Editing Paradigm

<br><br>
An excerpt from ''Peripatetica'', by M. K. Sebastien, Engr. ret. <br><br><br>



'''Saturday, 24 May 2521''' <br>
'''Peña Spaceport, Kerry''' <br>
'''Georgia (Huang Long) system''' <br>
'''2300hrs, local time''' <br><br><br>

Kerry wasn’t a bad spot for a layover, all things considering.  Her oceans crashed into shallow rocky beaches backed by 70 stories of sheer cliff, after which the land smoothed out into an incredibly green and rolling interior well watered by the cool and velvety air.  During the daylight hours, the light bouncing off all that green made the blue sky almost purple in contrast and at night, no doubt the sparsely populated countryside would be as dark as the inside of a black cat. Not that I had the chance to observe nightfall in the rural areas.  As soon as we’d secured the orphaned children aboard the Gift, we’d blasted out of the ruined village for the closest spaceport and put them in the hands of the proper humanitarian services, there to be looked after and one would hope, placed with families who would love them.  

That had been several hours ago and currently I sat atop the hull of our girl, the line and harness I’d worn to hang off the bow in yet another crack at fixing our sensor array laying coiled at my feet.  Before me stretched the spaceport, a glittering complex of lights, ships and steam blazing into the night.  Exit and entry trails crossed the stars overhead and the hum of activity both human and machine-made hummed around us. A radio screeched something musical and tinny somewhere behind me and even at this late hour I could hear the pushcart vendors calling their wares.  The late spring weather lay like silk on my skin, pleasant and undemanding.  A breath of it wafted through my hair and I tipped my head back to savor it.

Was Mike doing the same thing, standing dirtside somewhere?  Or was he locked up in a prison cell awaiting execution?

''The president of the MZP, most powerful man in Blue Sun, and owner of You Corp, (Parent company of You Go: Gas and Service, as well as several other large enterprises, including Pericles Station) was assassinated in his home March 15th it is believed to be by one of his own security personnel. The alleged assassin Michael Cameron Carter has long ties to the Independence movement, and insurgents in the post war era. It is unknown whether Carter acted alone, or in conjunction with others. Although some people in the MZP and PDF accused the Alliance of sending Carter in, there is considerable animosity and infighting from within the Independence movement. Many Browncoats expressed distrust of You Ge, calling him power hungry, and others expressed disappointment with the willingness of the MZP to settle for autonomy in the relatively sparsely populated Blue Sun System instead of carrying the independence movement to the whole Rim and Border.''

Or so read the Cortex feed the local network gave us.  I tried to picture Mike worming his way past You Ge’s defenses, hiring on as a security officer in order to get close enough to kill him.  To what end?  I thought back to Kramer telling me some things in her office aboard ''Decatur''. 

''“I’ve got some information about your friend Mike Carter. My question is, do you want to know any of it?”'' she’d asked me six months ago.

''“Yes,”'' I’d said.

''“I’ll summarize. It is a ‘be on the lookout’ notice sent to all PDF vessels. It says that he broke into PDF command on Highgate, may have gotten some information, or tampered with files there, was captured, and escaped. Quite a busy trip,”'' she went on to tell me.  And followed it with, ''“Carter is a bit of a pariah now. Our information network was dealt a pretty serious blow when his intel got leaked. That said, I know how it happened. So I hold no grudge. But it is hard to blame those who lost friends and compatriots, and maybe those that don’t know how it happened. Carter was often in so deep lots of people were never sure whose side he was on. Does that make sense? This just cemented the view that maybe he wasn't one of them, one of us.”''

She’d had a data pad with the report of his capture and escape on it.  The date on it was forty-five days old.  A lot could happen in a month and a half.  Shyla hadn’t finished hitting me with the bombshells.  She’d lobbed another in my lap with, ''“And... there is something else. His name came up recently. But not in the context of the PDF. I was speaking with Ge You. He asked if I had heard of him. I was vague, mentioned what we all know… and You said something odd. ‘A man like that is probably in need of a friend wouldn't you think?’ I don’t remember what I said. We moved on to other business. When I left the meeting he asked me to keep an eye out for Carter and let him, You, know if he showed up. I thought that very odd.”''

''“When was this conversation with You? Before or after the Highgate job?”'' I’d asked.

''“Before…,”'' she’d said. ''“And I can't help wonder if he had some help.”''

