A new year. A new adventure?

Lily is whole.

Lily is Free.

Her body may not be here own for the moment, and she may not be on Dragon's Egg, but that doesn't matter so much.  She is.  That, to me, is what matters.  Not that I had any doubt she would "survive" her transformation in the desert.  Not that I can pretend to understand what happened out there.  Only two people I can think of really understand her artificial physiology, and I'm not sure anyone but Blue understands her psychology.

I don't need to understand my little girl.  I just need to try and be there for her as best I can.  Which, I admit, is not always easy - physically or emotionally.  The physical, of course, is easy to understand.  Lily rarely stays put for long.  Even in the middle of a conversation, she's apt to dash off on some errand or another.  Emotionally?  Raising a child, even a problem child, there's certain things you can take for granted.  Normal kids, even abnormal kids, grow up exhibiting a broad, but understood, range of behaviors.  Lily?  Not so much.  No other mother in history has faced what I've faced as Lily's mother and there's times I'm not so sure I've done a good job of it.

Sample size of One means there's nothing to compare it with.  She has come out OK.  Just not sure I had much to do with her overall success.

From where I sit though, looking at Dragon's Egg from a medium orbit, I can only hope I've done right by her.  Done right for all my girls.  AuroraBlue's still on Al Raquis.  As is Lily.  x0x0?  She moves about.  Even if she may not think of herself as one of my girls, on some level she is.  Our relationship's not easy to pin down.  But I still consider her one of my girls.  Maybe because I know more about her than she realizes.  See the need.

Sometimes it's hard to reconcile my past and present.  To see myself caring about folk I'd have just as soon put down a decade ago.  The Ice Queen's thaw'd a bit.  Never mind Reavers still back off with a glare, and Alliance Officers still quake when they see me in uniform.  Not that I've put on the uniform in a while now.

From here, Dragon's Egg is just another world orbiting in the Black.  A world that's only half way considered livable.  Terraforming that's not quite stable.  Folk having to relocate more often than not.  Abandoning more than one settlement already.  Leaves me wondering if I'll ever come back.  Even with the cabin on the coast, there's not much left for me here.  The girl's on Al Raquis, a world that'll never be home to me.  A nice place to visit.  Or, more, A place to visit.

I've got business dealings there and folk I know.  But it's not home.

Home right now, for me, is the bridge of Wave Equation, or my quarters on Saule Silencieuse.  Preferably with Simon.  Though he's been out and about now even more than before we got hitched.

It's a new year though.  Maybe another adventure in the making.  Or maybe time to settle back to real business.  Hard to say.

Dragon in the Black
A new year calling to me
What holds the future?

To wait by the sea for a tide that never comes

I haven't seen Simon in weeks.  It's not entirely unusual, though I had hoped we would be able to extricate ourselves from our respective roles enough to try and become an actual couple.  It is what it is.  Ultimately, it's little different from my marriage to Sabrina.  We spent more time apart than together.  While the times together were spectacular, they were infrequent and often interrupted by circumstances beyond our control.

Of course, my life has led me to accept long periods of being alone.  Some would say Spooks are always alone, even when they are with the person they love.  Sadly, I've come to believe it's true.  Married or not.  In a crowd or not.  I am alone.

Except for Haley.

Right now, I don't want to be alone.  Though, technically, I'm not.  Haley is here with me, her baleful howls both annoying and endearing.  She doesn't really understand why I've been sitting on a lounge chair under Wave Equation's wing, looking out over the ocean near my personal vacation spot on Dragon's Egg's "far side" away from the settlement.  She's a dog.  She doesn't need to really understand.  She does what she does, which is sit in my lap and try and make me feel better.  Forty thousand years of parallel evolution has bred this into her very genes, and bred the response into mine.  A tight hug, and burying my face in her fur to hide the tears.

But the tears come unbidden.

Lily is gone.

On some level, I know she can't really be gone.  Not in the same sense that "normal" people are gone when they die.  Lily's shell was artificial.  I'm actually fairly sure we could bring the shell back . . . on-line?  Probably not accurate, but as close as anyone will get.  There are still two people who know how she worked.  With effort, I'm confident they could bring her back.  Assuming we could get the shell back from Al Raqui's desert born.

