This is what they pay me for

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

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

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

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

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 . . .

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

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.