I had been shown security camera feeds of the Highgate job by military intelligence.  Major Tanner’s screen capture showed Mike in a moustache and goatee, wearing the cap and coveralls of a You-Go employee.  

''“This security shot was taken on a You-Go fuel tanker headed in to Blue Sun,”'' Tanner had said. ''“That’s the last we had.  You know anything about this?”''

The date on Tanner’s feed said October 6th.   Thirty-six days prior to my meeting with Shyla Kramer. 

All that was history, six months gone and more.  I sat with the night all around me and tried to hammer it into some logical pattern, force it to make some sort of sense.  I pulled a grease pencil from my sleeve holster and drew a timeline on the hull. Working backwards from my meeting with Shyla, I placed hash marks on the line where the events occurred and labeled them:

''< 27 Sep 2520: You Ge offers Mike friendship via Kramer. (0)'' <br>
''27 Sep 2520: Highgate job, Highgate, Blue Sun (0 + ?d)''<br>
''06 Oct 2520: Screen cap, You-Go Tanker, Location unknown (= 9 d)''<br>
''11 Nov 2520:  Kramer, Meridian, Blue Sun (9 + 36 = 45 d)''<br>

And moving forward, I filled in:

''15 Mar 2521: You Ge assassinated, Blue Sun (9 + 36 + 124 = 169 d)''<br>
''24 May 2521: Today, Kerry, Georgia (9+ 36+ 124+ 70 = 239 d)''<br>

Sometime before the Highgate job, You Ge extended an offer to Mike. The Highgate job targeted PDF records.  The PDF issued a BOLO on Mike afterward. You Ge was President of the MZC party and the financial backer of the PDF. Nine days later Mike was seen by the tanker security cameras. One hundred sixty-nine days after Highgate, You Ge lay dead, shot by one of his security team and Mike detained as the assassin.

After a moment, I added one more item to the timeline 

''07 Sep 2520: Cortex goes down.''

Killing the Cortex effectively killed the Alliance.  No one could keep tabs on anybody or anything anymore, not with any efficacy.  Comms traffic was reduced to local signal range.  Documents traveled only as far and as fast as the ships carrying them.  Neither comms nor ships could be everywhere at once, not like the Cortex could.  It could take days, weeks, months before knowledge of events caught up with others not directly involved in them.  In such circumstances, a civilization spanning stars and worlds was impossible to hold together and so everything spun away.  Now the individual star systems were on their own, with the Alliance withdrawing to White Sun and circling its wagons.  In such a climate, political and territorial gain could be had just for the taking… provided one had sufficient political and military backing.

Thinking hard on what I’d gleaned from our trips to Meridian, I recalled Blue Sun’s interplanetary and safety issues fell to the PDF for enforcement while the organs of government and elections fell to the MZC.  Election results were managed by the MZC with help from the PDF.  So the two were entwined in any election process… 

''Military and politics.  Never a trouble-free combination.''

What was Mike looking for in the PDF records on Highgate?  What did Mike take, if anything?  Or what did he insert?  Did You Ge send him to Highgate for something?  If so, what?  Why?  If it wasn’t at You Ge’s order, then whose?  And Mike being Mike, what did he learn and memorize before turning it over to whoever had sent him?  

Did what he find influence him to become a part of You Ge’s security force?  Or was he already a part of it by the time the Highgate Job went down?  I had no hard date for that friendship overture of You Ge’s.  It could have been months before Highgate, or it could have been only days.

And when I got right down to it, I only had Kramer’s account to suggest that the friendship offer was newly minted when You Ge mentioned it to her.  For all Kramer knew, it had been. Or it could already have been already a done deal between You Ge and Mike, and Kramer had been merely an unwitting tool to skew the timeline with her version of the facts.

I stared at the hull, trying to connect the dots, feeling the truth hovering just past my comprehension, the big picture eluding me by a cat’s whisker.  It might as well have been a mile—close only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades.  And a traitorous part of me whispered that perhaps it was as straight up as it seemed: that Mike had pulled the Highgate job on his own, had heard of You Ge’s offer afterward, and had taken him up on it so as to assassinate him later.  

But why?

Mike had to know that assassinating a public figure would only put the spotlight on that person’s security team.  As a member of it, he would immediately fall under suspicion.  Why would Mike go in with that strike automatically against him?  Why not take out You Ge with a sniper rifle as a lone-wolf operative, unallied with You Ge’s security team? Itineraries could be stolen, ambushes arranged, all without infiltrating the target’s organization by posing as one of their own.

