Local Interests

Scorpius 24, m0039, continued

Jianwei does take a moment out to send Quentin a message about the team's plans for the morning, and Quentin notes no problems with the arrangement. Meanwhile, Dougal finds Florence a bar that his search heuristics suggest will correlate to her known preferences. This turns out to be "Ping's Bar", a fairly substantial building close by the walls of the dome - the chief meeting-place for the university's martial arts enthusiast community. It is almost entirely open space inside, and indeed partly occupied by a sparring ring. The general style of the place is typical of Nix Olympica's local American-Chinese hybrid atmosphere; Florence orders a burger with fries and a rice wine, and looks for a table with a view of the ring.

There aren't actually any free tables, but at least one group already settled in signs her to join them; a Felicia bioroid isn't a common sight in these parts, and there's an automatic assumption that she must have her own insights into the martial arts. Members of the group prove chatty; they're a mixture of areology and Chinese history students who like talking about variant unarmed combat forms. They ask politely about her background; she's open about the general facts, and admits to having received VR combat training during her creation process. Some of the group actually remember seeing recordings of Florence's fight in the elevator car, which earns her some respect; nonetheless, one of them expresses cynicism about "vat training" for real combat, and the conversation, while never lapsing into outright hostility, becomes abrasive enough that a trial match in the ring becomes unavoidable. Other would-be combatants are interested enough that they allow this pair to the head of the queue.

Florence and her opponent size each other up for a while, and then he throws a competent punch that slides past her guard - first point to him. Florence responds by using her Zhua training to go over his head, evading his attempts to stop her (the move was hardly unexpected, after all), then lands behind him and follows through with an elbow strike that brings their points score level. He tries to retaliate in kind, but Florence expected that, parries, and follows up with a complex grip and over-the-head throw, putting her challenger down. Before he can recover, she pins him and gains a completely effective lock. He is obliged to submit, and then proves good-humoured enough about the experience to buy her a drink.

Aside from that - and a later request for a less serious-seeming bout to demonstrate some Zhua forms - Florence spends the evening in casual conversation. The only snippet she does pick up is a remark about the Zeppelin incident being typical of how things go around these parts - "the only people who know how to run anything are the Peruvians..."

Scorpius 25, m0039

During the night, after Florence has returned and retired to bed, Vajra receives notification that the forensics package has arrived, and goes to talk to it. It proves to be run by a simple-minded NAI, so he puts it into demo mode. (Their first exchange - "Do you self-identify as male/female/other?" [other] - causes it to display a VR avatar that combines a metallic, androgynous form with what is clearly meant to be a "sexy librarian" form in a downright annoying fashion.) Anyway, he can't find any obvious problems, so he returns to the hotel.

The next morning, he and Jianwei inspect the rover, then the team sets out once again. Unfortunately, Florence makes a minor driving error involving a high-speed approach to a sharp drop that causes them an hour or so's delay as they check the vehicle for damage and make calls through the Web to check their insurance position. Hence, it is becoming quite dark when they reach the crash site, but Vajra is able to deploy the forensics package - it works largely by IR and radio location, enough that darkness is of little concern to its operation. The team watches microbots deploying for a while, until the two organic sapients' minds begin to wander, and they retire to sleep.

Scorpius 26, m0039

However, Vajra needs no sleep and can provide a diligent watch, and is more than alert enough when the rover's sensors pick up an incoming trace in the early hours of the morning. He generates an audible alert sound; Jianwei comes awake smoothly; Florence's trained reflexes prove stronger than her alertness, and she comes awake with her helmet and gloves half on.

The team's AIs fail to acquire a precise lock on the trace, so Jianwei instructs Aunty to turn on the rover's floodlights. The team quickly locate a large wheelform cybershell rolling toward the airship wreck, and Florence immediately pops a side hatch and vaults deftly up onto the vehicle roof. Jianwei drops into the driver's seat and begins recording events while telling Aunty to prepare to move; Vajra, who has been outside of the vehicle all along, contemplates the ineffectiveness of his weapons against a combat-capable cybershell in a trace atmosphere, then settles down to researching the wheelform design. (It is actually the kind of slightly out-of-date generic thing which can be put together from components for which 3D printer templates can be found on the Web.)

The cybershell ignores radio challenges, so Florence takes careful aim, locks a homing shell's sensors onto it, and fires. The large-caliber projectile punches through what armour the cybershell has, and then detonates. This proves more than sufficient; the wheelform suffers a series of systematic malfunctions and stops moving. This is doubtless just as well, as a brief inspection shows that it was itself carrying a gun in an internal bay - as well as a tank of what seems like scrubber nano. It would seem that someone may have been anxious to eliminate some sort of evidence from the crash scene.

The team have not attempted to keep information about this very brief combat from the Web, so it is no great surprise that, within a few minutes, they are notified that a rocket hopper with a team of U.S. marshals is incoming. Before they arrive, though, Vajra collects forensic samples of his own from the wheelform wreckage.