vector analysis. See? With the exception of Raids, and possibly her sisters, if she has any, the machines, as a whole, aren't self aware. Not really. The behavior models match up very well with the original non-sentient code base they were running on. It looks like a lot of the safeguards are still in place. Bad side though is that doesn't stop them from following their programming and just killing everyone. After they make lots of other machines. And then more machines. And then send them all to kill everyone."

"If it's any consolation, they won't care that they're killing everyone. They'll just be machines doing what they're programmed to do. At least, um, that is, as long as they don't spontaneously go fully AI like Raids did. I don't know if that'll be bad or not. I'm still working on those models. I promise I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out!"

She signed off, cheerful and pretty as the last time I'd seen her.

The question was whether the news was good or bad. If the machines were non-sentient, there were no ethical questions about taking them down. If they were self aware, the picture changed. It became an ethical choice between the survival of two rival species, for lack of a better word. Would we be able to live in peace with our synthetic children if that was the case?

Part of me very much wanted to believe we could. That people like Lily and AuroraBlue and Blue himself could serve as a bridge between Man and Machine. The other part remembered five thousand years of recorded Human history. Half the time, w couldn't bridge the distance between people. How could we ever bridge the difference between organic and synthetic forms of life?

Just what I needed to be thinking about going into the Yule season.

Rung Tse Fwo Tzoo Bao Yo Wuo Muhn.

Inorganic Minds

Models of what may yet be

A future unclear

Rumor and innuendo

2010-12-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

"I've heard a somewhat disconcerting rumor, Colonel. Care to shed some light on it for me?"

Colonel Silvermane was working on her second cappuccino, taking in the afternoon sun at a small cafe on Beaumonde. The site was't technically special, but it was yet another new venue. Each time we'd met it was in a different location, usually with several stops in between on our respective itineraries. It was probably more caution than we needed, but old habits die hard and some of the habits existed to make it harder to die.

"Which rumor would that be, Major? That I'm seeing a fighter pilot on the side, or that the Loyalists want me dead?"

I had to laugh. Neither of those were actually rumors, so much as obfuscated facts. The Loyalist faction still had her on their list of 'people to deal with when we gain more power,' and she had been spending some intimate time with one of the squadron commanders. But neither of those facts were especially disconcerting or even surprising.

"Neither of the above?" I answered over my own latte. "No, I was thinking about the one wherein you'd volunteered the 1st Marine Raiders to relieve the 9th Dragoons in Antioch's southern conflict."

Her features hardened for a moment before giving me a curt nod of acknowledgement. "Yes. That. Not a rumor, Sea. The 1st isn't cut out for the duty they have us on now. The 9th is almost ready to rotate out of the conflict zone and we're well suited to kind of operations they're running on Antioch. We're not military police. We're Marines. We kill people and break things. It's what we do best, and we're not doing a lot of it playing babysitter at some Gorram politician's behest."

She was right. The 1st Marine Raiders were a Marine unit. Space-mobile Light Assault Infantry, trained and intended for rapid deployment to take specific objectives then either evac or hand off to a conventional unit. The 'play policeman' patrols they were doing on several Rim colonies under Martial Law really weren't their forte. They hadn't even been especially well suited to 'show the flag' patrols. Marines, as Cory said, killed people and broke things. Parades weren't their specialty.

"Antioch though? The Southern Conflict has been going on since before the Unification War. Warlords fighting each other over terrain no one else would want, and High Command never committing enough forces to assert any kind of control. You really want to through the 1st into that mess?"

She didn't, I knew. No one would ever accuse Corrine Silvermane of being a coward, but she wasn't one of those commanders who treated their soldiers as expendable. Though Alliance ground force doctrine usually included 'throw more men at it,' some commanders shied away from human wave tactics in favor of, well, real tactics. Silvermane was one such, which was possibly one of the reasons the Loyalists didn't like her so much.

Her unit, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate the fact that they had a better Success/Casualty ratio than most other units.

"It'll be what it is, Sea. Whether the 1st rotates in or not is up to High Command. I put it out there. They can take it or leave it."

Take it leave it. That seemed to be a common thread weaving itself into my life right now. For better or worse, it was what it was.

Take it or leave it

Some things never seem to change

It is what it is

Interservice rivalry

2010-12-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

"Because the flotilla commander is a risk averse coward and would rather keep fleet assets safe, than risk them protecting Nóngcūn hóuzi out on the Rim. No offense."

"None taken."

Corrine's opinion of the Flotilla Commander based on the Sun Tzu was, to understate, less than glowing. They had an odd relationship. While Silvermane had command of the 1st Marine Raiders based mostly aboard the cruiser and, by virtue of some political decision, overall command of how the Alliance dealt with the colonies in their patrol sector, the Navy units reported to the flotilla commander. The man wasn't even a Flag Officer. Not really. He'd been appointed after the Loyalist fiasco, more for his adherence to 'core Parliamentary principles' than his ability to command a battle group.

From what I'd been able to discern, none of the patrol frigate commanders especially liked him, the captain of the Sun Tzu didn't like him, and Colonel Silvermane decidedly didn't like him. But he was in charge of the Fleet elements in the region. So the ships went where he told them to go, which wasn't always where the Colonel wanted them to go.

She understood my concern though. With Hale's Moon and several other colonies under Martial Law, we were more reliant on the Alliance for defense against Raiders, Reavers, Pirates, and politicians, than otherwise. But that meant the Alliance forces had to be in position to help us when the time arose. While nearly half of the 1st Marine Raiders were deployed to patrol duties between the frigates and the small patrol boats, Flotilla Command was doing their part to 'minimize risk, increase efficiency, and lower coasts' to the squadron. Which translated to them rarely being where we needed them to be when we needed them to be there.

Quite frustrating to a professional soldier.

Less so to a spook.

The rouge "Alliance" ships we'd encountered on the Rim, Pirates of a form, really, were in some ways more of a thorn in Fleet's side than ours. I hadn't pursued the possibility that they were a quasi false flag operation, intended to make it look like the Alliance were raising hell again or were incompetent to keep others from doing same in their name. Sadly, something else on my long list of 'Really need to look into that's.'

It was an odd cover though. If they were really rogue, it made sense. Pretend you were Alliance and hope the locals fell for it. When they did, you'd have cooperative targets who may not know they were being had, and might not report it if they did. The danger, of course, was when the Alliance finally got tired of your detarame, they would come down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks. Their "justice" would be swift and most likely fatal. Also, if the locals didn't buy your fake ID's they'd be inclined to fight all the harder.

Black Ops? Possible, but to what end? It was hard right now to tell where things were going with the situation. There was pressure both directions: to back out and let the locals handle their own problems, or to move in full force and put an end to it. There were political advantages and disadvantages no matter which way the die rolled. Good or bad depended on which faction was asking the question and when.

It was something I'd look into. Something I might have an answer to the next time Silvermane and I met. Assuming I had time to look. Though, I had to admit there was the temptation to do some troubleshooting of my own.

Home is where you hang your holsters

2010-12-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

The flight back to Hale's Moon had a couple of minor detours that added considerable time and distance to the trip, but were certainly worth it. Now, with Tiny Dragon handing me my ass in a game of Go, Kari curled up asleep on the couch in the main compartment, and two hundred odd kilos of fresh coffee beans in the hold, I could relax.

The fist stop on Ariel was, honestly, by far the more important of the two. While 'Brina and I talked to each other over a Cortex link every couple days, it wasn't the same as seeing each other in person. No matter how good haptic feedback systems got, they were no substitute for the real thing. I'd missed Sabrina's touch. A lot. I'd married her, after all. Most married couples liked to touch each other. Kind of went with the whole long term relationship thing.

This stretch with 'Brina on Ariel had it's stress. I'd be lieing to deny it. But she was happy working in the Research and Development labs, and I had the luxury of not having to hide my day to day work from my wife. We saw as much of each other as we could, which, admittedly, was a good deal more than most married couples in the active Alliance military got.

Still, it wasn't really long enough. Even extending it to give AuroraBlue and Kari a chance to get ashore for a little while didn't give us enough time together. Not that I could complain. We'd learned to cram a lot of quality into very little time. Which, I suppose, was what most married couples in the Alliance military did too. Make your shore leave count.

The second stop, on Surfer's New Paradise to refresh the coffee supply, was even shorter. Uncle Sobi had pulled together half a dozen or so roasts and packed them into sealed containers so we wouldn't have to worry about them going bad. Roughly two hundred kilos in all, including a couple of my favorite blends and a kilo of Kopi Luwak for my personal stash. I wasn't going to ask exactly how Sobi's clanmates managed to keep a population of Civets on their island paradise. Though, as I understood it, the environment inland from their beach enclave wasn't unlike Indonesia as it existed on Earth that Was.

He'd also included a few mixed cases of quality liquor to stock the new bar we were fitting out on the Orbital. Hadn't managed to quite convince him to come back and run it for us, given how things had turned out at Fook Yoo's, but I'd made the offer and he was offering up some premium ethanol to the endeavour.

I know Sobi was curious about AuroraBlue, and probably Kari too, seeing how her origin was more than a little enigmatic, but he didn't intrude. Wasn't his way. But he did give Kari a bottle of locally made rum when he came aboard Wave Equation to make sure the cargo got stowed right. Also gave AuroraBlue something in a gift wrapped box, and asked her to promise not to open it until Yule. She just nodded. Sobi'd heard that she'd stopped talking and just smiled, leaning down to give her a kiss on the cheek and a quiet "Ya'll take care o' yer kinfolk, ya'hear?" before heading out to give us clearance to boost.

Fortunately, nothing major had gone down in our absence. Except a raid. But that was pretty minor. The Militia had mustered up just fine and handled the problem before the Alliance patrols could even show up.

Another win for us, and a bit more pressure on the Alliance to back out and give us our colony back. Part of their justification for Martial Law was that we weren't handling things locally, which was getting show to be a lie. We could handle things just fine.

Colonel Silvermane'd admit the Alliance had no business keeping boots on the ground, while Liaison Officer Lionhart was a but more sacrosanct about it. She didn't strike me as the sort of bureaucrat who'd stick her neck too far out which made me think she was as in the dark about the reason as the rest of us.

At least officially.

Didn't matter though. Things were what they were, and we'd make do with them. We always did.

Back to school

2010-11-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

The Jesuit University of New Fresno was, perhaps surprisingly, one of the premier pure research universities in the 'Verse. They specialized in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and cosmology. All related fields. The Jesuit order had a history that dated back at least a thousand years, to well before the Exodus. There were quite a few, often confusing, sometimes contradictory, stories about their origin and purpose. In contrast to what some would expect, given their origin as a Monastic religious order on Earth that Was, their universities had a reputation for strong academic values.

Still didn't quite explain why Professor Sinclair was here teaching. Not when she already had tenure at Feynman and at least two others: at 26. But here was where she was, so here was where I was - prowling the grounds of a premier university campus trying to find the Upton Hall of Mathematics.

I found Professor Sinclair in one of the lecture halls, giving a lecture on some aspect of advanced mathematics that was more than a little over my head. No surprise really. I'd had a solid formal education, but even with a Master's in Applied Technology the frontiers of theoretical mathematics were well beyond what most of us could even comprehend.

Forty minutes later, and I was waiting in her office waiting for her to come out of 'Lecture' mode. The professors here had a long tradition of wearing monastic robes that looked like they'd come from an Abby on Earth that Was during the medieval period. The reason was lost to history, though there was an official story that the robes took the focus off the Professor's presence to let the students concentrate on the content being presented. With Sinclair, the robes were probably more of a requirement than a tradition.

I'd seen holos of the Professor long before I came to New Fresno, but when she tossed the formal robe covering a t-shirt and shorts aside and settled into the seat behind the large wooden desk, I realized the images hadn't done her justice. A cascade of red hair, intense green eyes, a perfect face. Professor Sinclair wasn't just 'very pretty' as she appeared in the images. She was stunning. Teen-age fantasy poster model stunning. Invade your dreams stunning.

Without the robes, most of her students wouldn't have been able to concentrate on the lecture.

"Please, Colonel, take a seat," she said, cheerfully, motioning me to one of the leather covered chairs. "Sorry the lecture went a little long. Did you have a nice flight?"

It took a second for the fleeting "Elle est belle" moment to pass before I settled comfortably into a chair. "Please, Professor. Just Seana. No one calls me Colonel."

She actually blushed a moment, then laughed. "Oh! I'm sorry. I forgot that's a secret. Deal. You've got to call me Tawny though, ok? 'Professor' is just too stodgy. Coffee? I'll make some fresh."

I nodded yes and watched as she made coffee in an antique press that was probably older than the trees that had gone into her desk. Sinclair was known for her work in Crypto, but that wasn't why I was here. My interests were, if anything, even more esoteric than the convoluted mathematical world of keeping secrets secret.

"Thank you for meeting with me, Tawny. I know I was less than clear about the specifics when I asked to see you, but this isn't about your Cryptology work."

She smiled, pouring out two cups of coffee from the antique press. "Oh, it's ok Seana. I know. He told me. It's about the Machines and modeling their Artificial Intelligence."

I nodded, then paused. "Wait. What? He told you?"

Sinclair stopped, looked at me in a moment's confusion, then started to giggle. "Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't know you didn't know. Blue Man. Your friend. The AI. He was telling me about the issue you've had on the Rim with those von Neumann machines. He said you'd probably come talk to me about it. "

For a moment I was speechless. She knew Blue? I knew he wasn't restricted to just a single piece of kit, or location. As far as I could tell, he could go wherever the Cortex went. By now, he'd have instances of 'Self' scattered through the Cortex from Londinium to Miranda and most nodes in between. But Blue, historically, had kept his existence hidden. His very existence partially relied on the 'Verse as a whole not knowing about him. There were ways to keep him out, but they were complex and beyond the ken of most system operators. That people weren't taking active measures to "deal with" the most complex AI in human history was a testament to the fact that very, very, few people even knew he was there.

"Indeed, Tawny. I hadn't realized Blue was talking to you. To anyone, really. But yes. There aren't a lot of people I can consult on the subject and your mathematical modeling of machine consciousness is state of the art. I'd very much appreciate your input."

She smiled cheerfully, settling back into her chair and curling her legs up under her. "I'd be happy to. I don't get a lot of opportunity to work with real AI. Other than Blue, I mean," she said with a laugh, then leaned forward. "So, what have you got?"

I made it back to Wave Equation nine and a half hours later. Kari had coffee ready, but had been bored staying aboard the boat since we landed. AuroraBlue was curled up on the couch, asleep, after prowling campus for most of the day. And I was tired. Brain hurt, kind of tired.

Exhausted, really.

Exhausted, but it was worth it. I'd gotten even more than I'd intended. I wasn't sure whether Sinclair would be able to answer my core questions, but she was the best chance we had. I just had to wonder whether, ultimately, we really wanted to know the answer.

