Letters from Home

Working on the Children of Earth project has been the most engrossing thing I've ever taken on. For the last six months this ship, and her crew, have been my life. Sure, there are occasional breaks surface side to Bolinger's Rock or into the city for something, but for all intents and purposes the Sled is my life.

That's why anything personal in my daily mail is a bright spot. The vast majority of my incoming waves and hard copy packages are directly related to the project, so when something comes in from someone who's actually part of the 'Verse outside of this little artificial world I always set aside time to enjoy it.

When the courier delivered a small package from Hale's Moon, I was naturally excited. Not that anyone who looked into my office could tell. Aside from Belize and Sabrina, who knew me well, and Lieutenant Conner, who understood the facade of a fellow Special Ops veteran, the crew all knew me as calm and personable, if a little reserved. None of them actually knew I had a temper, or that I felt emotions deeply, and that it was all kept hidden behind a calm, peaceful, exterior by years of self discipline. Good or bad, the only thing that changed in the calm was whether it was a bit warm or a bit icy.

Now, it was a warm calm.

We'd gotten semi-regular waves from the folks back on Hale's, but something you could hold in hand was special, and I knew who it was from without opening the box. An address label printed with machine precision, using a crayon, could mean only one person. Well, two, really. In concert. The handwriting was Krenshar's, the selection of lipstick red crayon could only be Lily.

Part of me wanted to wait until 'Brina and Bel were both off shift so they could be here when I opened it. They'd both left friends behind on Hale's to take this assignment and I knew they'd both want to know what was in it. Unfortunately, 'Brina was, almost literally, up to her elbows in drive tuning, and Belize was planetside again for a couple days getting some updated medical equipment. Which meant I wasn't really being bad by giving in to temptation and opening the package.

I opened it carefully, setting aside the wrapping as close to pristine as possible. I knew it was silly to want to preserve the wrapper, but it was all special. At least to me. In some cultures, the wrapping a gift came in was considered part of the gift itself, and often as much thought went into the wrapping as went into the present inside. So there was at least a precedent. Sort of.

Inside the wrapper was a small polymer packing box, just big enough across to cover both my open hands and maybe thirty millimeters thick. The original markings had been removed, but fr0m the looks of it, and the faint scent of coffee, it had originally gone Lily's little coffee shop. Now, instead of whatever markings it had once had, it was now covered with about a dozen hand written little notes from various folk back on Hale's.

My smile was just a shallow reflection of what I was feeling inside. The package is part of the gift itself. The sentiment of a small world in wildly varying script.

I opened it as carefully as I had the outer wrapping. Inside the box, nestled on some carefully cut padding that hadn't been part of the original package, were a dozen or so individually wrapped pieces of hard candy, several pieces of jewelry that looked like they'd been hand made by Lily and Jin, a couple of hand written notes, and half a dozen video posties.

It was easy to tell who the jewelry was intended for. The pendant, hanging on a woven titanium necklace, was obviously for Sabrina. Looking like a set of intricately linked clockwork gears, hand carved from the aft bearing of a Firefly's main drive, it screamed Jin's work. The other pieces were equally obviously Lily's handy work. Made from gemstones and precious metals she'd dug out of Hale's crust herself, mixtures of garnet, amethyst, platinum, silver, and gold, she'd sent along something for each of us.

Each of the posties was signed by one or more of the folks back on Hale's. I would save them until Sabrina and Belize were back to watch them with me. All save one. The one that said L I L Y on the back, block printed in crayon.

I ran my fingers over the smooth glossy surface. Flexible, thin as a sheet of paper, the postie was both storage and display media. They would last for decades, able to play the recording again and again before needing to be recharged. Giving the bottom corner a little squeeze, I watched as the image snapped into view.

For a moment I was confused, until I realized I was looking at an extreme, jiggling, closeup of Lily's nose. "This on? Ok ok ok! Hi Mommy Seana!" her voice came from the postie before the image suddenly shifted wildly to show sky, part of a building, a leg, then Lily's feet. Somehow I managed not to giggle.

"Would you like me to hold the recorder, Miss Lilybell?" Krenshar's voice from off screen somewhere, then Lily's "Ok, ok! You hold." The image suddenly bobbing quickly, and I could picture Lily nodding rapidly, like she did, before the image slid around, obviously passing the recorder off to Krenshar. The image suddenly stabilized with Lily center of frame, letting me identify where they were standing - near the main lift beside Fook Yoo's.

"Hi Mommy Seana! Hi Mommy Sabrina! Hi Auntie Belize!" Lily said, grinning wide and waving madly at the camera. "Hello, Mei Mei." I said softly back. "Her misses you all! Wanted show you everything ok wif us here. We takes good care of people wif Miss Genni." Lily nodded fiercely, then started explaining what everything was around her starting with the main lift. Krenshar dutifully followed her around town, keeping her, and often what she was trying to show, in frame and in focus.

For the next hour I watched the recording as Krenshar followed Lily around town, stopping to show off every little change she could find since we left. Furniture re-arranged in Fook's: New paint on the Church: An awning at Starstrucks: The updated sound system at Firefly's: The latest harvest from the Hydroponics building on sale in the Farmer's Market: A roughly Matagi sized rectangle hand painted on the pad behind Town Hall with the words "Reserved. You no land here!" scrawled across the middle.

I had to laugh aloud at that. We'd had Wave Equation parked on that spot for the better part of five years. My boat. Our home. She was still my boat, though the interior had been changed around to carry more passengers since we used her fairly often for runs planetside. But I doubted she'd ever see the surface of Hale's Moon again.

