Magic boxes

It's been another long day, but I can't say I didn't see it coming. With commerce picking up making Hale's becoming more active as a cargo transfer point, and a surplus of supplies from the rebuilding, it was only a matter of time before someone out there decided that they wanted what we had, but didn't want to pay for it.

A bunch of folk were lounging around Fook's when I noticed the boat inbound. I hadn't even bothered to get out of my PJ's. Probably the only expanse of cloth on Hale's Moon brighter than those awful floral print shirts Uncle Sobi favored. A bunch of folks were in from some of the other colonies too, so we had quite a crowd when the boat set down.

I think I was the only one not packing, which wasn't a big deal considering how much heat we had. Sabrina'd just gotten back home from Blackburne toting that crazy Tesla rifle of hers, so our little slice of the 'verse was better equipped than usual.

Gallagher was the first one to talk to whoever got out of that boat. Some harsh words about taking things that didn't belong to other people. Didn't catch much of the exchange, as how I wasn't wearing anything more than pajamas.

Not surprising, harsh words turned to gunfire, and most of the folk in Fook's got into it with the two or three guys who'd gotten off the boat. I did what I could, dropping the blast doors (Krenshar, remind me to kiss you for installing those things when the Alliance was still making us miserable) and tending the wounded. Didn't have a lot of that, fortunately. Alison and Sabrina both took a couple rounds, and I patched them up as best I could. Gallagher's actually a real Doc, and the infirmary's well stocked, so we weren't hurting too bad.

When the shooting stopped, the raiders were gone. Still not sure how much they got, but it was mostly small man-carryable crates from the transfer pad. Though General says he saw one of them was over by the hangar on the security feed.

A few hours later, after we'd gotten things cleaned up and the townsfolk calmed down, Lily came by looking for the box I'd managed to recover from her hide out by the mines. She was a little confused on whether she wanted to open it or not, but she did and started showing us all the pictures she had in it. She called it her Love Box. Filled with all the things she loved. Pictures of a lot of folk in there, including a few even she didn't recognize or understand.

I'm not sure what the exact effects were on Lily from reviewing the images. She seemed to be remembering a lot, and it looked to my completely unqualified eye like the images were helping her anchor what really mattered out of the jumble of memories she was dealing with.

Lily was still working through everything, but at Firefly's later that night she was getting closer to her old self. Not all of the memories were back in place, or even complete, but I could feel deep in my heart that we were going to get her back. The sweet kinda crazy not-cat that we all knew and loved.

All in all, the day could have been a lot worse. The raid didn't help us any, but Lily making steps to recovering gives me a gladness. I just have to remember to change out of my PJ's if I plan to get any work done. Sabrina does like the shiny silk, but it's not exactly professional Mayoring garb.

I'm going to kill Gallagher...

Ok. Maybe not. But sitting out here on the rise overlooking the Mines, trying to remember where to find that little hiding spot Lily uses to hide stuff, I'm seriously considering it.

What the hell was he thinking when he just went ahead and put that goram collar on Lily without telling anyone he was going to do it? We needed time! Knowing Lily'd stashed away memories as some kind of backup didn't mean we were ready to run the recombination and try to recover her from them. We don't even know where they all are!

I'm hoping that I can find her stash out here. Assuming it is stashed out here. It's possible she's left us other clues scattered around. Knowing what I know now, I can't imagine the pictures she put up in her apartment were completely random. Gallagher mentioned Lily making some kind of picturechart that was supposed to be done around Yule holiday, and that fits right in with her taking pictures and trying to make a backup. Also, have to wonder, with her giving gifts to the folk she thought were important, if she maybe didn't hide something in them too. Might be worth a look.

But right now, I've got to see if I can't find that box Mindo was talking about.

Definitely going to need a bath when this is done too. Maybe Sabrina will be willing to wash my back.

Lily's home, and other things

I've come to the conclusion that things out here on the Rim happen in bursts. You can go days, or even weeks, without any excitement and then all of a sudden everything happens at once. While we're still getting sporadic reports of drone activity, we've managed to recover Lily.

Mindo, xoxo's brother, payed us a visit with more questions about Lily. I don't trust him. I don't even like him. But he was our best lead on getting her back and figuring out how to fix her if we could get her back alive. The thing that gave me a glimmer of hope was him talking about all the pictures Lily had taken, saying she was gathering momentoes of the people and places that mattered in her life. Whether Lily herself realized it or not, she'd given us the key to getting her back. The crazy adorable not-cat had given us a goram backup.

