A Handful of Dust

March 4, m0039, continued

The team spend the rest of that day sorting out the gear that they might need for this investigation. Dr Vartex has received a set of packages, routed by Quentin at the embassy, containing his personal effects from both Nova Iquitos and his old rented flat; the rest of the team note that this package has a security seal, suggesting that some of the contents may be legally controlled in some jurisdictions - probably nothing very worrying, but it seems that the doctor may own a sidearm or two. He reports that, by the best of his recollection and available records, there's nothing of his obviously missing or showing signs of tampering. That aside, the team apply some of their expenses budget to acquiring or (mostly) renting survey equipment, which fortunately proves to be fairly widely available - New Shanghai is a major city on a frontier world, not very far from a university, after all. Specifically, they pick up a lightweight ground-penetrating radar system, a small excavation cybershell, and an excavation cyberswarm to go with Vajra's survey swarms.

March 5, m0039

The next day is mostly occupied by a long maglev ride to the small Chinese outpost where a hotel booking and a rented rover will be waiting for them. They take the opportunity to catch up on paperwork and correspondence - Florence has a set of lessons from her continuing education in human society to deal with, and Dr Vartex has a slew of messages welcoming him back to the land of the living and expressing best wishes (and maybe one or two making it clear that old acquaintances regard him, not as his former self, but as a technological abomination). They also continue to talk over the question of what and who might have been behind Dr Vartex's death; their current preferred guesses involve some kind of smuggling operation.

At the stop, they check into one of a widespread chain of capsule hotels, and then look around. This is the place where the medical team who saved Vartex's life were based; it might perhaps be worth trying to locate these people, if only so that Vartex can thank them. Unfortunately, Jianwei doesn't manage to convince the clerk at the medical centre to be very helpful, but the group simply slip around the back of the site, find an employee who's willing to chat, and get the name of a bar (one of the three in the town) where the flying medics relax in their evenings. It seems that most of the team who found Vartex are still stationed here, and when Jianwei and Florence - the most sociable of the four - buy them a round of drinks and introduce Dr Vartex as "one of your success stories", they're more than willing to talk. (They too seem at heart to regard Vartex as a piece of software carrying some useful information recovered from a corpse, but as sophisticates by the standards of their society and also medics, they can still see this as a worthwhile thing. Anyway, one of them mutters, whatever the official legal position on ghosts in Chinese territory, there are rumours about some members of the Central Committee back in Beijing.) They remember that day last year fairly well - it was a dramatic sort of incident, after all - and one of them comments, when asked, that their aircraft's radar screens showed two ground vehicles more or less in the vicinity of the crash, though neither was visible at the scene when they arrived - they assumed that both were passing desert travellers who initially responded to Vartex's hopper's automatic distress call, but turned away once it was clear that the medics would get there first and be best equipped to help. The relevant sensor logs should still be available...

Meanwhile, Dougal has been mildly annoying the bartenders and some other customers who use augmented reality by running up and down the bar. Once Florence has persuaded him to stop and apologised for this, and also finished politely fending off an unconvincing amorous approach by one of the bar's other patrons, the four Europeans retire to their four capsules in the hotel for the night.

March 6, m0039

The next morning, reminded by his AI aide, the friendly Chinese medical team member from the night before does indeed transmit those sensor logs to the team, around the time that they are collecting and loading up their rented heavy rover. Once they are underway, they're able to review this material; examining it closely with trained eyes (and both Jianwei and Dr Vartex have some knowledge of intelligence analysis), they note first that both vehicles were showing only minimal transponder response - legally sufficient, and enough to avoid suspicion from casual observers, but not very informative. They also decide that one of the vehicles was probably at the location which the hopper would have reached had it not been shot down, and that it probably never came very close to the crash site; the other, which came from the shoot-down point, was probably the one that did reach the crash, but wouldn't have had very long there before the medical team arrived. This raises the question of why that individual didn't finish off Dr Vartex while he had the chance - but even if he didn't have other priorities, he may not even have seen the body amongst the wreckage, or he may have thought that Dr Vartex looked sufficiently dead - and putting in another shot to be sure would probably have left a mess that even a careless forensic examination would have noticed. Another point to note is that both vehicles would have needed to be long-range, well-supplied types if they could loiter in that area for long without having to head for some nearby community for fuel and life support recharges (the team's own rented rover comes with a trailer to carry extra fuel for this trip), but such specialised models do exist.