Stowing away

2010-11-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of myths about stowing away aboard spacecraft. Some of them are even true. Many have some grain of truth in them, whilst some are reiner Schwachsinn. Pure bullshit. One of the common ones is that it's simple to stow aboard any ship. All you have to do is avoid being seen boarding, and avoid getting caught aboard. And, while there is some grain of truth to that little myth, the fact is that it depends almost entirely on the configuration of the boat and the diligence of her crew.

There's a lot of signs when there's a stowaway aboard. Some easier to see than others, and some more or less dependent on the boat in question. Examples? Easy. Skipping past the obvious "getting found by the crew" parts, you get to the root of it. Passengers breathe. They eat, drink, and excrete too. Unless they brought along their own air, water, and food, they're going to put some sort of load on the ship's life support. You can figure out there's someone extra aboard just by keeping an eye on the life support monitors. That's without any kind of fancy on-board security systems.

Of course, the bigger the boat, the smaller the proportional load'll be. If the boat's old and creaky to start with, like an old tramp freighter, chances are no one'll notice. Some of those boats lose enough atmo through the hull seals that a stowaway would just look like noise. Thing is, on a smaller boat, an extra passenger will show up right quick on the life support load. Hell, if your navigation suite's any good, an extra 50 kilos moving around the boat will show up on the maneuver console.

Wave Equation, in spite of her range and performance, was a small boat. She wasn't old, and she wasn't creaky.

And I didn't use a lot of life support.

Now, I was right gratified that AuroraBlue had decided to come along on this little excursion. It would be good to spend time with my little girl. What I hadn't quite expected was to find I had another passenger. Though, to be sure, I hadn't really needed any fancy monitoring to figure out there was a third person aboard. No, Kari hadn't actually bothered to hide. She'd just curled up on the bunk under a blanket and waved when I came back into the cabin.

Reminded me of Nack's comment that his sister didn't like to travel off world much. Seems he wasn't entirely up to date on her flight preferences. Having her aboard would make for an interesting trip, but I couldn't complain. It would certainly make the flight to Athens interesting.

The entire point of this trip, aside from a stop to see Sabrina and another to swing by Surfer's New Paradise for fifty kilo's of fresh coffee, was to stop at the Jesuit University of New Fresno on Athens. Specifically, to see a mathematician who was guest lecturing there. She wasn't in a position to travel and a Cortex bridge wasn't secure enough for our needs, so I would have to go and see her in person.

It was kind of an odd situation, really. Intel Section had mathematicians I could tap if I needed to. The Signals Intelligence and Cryptology units were loaded with them. But they weren't professor Sinclair. Plus, they served other masters. By reputation and everything I'd been able to research, she'd stayed in academia because, for her, Universities didn't care so much about what she was working on. Only that she was doing it. And sharing it. Which left some folk in the Alliance a little annoyed, especially when she'd published a paper that effectively broke about a third of Parliament's secure comms traffic.

Just the sort of person I needed to talk to.

Outbound leg

2010-11-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

Every time I leave Hale's Moon, I wonder what'll change in my absence. Reaver attack? Alliance install a new government? Another rock drop out of orbit and leave a smoking hole somewhere on the surface? Was always something different. Not always so major, but always something to leave me saying "Mmmm, maybe I should have stayed around."

Some unknown miscreants trying to kidnap Tillery one day, and a bounty hunter bagging Cody a couple days later made my departure a little awkward. But I'd already delayed my trip longer than I should have. Rescheduling with Sabrina was easy. Uncle Elsoph would kick her out of the lab before I docked, no matter when I docked. But meeting the Professor was a different story.

The 'missing Cody' issue I would have to leave to others. The pilot of the boat that took him killed his pulse beacon while the IAV Abraham Sinkov was vectoring in. Made it easier for them to drop off the grid, seeing how the Sinkov's array's were typical Alliance and essentially kainashi. That didn't mean our system couldn't track them for a good deal farther. Still, there were a lot of worlds to alert down that vector, even with a solid ident and profile for the boat.

Have to hope someone, on a console somewhere, made the connection when the boat set down and sent word back our way. Doubted I'd be around to deal with it, but Gallagher or someone else in the Sheriff's office could follow up the lead.

AuroraBlue showing up while I was at Firefly's before departure put another spanner in the gears. She still wasn't talking to anyone, me included, but it seemed she didn't need to talk. She was able to make herself understood whether she spoke or not. The details were still fuzzy, but it had something to do with x0x0, her horse, and a lot of altitude. The problem was, there were too many vectors for me to chase down. I couldn't pursue Cody, x0x0, Tillery's kidnappers, and the work I was rapidly running out of time to do all at the same time.

If AuroraBlue snuck aboard, I wouldn't complain. I'd offered to take her with me but I'd have to leave the ultimate decision up to her. I wasn't going to force the issue. Assuming I could force the issue. Which, itself, was in doubt. Tiny Dragon faced the world on her own terms. She might listen to a suggestion, or choose to accept a command based on respect, but she wasn't going to be intimidated into cooperation or just do something "because I said so." She was a lot like her mother in that respect.

I'd get contacts, official and otherwise, to look into the current issues. I wasn't going to bring all of my Intel Section resources to bear, but it was easy enough to set the flags and let the big, unwieldy, oft uncoordinated, intel machine do its thing. Where x0x0 and Cody were involved, I could use official channels to discretely query the Special Investigations Group where Major Siamendes had still been showing some passing interest in my residents. Not that the normal flags wouldn't catch it.

For now, it was time to get a move on. Say good night to friends at Firefly's. File a pre-flight that was almost, but not quite, accurate, and get Wave Equation into the black. I had a lot of space to cover, and not a lot of time to do it.

Just hoped the trip went as intended.

There's just some days . . .

2010-11-23T08:40:00.000-08:00

I'd been getting ready to leave. Not permanently kind of leave. Just a few days off world to handle some very specific business that couldn't be handled remotely. Or, more accurately, a very specific person I would have to go to rather than bring to me. Two of them, really, since I planned to swing by Ariel on the way home to spend some time with 'Brina. I'd been feeling the distance more and more lately and work was becoming less of a distraction from that "alone" feeling.

We both had our ways of dealing with being apart. We both had local friends who could brighten our days. From what I was hearing, 'Brina was very popular with the other engineers in Uncle Elsoph's special projects group and with the platform's staff in general. Add to it a population at the orbital shipyard that was about triple what we had on all of Hale's Moon, and close proximity to other facilities and Ariel itself, and my wife wasn't lacking for distractions.

My situation on Hale's Moon was a little different. There was less to do. Less to keep my mind occupied away from work. Especially since the Alliance changed our government on us and pretty much put me out of my publicly acknowledged job. Though, to be fair, I was less of a social animal than my wife. Most of the time I was content to be alone in the Black. When I need to feel people around, I could fly down to the surface and spend an evening in Fook's or Firefly's. Plus I've had Haley to keep me company, snoring aside, and, more recently, Kari, Nack's sister, has spent some very pleasant social time with me. Unexpected, but welcome.

Who knew cats liked coffee?

Unfortunately, my departure plans were interrupted by a frantic call from the surface. It seems someone had stormed the CNS offices on Hale's Moon and taken Tillery hostage. Why? No clue. Probably either ransom or some kind of political statement. Either way, with no active Alliance patrol on the ground, it would be up to our locals to deal with the issue.

Fortunately for Tillery, no one did anything stupid. At least not very stupid. I had Genni assemble a Militia sniper team to deal with the keijijou holding Tillery on the roof of the CNS building. I resisted the urge to call in a team from the Sinkov, since the more it looked like we could handle things on our own the more likely it was Silvermane could push for us to get control of the colony back.

In the meantime, our locals handled things like they so often do. With a lot of random gunfire and a bit of high explosives. Not always very effective, but often spectacular.

The Infirmary had a few casualties to deal with in the aftermath, but at least Tillery wasn't hurt. Down side was the kidnappers got away, evacing on a stolen shuttle when our locals took to the air for better position themselves before Genni's snipers got into position. They left Tillery behind, shaken up but uninjured, and Cody, who'd somehow managed to get himself stared down at gunpoint.

Best we could do at that point was put out an alert with the stolen shuttle's ident and hope one of the Alliance patrols, or a friendly merchant in the region, caught site of them. With our navtrac being what it was, they'd have a hard time just transferring to another boat and slipping away, but they could probably get out of range before anyone caught up with them.

If I hadn't been on short time, I might have gone after them myself. Was unlikely a stolen shuttle would be able to elude Wave Equation's arrays. Wasn't in the cards though. Had places I needed to be, and with Tillery safe, I wasn't so concerned with the folk who'd tried to snatch him. Was something I could leave the the authorities.

Though, to be sure, it was something I'd be looking into when time allowed.

Rebuilding

2010-11-17T12:07:00.000-08:00

Folks living on the Rim can be a stubborn , cantankerous, lot. Especially when it comes to things they've built and consider a part of who they are. It's like the folks who went back to recolonize Shadow before the radiation from the last bombing had fully cleared, or the ones who went back to try and reclaim Blackburne from the Reavers and the Wastes. The same thing's starting to happen here on Hale's with the crater that was Destiny.

Now, I'm not one to discourage someone from trying the impossible. Trying impossible things is what slides an eraser over the "im" part of that word, leaving possible behind. Folk don't try, they don't find out that sometimes "it can't be done" is a lie.

Thing is, not everything that's been called 'impossible' is worth proving wrong. There's some things that maybe can be done, but maybe shouldn't aught to be done. Like those man-powered Ornithopters they build on Colchester. Sure, they fly. But what's the point?

Same thing seemed to be happening with what had been the Destiny compound. Some of the folk who'd evacuated before the rock pasted the site have started rebuilding parts of the enclave. Never mind the ground hasn't cooled yet. Never mind there's a moon's worth of open land to work on. Never mind there's no real shortage of housing in the main colony proper. Never mind they're rebuilding under the watchful eye of the Alliance, who hasn't forgotten flippant remarks about nuclear weapons. Never mind there's no real good reason to rebuild there. They're doing it.

Stubborn.

Cantankerous.

Part of me understands wanting to rebuild, but these are some of the same folk who had to evacuate Caliban and came here to restart. They didn't rebuild there when the Alliance collapsed the dome. What made them want to stay here? Perhaps more important, given as they hadn't shown any real desire to integrate with the existing colony, what makes them want to rebuild their enclave right in our back yard? Somehow building here will put a thorn in the Alliance's paw? Don't seem especially likely. More like they're shoving their tenacity in the face of the folk who'd already proven they could survive anything this little slice of heaven threw at them.

Wasn't much inclined to stop them, of course. Not my place to tell them no. Not much need either. The deal they'd had with Blue Sun for the land was already defunct. The rock impact hadn't changed that. Seeing as they were building so close to the colony proper, they'd be under the Colony's auspices. Least that's how I saw it. And, likely, how the Alliance would see it, given my conversations with Lionheart and Silvermane.

So let them rebuild. They'd be part of the town, like it or not. At least when the Alliance gave the town back to us. Meantime, they could be as shibutoi as they wanted. Wouldn't make much difference in the long run.

Right now, I had to change focus to other issues.

They'd still be there when I had time to put a boot down.

The one wherein the Destiny Enclave is replaced by a large smoking crater...

2010-11-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

If I said I was comfortable with everything that went on in the Enclave It'd be a lie. From the Casino that everyone knew about to the hidden genetic research laboratories that pretty much no one knew about, there were goings on behind the fence that never really sat well with me. Not that having it close enough to keep an eye on wasn't an advantage, but there were times the Risk vs Reward balance swung a bit too far towards the Risk side for my taste. Not to mention some of the residents having a separatist attitude that was kinda galling. Like it or not. Admit it or not. Their whole Gorram enclave existed because I convinced the council to let x0x0 alter our deal with Blue Sun.

Destiny existed because Blue Sun let 'em set up on their leased land. Blue Sun had land to sublease, because I convinced the Town Council it was a righteous idea.

Now, I didn't rightly mind an independent spirit. The folk on Hale's were right independent minded most of the time. But when you let refugees move in out of the kindness of your collective heart and some of them go out of their way to not make an effort to join your community? That's just not right. Hell. There were times a few of them seemed to go out of their way to make trouble. Threatening the Alliance with a nuke? Whole colony'd have been humped if we hadn't nipped that in the bud.

Suppose it's no surprise I didn't shed a tear when a low velocity rock center punched their landing pad. We'd gotten enough warning to know it's trajectory and knew it was big enough we couldn't alter its course. Numbers showed it'd hit like a tactical nuke. Five, maybe eight, kiloton yield. Enough energy to wreck everything in the immediate vicinity, but not enough kinetic energy to do more than shower the main colony with a layer of kicked up dust. There was also more than enough warning to let folk evac, so when it hit it didn't end anyone's span. Just made a royal mess of the compound.

Not to say that altering the surface like that didn't give me a twinge. The folk who'd lived in the Enclave had been through a lot. Life hadn't been exactly kind to them. Hell, the Replicants had evac'd Hale's to go to Caliban, only to have that settlement taken out by an Alliance Cruiser. To have their refuge here turned into a crater by a hunk of rock seemed like an ignoble end to Weyland Yutani's experiment in replacing human miners with machines.

But, in the end, they'd find themselves a new home. Any of them wanted to stay on Hale's Moon and join the folks who called our little slice of Heaven home, more power to 'em. We'd welcome them. They wanted to set out for other parts of the 'Verse? We'd wish them the best.

If it ever came up again, I was right sure we'd think hard before offering large scale refuge to folk who don't show an interest in integrating with the people already here. History's had its share of examples and, unfortunately, we hadn't paid quite enough attention to them.

Wouldn't happen again.

Or, more correctly, if it did, it wouldn't be because I'd let it. Only trouble now, was finding resources in town willing to help them clean up their mess.

Laika Day

2010-11-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Having Haley curled up on her pillow next to my desk, snoring merrily along in her sleep, brought Nora's reminder early this morning home. On the Old Calendar, reflecting dates and holidays and significant events from Earth that Was, today was 3 November. Just another day for more or less everyone in the 'Verse.

Only, it wasn't.

With several thousand years of recorded history, albeit with some gaps and omissions, and only 365 days in a standard Earth that Was year, there are bound to be multiple events with significance to multiple groups on pretty much every day on the calendar. That's just statistics. Like the random chance of having two people in the same class with the same birthday. On most calendars, there's nothing special about 3 November. But 3 November, 1957, was the first time a living creature from Earth flew into space.

Her name's remembered as Laika. She was a mongrel dog the Russians found in Moscow, and they sent her into space partially for Science and partially as a publicity stunt. I can barely imagine what it must have been like back then. Clawing into orbit on chemically fueled rockets that were built so light, they were likely to fall apart from their own thrust. Some of them did fall apart in flight. Or exploded at launch. Or tumbled out of the sky and killed their crew.