I didn't know how much the 'reset' mode on that collar would actually wipe out. Lily's brain was at least mostly organic, and brains aren't like computers. Neural pathways don't wipe clean. If we were lucky, we could use all those images and objects Lily'd gathered to restore her memory, and with it the Person she'd become.

I'd set General off to get some memories of our own to help Lily recover -Mostly just the security feed backups from town. Any of the images that had her and the townsfolk, so she could see how people cared for her here and how caring she acted with them - when General and I both got waves from Lily, coming out of some abandoned comms relay in the wastes.

General did the heavy lifting. I just flew the boat this time. He might be telling the story in Fook's some night, but that's for him to decide. All I cared about was we'd managed to recover Lily and that goram collar.

She's not fixed yet. Not hardly. But she's back. Lily's a little worse for wear maybe, but there's a fighting chance we're not going to lose her.

On a more personal note, I've found I'm falling in love with Sabrina. I don't know how or why, especially since the both of us had it something fierce for Imrhien, but it's happened. We started getting friendly at the Yule season holiday party at Fireflys, and it went from there. Friendly, to friends, to lovers - the girl knows how to raise my temperature - to love.

The other night Sabrina made our being a real item public at Firefly's. Gray's even said we make a cute couple. I'm glad he thinks so, 'cause Sabrina and I have been pretty near inseperable on Blackburne.

I haven't stopped loving Imrhien. I don't think either Sabrina or I have, but that doesn't really matter. I don't believe you need to stop loving someone in order to love someone else right along with them. Imrhien'll always have part of my heart, but Sabrina's warm and close and she makes the 'verse a lot less lonely.

The love in your heart grows to fill the need. It's something I'd forgotten a long time ago. And now? Now I find the emotions confusing, but welcome in ways I'd forgotten.

Just need to let Haley out for her morning romp and get back to bed before Sabrina wonders where I've gotten off to.

Who the hell is xOxO . . .

. . . and what does she know about our Lily?

Ok, that's not really right. I've met xOxO before. Back when I first came to Hale's she was around occasionally, but I never really talked to her. And now, coming back from the Wastes with Imrhien while Lily bolted off, nekkid, to try and find her Daddy? It's got me wondering who she is, and why she knows so goram much about my Deputy.

General was sitting around the office talking with me the other morning, as he's been doing off and on of late, when xOxO showed up and said Hi. She asked a lot of questions about things that had been going on the last few months. No real surprise considering how long she'd been off the grid. General and I filled her in on most of the mundane goings on, and some of the more major events that'd happend to the folk that call Hale's Moon home. A lot had happened over the last few months.

As we got to talking, the subject of Lily came up and that's when things god painful. xOxO seemed to be figuring Lily was probably dead, or taken by slavers out in the Wastes. Both possibilities got my temperature up. But what threw me was the revelation that xOxO's brother, Mindo, was on the Blue Sun genetic engineering team that put her together. She seemed real surprised to find out just how Human General and I thought she was. How whole a person Lily'd become. xOxO seemed downright shocked to learn that Lily showed signs of caring for folk, and how much she'd come to mean to the town.

Don't know how or why she knew, but xOxO said Lily only had a six month span before she'd need the collar - some kind of biomedical device that would stabilize her hormones. Speaker cooked up something that stabilized her for a spell, but said himself it wouldn't be permanent - or go crazy with some kind of mating frenzy that's ultimately be her undoing. Don't know how much of it was even true. Only thing I knew was xoxo seemed to know a lot about our Lily, didn't think she was in a good place, and wasn't in a position to go looking for her.

Neither General or I were especially happy about what xoxo said. Couldn't hold it against her, really, though the paranoid retired black ops side of me kept thinking it might be some kind of elaborate trap to goad us into searching for Lily. Whether it was or not, that was what we were going to do.

We wouldn't have a lot of time or resources to devote. Certainly not enough for a proper search, but General had decent ground tracking skills and I had usable sensor and EW pods I could mount on Wave Equation. If the tracks were still fresh enough where Lily took off, General might be able to follow her. Otherwise, we could hope her signature was unique enough, even in the Wastes, that the sensor pod could get a fix.

