TGoaW-26

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==Chapter 26 - The Glow of a Worm inside a Child's Eye==
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Ia Drang Overlook
Kowloon, Lyran Commonwealth
Mid-winter, June 30th, 3038
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The boys were playing outside under watchful eyes. "I would have thought you would position further up." Ardan Sortek commented from the deck of the cabin.
Dinh Ngo finished pouring his own ca'phe, and joined the foreigner. "You mean in the out-system. Yeah, well, You go where the work is, Mister Sortek. My job is down here, so are the grandchildren this year...don't worry, we're not under anyone's observation."
"How do you know?"
"Because, I'm paranoid...which is to say, 'security conscious' about industrial espionage efforts. Especially with our manufacturing status being outed by Her Majesty to foreigners. The threat of a sudden rash of unexplained deaths or accidents keeps me on my toes."
"You have reason to believe in such things?", Adrien asked
"Only history." Dinh said firmly, "Every time someone looks like they're getting things put back together? there's a rash of accidents, or someone critical dies. It's been like that for more than two hundred years, which is why my mother, her father, and his father, and his mother? They all went with the cover of being a somewhat lucky salvage outfit for as long as we could get away with it...you're going to want to drink that soon or it'll be so cold it's terrible. I got my first real 'eye opening' when I went to You-Dub Donegal back around the late nineties, and found professors teaching shit I already knew from apprenticing with my father's friends."
"Funny, your marks were middle-of-the-pack."
"Yeah, had to dumb it down a lot." Dinh stated. "We kept a wealth of industrial and technical knowledge that everybody else seems to have rushed to forget...only I think it was more than just a rush to forget, and I can't say it's a 'dirtyfeet problem'. Her Majesty wants me to read you in on the program here, and while I have objections. I swore an oath, and she's got my loyalty, so we're going to pretend my reservations don't make me want to throw you out the nearest airlock and write a letter to your sovereign explaining the accident."
"That's...more frank than I was expecting."
"We survive out here by keeping secrets secret." Dinh underlined with a gesture. "It's why Alessandro's interrogators didn't get Luvon's itinerary or support group from me for three years. I've gotten what amounts to a royal command to give up a big one."
"The Caspar."
"Tabiranth, and you'd best get used to referring to them as you would a person." Dinh clarified, "Because they ARE a person, in every way that matters."
"Every way?"
"Self-willed, intelligent, even capable of selfishness." Dinh stated, "Tabiranth is a..a sapient being, we're not sure how they wound up that way. It's not because Nirasaki did anything spectacularly right, but in every particular that matters. That ship is a person, and forcing them into a service role is slavery. They're a guest, and an ally. With due all the rights, you are as a guest and an ally."
Ardan blinked, he caught the emphasis there. "You aren't kidding."
"No." Dinh stated, "I'm not. TQF-142M5D is as deserving of decent treatment as any human being, and has the scars and traumas to prove it...without their help. Kerensky would've lost the day he started the final drive to Terra, and he paid that back by trying to kill his benefactor...right before he deserted with the only force in existence that could've made the Successor Lords blink."
"Uh, how?" Ardan asked.
"The 'unique ECM' wasn't." Dinh explained, "She virused her own kind, and crippled their performance when he arrived. If she hadn't, Kerensky's fleet would've died on the way in. she was able to do that, because she's somehow developed the will to overcome hard-coded directives-she was able to ignore Amaris' orders, which shouldn't be possible for something built on a Nirasaki processor instead of evolved from what we evolved from. She still HAS the directives, she's just able to refuse to obey. She has morals, Mister Sortek."
"So...if she chose to leave..."
"We'd make sure her fuel bunkers are topped up and let her go." Dinh told him. "She hasn't chosen that, she seems to like working with us, but it's HER CHOICE whether she speaks with you...I think this is a wonderful way to introduce the idea of immigration for non-human sentients, don't you? I have a mind to offer her citizenship status, or warn her to run and keep going, depends on what you show me."
"My god, you're serious."
"As a heart-attack." Dinh stated blandly. "I'll suggest you draft your request to speak with her in the sitting room, we'll courier it out to her, and she'll decide if she wants to speak with you, and under what role...and she'll have my full backing if her answer is '****** no'...it's how Annie would've wanted it."
"Your late wife."
"Yeah." Dinh agreed.
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