Who am I kidding.  If I choose to recover my daughter's shell there is little chance they could stop me, even if they knew I was coming.

But what of her Ghost?  She's bee broadcasting since she's been alive.  I know Blue's been listening.  I've been listening.  I don't know what it means, but Blue does.  Sinclair probably does too, in her own way.  But Blue hasn't been talking to me and Sinclair?  I don't think she can dumb it down enough to explain it to me in words I would understand.  I'm not stupid, but when it comes to the kind of maths she's talking about, I'm not sure anyone else understands it.  Except Blue.  Maybe.

I feel empty.  A crowd wouldn't help.  Playing chess with Niki, or having coffee with Cory, or hanging out with Genni and her family, wouldn't make it better.  Haley helps.  Simon would help, if he were around.  AuroraBlue could help too.  Though I doubt the Tiny Dragon would show that kind of emotion.  But none of them can fill the empty spot.  No one can replace my little girl.

"Blue.  I know you can hear me.  Just . . . sometimes, I wish you'd say something."

I sit by the sea
Alone, waves coming ashore
Rolling up the beach

Signal fades to noise
Tides ebb and flow like our lives
Memories remain

Emptiness inside
A void as big as the sea
Begging to be filled

But some things once lost
Can not then be recovered
Only remembered

Love transcends the shell
Your ghost will ride the signal
I miss you, Mei Mei

Democracy 101: The Tyrany of the Majority

Back on Hale's Moon, they elected me Mayor.  Ultimately, a role that became the de-facto governor of the entire world.  A small world, to be sure, but as the leader of the only major settlement on the little terraformed rock, my authority extended to more or less the entire world.  When the survivors of Caliban settled on Hale's and founded the Destiny township, they were arguably independent of our governance.  But they still used our traffic control and still recognized what passed for Customs being based out of the main settlement.  They controlled their own settlement, but understood that we controlled the rest of the world.

Not that it mattered much then.

Not that it matters at all now.

Dragon's Egg doesn't really have much of a government yet.  There is what remains of the town elders who came over from Hale's, including myself, who kind of serve in something of an advisory capacity to the rest of the town, and were working with the Alliance liaison - when we still had one.  When Blue Sun started to exercise more influence, and the mercs took over "protection," the council stopped meeting so often and people stopped caring so much.

Now, though, noises of a new Sheriff were in the wind.  Which made sense, given the nearest thing we had to Law Enforcement was people shooting anyone who tried to rob them.  Not a bad solution, actually, but some actual civil law was a step towards actual civilization and a step away from being a company town.  Next step would probably be an actual Mayor.  Assuming it all got that far.

It was actually surprising how many folk had signed on for the election for Sheriff.  Even one of the former Mercs, who'd decided to forgo the old life and settle here, was signed on.  Wasn't going to vote for him myself, but that had more to do with my planning to vote for Gallagher, seeing as he'd been Sheriff before on Hale's and me feeling he'd do a good job of it again here.

Thing is, it is a step back onto the path we'd all originally thought we were on when we came to Dragon's Egg from Hale's Moon.  Re-establishing a thriving colony with a sense of community and a new sense of purpose.  It just hasn't been turning out that way.  The discoveries of who wrapped up into the colony Blue Sun really is hasn't actually made a lot of people comfortable.  Sure, there were some business advantages to having less Alliance oversight, but being a company town for the most part wasn't actually good for us.

Well, not good for most of us, anyway.  Maybe I'd been too passive in letting KHI Corporate move the orbital maintenance facility elsewhere.  On Hale's, the KHI presence had been something of a counterpoise to the Blue Sun presence.  That and the colonists having inherited the mining operations from Weyland Yutani when they abandoned the colony.

Here, we didn't have that.  Blue Sun's roots here went deep and there was little chance of ever escaping them.  It kind of begged the question of why I stayed here myself.  Sure, I'd jacked the communication network almost since the arrival.  I had my own drones and feeds from all the local security systems.  But there was still this creeping feeling that I wasn't quite in the right position.  Too much visibility without the power to compensate for it.  The solution was probably to drop further out of sight, rather than to try and gain more influence.  Let them forget I was here so I could go about my business.