Alive or dead, I was tired of not knowing.

Complications in dynamic organic systems

When I retired, decided to check out a boat, and went to the Rim, I thought I knew why I'd done it. I thought I was running: leaving behind events that were still painful, but not falling into the life laid out for me. Wouldn't have been a bad life. It just wasn't a life I was ready for.

I didn't realize it at the time, but part of the reason I came out to the Rim was to avoid the complications of life back home. Frontier life itself was rougher than life back on the core worlds, a good deal riskier, not always pleasant, but ultimately a whole lot simpler. At least until you factor in the People that get mixed up in the equation.

When I came out to Hale's Moon, it was just a place on the chart Speaker said had a decent bar. A spot where I could set down the boat, pick up some fuel, cycle the atmo, grab a bite and then get back into the Black. I never for the life of me thought that I'd wind up calling the place home.

I never figured they'd elect me, of all people, Mayor. That I'd find folks I'd be willing to lay down my life for. People to care for. People to call family, whether they're blood kin or not - or even Organic, or alone Human. I never thought I'd find someone to love, and someone to make the Black less lonely.

Never thought it could get so complicated.

It's all shiny though. Well. Maybe not so shiny. LilyBell is still out in the wastes somewhere, and Imrhien went back out to get Sabrina another one of those damn combat drones. Hale's is still rebuilding, and there's a darkness coming I'm going to do my damndest to hold back. At least I won't be doing it alone.

Life's gotten more complicated over the last few days, but it's also gotten less lonesome.

Memories

Something about real time stress makes a person long for times when things weren't quite so stressful. The last few months leading up to End Year hadn't been easy, not that living on Hale's Moon, out on the frontier, was supposed to be easy. But add to living on the Rim all the tsway-niou the Alliance was dumping on us, and it just loads it up to fill the brief time between laying down and falling asleep with wistful excursions into my own past.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The reasons behind the celebration didn't matter much to a 9 year old girl. Something about the Alliance taking delivery of a new KHI built capital ship. What mattered was that someone in the Alliance Ground Forces thought they would try and impress KHI's leader, Ernst Kawanishi, by adding a demonstration of the hand to hand training their elite Special Operations unit received. Martial arts traditions passed down from Earth that Was had been a part of the Kawanishi clan heritage from before the Exodus and Ernst, current clan Patriarch, was the master of those traditions.

None of that mattered to the little girl sitting beside her beloved grandfather on those grounds. The presentation was in his honor and I was there with him, basking in the reflected glory of a man I considered a minor deity.

I payed nearly as much attention to Grandfather as I did to the presentation: reading his assessment of the soldier's performance in his stoic gaze. I had studied the art under that gaze as long as I could remember and Grandfather did not appear overly impressed. He was polite, of course. He was always polite. But he was not impressed. Finally, after one of the more elaborate demonstrations, one of the soldiers - a lieutenant, though the rank meant nothing to me - approached Grandfather, giving him a barely adequate bow, and asked what he thought of the skills his team had displayed.

I was aghast. The soldier's tone, his stance, his expression, all showed arrogance and a lack of respect. Yet Grandfather only looked back at the man quietly for a moment before responding in a cool, controlled, voice. "Your soldiers are well trained for their role, but limited in their art." I looked between them as the Lieutenant took this implied criticism poorly, muttering something under his breath in Russian before giving Grandfather another barely respectful bow.

"Grandfather?!" I said softly, controlled anger obvious in my voice.

He looked down to me where I sat next to him, his own feelings well concealed on his face, but softening as he addressed me. "Yes, Mei Mei?"

I lowered my voice as much as I could, feeling several eyes upon me as I looked up, barely containing my feelings. "Grandfather, he disrespects you."

He smiled faintly, the barest uptick at the corner of his mouth. "Do you wish to challenge, Mei Mei?"

I looked between my Grandfather and the soldier, twice my height and at least four times my mass, and nodded fiercely. This soldier had besmirched my grandfather's honor, and that of my whole clan with it. Now, I'd have called my reaction cliche and immature, but at that moment every fiber of my being screamed out to defend my grandfather's honor.

Grandfather looked up at the soldier with a faint smile. "My granddaughter challenges you, Lieutenant. Do you accept?"