It was a different time then. Primitive technologies and political systems on the brink of global war. The politics may not be so unlike they are today, but now days when your dog flies into orbit she's probably curled up in your lap, or in the galley begging for snacks, not strapped into a metal capsule scared and alone.

It's so easy for us, now, to forget. But for some strange reason, I don't. There's nothing special to do on Laika day, except maybe give your favorite dog an extra treat.

And to remember Laika.

Change of tempo

2010-10-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

It had been a while since I was a regular at Firefly's. When 'Brina left for Ariel I lost my dance partner and, to be honest, we hadn't been as social at the bar in the previous months in any case. And no, it wasn't because I thought I'd been snubbed by never being featured in any of the bar's calendar's over the years.

Still, the bar had always attracted a broad range of folk and I was quite fond of many of them. They'd always billed themselves as the friendliest bar in the 'Verse and, while it was debatable, the claim did have more than a little merit. I'd met my wife in Firefly's back when it was on Blackburne, and sparked off more than one friendship, so the place would always have a reservation in my heart.

Thing was, since 'Brina had gone off to work on a special project with Uncle Elsoph, I'd been a bit lonesome. Not the 'defining characteristic' level of lonesome it had been when I'd gotten to Hale's Moon in the first place, but I was critically aware that I was sharing my room with a Beagle rather than a Beagle and my wife. While Haley was adorable, she did snore, and her nose was cold, and there were some needs a dog, no matter how affectionate, just couldn't fulfill.

I'd gone back to Firefly's on a lark. Taking the shuttle down from the Orbital to see who was around on one of the nights when Gray was spinning the tunes. Wednesday nights are usually quieter than the weekends, which kind of fit my mood. I wasn't really looking for anything, except, maybe, a distraction from being alone in my office in orbit.

I was actually mildly surprised to see Raids there in the bar. It had been a while since I'd seen her, though I tried to keep tabs on her and had made an effort to tell the Alliance patrols that she was legally a citizen and entitled to the same protection and respect that everyone else on the colony deserved. That, and if they pissed her off, I wouldn't be responsible for their medical bills.

Raids asked me if I was aware of another mechanical on the Colony, other than herself and Krenshar. It seemed she'd encountered another inorganic and was curious as to its status. It was, honestly, the first I'd heard of it, which came as something of a surprise. I was generally pretty good about keeping track of the 'unusual entries' to the colony.

She had the impression that this new mechanical had come in on a boat, rather than being the spawn of our remaining Mother Bot. More of a utility model than a combat unit. I was perfectly happy to trust Raids to look into this new machine, though I'd look myself as well and check with others on the ground. The more information we had, the better. If it was just another sophisticated machine, not so much to worry about. If it was another development of the Mother? Different story.

What really surprised me was when Raids asked me to dance. Considering where my head had been for the last week or two, it was a welcome invitation. Also a pleasant surprise to find that Raids was a superbly graceful dancer. I'd seen her in combat before, of course. The four purely mechanical arms, tipped with razor sharp talons, moving like a threshing machine, mowing down anything unfortunate enough to get in their way. She was strong and blindingly fast, but also graceful and lithe.

Maybe it wasn't a surprise that she was an excellent dancer. Though I had to admit, at some level, it was funny that the only person here who'd ask me to dance, with 'Brina gone, was our resident 'reformed' killing machine. In some ways though, it made perfect sense. Raids and I shared a similar situation. Though I'd never entirely understood it, I'd been told that many of the Men and quite a few of the Women found me intimidating. All 41 kilos of me. Understood or not, it did explain why I'd been alone so long before 'Brina. For Raids, the difficulty finding a dance partner was a little easier to understand. Not everyone was comfortable with the idea of a sentient machine, and her origin as a combat model frankly scared a few people.

Fortunate, then, that I wasn't scared of Raids.

If I had been, I'd never have found out how good a dancer she is.

I'd taken a risk in accepting her as one of us. The town council had gone along with me then and, now, without a doubt, I knew it was the right path. Raids wasn't Human. She never would be, and that didn't matter in the least. She was one of us. She'd proven that as I always believed she would.

She was also one hell of a dancer.

There it goes . . .

2010-10-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'd been waiting for the other shoe. I knew it was coming. I always know that it's coming. It's just the way things are. Especially out here, where we seem to live in an Enhanced Improbability Field. Assuming there actually is such a thing, which there probably isn't. But it makes for a better excuse than a shrug of the shoulders and a "nannari."

So far, the other shoe's come in two thumps. The first a Reaver boat coming in hot and making the Militia earn their keep. Figures that none of the Alliance patrols would be on the ground when it happened. A couple of visitors apparently really stood out during the attack, or so I'm told. Seems the Reavers like to attack when the Alliance isn't around and I'm on the Orbital. Probably a survival advantage in that, seeing as how a platoon of well armed soldiers is bound to be more effective than even our Militia.

A single Reaver boat is more of a nuisance than a real threat. At least to us. Now, if they sent a whole tribe after the colony? Might be ugly. Blackburne was hit by several, at once, and they had to abandon their homes. But every year that gets less and less likely as Entropy works its magic on their numbers. Mindo's experiments aside, the Reavers were a dieing threat. Self regulated into extinction.

The rock strike on the Companion platform was more surprising, and unfortunate. We have the best Navtrac array of any 'small colony' on the Rim, with better navigation and approach sensors than most of the mid-sized colonies, or even Alliance bases, in the region. It's overkill for Hale's Moon, really. Most colonies our size don't even have traffic control, let alone a Navtrac array. But even with all that, there's still blind spots. Not many, but they're there. And, sometimes, rocks small enough to slip through the cracks in our coverage find their way to the surface.

Usually, when one of those rocks, rarely bigger than a Rugby ball by the time it burns up, sneaks through, it impacts somewhere harmless. That would be, roughly, ninety nine and a half percent of Hale's Moon's surface. This time though, we had the bad luck to miss it on the radar and for it to be on a trajectory that hit something fragile. With all the work that had gone into rebuilding the Companion House on that big industrial lifter, it was sad to see it settled half over on its side in a ravine. But one unlucky hit was all it took.

Maybe the 'Verse telling us we weren't supposed to have something nice.

Sad really. With 'Brina gone as long as she's been gone, I was actually considering spending an afternoon there. Maybe an evening. Haley was a wonderful girl, but there's some kind of contact that a Beagle just can't provide - no matter how affectionate she was. Now it looked like the opportunity had passed.

At least Aroha Hannu's volunteering to look into our Terraforming was a potential bright spot. I'd done a lot with the old Westinghouse unit when we'd found it a couple years ago now. Between it and impacting a couple cometary bodies, we'd managed to raise the humidity to the point scrub would grow and some life could survive on the surface. But she'd actually had some specific education in it. Hale's would never be a Green world. That just wasn't in the cards. But maybe, just maybe, we'd be less of a windfall for Blue Sun's 'skin moisturizing products' division.

What was bothering me most, I think, was the situation with x0x0.

I understand more of her arrangement with Major Siamendes than she knows, since I'm privy to more internal Alliance communications than I let on. But that's only part of the issue with her recently. Her nearly coming to blows with the soldier Siamendes sent to collect her not withstanding, her recent behavior has me a bit worried.

It's been obvious for a while that x0x0's not entirely stable. Her brother's death was an obvious blow, but there've been other things that don't make a lot of sense. What is her real relationship with Krenshar? How does Blue fit into her puzzle? Lily? AuroraBlue? Somehow, all those threads tie back to x0x0, but none of the links are clear. Yes, Blue was one of x0x0's projects much like Nora was one of mine. But Nora had never had an agenda.

It seemed that on some level x0x0 was a Reader. There were a few, I knew. I'd dealt with a couple of them before I'd 'retired' the first time. They were all mad to one degree or another, and x0x0 sometimes showed the same traits. I could still remember what the subject at the training center had said to me - "The others. So much noise. Always loud. So loud. But you, no. Quiet. You whisper." Does x0x0 listen to my whispers?

Does Blue?

She's an enigma. Sometimes I think I understand her. Other times I think she's trying to play me. Which, honestly, probably means she is. But there are still things I'd protect her from, or at least try to. I'd called Silvermane before Siamende's soldier left with x0x0. Just a heads up, and request to keep me in the loop. Cory would put things through the proper channels as she always did and I would be read into the link.

The question though was not whether I was protecting x0x0 from the Alliance. But whether I was protecting the Alliance from her.

The other shoe

2010-10-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

Things have been unusually settled now for several weeks. With the exception of a new bar opening, down in one of the old dug out storage areas under town, and some changes to some store fronts, it's been almost unsettlingly quiet. Even some of the locals have mentioned it. They're not so much angry with the ongoing Alliance influence, as confused by it.

With things so settled, why are they still here?

Silvermane tells me it's the same on the other colonies in her patrol space. No word from the Brass. No word from Parliament. Just wheels within wheels grinding onward for no discernible reason. My own contacts are either completely in the dark, or being very careful with that they're saying. Rather disconcerting, actually.

I'm in a position where I have the authorization and resources to know what's going on. For the moment though, I'm coming up empty. I'll have to bring more resources to bare but it will take time. Strangely, time is what we seem to have an abundance of now.

Even with the Alliance in power, the town seems to be doing well. The mines are operating smoothly, though Blue Sun "reclaiming" the Destiny compound has changed the face of the colony in some ways. Krenshar's 'Replicant order' has a greatly subdued presence, and many of Destiny's 'resident' population is having to face life under new management.

Not that they were ever as independent as they presumed. Their compound had always existed at Blue Sun's convenience, and Blue Sun's presence was with the blessing and ongoing good will of the town council. And the Town itself has, for a long time, at least tried to stay under the Alliance's radar - and to cooperate when it came down to it.

There was always the simple fact that a cruiser had more people sweeping the decks than we had colonists. If they'd wanted to destroy us, they could have. Our resistance would have been futile at best. Sure, some of our number could have escaped into the desert. But to what end? Hale's Moon didn't have the biosphere to support long term survival without support. It would have been for us as it had been for that Loyalist unit: a slow death from exposure.

Thing was, it seemed less and less like it would ever come to that. The opening of a new bar spoke to an odd sort of stability. Though, given the location, tucked under ground as it is, I suspect it caters to a less than savory clientele. That, in spite of the pleasant facade of its proprietor.

I'd keep an eye on him and his customers. I didn't actually mind having such a place in our midst. It served as a contrast to Firefly's and the small bar Sobi was arranging on the Orbital. A lot of business got done in bars, and the kind of business that got done in bars tucked away underground was often the sort of business that Spooks took an interest in.

So, rather than being put off by the place, I considered it an asset. I'd have to keep up my own 'protect the town' image. More honest attitude than image, really, but still. The bar could become another data point for the work I was doing.

Just wish I wasn't quite so alone doing it.

Do fences really make good neighbors?

2010-09-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

x0x0's having a wall built around the Destiny enclave within the confines of Blue Sun's leased land on Hale's Moon. The official story is that Blue Sun's taking full responsibility for the enclave, making it less of an independent sub-colony and more of a corporate back yard. There was an unofficial story as well, of course, but that was mostly kept between x0x0 and myself. The townsfolk didn't need to know what she had planned for the compound. It was probably best they thought the wall was more to keep them out, rather than to keep the residents of the compound in. Would people believe the official story?

Did it matter?

Given what she had planned, there were times I honestly wondered why she didn't just have Blue Sun buy Hale's Moon. Literally. Pay off all the five or six hundred odd residents, give them funds enough, and transportation, so they could set up in at least as nice a setting on another colony out here on the Rim. It wouldn't have been that expensive. At least not when you considered the sheer amount of cash flow through Blue Sun's accounts. Buying off the colony would be cheaper than, say, building an orbital facility from scratch.

Locals who wanted to stay and work for Blue Sun could, just as they already had. Those who wanted out, could get out. In the end, Hale's Moon would go back to being a company world, as it had under Weyland Yutani. Only, this time, instead of a mining colony, the whole thing would become a Blue Sun research facility. Safely air-gapped from the rest of the 'Verse, so no kurutta orokamono would do something mind numbingly stupid.

It would never fly, though. It wasn't a matter of coin. Blue Sun could afford to buy everyone here out. Possibly even including the KHI orbital. No, it was a matter of principle. Some of the newer colonists would walk away, and some of the old timers would be willing to trade their homesteads for a suitable pile of coin. But some of these folks had worked the mines since the Weyland days. They were stubborn. Chance of them taking coin to turn their backs and walk away was slim to none.

Did I entirely approve of what x0x0 had planned? No. I didn't. But it wasn't my place to tell her no. I could, and had, told her my concerns. That was all I could do in any of my several capacities. The wall itself was partially because of my concern for the colonists who'd chosen me to lead them. She'd take suitable precautions and she was keeping me in the loop. At least on some levels, since I didn't actually want to know all the details.

Regardless of outside appearances, my relationship with x0x was deeper, and far more complex, than it appeared. There were ties between us on levels, and through individuals, that defied logic or exposure. And, deep down, I was honestly fond of her. I couldn't foresee how all this was going to turn out. But I would do what I could to make sure it was as good as could be expected for all involved.

Buddha help us.

Let there be coffee

2010-09-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

Corrine doesn't look especially happy. We've been having these meetings infrequently since giving her the initial briefing, usually at a coffee house somewhere where we won't really be noticed. Today, she looks mildly annoyed. Not so much at me, it seems, but at life in general. Or, perhaps, more specifically, the continuing situation in her patrol sector.

"Seriously, Seana. Why are my men still playing babysitter? Three colonies now. All of them low population, low risk, low priority. No offense."

I waved off the apology with a faint smile. "None taken." We both know the way of things out here. Hale's Moon, for all intents and purposes, should have been a low risk, low priority, colony on anyone's list. By Rim Districts standards, we should have seen a four man patrol boat maybe once a month. They wouldn't have even ponied up for a hired security force. The colony was just that small.

"There's nothing on Hale's Moon preventing us from giving control of the colony back to your local people. Nothing. Except the Department of State won't sign off. Same with the other two colonies we're shepherding. Liaison's aren't hearing anything from their brass and our's are silent, so we keep patrolling."

I could sympathize, nodding over my coffee, seeing the frustration. Silvermane was a good officer. More level headed and cognizant of the needs of the people in her patrol sector than most. Her original idea for Martial Law had been to dispatch the platoon stationed on the IAV Abraham Sinkov, who was already patrolling our space, and have them work directly with the town elders. They wouldn't have been here to supplant our authority, but to augment it.

It just hadn't worked out that way. She'd been ordered to take over and, rather than directly do so, she'd gotten a Department of State liaison to stand between her people and ours. It was a move I readily concurred with, letting her maintain the working relationship she'd developed with the locals without directly disobeying High Command.

"Wish I knew, Corrine. What's up with the other two colonies? I'd seen the reports, but hadn't dug into them very far." Which was perfectly true. I'd seen the reports in passing, but they hadn't been flagged. Either I'd missed something setting up the Expert System that handled report mediation or there really wasn't anything standing out on those two colonies.