Of course, I could always retreat back to my command ship or, if I wanted to enjoy the comforts of a living biosphere, I could further develop the little place I'd set up half way round the planet.  There really was something to be said for a sheltered beach house...

Elect a Sheriff
Vote early and vote often
Is that how it goes?

The kids in the hall. I mean mine.

On Hale's Moon, I knew virtually everyone who called the world home.  There were a few people in the distant outlaying settlements, if three prospectors living out of a grounded Dakota class transport could be considered a settlement, that I didn't know.  But I usually knew of them even then.

On Dragon's Egg, it hasn't been the same.  A lot of folk coming and going and, to be honest, I haven't felt the close attachment to the people that I felt on Hale's Moon.  On Hale's I knew the names and faces and stories of over a thousand residents.  On the Egg, I doubted I knew more than a hundred.  At least not personally, and the majority of those were people who'd come with us after the Core Rebound that destroyed Hale's.

There was an old saying about not seeing the forest for the trees.  It was a reference to being so close to the details that you couldn't see the bigger picture.  It was a comfortable place, actually, if your weapon of choice was a chainsaw.  It seemed though that I was sliding to the other extreme.  I couldn't see the trees that made up the forest.  From low orbit, it was just a big green carpet.

That didn't mean I didn't know about, or care about, some of the very close to home details.  Like the Frog  kid and Lily's K2 going missing.

The search lasted days, focused mostly on some of the "old mines" that, ultimately, were a bit of a mystery on a newly released for occupation world.  Just another detail that had been either omitted or erased from the terraforming records of this world.  Fortunately, that's where they found the boy.  Locked away in some cage, surrounded by crazy people.

Ittai nani ga okotte iru?

Crazy people.  Living underground.  In a mining complex.  Considerably bigger than the test mines we'd found when we arrived.  On a world that had been inhabited for barely a year.  The mind boggles.  But the fact was they were there, both the tunnels and the people, and the boy.

Of course, it didn't help that there was an implication that the tunnel system was changing at a fairly rapid rate.  Which indicated active digging on a scale considerably greater than the pilot mines and exploratory digs our locals had started could manage.  Let alone Lily or K2, with a passion for digging.  And . . . the lack of seismic signatures we'd gotten so used to on Hale's Moon where rock mining was a way of life.

Only one thing came to mind which might be able to tunnel that quickly and quietly, and that thought was not something I wanted to dwell on.  Though it did prompt me to reposition one of the crowbars.  If we did have a mother bot on Dragon's Egg, I wanted to be sure we were in position to make it a smoking crater if we needed to.

But all this just led me to the conclusion that I needed to know more about the world we were living on.  Supposedly, the records were open.  Obviously, that was not really the case.  Which meant I was going to need to do some digging myself to get to the facts behind the truth.

I would know.  It was just a matter of time.

But, in the mean time, we still had to find K2.

Child of the sand
Digging into the unknown
What have you found now?

The Repo Men Cometh

I'm not known for being a gambler.  Risk taker, yes.  When the reward is sufficient to justify the risk, I'll take a chance.  It comes with the territory.  But not so much of a gambler for gambling's sake.  Sometimes though, I'll make a small bet.  Something for the fun of it, where the amusement value is far greater, win or lose, than the resource value of the bet.

Like making a bet with Cory that x0x0's hired guns would be able to recover the Cruiser, where the General was fairly sure it would actually be an Alliance unit that recovered the ship.  She wasn't willing to specify that it would be one of her units that did it, because that would be cheating.  Just that it would be the Alliance, and not a Mercenary unit, that took the cruiser back from Cerberus.

The stakes?  Our next face to face would be over a nice brunch, loser picks up the tab.

Sure, a nice brunch could cost a month's wages for a dirt farmer on the Rim.  But we weren't dirt farmers.

I'd honestly thought the unit x0x0 hired to recover the cruiser on Blue Sun's behalf would be up to the task.  My personal feelings on Cerberus Security aside, there were units out there bigger and better equipped and available for hire.  Not to mention specialists on just that sort of operation.  It just took the financial resources to do it, which was not something Blue Sun lacked.