The man managed not to laugh, but his look was condescending, deciding to humor me. "Yes sir. I'll take her challenge."

I stood, giving Grandfather a deep bow before stripping off my shoes and some extraneous clothes and stepping onto the large mat to face the arrogant lieutenant. He gave me the same barely respectful bow he'd given Grandfather and dropped into a half serious ready stance, obviously not considering me a threat. I had been watching him during the demonstration, gaging his center of mass, his agility, speed, strength. I had already weighed my options by the time I returned a shallow but respectful bow, more respectful than he deserved, and settled into my own ready position.

"Begin" Grandfather said softly and I paused, dropping slightly to compact myself, ready to spring. I could tell by his stance the Lieutenant was expecting me to attack straight away. Even at that young age I could read his expression, his stance, and predict what he was going to do. It flashed though my mind that he might be better than I was giving him credit for. That my barely confined rage had made me underestimate this man. Or was Grandfather staging this as an elaborate lesson?

None of that mattered. In my heart, I knew my cause was just and only that mattered. I was fighting for love and honor and would bring every lesson I'd learned to bare. Without further warning, I let the coiled energy unleash and launched myself across the mat at my opponent.

He was caught off guard by the acrobatic leap as I dove into a roll to quickly close the distance. It was a flashy move, but had the intended effect. He paused in a moment's surprise, turning to face me as I rolled past and lashed a kick into the back of his leg, just above the knee, with all my strength.

The impact felt like kicking a tree stump. His legs were muscled like iron, but it was enough, barely, to buckle his knee. As he started to turn to recover I quickly rolled to his blind side and lashed a kick into his opposite ankle. He was much, much, larger and stronger than I was, but I was faster and more agile.

I was moving again before he hit the mat, springing back to my feet with an agility he couldn't physically match. I could see from his reaction that he knew he'd underestimated me, but it was already too late. Without giving him time to fully recover I attacked again, unleashing several swift kicks before he was able to reposition himself and roll back to his feet.

He settled back into a ready stance, this time well balanced and conservative, reassessing me. I knew this time I wouldn't have it so easy, but I was ready just the same. This time he started, launching into a series of strikes, a mix of punches and sweeping kicks. With his huge advantage in mass and strength I couldn't effectively block so I kept moving quickly, dodging or deflecting his powerful blows and mixing in ripostes of my own. I didn't really want to cripple this man, but given our relative strengths it was the one of the few options I had. But not the only one.

After exchanging several rounds of strikes and counter strikes, I moved in close. Inside his effective striking range, I could more easily dodge and eventually grapple, relying on speed and agility to get a solid grip on his left thumb. It was a devious hold. A full arm bar he'd have been able to simply over power me. But take the joint, and the arm would follow. At least with anyone who wasn't willing to sacrifice their own limb. As he tried to twist the thumb free, I used his weight and my body as a fulcrum to lever him over onto the mat, one knee on his back the other on the ground.

"Yield." It came out as more of an order than a question. He spent a moment trying to break my grip, but I twisted his thumb a bit more and better sense overcame him and the Lieutenant patted out before I dislocated the thumb.

With his surrender I immediately released him, quickly rising to my feet and offering him a hand. To my surprise he smiled and let me help him up before bowing to me respectfully. "You're much better than I'd believed, Miss Kawanishi. My apology. You've been taught well." His tone was far more respectful than before, and he turned to grandfather giving him a proper bow before returning to his place by the side.

Returning to Grandfather's side as the Special Ops unit prepared for their next demonstration, he looked at me with a pleased smile. "You make me proud, Mei Mei."

I just smiled outwardly, my voice soft "Thank you, Grandfather." But inside I was trying to resist the feeling of pride that was welling up inside me. The anger I'd felt before was gone, replaced by a sense of accomplishment. I'd challenged to defend the honor of Elder, Guro, and Clan and won against a worthy opponent. The only way I could feel better was if Grandfather took me out for ice cream after the demonstration.

He did. Chocolate. With sprinkles.

Home, if only briefly

So much to tell. So little time to get it into this diary. As I write this, Wave Equation is tearing through the Black on a maximum burn short time vector from the KHI shipyard over Ariel back to Hale's Moon. General's curled up on the couch with Haley, and Imrhien's asleep back in the living quarters.