Eventually, they worked their way through town until they arrived at the little courtyard above the Infirmary. That little sheltered area, quite literally in the center of town, had always been a favorite spot of mine. The fountain, centered in the carefully tended stone garden, was an open challenge to the desert that was Hale's.

Years ago, lacking a church or temple or even a simple alter, I'd hand cut a small alter from spare stone and placed it in the courtyard. I'd needed it to offer a prayer to Caitlin's memory, as I had every year since her death. As I still did. That little stone alter had somehow come through Buddha only knew how many firefights, explosions, celebrations in the courtyard, and what have you, in the years since. I never expected it to be permanent, but somehow, like the colony itself, it had survived.

"You see, you see? Her saved this for last, Miss." Lily said brightly, then stepped off to the side, Krenshar holding the recorder focused on the little stone alter and the structure they'd placed around it. A tiny gazebo built around the alter, sheltering it. On shelves built into the small structure, people had placed posties and stills. Pictures and memories of us.

They'd turned the simple alter into a shrine.

"You likes? Whole town help build. Put up pictures and everything. You goes all the way to Erf that Was, but we remembers. Her remembers. But her gots to go now. You be safe Mommies! You be safe, Auntie! Her loves you." Krenshar held the image of the shrine in frame for a long time before the recording stopped, frozen on lily and the shrine. A moment frozen in time.

I stared at the frozen image for several minutes before a single tear landed on the glossy surface, bringing me back to the moment. "I like, Mei Mei. And I love you too. I'll never forget. We'll never forget."

Five months on

Officially, at least, the major work on Children of Earth and the crew integration phases are complete. The ship, now, has started into the Acceptance phase with the crew's undergoing their final training stages before we start the final shakedowns before departure. Never mind the 'last testing stages' would take another four to six months, depending on how things went.

Sabrina and Belize were both taking well to their roles. They'd both settled in well with their teams and quickly earned the respect of the people in both directions of their respective food chains. I hadn't had it quite so easy. While I was a competent leader and had managed to gain the respect of many of the people who reported to me, most notably the ORCA's who I understood, and the Scientists, who I did not, there was still a very subtle friction with the Captain and other members of his hand picked ex-fleet staff.

The inter-service rivalry between those who served in the Ground Forces and those who served in the Alliance Fleet, was as old as the Alliance. Older. Records from Earth that Was had some famous examples of rivalries between the different services almost as intense as the rivalries between different national militaries. As long as it didn't interfere with operations, the rivalries were usually pretty healthy. They kept the services sharp by trying to out do one another, rather than just drilling against synthetic enemies. And therein lay the problem.

While I was an accomplished pilot with hundreds of hours in the command chair, my official service record was with a ground unit, not a fleet element. I was a Major, not a Lieutenant Commander, and that difference in title apparently mattered more to the Captain's senior staff than my current position as their Executive Officer. Never mind there was an official promotion in the works, which would actually give me the Fleet rank of Commander, equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel, the fact was my capabilities and matching responsibilities had never been limited by my official rank.

There was a reason Admirals would would talk to me when I asked.

I would deal with things, of course. I actually understood Captain Gill's reason for being a little standoffish with me. He'd wanted to pick the deck crew entirely on his own, but to his mind, had been saddled with an unsuited officer who'd been picked by the constructors, rather than the Alliance.

Not that our problems were even that pronounced. But one thing I had learned from my covert operations experience and, to a lesser degree, running the colony on Hale's Moon, was how to read when someone harbored ill will. Even when they may not admit it to themselves, I had learned to see it. He could claim he was perfectly happy having me as his XO but I know, deep down, he resented a Gropo, picked by the company, on his staff.

Dealing with Gill, and all the fleet specific retraining, made me relish the occasional breaks we took planetside. I'd been born and raised on Ariel. I'd probably been to every worthwhile place to get some away time on the planet. But a favorite, shared with a fair number of Children of Earth's crew, was a small island roughly in the middle of nowhere.

Bolinger's Rock wasn't well named. While the center of the roughly five my three kilometer island was indeed quite rock like, it was actually the highest point of a mostly submerged undersea mountain: the central cone of an ancient undersea volcano. Shallow reefs surrounded the central island, providing natural breakwaters that let Bolinger's retain some truly pristine beaches.

There wasn't actually much on the island, save a tracking station near the peak KHI had installed decades ago to monitor atmospheric flight tests, some bungalows used by the station's resident technicians, and a couple of landing pads. The island itself was named for the Range Master who'd overseen the station's construction, and had become kind of a 'special benefit' for KHI executives and specially invited guests once they'd landed a retired luxury transport in the island's lee on a specially built pad.

Now, it was mostly ours.

Since the finalization of the crew and their coming aboard, we'd pretty much annexed the "Liner-turned-Hotel" for our own needs. Given the stress the crew was under, and the fact that we may never see a beach again, Grandfather had been willing to turn the keys over. While the station was still quite active, it's crew had been augmented by a handful of people who were dedicated full time to supporting whoever was visiting the grounded "Lady Minerva."

Laying out on the beach, under the light of a star I would soon leave far, far, behind, listening to the waves, I could forget, if only briefly, the troubles of the 'Verse. It was an excuse to pretend I didn't have any responsibilities. Besides, 'Brina still liked me in a bikini. for that matter, I think the ORCAs may have too.