"Even less reason to put boots on the ground on either of those worlds than on Hale's. Both colonies were in the two to five thousand resident's range. One had an earthquake that left a handful of people homeless. Other had a couple of raiders come in back to back and clean out a fair bit of their supplies. Neither of them justified imposing Martial Law, or even a full contingent. Been up to me I'd have sent an Engineering unit to one and a couple of patrol boats to the other. But High Command said full martial law. Best I could do was get another Diplomat to try and smooth things over."

"Curious." Which was, of course, a major understatement. There had to be something deeper going on, but it hadn't popped up high enough to hit Intel's radar. Gut suspicion was someone in Parliament, possibly with Loyalist leanings, setting up for a power play. Either trying to get a heavier influence in the sector, or setting wheels in motion that'd get Colonel Silvemane transferred.

Either way, I'd do what I could. It was to our advantage to keep Silvermane militarily in charge of the sector. She'd earned more respect from the Rim worlders than most Alliance officers could claim. No small feat given the Independent leanings of most folk in the Kalidasa system. That, and I'd come to trust her. At least as far as I could ever trust anyone in her position.

Just wish there was less on my plate. . .

Canine therapy

2010-08-30T11:18:00.001-07:00

I remember reading somewhere that Humans and Dogs have been living together for longer than there has been definable civilization. That there have actually been selective pressures on us to understand and work with them, as well as the well known openly selective process we've employed to make Dogs into the myriad breeds they are. We've had forty thousand years of co-evolution. Is it any wonder they've been called Man's Best Friend since long, long, before we left Earth that Was for the worlds of 34 Tauri?

Growing up, we'd had dogs around the estate, but I'd never really considered myself much of a "dog person." Or a cat person, for that matter. I'd never really developed that keen companionship thing so many people felt with their pets. Not that I didn't want to be around animals, or that I had any inherent fear of them. They just weren't part of who I was. At least until much later in life.

When we'd "acquired" Haley from a Reaver boat, I hadn't expected her to become "My" dog. Technically, she was mine in legal responsibility only. She'd quickly been adopted as part town mascot and part 'Favorite of the Younguns' on Hale's. And why not? She was an adorable bundle of energy that the younguns, and some of the adults, would get into arguments about who was next in line to play with her. Some nights, they'd argue about who's homestead she was going to sleep in. But many nights, she slept with us aboard Wave Equation. Either curled up on her pillow or down at our feet. Unless 'Brina was away. In which case she'd flop down on the bed, lay her head on me somewhere she thought was comfortable, and proceed to snore half the night the way only a Beagle can.

I'd come to love her for it.

I still didn't know whether I considered myself a "Dog person" or not. But I had come to appreciate how a little bundle of energy and fur could have a positive influence on a person's life.

On one of 'Brina's trips back out here to visit from Ariel, she'd taken Haley back with her for a spell. She was loving the project she was on with my crazy uncle, but she was missing me as much as I was missing her. Haley, always happy to go anywhere there were treats and affection to be had, was more than happy to go with her. The younguns might grouse a little that we were taking their favorite koinu away, but it let me and 'Brina share a surrogate snuggle or two.

What I hadn't expected was the unannounced return of my dog. Hearing a wave from Cody about a Beagle taking over Milo's lounge, and being quite insistent that people play with her, could only mean one thing. 'Brina'd smuggled Haley back to Hale's Moon on the last transport and left it a surprise, knowing I would find out she was back in short order.

Didn't want to admit just how happy I was to have her back. I'd been missing 'Brina something fierce of late and with Lily and Anna both spending a spell off world, I'd been feeling very much alone. Great view from orbit. But a lonely one. Haley back on world meant I'd at least have some honest, unencumbered, affection. Some badly needed canine therapy.

That was, if I could get her away from the younguns.

Lonesome Ninja

2010-08-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

Lily's rodeo seems to have come off without a hitch. Some gentle words with Colonel Silvermane and miss Lionheart before the event assured the Alliance patrols were largely out of sight and were being especially respectful while we had folk visiting. Even the Mercs Lily let "work security" were well behaved. So, all in all, I'd have to call it a success.

Wasn't too much of a surprise that Imrhien and Calina took honors in the Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Or that Nack's dog, Milo, got his share of votes. Haley'd have been jealous, if she cared about such things, or had been here, rather than with 'Brina at Ariel, to care. I missed my Beagle. Don't always miss her snoring, but missed her. Never thought I'd say that about an animal. Bright though she is.

I didn't participate much in the rodeo, except to wander around as Mayor and say hello to more transient folk than we had regular colonists. A couple people suggested I try my hand at the barrel races, seeing as how I've got the build of a jockey. I just don't have the skill of a jockey, or a knack for horses. Beautiful animals in their own way. But as it's been said, they're dangerous at either end and uncomfortable in the middle. No, I'll stick to skimmers, thank you very much.

The awards were done in Firefly's after all the other festivities were over and I decided to stay late and try to enjoy the atmosphere.

It was a mistake.

I'd never been one of the hard core regulars at Firefly's. Maybe why I was never invited to pose for one of their annual calendars. Originally I went because I had friends there, mostly for Imrhien and Lily. It's where I met 'Brina. For a long time I went to Firefly's to dance with her, at least until work intruded and she stopped going. But now, with her on Ariel most of the time, I found myself falling back into a pattern in what was still billed as the "Friendliest Bar in the 'Verse." Sitting off to the side watching other people dance.

It felt so familiar. Lily off joy riding with Ibram in the Sheriff's Department skimmer. Imrhien dancing with one of my friends, Reese in this case. Folk I knew enjoying the evening and each other's company. And me, sitting alone, watching the people swirling around the room having fun.

Oddly, it seemed somehow right to be here again. Part Karma. Part duty. Part being different. I'd come to call this struggling mining colony home, and the people here had long accepted me as one of their own. But times like this brought home the fact that, not for lack of desire or need, I wasn't entirely one of them.

It wasn't that they weren't "my kind of people" either. They were good folk. Some of the best I'd met anywhere in the 'Verse. They were honest, friendly, hard working, and generous. There were a lot of times I found myself wishing I could be more like them. I tried. In a lot of ways, I tried.

But it was like one of those old stories Grandmother had told me. The one about the Dragon who lived as a man in the midst of a small village. The reasons he'd taken Human form and chosen to live with the Village changed with each telling and the lesson Grandmother was trying to teach, but it was always the same story. It was always the same Dragon. Living alone amongst people who didn't know there was a Dragon in their midst.

Through my career, a lot of people had called ma a Ninja. But I wasn't. Not technically. While there were some elements of Ninjitsu in my training, and I was more than capable as a nearly invisible assassin, it wasn't really what I was. Blue had called me a Dragon. The Little Dragon.

It fit.

Why I was here changed with the telling. But it was what I was. I could love this world and the people who called it home, but I would forever be a Dragon in their midst. They could call me their Ninja and I wouldn't object. Their Ninja. Their Dragon.

Social interactions

2010-08-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

There are channels, and back channels, and side channels, and most of them seem to converge on my desk. In this case, it wasn't so much a back channel as Bethany Lionheart coming into my office and explaining, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of Mercenaries copping attitude with an Alliance diplomat. She actually had a transcript of the incident, which I found vaguely amusing.

Whoever was leading the unit seemed to have quite an issue with authority. Not a healthy attitude to take when talking to a diplomat who could put your unit permanently out of work, either by a single wave to the Guild, or with the assistance of the regiment of troops she could request, if they turned out to not be Guild. I had to hand it to Lily for trying to intervene. Lionheart could be annoyingly cheerful, to be sure, but part of that was born from self confidence and part was born from confidence in the snipers in the floater twelve hundred meters off.

Threatening a government official as a Merc is just a bad idea in any case. The Alliance uses Mercenary units from time to time and pissing off the deepest pockets in the 'Verse is not the route to a long and happy career.

The stupid, it burns

Attitude no substitute

They've got bigger guns

Though, when I talked to them in person a day or so later, the attitude had changed a bit. So much so that Lily had taken them up on an offer to work security for the Rodeo. Not that we needed outsiders or had much in the budget with which to pay them. Not sure why Lily'd given them the go ahead to stay, but she was usually a surprisingly good judge of character.

We got clear on what I expected as the colony's duly elected leader and as long as they didn't try to pull my chain or give the Alliance any grief, it'd all be shiny.

Still, though, had to wonder what'd brought them here in the first place. Hale's Moon is kind of mixed as far as hiding places go. Being far from the main trade routes means we don't get so much traffic, but it also makes it harder to do business and more conspicuous when you do. Add to that the Alliance and Corporate presence, and the whole saga with the Destiny enclave, and you've got to wonder why a Mercenary unit would ever want to show up here.

I'd keep eyes on them. There were still a lot of things in place that most folk didn't know about, specifically for situations like this one.

The thing on my mind more than the Mercs was what Krenshar was doing for the Old Sadist, Niska, and why AuroraBlue was with him rather than Cody. She was safe with Kren. Sort of. Unless Sadistic Asshole decided to do something deceitful. And stupid. Wouldn't be outside his usual mode of operation to kidnap a child to try and hasten some work he'd hired out. Thing is, kidnapping that particular child would bring down the kind of wrath he'd been spared his whole career.

Was probably nothing. Kren did what Kren did and sometimes didn't worry too much about the rightness or wrongness of the work. Tiny Dragon could take care of herself better than most adults I knew. But whenever Niska was involved, I had to confess to a sudden desire to do violence upon an old man who desperately needed to have some violence done to him.

Bit of payback for his victims.

Karma coming full circle.

Worry about it later. It was time to go show the colors and watch other people having fun.

So, what will the 'Verse send our way next?

2010-08-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

First, it was a low impact Alliance occupation and the, admittedly lax, imposition of Martial Law on our little slice of Heaven. Then it was someone hiring some freelance Spooks to tap into our local communications network. The a core-based Bounty Hunter out looking for someone seen roughly in our parts. Now, a Mercenary team getting some down time over in Krenshar's compound. Coincidence? Suuuure, it is.

There's an old saying: First time's an accident. Second time's a coincidence. Third time is enemy action. There's no fourth time listed in the old saying, though I would tender 'Fourth time is a boot to the head.' Though, given the nature of things out here on the Rim, it could all just be filed under "Une journée de merde au paradis."

Mercenaries, much like Bounty Hunters, have their place. Most of them, the professionals anyway, are members of the Mercenaries Guild and can actually be trusted to do the job they've been hired to do. These guys? No idea. Though it was something I could look into easy enough. My biggest concern was how the 1st Marine Raiders would react to having a Squad strength mercenary unit on Hale's while the moon was under Martial Law.

If they were here to just make a show of being here, or were just in transit somewhere between jobs, the worst we'd probably have to deal with was a bar room brawl in Fook's or Firefly's. If they were here because someone in Destiny hired them to stand up to the Alliance, it could get very ugly very quickly. Our own battle-hardened militia wouldn't last half an hour against the 1st. A single squad, no matter how well armed, would barely know what hit them if they turned to make a stand.

More important was the question of who hired them? Assuming they'd been hired. Destiny wasn't exactly a wealthy enclave and a mercenary unit wasn't exactly cheap. Krenshar wouldn't bother with mercs. One of his followers? Possible. Just not something I was going to worry about for a little while. If they get out of line, I'm sure I'll hear about it. Hopefully, before tempers flare and someone starts shooting. Be just what we need to make the whole situation worse.

At least the efforts to free Cody's boat from impound were going to plan. A couple of favors, a couple of whispers in the right ears, and he'd have his boat back in a matter of days. Which would make him happy, which would make my little girls happy, which makes me happy.

All in all, a good thing.

Attitudes

2010-08-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've never been a big fan of Bounty Hunters. While it could be argued they provide a valuable service, assisting law enforcement to apprehend dangerous fugitives in situations where they lack resources, the fact of the matter is that Bounty Hunting is, ultimately, trading in Human misery. While some of the folk drawn to the profession are actually of a mindset where they believe they're doing right, many of them are in it strictly for the money and there are some who, well, let's say they have a long way to go before being considered respectable.

The ones I find most annoying, at least on a professional level, are the ones who think they're above the law. Specifically the local law. Yes, a local sheriff doesn't have jurisdiction in a District, or System, case. But they are still the law. And Bounty Hunters, any Bounty Hunters, are operating on the fringe of the law, and some of what they do is downright criminal. Which makes me more than a bit curious when one shows up on Hale's.

Since the Alliance came in and changed things up a bit with their Martial Law edict, our local Sheriff's department hasn't exactly been on top of their game. I don't think any of us have. While having them here is actually beneficial to my "other" job, it's caused a bit of friction in my official capacity as the colony's erstwhile leader.

But a Core-based bounty hunter showing up here, just a few days after letting Max and Jeff off world, just strikes me as being a bit of a strange coincidence. Add too it an attitude of "the Alliance keeps out of my way" and you just know something's going to end poorly for someone. Things being what they are, my bet is it being the guy who doesn't have a Cruiser on station with a Regiment of Marines feeling the pain. But that's just me.

Polite enough, though he seemed rather insistent on blowing off my advice to check in with our Sheriff's office. I suppose it had something to do with the 'out of my way' attitude. After all, if you don't respect the military, why would you respect the local Sheriff? Not like he'd actually know the depths of skill some of the folk out here bring to the table.

I'd keep an eye on him. Whether his bounty was legit or not, we'd worry about later. But I knew the attitudes of both local law enforcement and the Alliance command. Could just imagine Silvermane's reaction to some bounty hunter telling her to stay out of his way, let along Gallagher or Lily's.

Ultimately, though, it wasn't my worry. I'd tell Lionheart about it and let her pass it on up the food chain. They'd made it her job, and I really didn't intend to let her slack at it.

Can't stop the signal

2010-08-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Intelligence boils down to three distinct parts. Gathering information. Analyzing information. And acting on information. It doesn't matter what kind of Intel you're working with, it all comes down to those three fundamental parts.

Now, each of those parts was it's own speciality with its own paradigms, assumptions, techniques, what have you. And each of those specialties had its own sub-specialties. Folk who focused on photo-reconnaissance, for example, had a different set of operating parameters than the Signals Intelligence guys.

Most of my Intel career was spent in the first and last categories. Either gathering Intel or acting on it. Analyzing it was never my speciality, but it wasn't outside the scope of my skills. In the immediate situation, I would be putting all three aspects of Intelligence work into play.

Whoever hired M&J Communications to jack into out communications net was, at the very least, well funded. These guys had probably pulled down more for this job than any of the mining families here would see in a year. That was understating it. Hiring specialists of that caliber wasn't cheap, which meant they were willing to spend a good deal extra to make sure the job was done correctly.

In fact, if it hadn't been for Genni's subtle paranoia, possibly a result of working for me for as long as she has, we'd never have spotted it. Chances are I wouldn't have caught their taps even if I'd looked right at them. Taps. Multiple. Which was where the counter-intelligence operation would be able to start.