Although the rover comes with a NAI that can drive it competently, Florence decides that she wants to practise her vehicles skills. Her VR training was actually for lighter models, but she manages this one adequately, and decides to train up on such vehicles - the team will doubtless use others of the same general type again in future. After lunch, Jianwei too takes a turn behind the wheel, although he has a little more trouble - the vehicle AI cuts in to offer assistance at one point.

By the end of the day, the others note that Dr Vartex is looking especially withdrawn and grim, and realise that the thought of visiting the scene of his own death is becoming a little oppressive for him. Still, he focuses on the task in hand, and everyone prepares for the task of investigation. Rather than drive over the site, they stop a mile or two short of their destination, by which time it is late enough in the day that the three organic team members decide that they should settle down to sleep after eating and some final planning. Vajra, on the other hand, simply dons a bit of cold weather protection and some light-enhancing goggles, takes a full set of cyberswarms, and sets out to prepare an initial map of the location in preparation for the next day's work.

March 7, m0039

Hence, the team are awoken in the morning by the returning humaniform cybershell, and start their day with a prepared coordinate map of the crash site and some initial imagery. They drive carefully up to the scene, which has fortunately not been too badly disrupted by weather in the past year, and set to work.

The ground-penetrating radar locates a number of additional fragments which they're able to excavate, and they contact Quentin to tell him that these will eventually be sent his way. He in reply says that he's still having some difficulty locating a fully-qualified forensic analyst who the embassy can consider entirely impartial, but he's been able to conduct some analysis himself, and he's sent high-resolution scans and images back to Earth for assessment by specialists in Brussels; so far, everything seems to confirm the missile-damage hypothesis, although the best bet then is that a shaped charge projectile was used, and it's not clear that enough chemical traces would remain after this time to establish any more about that.

Looking at the site, and using downloaded skill sets to conduct efficient searches and to perform forensic analysis of their findings, the team decide that they can provisionally further confirm this conclusion. They also think that Dr Vartex was quite lucky, in that the craft's pilot AI did a good job of moderating the force of the crash, which is why he was, bluntly, in few enough pieces when the medical team arrived that they were able to recover his brain. The doctor also looks at everything that can be reconstructed from the site, both from the Chinese forensic store and with the aid of this extra work and equipment, and decides that he is pretty sure that there was nothing substantial being carried on the aircraft for which he could not account - unless of course it was recovered at the time.

So the team next extend the area of their search out in two directions, using the ground-penetrating sensors and more downloaded skill sets to track the two vehicles back along their respective paths. This is difficult at this distance in time, of course, and they quickly lose the tracks of the person who apparently performed the shoot-down. However, working back logically, they find the place where that vehicle most likely was located when whoever was on it opened fire; the combat-trained members of the group decide that this looks like a well-planned ambush from well-chosen cover. As for the other vehicle, which the hopper was apparently descending to meet, they decide that it must have been waiting for at least a little time on that spot. However, neither left much in the way of traces such as discarded refuse; both vehicles were apparently being operated by competent professionals who knew something about secrecy. Both seem to have moved off in roughly opposite directions - east and west - evidently after the Chinese medical team showed up, although there's no hope of following their trails for very long.

By the end of the day, the group still have no idea who attacked Dr Vartex, who the other party was, or how his hopper was diverted, whether by software subversion or some other means - but they have a fairly detailed picture of the events of that day, and at least they haven't been attacked (a possibility which had crossed their minds). The next step, they think, is to follow the trail back to the Peruvians of Nova Iquitos - which means taking the rented rover back to the maglev track, moving on to a stop yet further west, and then heading out from there. In order to save time, they tell the rover's AI to take over the driving and head back along the route it now knows, with Vajra keeping watch, while the three organic party members catch some sleep in its capacious seats.

So, next on the itinerary is Elysium Planitia.