Surface

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expedition

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

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

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

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

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

Right now, my focus was AuroraBlue.

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

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

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

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

And she was still my little girl.

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

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

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

Finding our Dragon

She is so like her mother

Keep the coffee warm

Lonesome Ninja

Haley snores.

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

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

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

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

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

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

AuroraBlue was a different matter.

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

Tiny lost Dragon

An ongoing enigma

Mother will find you