Exactly why that operation fell through I was still sussing out.  Something about an emergency reassignment that was important enough to invoke the "something came up" clause in their contract with Blue Sun.  The reason was there, should I bother to look for it.  Regardless.  They backed out, which left the Alliance in the position of sending in their own teams to accomplish the exact same mission.

The results were inevitable either way.  Whether the hired guns did it.  Whether the Alliance did it with a small team.  Whether the Alliance used an entire assault company.  Whether the Alliance stood off and destroyed the ship with heavy weapons from another Cruiser.  The results would be the same.  Cerberus would give up the ship.  The only variable would be the number of casualties and how much was spent on the operation.

Now, personally, I would have sent an infiltration team over to jack the controls, lock out the Mercs, and then just let the Alliance come get their boat.  Whether I went myself or not was open to debate.  I'd done similar operations in the past.  In fact, I'd done more clandestine boardings than I cared to remember, but I didn't really have a stake in this.  This was strictly Alliance business.  Sort of.

I did have to hand it to the team they sent though.  I'd been prepared long in advance for this, regardless of who actually executed it.  Jacked feeds and small recon drones in place to observe the action.  The operation was surprisingly well executed, though I was surprised at how Cerberus treated the one Alliance trooper they managed to capture.

Hint: Mercenary units that openly threaten to torture, kill, or maim, captives, can find their hard earned reputations seriously tarnished.

Hint:  Mercenary units that actually carry out threats to torture, kill, or maim, captives, can find they have been blacklisted and subsequent contracts are very, very, hard to acquire.

Such was what it was.  I'd filed a recommendation before that the Alliance seriously consider refusing to tender any further contracts with Cerberus.  Now, after getting confirmation they'd abused one of the captives, I took it to the next step.

Sure, people could ignore the blacklisting.  Cerberus might even try and appeal it to the Guild.  But it was filed now through official channels.  They would almost certainly still find work, but their actions had consequences and they'd be dealing with the fallout from these actions for some time to come.

Maybe Uncle Sobi should have gone up and tried to talk them out.

Would probably have been much less expensive for all involved.

Action, reaction
The consequences should hurt
Lesson learned too late

Unexpected returns and other curiosities of reality

If I said I wasn't surprised to see Gallagher back in action on Dragon's Egg, I would be lieing.  I'd had a feed going to see what he was up to, but hadn't payed much attention it.  There was just too much and Nora hadn't flagged anything specific.  But he was back.  For better or worse.  Hopefully for the better, actually.

Gallagher and I had had our differences on Hale's Moon when he was Sheriff and I was Mayor.  Not unusual to have some friction in that sort of working relationship, but, ultimately, he'd done a decent job of it. At least the citizens liked him and were willing to be peacable under his watch, which was really all I'd been after.

Considering that we were about to lose the "protection" afforded by the hired mercenaries, Gallagher's return was actually well timed.  Whether he'd be willing to do it or not, and whether I could convince the rest of what passed for the Town Council to go for it, having him back as Sheriff might not be such a bad idea.  Whether or not I resumed the role of Mayor or not didn't matter.  In fact, it might even be better if I wasn't back in that role.

While there was something to be said for being Mayor, there were also a lot of other issues.  On Hale's Moon, I'd been defacto Governor, since the main settlement had been the only real concentration of people on the entire rock.  At least until the survivors from Destiny set up their little settlement.  But on Hale's, the folk owned their colony.  When Weyland Yutani abandoned the colony, the colonists tool position of the assets.  On Dragon's Egg, things weren't quite so cut and dried.  As time went on, we came to realize that Blue Sun wasn't just a major investor in the new colony, but had had a great deal to do with the original "alternative, long duration, terraforming" process.

Though never acknowledged as the original intent, Dragon's Egg had become largely a company world beholden to Blue Sun.  That might have panned out differently if KHI hadn't decided to relocate their facilities elsewhere, but it was what it was and there wasn't much I could do now to change it.

I didn't want to be the Mayor of a Company Town.  At least when it wasn't my company.

But that did still leave the issue of defense and the Law.  I'd be OK with someone else taking the reins as Mayor.  Things got too uncomfortable, I had my plot well away from anything important.  Far enough out to be left alone.  Barring that, I could go back into the black.  I'd be OK either way.  So someone else could get shot at instead of me, and maybe Gallagher would pick up his tin star again.

