02/11/21 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

Having a little trouble getting anything done today. Some days the creative juices don’t really flow, I guess.

“Right,” I said as I leaned forward. “Tomb World colonies are dying, we’re next on the list, you’re here to stop it. Why didn’t you say so? And why are you saying it to me? This is a conversation to have with the project head, or the corp manager, not the chief pilot. I mean, sure, I’m real important and everything. I’m in the leadership. But I’m not in charge.”

“The answers are all related,” said Rubicon. “Simply put: you are the highest-ranking individual with no prior links to the other sites. We looked at public information; you have been on-planet for the last two years. No vacations, no offplanet assignments. You might still be involved, but there is an upper useful limit to paranoia. Besides, we cannot investigate further unless we have some access to private records.”

“Ha! And you’ve discovered by now that Jefferson-based corps won’t back-door personal information files, I bet.” I took his silence as consent. “Especially when it’s somebody from the Great Powers trying to get in. There’s a lotta people back home with long memories about how their grandmas ended up in the colony, you know.”

“I do not set Earth’s involuntary transportation policy, Pilot Officer Tanaka,” Rubicon said, evenly enough that I wondered if he might even disagree with it, a little. “But I will admit that it is currently making my task more difficult. And my task is to stop the scouring of this planetary site.”