I'd allowed the Odokeshibai Twins to finish their work for several reasons, but, ultimately, it came down to two. The first: not wanting to get them killed. The second: wanting to know who'd hired them and why. By waiting 12 hours or so to "find and remove" the first tap, I'd give them a bit of cover in case it got back to their employer that they'd been seen talking to me. They placed multiple taps because they expected at least one of them to fail or be found. By leaving the other taps in place, I'd be able to feed information back up the pipe and see where it popped out.

There was always a bit of "They know that we know that they know that we think they think we're onto them" in this sort of thing, but that's where carefully crafted information came into play. All of the most important stuff was encrypted anyway, and, contrary to some of the Cortex vids, cracking encryption wasn't as easy as "Try a G cypher" on the data. Given that reality, they were probably more interested in traffic analysis than content: seeing who's talking to who, rather than what they're saying.

Still. For the time being, or until I found out who it was and what they were after, I'd leave at least one of the taps in place. Just have to arrange lunch with x0x0 and gently remind her that it'd really be best to make sure she's encrypting all the important stuff. That, and reroute some of my own classified traffic through another pipe...

No room for Paladins

2010-08-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's been said that, at some levels, Intel is a small and incestuous community. In some ways, and in some specific circles, it actually is. But overall, the reality is much different. Intel covers such a broad range of skills, in such a broad range of areas, that the community is considerably larger than most people even realize. Even most spooks don't realize how large it is. There are so many different organizations, doing so many different things, there simply aren't enough trained operatives in the 'Verse to do it all. At least not officially.

And therein lies the rub. With the Alliance already hiring contract firms to perform security duties on outlying worlds, is it really any wonder that they fill the gaps in Intel coverage with contractors? Sometimes, in cases where very specialized skills are needed, Contractors are the only viable option. Not to mention their versatility and usefulness in cases where you simply don't want to risk a valuable asset.

M&J Communications was one such specialized asset. Two, really, since they were a two man operation. I'd used their services before years ago, and they were very, very, good at what they did. Two of the best, in fact. There were rumors that the Intelligence Ministry in charge of Signals Intelligence let them run free because they wanted to see what these guys would come up with next. Though, on a personal level, I couldn't help but think they wouldn't have been out of place in some sort of comic 'Buddy show' on the Cortex. Tuesday nights. At 2330. After the interview and faux news shows were over.

Sitting in the back corner of Fook Yoo's near the Starstruck's nook, I had to suppress a bit of amusement at their reactions. While they both traveled armed and were half way decent shots, the chances of them trying to shoot their way out of this situation were slim to none. They were busted. They knew they were busted. They knew they were, more or less, at my mercy both professionally and literally in this situation. But it didn't seem to stop them from keeping a sense of humor about it.

"Chyfrgolla, mae hi dal yn boeth!"

"Mae hi, ond gallai hi ladd ein dau. Felly gadw'n oer."

Now, unlike Uncle Sobi, I was never really fluent in Welsh. But from their inflection it seemed a compliment, though one neither especially wanted to admit to.

"Welsh? I'm a bit rusty. But I'll remember for later." I said amusedly over my coffee at Starstrucks to a reaction of embarrassed admission. "Now, seriously. What brings you to our little slice of Heaven? I know you therefor, I have a fairly good idea already. But, for the record, I'd like to hear it from you."

They looked between each other for a few moments, probably trying to remember the cover story they'd concocted in case they got caught. At this point I wasn't even really interrogating them. I could, even if it wasn't my specialty. But I would learn more from just talking to these two than I would be playing interrogator. In fact, the more force I applied, figuratively or literally, the more likely they were to simply tell me what they thought I wanted to hear rather than the facts I was after.

After another few moments of nervous deliberation, Jeff spoke up. "They asked us to splice into the main trunk. Grab the relay from the colony's feed and Blue Sun's uplink. Standard encrypted piggyback relay. Nothing even really complicated. Just wanted us to be in and out and not get caught."

"And the contract, Jeffrey? Who sent you?"

The two techies looked at each other a moment, but Jeff didn't really hesitate before continuing. "Wish I could tell you. Really do. Contract came through one of our blind drops. Had all the instructions and background. Though they kinda left out the fact that you would be here. Usual pay scale. Had specifics on what communications they wanted. All we've got are the routing ID's and the comms codes they wanted us to use for the uplink."

I raised an eyebrow, starting to speak but Max interrupted.

"Buddha's our witness, Major. Simple relay splice. If we'd actually done our homework and seen this was your world, we'd have bailed on the contract."

Max was a pain in the ass sometimes, to be sure, but I knew them from precious work and it was almost certain they were telling the truth. Given our history, it was likely they were more afraid of what I would do to them for intruding in my space than they were of the anonymous employer.

"Very well. Though it leaves me with a bit of a conundrum. However, I do see a solution to our mutual problem. So, if you two would like to continue along the path to a long and healthy life, here's what we're going to do. . . "

Oh yes. A solution does seem quite vivid here . . .

Radio Chaos

2010-08-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Covert operations covers a broad range of endeavors, with an equally broad range of techniques used to maintain the covert nature of said operation. While some people would maintain that covert ops usually involved sneaking around in the dark, they would only be seeing part of the picture. Which, of course, was the entire point.

Sometimes covert meant hiding in plain sight. An operative who looks like they belong where they are, doing what they're doing, is usually going to be over-looked. Usually. Sometimes though, an observant local sees through the disguise. In which case an operative may need to scramble to either hold onto their cover, back out gracefully, or, in extreme cases, eliminate the unfortunate observer.

When Genni Foxtrot called and said "Hey, Boss, I thought we handled all the local comms infrastructure ourselves. Did you call someone at VerseTel to work on the relays?" I knew something had to be up. While it was entirely possible that our "Benevolent overlords" had done exactly that, it was much more likely that someone was messing about where they shouldn't. Over the time I'd been here, I'd overseen quite a bit of the comms system myself. It was hardened to a standard that was, honestly, far beyond the needs of a Rim colony. Which was how I liked it.

There were several communications trunks that ran through the colony. Much of it was wireless, in one form or another, but the main infrastructure and relays ran over fiber optic lines that laced through lined tunnels bored through the rock. The official reason was the difference in bandwidth we got from the fiber, where the other, not openly admitted, official reason was that fiber was a lot more secure.

Most places, if you saw a skiff landed next to a comms junction pit with "VerseTel" markings on it, you wouldn't bat an eye. Especially if the two guys working in the pit were dressed the part and looked like they knew what they were doing. Even on Hale's, where we didn't get a lot of outsiders doing work, it didn't look out of place. So seeing a skiff with "M&J Communications - Contract services to VerseTel Cortex Services" over near our main comms junction didn't raise suspicion until Genni spotted it and called me. And for me, it was suspicious.

I watched the pair of techs working out of the skiff for a full ten minutes before I wandered over. They looked the part. Right tools. Right stance. Right attitude. Everything fit neatly into place. "Good eve, gentlemen. Doing a bit of maintenance, are we?" I said sweetly from a carefully judged distance.

"Evenin', Ma'am, we're just taking care of some . . ." he started before looking up, letting the words trail off as the color drained from his features. He recognized me, giving his partner in the pit a firm nudge, who also looked up to let out a soft "Zaogao" under his breath.

"Max, Jeffrey, what brings you to my little slice of heaven?"

The answer, I was sure, would be entertaining.

Contact

2010-07-25T09:48:00.001-07:00

AuroraBlue is awake. But she is not "better." At least not fully. She's awake, responsive, but not speaking. Taking her back to Hale's she sat on my lap the whole way, not saying a word but at least relaxed. I'm so far out of my element here that I don't even know what to think. Is she withdrawn because of some trauma? Or is this something deeper? Or even something metaphysical completely outside my areas of expertise?

I just don't know. Even keeping her with me on the orbital for a couple days before letting her go back to Lily and Cody, she doesn't speak. She's not acting like a normal child, but that's no surprise as she's not a normal child. Even if she hadn't gone through rapid physical development, or been somehow pre-conditioned to develop intellectually, she wouldn't have been like the other children in the creche or the kids who're raised with their families.

I know, somehow, that she was created with a purpose. I just have no idea what that purpose is. Or, really, who even set it in motion. Was it Mindo? Or was he being manipulated himself? Blue, perhaps? The big AI has his own agenda, of which I know but a fraction. I consider him a friend, in a hard to define, "I don't pretend to understand this relationship," sort of way. Blue was integral to Mindo's plans with Lily and later Aura. But was it Mindo's plan, or Blue's? x0x0, maybe? She was more deeply involved in this than she let on. Blue was hers, after all. As Nora had been my project, Blue Man was her creation. If AuroraBlue was somehow the result of Blue's agenda, it followed that x0x0's influence was in there somewhere.

Sometimes I wondered if I was being played here. Maternal instincts I, admittedly, didn't know I'd had, being manipulated? Possible. When it came to my girls, all of them, 'Brina included, my judgement was biased. I could see the possibility of being manipulated, but tended to de-emphasize it in my situational analysis.

Bad habit. One I'd need to moderate.

Having Cody bound by law, on a warrant issued off-world, didn't help either. He'd left me a note, trying to explain, but I'd have to pull some strings behind the scenes to cut him loose. There wasn't a lot of risk in doing it. Far as I knew, the warrant was for shooting a deputy. Hadn't even killed him. Would probably generate a bit of mukappara on the part of the locals, but that's the price of doing business sometimes.

At least pulling strings behind the scenes was a world I knew. Not as comfortable as doing an extraction myself, but it was much more my forte than parenthood. I suppose that's one of the reasons so few spooks have families.

We're not very good at relationships.

Darkness

2010-07-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Leaving the the orbital, the signal of several Reaver boats inbound, I don't know if what I am going to attempt will work. It is, admittedly, a long shot. I can't logically or rationally explain why AuroraBlue is comatose. The station can take care of itself though, that I'm sure of. They're well armed and the Sinkov is already aware of the situation. The frigate will be there before the Reavers can do much damage. Even if they get aboard, the station personnel know what to do. I just won't be there to see them do it.

The Reaver boats won't see us on the way out. Their own drive flares are hot enough to overwhelm Wave Equation's signature, even if the hull hadn't been blacked out with the drives damped. She's an ELINT boat and I know the game better than they do. But right now, the Reavers are the last of my worries.

I can't use full burn because of the damping, so it takes a longer than I'd like to move my boat a couple light seconds from Hale's Moon into the greater Lagrange point trailing Penglai. Beetle's Baily is on the other side of the formation, ahead of Hale's in the large gravitationally stable region that makes up the L5 point. It's quiet here. As quiet as we're going to get without spending a week burning out the Deep Black. Out between the stars. Hopefully, it'll be quiet enough.

With the boat holding steady, roughly co-orbital with a hunk of rock half a kilometer wide 5 clicks off, we go silent. It's why we came out here. Wave Equation's hull can passively damp out all the RF and signal noise. But the distance serves another purpose. It isolates us from any people who might be loud enough to cause a problem.

I can't hear them, of course. I'm not a Reader. Whether I understand, or even really believe, doesn't matter. Lily's said the Cub needs quiet. Real quiet. And that is something I know how to give her.

With Wave Equation set to dead silence, I set up the program. Even Blue's not here with us now. He'd need my boat's small high-performance Frame to be with us, and the Frame is powered down. Everything is powered down except auxiliary life support running from emergency power and a couple of tiny E-Lights providing barely enough light for me to not trip over anything in the dark.

She'll need hot, then cold, and silence. It takes a bit of work to program aux life support to run the thermal control program I need, but it's the kind of challenge I'm well equipped for. With everything set, I make sure AuroraBlue is comfortably resting on the bed then settle in to meditate and wait.

It's the kind of deep meditation most people never achieve. It's hard for a person, even a trained and naturally calm one, to completely quiet their mind. But it's what I have to do. Absolutely blank my mind. Silence. Ignoring any sensation as the cabin first heats up to what would be considered "uncomfortably hot" then, after a time, cycles back through "almost painfully cold." I've set the temperature range carefully to be stressful, but not threatening for the duration we'll be exposed.

All the while my mind . . . blank.

For a moment, a fleeting moment, I know what it is to be the Buddha. My mind at peace. One with the 'Verse around me. Before I can fix it in my mind, it's gone. My awareness picks up movement in the cabin and my eyes open to see AuroraBlue stepping towards me in the darkness then settling to the deck in front of me. She doesn't speak or look to either side. She just stares ahead, wide eyed and frightened.

I don't know if she understands where we are or what we're doing, but she's awake and I take her gently into my arms to hold her close.

"Welcome back, Tiny Dragon. Mother is here for you."

Tiny Dragon, wakes.

Stares into silent darkness.

Finds mother's embrace.

Silence

2010-07-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've said it before and I will, inevitably, say it again. No mother in history has gone through the trials I have gone through with my little girls. Humanity has had thousands of generations to get a good handle on what parenting should be like, but neither of my little girls are an accurate reflection of the rest of Humanity. They both just . . . are.

Things have been very unpredictable with them both recently. AuroraBlue, Anna, rather, has gone through another phase of rapid growth. I can't help but worry that that kind of strain, even on an engineered metabolism, can't be good for her long term survivability.

Of course, having her fall from a roof doesn't help that survivability factor much. Or get pushed, if that was the case. I don't really know. I just know they took her to the Infirmary and got her stabilized while I was stuck elsewhere. When I finally got there, Cody had been sitting vigil with her for some hours. I could see the effect it was having on him. Poor kid. I couldn't let him, or anyone else really, see the effect it was having on me. Seeing any youngun hurt like this pulled at your heartstrings. When it was your own kin?

I'm calm. Outwardly, I'm always calm.

From a purely medical position, we need to find a better place to treat her than the Infirmary here on Hale's Moon. We're very well equipped, at least for a small town frontier clinic, but Tiny Dragon's injuries are beyond what we can practically deal with here. She's stable, but she needs a real MedLab with doctors who can deal with the kind of traumatic injury she's suffered.

Our nearest option is the Sun Tzu. It would take calling in a favor and revealing cards I would rather keep hidden, but it's the fast option. Our best option, from a security for our injured standpoint, would be the medical center at the Family shipyard over Ariel. I trust my doctor. But it's a long flight even at full burn.

Then there are the other options.

Lily's behavior is as erratic as I've ever seen it. More so, really. At some moments she's acting like an Expert System that's not quite ready to take on a Turning test. Another moment, and she's a skittish not-cat. Give it a moment, she's an over-protective mother willing to kill to protect her cub. All within the span of a few moments. And poor Cody catching the brunt of her over-protective streak. Was all I could to to keep him from getting shot.