That just left defense, and we had a solution to that.  The Militia on Hale's Moon had been quite effective in its day.  Was a thorn in the side of Loyalist Alliance, and more then a match for most Reaver boats that made the mistake of landing.  We still had enough folk from the old colony around that we'd have a core to build around.  That was something I could handle myself.  Gallagher wanted to help, I'd be right happy to let him, and I didn't foresee any issue with the Town Council.

Blue Sun might object, but chances were x0x0 would be right with the idea too.  Especially seeing how she'd helped supply the Militia back on Hale's.

It'd be something to set in motion.  At least once the issue with the cruiser was settled.

Funny thing about that though, was getting a wave from my Uncle Sobi, offering to try and negotiate a peaceable settlement.  Doubted they'd listen, but doubted he'd listen if I told him it's likely be a bad idea.  Wasn't sure if he was serious though, seeing how things were last time he had words with any of them.

Constantly in flux
Situation always changing
Life as it should be

We knew it was coming

There are times I wish I couldn't so readily predict the outcome of certain chains of events.  Like the chain which started before we evacuated Hale's Moon and ended with a Mercenary unit turning on their employer and holing up on a borrowed Alliance Light Cruiser.  Or whatever they had re-designated the IAV Sun Tzu II when they handed it over to the Mercs.

I'd always been mildly amused by the choice of ship, considering the IAV Sun Tzu, the ship Brigadier General Silvermane called home, filled a similar role, though was larger, newer, and still a Ship of the Line.  Fleet was large enough that I could actually see how they somehow recycled ship names before bringing the previous barer of the name out of service, but it still struck me as amusing that two ships of such similar designation and role would wind up in the same sector.

The fact that the mercenaries didn't intend to give the ship back led, inexorably, to an effort to reclaim the ship from them by other means.  Where a Diplomat like Lionheart would negotiate for it, or a Military Officer like Silvermane would offer terms to surrender the ship in the face of overwhelming firepower, and someone like myself would use more subtle means, we were dealing with a Blue Sun sponsored contract and, thus, a Blue Sun sponsored recovery operation.

Now, that didn't rule out any of the previous options.  Blue Sun was a business, and business interests usually went for the most expedient, least expensive, solution to any given situation.  Negotiations, military action, or infiltration were all on the table.  So, for that matter, was bribery.  It might be cheaper to just bribe them off the ship than to pay for the expertise to remove them by other means. But there was also some Face involved here, which meant there were other factors at play besides what method would have the best cost / benefit ratio.

Chatter had that "alternative" method being a rival Mercenary organization.

Not that that wasn't something I'd known about for a while.  Or something the former paid guardians of Dragon's Egg wouldn't also be expecting.  Even without my Intel resources, they would have to suspect Blue Sun to come after them in force, once they got past the "Ask nice and hope they accept" stage.  In truth, I hadn't quite expected them to bomb the colony in passing.    Though I probably should have.

Fortunately, I guess, I had already left town to visit Genni at their remote farm when the bombing happened. Which meant I was far from the action when it hit.  But I was left wondering why they'd done it.  Were they trying to frighten the colonists so they would beg Blue Sun to back off and let the Mercs keep the ship?  Were they being vindictive?  Or had someone just gotten a little too tense at the launch controls?

Hard to say and, truth be known, I didn't feel the need to infiltrate the ST2 to find out why.  It would come out, eventually, or it wouldn't.  The why wouldn't really change anything.  They'd bombed civilian targets, done a fair bit of property damage, and left two people missing.

The first, one of the local miners, was of measurable concern.  I'd have to find out if had any family so the town council could respond appropriately.  The other was Lily's boy; K2.

That would have much greater consequences.  Lily herself would be frantic, and the boy's erstwhile "father" was highly placed in the Myrmidon Order.  That translated to the Mercs bringing down a whole world of hurt, the likes of which they were likely ill prepared for.  Even if Blue Sun wasn't going to ante up for a first rate Merc unit, it was pretty much guaranteed the Myrmidons would be moving against Cerberus.

I just had to wonder how many observation drones I could get into place to watch the show.

Whether planned or not
Unintended consequence
Time to pay the price