I thought some more on the Cortex report.

''The alleged assassin Michael Cameron Carter has long ties to the Independence movement, and insurgents in the post war era. It is unknown whether Carter acted alone, or in conjunction with others.''

That certainly sounded more like Mike’s style.  I knew he preferred to keep the in-the-know loop small, if he included anyone at all.  Acting alone was safest in terms of intel security, but left you vulnerable without back-up.  

''Although some people in the MZP and PDF accused the Alliance of sending Carter in, there is considerable animosity and infighting from within the Independence movement.'' 

Mike had already admitted over two years ago the reason he’d been involved in the Beaumonde factory job was to patch up the schism in the Independence movement, working to build a bridge over the widening gap between ideologies.  He’d been caught by the Feds instead, chemically mind-fucked while in captivity, and forced to give up thirty-five confirmed sleeper agents as a result.  

As an Independent spy, being captured by the Feds was enough to damage his trustworthiness in the Resistance.  The death of the thirty-five was enough to burn him completely. Where could a burned spy go after that?  History had already proven that hiding was not an option for Mike.  Hunters had found him on Salisbury and forced him to leave for the Black again.

''Many Browncoats expressed distrust of You Ge, calling him power hungry, and others expressed disappointment with the willingness of the MZP to settle for autonomy in the relatively sparsely populated Blue Sun System instead of carrying the independence movement to the whole Rim and Border.'' 

Was assassinating You Ge the price for being allowed back into the fold as a spy?  Or was this a condition of calling off the hunters that had been sent after him?  Or was a greater plan being put into motion?  Was a larger agenda being served?  If so, whose?  

''“There is no love lost between Nguyen and You. They both resent the power the other has. Nguyen's military, You's wealth,”'' Kramer had said to me.  Nguyen had a substantial base on Highgate and had been gathering forces loyal to him and his cause for some time now.  I added another date to the timeline, setting it before the Highgate job by six months.

''29 Feb 2520: Meeting with Nguyen, Base near Lorngaard, Highgate''

At the time we’d had no way to refuse and had gone to meet him.  At the meeting he was primarily interested in news of Mike.  First Nguyen wanted him, then You Ge.  Who eventually won him to their side? Or was Mike playing both against each other?  Mike knew Nguyen as far back as Beaumonde, perhaps even farther, and Mike never explicitly said whether he believed in Nguyen’s politics or not.  What if he had?  Killing You Ge benefitted Nguyen and if so, Mike apparently was his go-to guy.

But would Mike further Nguyen’s agenda at the cost of his own?

Mike had told me of his plan to go to Miranda to settle there.  To disappear.  And when the time was right, he’d call me to disappear with him.  If You Ge was solidifying his power to make Blue Sun autonomous throughout, Miranda’s freedom from the Feds was secured and with it, Mike’s continued existence.  Without You Ge, it became more uncertain what the fate of Miranda would be.

With Mike’s retirement in mind, killing You Ge made no sense.  None whatsoever.  Especially now in the light of the events since the Colchester Wave, with all the systems outside the Core cut loose to their own devices, with the Alliance stepping in only on invitation. It would be highly unlikely for the Alliance to interfere with Blue Sun now or press any claim it might have had on Miranda.

Had Mike made a sweetheart deal with Nguyen?  The death of You Ge in exchange for a Nguyen-enforced hands-off on Miranda? Would securing an entire world from outside interference be worth killing one man? A man who just happened to be the main political opponent of another with an army on his side?

In the end, it came down to who had the most guns AND the ability to move them between the worlds at best possible speed and effectiveness.  As the head of the PDF, Nguyen had the ability to enforce any policy he wanted at the end of a gun. Who knows what that man might accomplish now that You Ge had been removed from play?  

As I’d said to Kramer on Decatur, ''“Personally, I wouldn't want to live under a military dictatorship. They tend to be bloody and having done a job for Nguyen once, I'm pretty sure what his style his dictatorship will take.”''

However, the PDF had been financed in part by You Ge.  Losing You Ge’s money and resources would be a critical blow to Nguyen’s military machine. What did Nguyen have that could counter that?

Shyla had called it before we’d even left Miranda: ''Many people see Nguyen as the quasi-Messiah of the Resistance.  He got the motivational skills and the will to do things.''