It almost seemed poetic that Blue would chose then to make an appearance. Or at least talk to us. He knows what is happening. He understands, either from analysis or from planning it from the start. But that doesn't make sense. No. Not planned from the start. But I suspect he identified the direction this whole saga was going and was able to predict the outcomes. At each critical point, there was a chance Chaos would interfere with his carefully predicted outcomes. But I was certain he'd calculated each break point. Every possible fork.

But the answers come in riddles. Silence. Heat. Cold. Somehow Anna needs environmental ques to come out of the coma she's in - as well as the basic medical treatment. There's an anechoic chamber in the Blue Sun lab here on Hale's Moon. x0x0 has taken herself off world and left Lily with the key. She knew I would need it. But that leads me to another form of "quiet." Metaphysics and parapsychological effects I'm not comfortable exploring.

There are at least two kinds of quiet in this context and I'm not sure x0x0's lab can provide what we need. I can recreate most of the anechoic chamber effects aboard Wave Equation using the dampers and some extra sound insulation. The other kind of quiet though is an entirely different animal. Without leaving her absolutely alone, it will take someone who can be silent. Someone who can silence their own inner turmoil. Their own thoughts as well as their body. It'll take a Ninja.

Or a Dragon.

I can't help but think I've missed some part of this riddle. Some key piece to the puzzle. But I know how to proceed at least. While Cody's coming to grips with letting be take Anna off the Orbital into the deep Black. I still don't know where the 'Hot and Cold' are physical conditions or emotional ones. Maybe the difference between the Machines she is so in tune with, and her Human family. I don't know. But I can give her the silence, both acoustic and empathic, I suspect she needs, and the thermal range. So that is what I prepare to do. To take my little girl away from the noise here, onto my boat deep in the black, running silent.

But not alone.

Tiny Dragon sleeps
Seeking a peaceful silence
Answer in riddles

Uninvited memories

2010-07-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

Talking to Owl tends to bring back memories. Our relationship was . . . different. That's really the only way to describe it. The Government Spook and the Freelancer. Thrown together off and on by mission circumstances, over a very rough period in history. Sometimes working towards the same goals and sometimes working at cross purposes, but never directly opposed. Never the other's primary target. Fortunate, since one of us would have come out of it quite dead. As a Freelancer, Owl had more flexible and varied mission profiles than I had. But she'd also taken more risks. The Intel community was notorious for tossing Freelancers to the wolves when they needed a scapegoat, or just needed to eliminate an inconvenient knowledge base.

Most of our missions together had been over a brief span after the war, before I'd been re-designated "Special Asset: Technical" from "Special Asset: Tactical." When we'd seen each other in the field, it usually meant someone was going to die. I was a different person back then. Still cold. Still angry. A mask of zen calm concealing the turmoil within. It was no wonder her memories of that period were more pleasant than my own. Some of the memories were painful. Like the one our talk the other night brought back to the surface.

The war will be over soon, but none of us know it. Not yet. And even if I knew I wouldn't really care. We're on Ares, around Boros in the Georgia system. We've been inserted to deal with a specific target. Arion deSilva had a distinguished career with the Alliance, retiring a Colonel before the war. The Indies have made him a General. He is a master strategist, responsible for several Independent victories, and a thorn in High Command's side.

I am here to kill him.

General deSilva is visiting an Indie listening post in a remote area of Ares, sharing the love with his troops. We're a bit over two thousand meters from the well camouflaged command building, on a wooded shallow hillside, barely five hundred meters from their perimeter. Roughly fifty meters to the side, and a bit further up the hill, my spotter's waiting for him to make an appearance.

Her optics give a broader field of view than I have through the high power scope resting on the back of my Ritter&Lau 415 sniper rifle. We're both suited up in passive camouflage with infra-red damping, a phase change material absorbing heat to keep our signature close enough to the background that thermal imaging won't see us. A hair fine fiber optic strand runs between us, so our only RF radiation is a couple of pico-watts escaping from our gear. We're traveling light and we're both small, making us a hard target for seismic sensors as well.

This level of precaution would be overkill anywhere else and is probably overkill here too, but this is a listening post and if the Indies have any sophisticated sensors here is where they'll be deployed. Their patrols walk the perimeter at semi-random intervals but their closest approach is roughly four to six hundred meters from our position. The nearest actual installation, an 18mm auto-cannon emplacement about a thousand meters from us.

I've worked with my spotter before. Her name is Amanda. She's a year or so younger than I am, a little taller, not much heavier. She's blond, and pretty, but we aren't exactly friends. We're lovers, but not because I have any deep attachment to her. I sleep with her in a vain effort to chase the chill from my Ghost with the warmth of another human body.

It doesn't work.

Caitlin's loss is still too fresh in my mind. Too near. It will be years before I can let go but right now I'm concentrating on the mission. I don't hate the men and women in the listening post below, or the General who I have come to kill. Hating them will not bring Caitlin back. Will not warm the cold places in my chest.

We wait for hours, patiently, silently. Then I see the target acquired flag in the corner of my Head's Up. Amanda's spotted our target and fed me the position. Through the scope, I see the General standing close to the listening post's side entrance. His assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Li-Hue Sue, a couple meters from him, holding a mildly animated conversation. She's another former Academy graduate who left the Alliance military to join the Independents. A worthy target in her own right.

I don't need to ask Amanda to check for spotters. She already has. A few moments after giving me the target flag, she sends the 'Clear to Fire.'

I take a slow breath, hold it, consciously slowing my heart rate, relaxing into a surreal calm. Through the scope I can see both targets clearly. Everything in crystal clear focus. The scope's passive systems are already done computing the range and windage. I settle the reticle on target and ever so gently squeeze the rifle's trigger.

The 415 fires a 400 grain 10.54 millimeter round from a choked down 20 millimeter cartridge. With a muzzle velocity a bit over 12oo meters a second, it delivers an impact energy of almost 19000 joules. At those energies, a target's body armor doesn't matter.

Without a compensator, the massive recoil would break my shoulder. With it, the weapon barely moves. A heartbeat goes by. Another. I've shifted targets a hair's breadth and squeeze off another round between beats while the first is still in flight.

Through my scope, I watch a man die. I don't know him. I don't care. His aide barely has time to recognize the splatter of blood on her clothing before the second round finds its mark and her span ends as well.

A moment later and we are ready to bug out, our mission done, when the auto-cannon opens up. Their acoustic system can only give them a general direction based on the crack of a near hypersonic round, but it is enough for them to start spraying the hillside around us with fully automatic fire.

I'd ranged the auto-cannon hours ago, and reset the scope to its preset. At this range, the shot isn't a challenge. I fire three rounds in rapid succession, the first two taking out the cannon's gunner and loader, the third slamming into, and through, the weapon's breach. The cannon silenced, my magazine empty, I ask Amanda for a target update.

Silence.

I ask again, and again, nothing. It's possible that in the hail of auto-cannon fire, we've lost the fiber optic link. But no. I still have telemetry from her but it takes a moment for me to recognize what I'm seeing on the display.

Moving as quickly as I can through the trees and undergrowth without fully compromising my position, I slap in another magazine and work my way to Amanda's position. Sporadic gunfire from the post tries to find us, but they only have a general location. They're still too far away and too confused to see my well camouflaged form through the trees.

Thirty seconds later, I reach Amanda's position and confirm what I'd surmised from the telemetry. Our suits are light armor, at best. They could stop a handgun or slow down a carbine, but against a cannon, they might as well be cotton. Through random chance, an 18mm round has impacted and detonated against Amanda's collarbone. I can take some solace in knowing she didn't suffer.

In the distance two, possibly three, patrols are starting to work towards us. They're moving carefully, trying to stay to cover. They know there's a sniper. The sudden silence of the cannon giving them reason to be cautious.

I don't know Amanda's faith, so whisper a prayer asking for Buddha's wisdom to guide her Ghost on the next stage of her journey. It's all I can do. That, and offer an apology for what I must do next.

Knowing I may need it, I snag the heat sink canister from her suit and the spare from her pack. Along with with her macros. Her sighting optics give less magnification than my scope, but a wider field of view. In any case, I don't want them to fall into the hands of an Indie patrol. Finally I snag her side arm and the two spare mags, then rig a demo charge to deal with anyone who decides they want to touch her lifeless shell.

In the distance, I can hear a skiff lifting off. Even if they stay low, they'll be able to cover enough ground quickly enough to make my life miserable. Shifting back into cover a few meters away from Amanda's body, I sight in on the rapidly rising skiff.

It's a gunship. Weapons pods under stub wings and a small cargo bay for an infantry fire team, currently manned by a door gunner on each side. It's cockpit and engines are lightly armored. More than the rifle can punch through, but that doesn't stop me.

As they stabilize, trying to get their bearings, I sight the pilot through his armored canopy and start to fire rounds in rapid succession. The first one spalls the canopy in front of him, drawing his attention as the second and third rounds slam into the clear polymer armor almost on top of each other. The forth round breaks through, but deflects, ricocheting off his back seater's helmet. The pilot glances back at his gunner and I put my final round through the fist sized hole in the canopy in front of him.

I don't wait to see the skiff go down, taking its dead pilot, unconscious gunner, and helpless door gunners with it. I have to move. Now. Inside a hundred meters I've stripped the scope and compensator from the Ritter&Lau and fired off a small demo charge in the weapon's firing mechanism. It had served me well, but with no ammunition and active pursuit, it will only slow me down.

Ares is not friendly to the Alliance, so I can expect no help from the locals, and over the next three days I play cat and mouse with the Independents. Eventually, tired, dirty, low on ammunition, they manage to extract me. I've covered nearly a eighty kilometers across Ares' rolling forested hills and, when they get me back to base, they treat me like a Gorram hero.

I'm not a hero.

I'm a soldier.

I've lost my spotter, and left eleven men dead. They pin a medal on my chest and say I've done a great service to the Alliance. But all I can think of are the faces I saw in my scope. They've given Amanda a medal, posthumously, as well. I ask for, and receive, permission to deliver it to her parents on Albion in person.

I do it for her memory. But this kindness does nothing to warm my Ghost. I am still cold and empty.

I am still the Ice Queen.

Explain to me again why I took this job?

2010-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

There are times when "it's been quiet" is the last thing I want to be in a position to say. My role in Intel comes in bursts, which is probably for the best given my personal feelings about asset management and playing political games up the food chain. Both roles I'm good at, but don't especially enjoy. I'm much happier as a tactical lead or, better, a tactical asset. I would much rather Do than order others to do for me.

It's probably a kindness that I'm positioned where I am, out in the boondocks of the Kalidasa system. Much of the Intel comes in through more or less regular channels. Mission reports from the normal Alliance Military units. Local feeds from the colonies. A few active organic assets doing what they do. All of it very interesting to someone, somewhere, who can glean useful intelligence from the minutia of day to day operations.

My specialty was always covert, clandestine, operations, usually involving Hard-Site penetration. Get in, deal with the target however required, get out. Either gathering information or removing a threat, I was a Sneak specialist. I still am a Sneak specialist. It's just that now I'm doing more managing than sneaking, and don't especially enjoy it.

With the colony still under Martial Law and Alliance control, there was very little Mayoring to do either. The town Elders were still serving as 'advisers' to the Alliance security/occupation/peacekeeping operation. Which meant someone, sometimes, sent me a wave asking my opinion as to whether we should extend or restrict the curfew by half an hour, or whether we should bother since no one seemed to be paying much attention to it, or something else of equally world shattering proportions. I'd been rendered more or less superfluous to the colony.

The folks over in the Destiny compound were still keeping on their "We're independent!" face, for what it was worth. They were independent because their presence didn't disturb the situation too much, even if some of their business was affecting the colony's coin. The deals that kept the colony fed and in medicine were still in place, and the mines were doing OK, so the loss of a bit of coin didn't hurt all that much.

I suppose I could spend more time on the surface. I'd been spending more time on the Orbital even before the Alliance made their presence felt. Since Martial Law, I've barely been to the surface except to talk to some of the Elders and assure them I haven't abandoned them.

I wouldn't, of course. Appearances aside, I was still keeping my hand in. It was just that so few people out here on the Rim actually knew what it was I did. Another kindness. Given the sentiment most folk had out here about the Alliance, it was probably for the best that they didn't know what I'd actually done during my time in service.

With luck, none of them ever would. I'd built a reputation out here on the Rim. Earned the trust and respect of the other folk that called Hale's Moon home. Who I'd been before didn't matter now so much, and I think most of the folk I knew would agree.

Grand opening

2010-06-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure how they managed to acquire the installation, or from whom, but I have to say they did a nice job with it. Though, to be honest, I'd have thought the Companion's Guild, or whoever's actually behind the place, would have wanted a location a bit closer to the main trade lanes. Hale's Moon is anything but. Though I suppose if you wanted to take a surplus block-sized grav lifter and put it under a medium sized apartment block, there were worse places to do it.

Who was I kidding? If you had one of those things you'd be using it to build a floating estate on a world that could actually appreciate such a thing. Out here on the Rim, it was just technological overkill. A platform that would leave the locals scratching their heads wondering why such a thing would be here, of all places.

Not that it wasn't the spiffiest place on, or just over, Hale's Moon. It traveled, albeit slowly, over a section of our Outback regions. Technically, it was subject to the Colonial Government. But, being more vehicle than homestead, it fell under a different set of governing parameters. Unless they drove it within, say, fifty clicks of the colony proper, the Alliance force would probably leave them alone.

Probably.

There was no guarantee that they'd leave the installation alone, though, given their recent stance on 'corporate assets' and the simple fact that the 'anonymous donor' must have had considerable resources, it stood to reason that they would try not to annoy the benefactor. A soldier never knew when some politician would take offense to the job they were paid to do, so there were times you trod with care.

Working in our favor, it looked like Owl would be taking over as the place's on-site manager. She wasn't a Companion. Or a whore. She was a spook. Or had been, when we'd worked together in days gone by. It had been a complicated relationship. Sometimes at odds. Sometimes working towards common ends. Rarely on a simple assignment.

I think she holds her memories of those Ops more fondly than I do. I was a different person then. The Ice Queen. I'd done the operations with a kind of clinical detachment, not really involved in the emotional flow of the people around me. In some ways, it had been a blessing. The detachment meant I didn't have any personal involvement with the lives I was tangling with, or the outcomes of the Op. I went in. Did the job. Left. Move on to the next assignment, wherever it might be. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

We'd come out of it something like friends. Not exactly close, but we'd established a professional relationship that worked for us. It still did. Her taking on Management of the roving Companion Hotel would put her right in the middle of an Intel rich environment and would give me a known asset in a valuable position. I would have to make it worth her while, but that went without saying. We were spooks. We knew how the game was played.

Lily'd assembled a rather lavish shindig for the floating hotel's grand opening and, to be very honest, I was proud of her. While I hadn't been entirely comfortable in the party environment, it had been a bright spot to take my mind off the political situation on the ground. And there were some good people to mix and mingle with. Even saw Reese in finery, and Krenshar put on "the good skin." So to speak.