So much has happened in the last few days, I'm not even sure how to process it all. Spending the annual 'Last Day' celebration at Firefly's on Blackburne was a roller coaster. A chance to dress up. A chance to spend a long, long, yet not long enough, never long enough, time dancing with Imrhien. Another long dance with Sabrina - the only woman I've danced with in a long time who I don't have to look up to see into her eyes. Watching Immi get a little too drunk, and Td hitting on her something fierce. And then, finally, a long trip back to Hale's Moon, alone, in the Black. Though, I admit, Haley seemed pretty enthusiastic to sleep on the bed when I got back.

Just didn't know Beagles snored.

Hard to believe that barely a day later Lily and Imrhien took off into the wastes for something: some kind of mission of Lily's I only knew the scantest pieces of. But Imrhien came back, injured, with xOxO in tow, and Lily still in the wastes looking for the 'cured' Reaver she calls 'Daddy.' I would be lieing if I said I wasn't worried for her. I love Lily. Not in the same 'tragic doomed romance' way I love Imrhien, but I still love her. Losing her would be like losing a sister and not something I want to contemplate.

So many revelations to digest. The truth about Immi being registered as a Companion. A band of watchers, like some mythical guardians from an Earth that Was fairy tale - though very real. A deeper relationship between her and Td than I suspected. The depths of Sabrina's natural skill. But worst - Experimental Alliance weapons systems turned loose on civilian populations and the terrible, gut wrenching, thought that, somehow, my own Kin were responsible for that weapon.

The machines that attacked Imrhien and xoxo on the way back from the wastes were some kind of combat drone. Small, but dangerous. Not entirely unlike the ones that used to plague the area out by the mines on Hale's, and evidently part of the weapon system that had supposedly attacked more than one Independent-friendly outpost. As Imrhien told us, gathered in Firefly's, about the machines and the self replicating mining machines they were based on, my heart sank.

I remembered a project, not long after the war, launched by one of my Uncle's at KHI's Research and Development lab to design and build exactly that. Self replicating mining machines. Drop a mother bot on a black rock and it would build a swarm of smaller mining drones. The drones would go out and start mining, bringing their finds back to mother who'd process then and eventually build another mother who'd move off somewhere and start the process again. The mother bots were programmed to set aside a good portion of the mined resources, then call back to someone to come pick it up. The whole idea was to help the rim worlds rebuild without having to risk people in mining operations on dangerous worlds. Just the kind of idealistic, mostly crazy, project Uncle Elsoph was known for. But also something he'd be able to make work given the resources.

It wasn't safe to wave Uncle with the kind of questions I had, so we mounted up - myself, Imrhien (I still need time to finish bandaging her wounds), General, and Haley - and burned full speed back to the yard. En route, I finished tending Immi's wounds and let her take a bath. She was bringing out a side of me I didn't know I had, but that was another matter.

Fortunately, we managed to avoid dealing with a lot of people. I'd been coming to the yard since I was little, and people still treated me as "The old man's favorite granddaughter." With my friends, it was almost embarrassing. They knew me as a friend. A small town Mayor on a frontier colony. They didn't know me as the daughter of an Industrial Giant, but I couldn't worry about impressions. Asking Uncle Elsoph directly about the old mining drone project was why we were here. That, and to give Imrhien the opportunity to get some real medical attention from the only doctor in the 'verse I trusted completely.

Uncle Elsoph confirmed my worst fears. He had designed the mining machines and gotten them to work. Actual, working, von Neumann machines. But other than the first prototypes, and a generation of 'daughters,' the project had been long abandoned. Explaining the project, the mining machines weren't even actually armed. At least not specifically. There was a lot of gear on a mining drone that was lethal to get in front of, but they were never designed for combat and were specifically designed to avoid injuring any Humans who happened to be around while they worked.

Elsoph also managed to dig out some records indicating the Alliance Bureau of Frontier Development had paid for most of the research, and then outright purchased the prototypes and the engineering data on them. What he hadn't known, because it was a deeply classified secret, was that there were several Black Ops development units hidden within the BFD bureaucracy, including at least one specializing in exotic weapons.

We were humped. Perhaps we were all humped. If someone had weaponized the von Neumann technology, things were going to get very scary out on the Rim.

Hell with it. There's nothing any of us can do about it now. I'm going to go in back and snuggle with Immers until she wakes up.