The farther from the Core one travelled, the more people hated the Feds.  I was pretty certain Nguyen was not blind to the wellspring of support just waiting to be tapped for his purposes.  Money and materiel could be had, especially if acquired across several years.  There would have been enough time after the War to start building financial connections and lines of communication with like-minded individuals.  With the Cortex down, organization across space would be difficult but so long as the lines of communication remained open, one only needed a way to coordinate a timeline with an agenda and a hard date to strike at a single target.

Like assassinating a President.

And if Nguyen’s been gathering his forces, who else in the Resistance movement had been gathering theirs?  I thought back to the message I’d gleaned from Bu Gao Lan and added it to the timeline:

''21 Jan 2520: Salisbury, Brothers come home if you are able.  The wheat is ripe for harvest.''

At the time I had thought it had been a coded message from the Abbot, calling his men home.  And our brief glimpse of the Abbey before we found Mike certainly made it seem he was been gathering forces of some sort…but to what end and where we could not uncover.  Mike had called them ''‘minute men’'', and wasn’t entirely free of derision when he said it.  

Mike had told me other things, too.  About how the Abbot had been getting intel from Blue Sun—from Miranda.  About how the Abbot had been training people to fight the Reavers.  About how there was a force gathering to clear Miranda of the Reavers so others could come in and settle on it.  About how Mike himself intended to claim a piece of Miranda as his own…and mine.

So now there was the potential for a third army in the picture, the one that would lay claim to Miranda as a stronghold for the hardliners like Mike.  Or rather, as Mike had once been.  Captured, burned and forcibly retired from the clandestine community, where did Mike fit in all of that?  ''Did he even fit''? What about my promise to him about Miranda?  And by association, what would happen to ''Summer’s Gift'' and my family on her?  

I stared at the timeline I’d drawn:

''21 Jan 2520: Salisbury, Brothers come home if you are able.  The wheat is ripe for harvest.'' <br>
''29 Feb 2520: Meeting with Nguyen, Base near Lorngaard, Highgate''<br>
''07 Sep 2520: Cortex goes down.''<br>
''< 27 Sep 2520: You-Ge offers Mike friendship via Kramer. (0)''<br>
''27 Sep 2520: Highgate job, Highgate, Blue Sun (0 + ?d)''<br>
''06 Oct 2520: Screen cap, You-Go Tanker, Location unknown (= 9 d)''<br>
''11 Nov 2520:  Kramer, Meridian, Blue Sun (9 + 36 = 45 d)''<br>
''15 Mar 2521: You-Ge assassinated, Blue Sun (9 + 36 + 124 = 169 d)''<br>
''24 May 2521: Today, Kerry, Georgia (9+ 36+ 124+ 70 = 239 d)''<br>

The Abbot’s message and his training of Reaver-Hunters…that was a red herring with regard to the assassination.  Even if you allowed the Abbot’s long-standing friendship with Mike, there wasn’t enough there to establish any connection with You Ge’s death.   The Abbot’s activities only put him in Blue Sun pursuing a different agenda.  I crossed out the notation on 21 Jan.  Everything else seemed relevant, I just couldn’t see ''how''.
 
Before we’d left Mike behind on Salisbury for a second time, he’d revealed to me that there was one last job he had to do before he’d call me to him.  Something long-range and difficult.  I couldn’t help but wonder now if killing You Ge had been what he’d meant.  My gut insisted that it was not.  My head wanted to believe it, too.  With only my memories of past events and a single news flash, I didn’t know which side was right.  

I needed more data.  I needed to look Mike in the eye and ask him for the truth.  Both were out of reach.  Without a way to ascertain Mike’s innocence from a distance, I was stalemated as to a course of action.  And that made everything inside my head come to a complete stop.

''Why are you even debating this? Spring him free. Get him back.'' 

After all, I hadn’t given it a second thought when the Feds snatched him on Beaumonde.  Of course I was going to chase them down and get him back.  Why was I hesitating now? I sat and listened to the night and felt something inside me stretch taut like a bowstring… and snap in two.  

''I’m not the same.  He’s not the same.  I don’t know who we are anymore.''

With that realization, the tightrope I’d walked for over a year and a half disappeared beneath my feet.  I knew that if Mike stood before me now, I wouldn’t know what to do or say, only that I might never be able to make it right between us again.


<br><br><br>
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