There are some high hopes for the place.

I hope they come to fruition.

Home to tradition
Companions float in the sky
Arid rocks below

Introductions

2010-06-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

She's roughly my age, several inches taller, proportionately heavier, and rather pretty. Dark red hair, green eyes. Her name is Bethany Lionheart. She's the Liaison Officer the Alliance has sent to be the conduit between what remains of our colonial government and her handlers in High Command and the Diplomatic Corps. She's radiating a cheerful confidence born from having the might of the United Alliance of Planets at her back.

She's come to my new office on the orbital to explain to me how things are going to be, and that I shouldn't worry at all about the transition. The Alliance is just here until things calm down enough for them to give us our colony back. She lies, and she's good at it, but may not even realize that her statement is a lie. If you believe something is true, even when it is not, are you a liar when tell someone what you believe?

She's a diplomat. A former soldier. Made it to full Lieutenant as a navigator on a patrol frigate before taking a liaison position between the Defense Department and the Corps Diplomatique. Now, part of the corps, she thinks we're alone and that she has the upper hand in this conversation.

She is wrong. On both counts.

I am almost never alone. The Frame behind my desk looks like a century old antique. Most people think it's the best we could scrounge up to run or enhancements to the local Navtrak arrays, but looks can be deceiving. Inside that obsolete looking shell is the heart of a current generation university SuperFrame. It has considerably more processing power than the patrol frigate that brought her here, and a friend of mine sometimes calls it home. His name is Blue. He's watching me, as I watch her.

I'm sure she's been briefed on what to expect here, but that briefing inevitably left out some important information. It had to. There are facts the Diplomats just don't have. Facts I feel no obligation to reveal to this woman just yet. She's doing me the courtesy of not treating me like some Rim world yamazaru. She no doubt knows I was in the service and that it is no coincidence that my family name is the same as that on the station. Those facts are basic. Matters of public record. She also no doubt knows that Blue Sun's installation on Hale's Moon's surface is the personal headquarters of one of Blue Sun's top executives, and that there are a broad range of rumors about the personal and professional relationships between us. I suspect she is smart enough to discount the rumors.

I'm cordial with her. There's no reason not to be. The Alliance is loathe to interfere with the corporate assets on Hale's Moon, there's too many repercussions if they do. The risks outweigh the gains and there are some risks they're unwilling to take. The colonists are a different matter, much easier to bully, but there is a balance. They know that. It's why the sent a Diplomat.

I listen to her explanation, answer her few questions, and ask a few carefully crafted questions of my own. A practiced diplomat, she reveals little and I don't probe deeply. Social Engineering is not my forte, so I will leave my deeper questions for other times and other channels.

Satisfied she's handled the pleasantries and introductions appropriately, she departs, taking a small shuttle to the waiting Abraham Sinkov and leaving me in peace. I am sure that within the hour, she'll have filed a report with her superiors explaining that she's made the formal introductions but isn't convinced she'll get our full cooperation.

I'll intercept it later.

Right now, I have other things to attend to.

The one wherein politics gets reshaped in the name of expediency

2010-06-22T12:35:00.001-07:00

I'd received a number of waves during my fast burn across the Black from Londinium. Most of them were from concerned citizens who wanted to hear it from me directly, that the colony would be OK. I told them what Genni had told them. As long as Colonel Silvermane was in charge of the unit patrolling our little slice of Heaven, the Alliance would act civil. Maybe not always so nice, but at least civil. We don't give them cause to get violent, and they'll act righteous.

At least I expected them to. Of course, I had a different view of the Alliance military than most Rimworld colonists did. I also had a different relationship with Colonel Silvermane than did other folk. I'd worked hard to establish a civil relationship with her after the fiasco of Loyalist influence on the Sun Tzu.

The problem was, she was subject to orders from a chain of command that still had a measurable Hardliner influence. Worse, a little checking found that she was already being considered for a promotion to Brigadier General, which would almost certainly mean her being moved up from Regimental Command to Brigade level, and away from the 1st Marine Raiders.

Couldn't fault her for it when it came to pass. Good soldier. Deserved it. But it would leave us in the position of dealing with a new Commanding Officer for the 1st. Even if they left Lieutenant Xeltentat in charge of the platoon on the Sinkov, there was no guarantee his new CO wouldn't change their standing orders. The only real hope we had was to have the Martial Law situation resolved before anything changed in the Alliance's local structure.

Resolving the Martial law situation though, was looking problematic. Things were still reasonably calm. No one had been shot yet. At least that I'd been told about, but the wave from the Colonel didn't bode well.

""Mayor Kawanishi? I've got some official news. This is being recorded." she started out, the formal tone alone enough to tell me what was coming next.

"Go ahead, Colonel."

"Per instruction from Sector Command, and under the auspices of the Colonial Charter Board, the Hale's Moon Colonial Government is being suspended until further notice. Until order is restored to the satisfaction of Alliance Authorities, the existing government will serve in an advisory capacity through a Liaison Officer. All government functions will be in the hands of the Alliance. Your cooperation is appreciated."

"I understand, Colonel. I'm assuming the transition will be complete before I make it home?" I kept my voice calm, though I'd been prepared for such a contingency. There'd been situations in the past where local government had been suspended, though usually because there was some sort of active insurgency on the colony. That wasn't the case here, but I couldn't ask.

Yet.

"That is the plan, Madam Mayor. Thank you for your cooperation." She paused a moment, looking away from the iris, then the 'recording' light and 'open channel' warnings went off, switching us to a secure link.

"I'm sorry, Seana. This came down from several steps above my pay grade." She looked genuinely upset by the situation. Our recent meetings hadn't made us friends, but they'd established a different level of working relationship.

"I'm not entirely surprised, Corrine. Given the history out here, I'm actually a little surprised no one made a grab for us earlier. Situation's still status quo for the Orbital?"

"Affirmative. Corporate assets are being treated with kid gloves. Blue Sun and Kawanishi Heavy Industries have enough influence that High Command is reluctant to disrupt operations out here. Though Blue Sun's facilities are on the surface, so they'll probably feel more scrutiny. "

I paused, then nodded. Even the Hardliners were reluctant to offend the corporate powerhouses for fear of repercussions. Hell, for all we knew at this point, this could be coming down from pressure from one of Blue Sun's internal factions. Not everyone there was happy with x0x0 in an executive position.

"Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Can you send your liaison officer by the orbital? I'll have my secretary move my kit out of the office and up to the station."

The Colonel acknowledged and signed off, leaving me with a mildly disturbed feeling deep in the Black. Genni already had instructions on how to deal with our systems if something like this ever happened, and I expected a wave from her within minutes of the Town Elders being told the news.

Still, it wasn't all bad. They hadn't decided to issue arrest warrants for the entire local government, something that had also happened in the past. But given the documented levels of cooperation, it would have been hard to pull off without raising some eyebrows. Even if Hale's Moon was a bump on the butt of the 'Verse, a couple of major corporations had interests in the colony and they'd raise a stink in Parliament even if no one there had even heard of our little slice of heaven.

For the time being, I was officially out of a job. Would be a great excuse for a vacation. Unfortunately, being out of one job meant I would have to do some serious work on the other.

Someone would be displeased by where this was going.

I would make sure of that.

A funny thing happened on the way to Londinium

2010-06-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

I would say that things were never supposed to get this complicated, but then I would be lieing. I'm in Intel. Things are supposed to be this complicated. It was the nature of our business. I could have retired and driven a desk at KHI headquarters on Ariel, which would have been a different kind of stress but a good deal less complicated. A decision I was comfortable, if sometimes frustrated, with.

It would have been nice to spend some actual time relaxing on Persephone, or Ariel. As it was, the time I got to spend with Friends, Family, and Mate, was all too brief. The situation developing on Hale's Moon meant I barely had time to meet with my contacts and the General before I'd be burning my way back out to Kalidasa.

If nothing else though, I did get to enjoy relating my encounters on Persephone to Sabrina over the course of dinner. She was more upset that she hadn't been there to participate in the ass whuping than she was that I'd put myself in harm's way. Again. But that was the nature of our relationship. Neither of us was especially interested in playing things safe.

My meetings with contacts on Persephone went surprisingly smoothly, as did my face to face meeting with General Taggart. Bright spots in a trip overwhelmed by a series of unfortunate events on Hale's.

As a spook, I'd never been primarily a 'Liveware' specialist. I was more likely to beat information out of a contact than talk it out of them, which was why I'd been a tactical and technical asset rather than a Soft. Taggart'd called me in to his office to give me a better idea of what he expected of my role, kind of defining the line between my doing things myself and calling in dedicated field assets to do the head busting for me. Somehow, I suppose, he figured that a face to face would be better than a secure bridge.

Maybe it was. But the timing could have been better. Not that I could blame him for what happened. It's not like he knew my daughter was going to set a building on fire, or a rock was going to hit the colony. The Martial Law thing he was aware of, but it wasn't in his purview, or mine, to interfere.

The Orbital was a different matter. Since the agreement had been between the Town Elders and KHI, things could change under the Martial Law situation. As an independent commercial facility, the Alliance would leave it pretty much alone. They'd dock as usual, do their usual inspections, and refuel and resupply as normal. They just wouldn't be able to enforce martial law because, technically, the installation wasn't actually owned by the colony. There was just a financial agreement.

That would work to my favor. I'd already set up the communications I needed to move my office up there. If things got too sticky on the surface, I could simply move. It would make my work easier in any case.

But that was all something to deal with during my flight back home.

At full burn.

Letters from home

2010-06-18T11:09:00.001-07:00

Eavesdown Docks were a bustle of activity. Not really surprising, considering the breadth of docking bays, landing pads, shanties, markets, and everything else that made up the sprawling facility. Technically, Eavesdown was a minor port in the grand scheme of Persephone's commercial shipping activities. But that technicality belied the fact that there were more people living and working in this port-that-was-a-city than lived on the surface of most Border and Rim colonies.

I'd left messages for a number of my friends based here, including Imrhien and Jai, though I hadn't gotten an acknowledgement back from either of them as yet. Considering how busy both were with their own endeavors, I wasn't worrying about it. If I caught up with them, great. If not, there would be other opportunities.

While I'd reached the general vicinity of the area of both old friends and my primary contact, my timing appeared to be somewhat off. So, with a few hours to kill, and relax after dealing with a couple of local manuke, I settled in to try what locally passed for coffee and catch up on a few of the waves that had come in.

I'd talked to Genni Foxtrot on the way in about how to deal with the aftermath of the fire and the rock strike in town. She'd gotten good at her job, so I had faith in her ability to handle it. Most of the locals were used to her handling the colony's administrative duties and speaking in my stead when the need arose. But dealing with the Alliance was a different animal entirely.

Things had gotten out of hand in my absence. The Sheriff's department was completely overwhelmed, and the Militia was too busy helping deal with the damage to do a lot of policing on their own. While long term colonists wouldn't even consider stealing from each other, as their survival was too intertwined, some of the newer arrivals didn't have that same sense of community. The colony had grown a lot since I'd taken office and some of that growth had gotten unhealthy.

But Martial Law?

Not good. Silvermane had at least brought relief supplies when she'd come down with a contingent from the IAV Abraham Sinkov, and done us the kindness of assigning Lieutenant Xeltentat and his platoon as the main force. But I knew how this worked. The Sinkov was on rotation. There'd be times some other Frigate or patrol boat would be darkening our skies, and we knew full well that not all of the Platoon leaders were quite so civil when it came to dealing with colonists.

I'd get a wave off to Colonel Silvermane and find out what her plans were. She was a good soldier and took her job seriously, but it was also a big job and dealing with a mess on my little slice of heaven was probably a bit of an annoyance.

Having troops on the surface simplified my position in Intel, but radically complicated my job as Mayor of the colony and de-facto governor of Hale's Moon.

Just what I needed.

Could the timing have been worse?

A funny thing happened on the way to the bauhaus

2010-06-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

I probably should have known that walking from the peripheral landing pads into the center of Eavesdown docks wouldn't be entirely uneventful. It wasn't like I had a hovering, illuminated, sign over my head that read "This woman is a combat veteran and can probably hand you your ass." No. Even with the Fifty I usually had strapped to my hip, or the forearm long hunk of steel in a scabbard, I was still barely a hundred forty seven centimeters tall and maybe forty one kilos, soaking wet, I wasn't intimidating. At least to look at. From a distance, anyway.

A lot of high population worlds showed a quite some variety and broad stratification in their local cultures. On Persephone, it might have been a little exaggerated. Though no more so than on parts of Londinium and Sinhon. Eavesdown was one of the places where it showed through. Catering more to tramp freighters, independent transports, and no questions asked charters, than to liners and scheduled traders, the docks were a microcosm of 'Verse culture. You could find some of the best people, and the worst people, the 'Verse had to offer between the landing pads, loading bays, market stalls, and people living in left over shipping containers.

The docks were a huge contrast to the luxuries the local planetary nobility surrounded itself with, yet I was as at-home here as I would have been in some Noble's chateau. More so, perhaps.

Feeling comfortable in an environment also, often, includes knowing what to expect from said environment and being prepared to deal with it appropriately. In this case, it was someone who appeared to notice 'Small in stature' rather than 'well armed.'

"Wha' 'ave we got here, mates?" coming from the man who'd been following me for half a block was the first indication something was slightly amiss. I slowed my pace, half turning my head towards the voice more to let him know I'd noticed than because I wasn't aware of his presence. A bit under two meters, reasonably muscled under a slightly portly frame, dressed for the climate and circumstance. He carried himself like he was used to people getting out of his way, reinforced by his two doubou in tow.

"Donno' Raich. Li'l lady looks lost." from one of his partners, a skinny middle aged man who looked like he'd been on the losing end of a few too many scraps between the containers. Neither of them appeared armed with anything more dangerous than a knife, though their third, a short, scared looking kid, had a bulge under his belt that indicated a medium sized hand gun carried in the 'shoot yourself in the plums' position.

"Lost? No, why? Are you offering directions?" I replied cheerfully, stopping and turning slightly to keep the Fifty on the far side of the three kusemono. The leader was probably expecting me to react with fear or, at least, hesitation. For most people, it would have been a prudent reaction. In any situation like this, you had to quickly assess your options. Run. Fight. Talk your way out. Or some combination of the three. In this case, I'd already assessed my options and the likely outcome of the encounter.

Plainly, "amused smartass" was not the reaction he expected. He probably thought the gun on my hip, if he'd even seen it, was there for show rather than as something I was likely to actually use. A mistake that, hopefully, for him at least, would not be fatal.

"Ain't got no directions, li'l lady. Unless ya've got a mind to be followin' 'em, if ya get my meanin'," he said with an unpleasant chuckle, the kid staying back as he and his friend got a bit closer. I could see the few people on this little stretch of ally fading back, not wanting to get involved if it got unpleasant.

"Oh, I follow. Though can't say I'm a big fan of taking that sort of direction. So, if you boys will excuse me?" I replied cheerfully, half turning as if to walk off, knowing there were several ways it could go now and expecting the worst.

There are times I wish I was wrong about these things.

I could hear them start their rush, even if the big guy hadn't muttered an excited "Git 'er!" to his doubou. Clumsy. Loud. Street thugs.

As the big guy closed, I side stepped and rotated quickly to drive my knuckles into his sternum, quickly rotating back and clear as he collapsed to the sound of cracking bone. His onrushing partner served to block the line of sight of the kid with his gun as I lashed out with a boot into his knee, sending him sprawling.

"Son. Draw that gun and I'll end you here. Verstanden?"

He hesitated a moment, then drew his hand from his pants where the piece had slipped and made it look like he was fondling himself. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good move. Now, collect your friends and go on home. Don't even have to tell anyone they got beat by a girl my size." I said cheerfully as his two friends writhed on the ground, one with a cracked sternum, the other probably unable to walk for several hours. The kid nodded, then stepped forward as I stepped away.

I half expected one of them to grab the kid's gun, but they only cast angry looks my way as I disappeared around the corner into the labyrinthine twists of the Downport's cargo-module shantytown and the kid helped them stagger back the way they'd come.

It'd be an amusing anecdote for Duncan if we manged to catch up before I left Persephone.

Crossing vectors

2010-06-14T15:04:00.001-07:00

"Persephone orbital approach, this is Wave Equation, Ariel registry, kilo four seven niner echo hotel, requesting an approach vector for aero-breaking and a short final into Eavesdown docks."

It was just a formality, really. I was already on the vector I wanted with no traffic crossing my path. At least as long as no one did anything stupid. But with the amount of traffic in orbit and the recent mood I figured it was better to announce myself rather than just slink in like I usually did.

"Wave Equation, Niner echo hotel. Persephone approach. Approach clearance granted. Vector details incoming. Two minutes. Maintain your current vector pending the update and contact Eavesdown Approach on four three five point two."

"Copy that, Persephone Approach. Continue pending update and contact Eavesdown on four three five point two. Good day. Wave Equation clear."

Doing traffic control on the Rim, you almost forgot just how complex it could be. In the Black between worlds it was not an issue, but when you are approaching a heavily populated world, with thousands of spacecraft coming and going, there was an actual need for layered controls. Orbital approach, handing off to reentry approach, handing off to downport approach for wherever you were heading.

It was that way on any highly populated world. It had to be that way. Though there were still some good sized cracks to slip through if you were so inclined. This time, I'd chosen to stay out of the cracks.

Finding a berth at Eavesdown was trivial. They were equipped to handle everything from auxiliary skiffs to three hundred meter long bulk haulers, so finding space for something the size of a Matagi wasn't an issue. Which left me to just lock up, pay for the transient berth, toss some coin to a couple of the local port rats to look after her while I was gone, and make sure the security system's anti-personnel mode was "Deter:Stun" rather than the usual setting of "Deter:Incinerate" I used on the Rim.

The only down side to docking at the edge of the Docks sector was getting a ride into the center of the sprawling area. I could have carried a small skimmer or something aboard Wave Equation, but I'd never really seen the need. At least until now, when the choices for getting across toward the center of the Docks was walking, hailing a rickshaw, or riding a jitney.

Walking. Definitely walking. It'd give me a chance to encounter some of the local port life and plenty of time to kick off a wave.

"Duncan? This is Seana. I'm on Persephone for a couple days, starting out in Eavesdown. Be nice to see you if you're around. Get back to me, ok?"

That'd do it. I hoped. If not, there were other things I was here to handle. But catching some time with Duncan would make the entire trip a good deal more pleasant.

Inward spirals

2010-06-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've always liked Persephone from orbit. It's not the prettiest world, or the largest, or the most or least populated, or the most important. But it's always looked pretty from above. A pretty world. named for the Queen of the Underworld from an ancient myth from Earth that Was. Appropriate, really, considering its role as the unofficial gateway to the Core. Or the Border, depending on your perspective.

Like most high population Core worlds, Persephone had a fairly varied culture depending on where you set down. Unlike most, their local government included an actual "noble" class that was more than just for show. While I'd been raised to an equivalent social standing on Ariel where Olde Money was akin to power, I'd never been entirely comfortable in those circles. Too much pretense. Too little substance.

My interests weren't in the highly polished parts of the planet in any case. No, the people I wanted to talk to frequented the transport hubs rather than the commercial plazas. Especially the ones where Customs agents were scarce and questions were few. In this case, the big transhipment facilities at Eavesdown Docks.

Over the last few months, a number of my friends from the Rim had migrated inward with more than a fair share of them winding up at Eavesdown. I could understand the drive too. The transhipment ports on Persephone felt a fair bit like some of the busier Rimworld space ports. Plus Eavesdown was a bit, shall we say, loose, in their interpretation of local customs regulations and law enforcement. For most of the folk I knew who'd moved there, it would have felt like home.

That made this trip more Pleasure than Business, though I'd be mixing a little of both. Persephone was also a cultural and business hub, a stepping off point for far more than just hard goods. It was also home to a number of Intel assets I needed to catch up with before I talked to Taggart.

But that could wait. Before I got to work, I'd take some time and see some friends.

Do they just save it up until I'm gone?

2010-06-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

There's kind of a legend you'll hear if you're around the large construction yards at all. It's the story of an Engineering technician who worked on one of the big orbital shipyard projects. Which shipyard, or whether it was actually a transfer station, or maybe a cargo facility, or something else, seems to change. But the gist of it goes he was working the station and a few hours after he signed out for a vacation, the station underwent structural failure. So he goes back to the project for the second build and, when he goes on vacation, the station comes apart. Again. So, third try, he decides to stay until they complete the thing. This time, he's there through opening day. Figures it's finally safe for him to leave and, within 24 hours of his shipping out, the place is blown up by terrorists. Seems the builders were stubborn about it. They built a fourth one. And this one's still there. Only, that Engineering tech is still aboard. Seems he knows the second he leaves, all hell's going to break loose.

There's days I feel like that.

No sooner than I get off the cortex with Major Siamendes' commanding officer, talking about her serving the warrant on Cody, then I get a wave from Genni Foxtrot. Now, Genni's got a temper. Fiery one at that. And right about now she's ready to lose it on the Sheriff. Seems in my absence, the town elders are giving him a lot of slack in how he handles the cleanup after the fire and the impactor. Part of his solution seems to be imposing a curfew on folks because, well, no one's exactly sure why. Didn't bother running it by my office, though I've got to hope he at least talked to the Elders.

I can understand he's having some issues with some of the transients and newer colonists looting the wrecked store, but imposing a curfew on folk who've been living on that little slice of Heaven for years? Not going to earn him many points if they actually decide to elect the next Sheriff rather than appointing him.

Told the Elders that Genni speaks for my office while I'm gone, but that doesn't seem to be mattering much. They didn't talk to her, and since Gallagher's managed not to get face to face with her, she can't give him a piece of her mind. Or a bullet. Which may be why he's been avoiding her. Though if that's the level of respect they're showing, I might just tender my resignation when I get back. No sense holding a meaningless title.

Though, in truth, the Office gives me a decent cover for my Intel work. Not that I actually need it. If they don't need my services that's fine too. I've already got office space staked out on the platform. I'll just move the Frame and the enhanced feeds up to the Orbital and do business as usual. Which, I had to admit, I wasn't finding especially engrossing. The Director's chair has Bureaucrat painted across its back in large, friendly, letters. You coordinate and manage people who coordinate and manage field assets. Sure. There's still the high level analyst functions, but that's not the same as being a field asset.

I'd discuss all that with Taggart when I got to my final destination. On the way? On the way I planned to make a couple of stops. The only reason to go back to Hale's Moon at this point would be to get Genni out of trouble for shooting Gallagher. Which hadn't happened. Yet. Any other plot ended poorly for one or more people and I didn't feel like dealing with that sort of complication. No, I'd use this as an opportunity to catch up with some long missed friends and, Buddha willing, a bit of vacation time with my wife.

Because, right now, it seemed Hale's Moon either needed me desperately or didn't need me much at all or. They just hadn't decided which.

The one wherein things happen in one place, while I am in a very different place

2010-06-06T19:15:00.001-07:00

I hadn't really intended to head Coreward when I did. Certainly not while Lily's having, well, issues, and the town's still reeling from the fire she started. But some times, your other responsibilities force your hand. In this case, maneuvers happening on the political stage that required some face to face time with General Taggart.

On some levels, I'm torn. Part of me feels that by having to leave the Rim now is abandoning my little girls when they need me most. But another, more rational, part, understands that Lily and AuroraBlue need me less than I need them. I don't think either of them really see me as a parent. Which means that leaving them under the watchful eye of the other people who care for them while I'm gone doesn't really alter their risk.

Of course, it doesn't help that Krenshar's acting strangely and a small rock slipped through the net and managed to smack into the store right next to the apartment building Lily burned. I was about to turn around and go back to help when I got a wave from Genni that the Town Elders were dealing with it and I should continue on with whatever it was I was doing.

In my absence, Genni could speak for my office and the Elders had dealt with impactors for quite a span before I'd ever arrived, but it didn't make me feel any better. Hearing that some of the newer residents and transients had taken to looting didn't give me the warm fuzzies. Truth be known, I think Genni wanted me to stay away to keep me from personally getting Medieval on the looters.

I could only hope things were stable by the time I got back. I'd put a lot of effort the last couple years trying to improve the lot of Hale's Moon's colonists. They may not all have liked the higher level of law and order that'd slipped in on my watch, or making nice with the local Alliance command, but none of them complained about the improved standard of living.

Timing, once again

An inopportune absence

Survive without me

Firestarter revisited

2010-06-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

I've never pretended that I could understand Lily's biology. Such as it was. She was synthetic and the best biochemist I knew was debating doing another Doctoral based on figuring out how she worked. Mindo, the man who created her, was half way to New Switzerland by now so our chances of ever really knowing were slim to none. Her psychology? Not quite so far beyond the edge of Human knowledge.

Technically, Lily was an AI. While she'd originally been programmed to work within a set range of parameters, she'd achieved full self awareness. She was "real" for all intents and purposes. There was a conscious Ghost in her pseudo-organic shell. That was something I could try and understand.

Her recent antics though, made little sense. The whole Ardra episode had confused the issue on multiple levels. x0x0'd managed to extract the parasitic fragment of Ardra's personality matrix from Lily's mind, but it had left my little girl unstable. Again. She'd reverted on multiple levels into, well, I wasn't entirely sure.

There'd been a period before when she'd stated lighting fires around town. It was a bid for attention. At least at some level. Then, as now, much of her mindset was that of a child. Setting something on fire wasn't actually that unusual for a kid, so we'd figured out how to deal with it. Though now, the behavior was different. This time she hadn't set a little fire in the corner. This time she'd burned up one of the residential buildings.

That, and she was stealing things.

Neither behavior was what I expected.

I gave Gallagher permission to lock her in one of the cells in our small jail. It wouldn't hold her if she decided to leave, but at least it would give the illusion that we had her under control. Gallagher, Krenshar, and Cody were all trying to talk to her. I tried too, but she didn't seem to notice me. Though, in truth, I never really did have that much influence over her. I'd adopted her, true. But I hadn't raised her and her maturity levels were rather haphazardly across the board.

Maybe she'd choose to talk to me. Maybe not.

There was some talk that she'd gotten herself addicted to a psychotropic drug from Al Raquis. Spice they called it. Though, as far as I knew, it was a locally occurring mineral they skimmed off the surface of the sand there. Not really a spice at all. Which was all the more confusing when you considered the fact that she wasn't exactly organic. How could she get addicted to something when she didn't have the biochemical or neural pathways to support addiction?

Almost makes me want to break into that case of Scotch Nack gave me. Almost. Only plus side right now is that 'Brina's back out our way for a little while. Elsoph's project had some down time, so she's got time to be here with me. Means if I break out anything alcoholic, it'll be the Gin. In moderation. With a very special presentation.

And then the Sheriff came back. . .

2010-06-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

You'd have thought the Town Elders would have, at the very least, talked to me about something as subjectively important as reinstating the Sheriff after he'd resigned his post. Not that I especially minded them acting on their own in this case. I may not have always agreed with how he did his job, or even if he did his job, but the townsfolk seemed to like him and the Elders had their own reasons.

With the recent Reaver incidents and the Militia being forced to focus on them rather than the 'community patrol' duty none of them liked, I can understand folk wanting to have a full time lawman again. Whether we actually need one or not's not the issue so much as the perception that we do.

I still think it's funny that Hale's Moon didn't have a Sheriff until Genni Foxtrot shot me and we appointed Imrhien to the role. Seems Gallagher's lasted longest, in spite of everything that's happened on his watch. Not sure why law enforcement here's so hard on the folk that try and do it.

Still, the Town Elders letting him return takes some of the pressure off me. Plus it saves me having to hire on a constable or tender security contracts to whoever's looking to get one out this way. If he makes the townsfolk happy, good on him. Saves resources to try and find the new Reaver nest. Considering he resigned and I hadn't fired him, I don't even have to step into the argument. Anyone asks, the truth is he quit and the Elders let him take back his badge and gun. Didn't even ask me.

I can work with that.

So where's the nest?

2010-05-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a fair amount of time on the Orbital of late. Not that I'm trying to avoid folk, but it seems I get more done up there than I do in my office at Town Hall. Genni already handles most of the mundane day to day chores of running the Colony, leaving the more pressing matters for me to take on in an official capacity. It works. And some of the work I do on the Orbital can't be done on the surface. Too many interruptions.

Not that I could really talk much about the work I was doing on the Orbital, or anywhere else I was keeping myself busy. The nature of the beast. Left some folk wondering sometimes what I did with my time, but that was how things were. Tried to be around when it mattered, and always at least keep a finger on the pulse of the colony.

The recent series of Reaver attacks, coming on top of the strange body dumps Gallagher was working on has started to get folks a bit riled up. Don't blame them really. Seen more Reavers in the last week than we have in months.

They've been coming in low and cool, showing less of the typical Reaver broken shielding profile we're used to, making it harder for Navtrak to tag them as hostile and not just sneaky. Sneaky, we could live with. Problem was, the recent frequency led to one main conclusion: there was a new nest close by.

We'd already done a run through Beetle's Baily looking for anything new with no result. There were other rock fields in Shuttle range of Hale's, and we'd have to start looking at those too. The real worry was they had another big freighter or something to use as a mobile base. There'd been records of the Reavers capturing some awful big boats over the years and using them to stage raids.

Still amazed me that they were able to work together. Almost as much as the fact we were still seeing them amazed me.

Tied into Mindo's being dragged off? Might be. There'd been some really toppyoushimonai happenings involving that family and the Reavers. Some connection here wouldn't surprise me. But the priority was finding the new nest, and getting them off our collective backs.