The Knotted String

March 10, m0039, continued

The Europeans first walk back to their sleeping quarters to leave Florence's UAW (which would seem tactless to take to a friendly chat about problems in science) and to explain matters to Dr Liang first. They tell her their story so far, and then head over to the main Nova Iquitos quarters, where the Peruvian scientists are gathering in the dining room.

There, Jianwei explains that the explosion was the result of an encounter with a hostile cybershell, and then tells their story yet again, starting from the point where they boarded the road train - all illustrated with recordings from their personal AIs, date-stamped and validated. As he talks, he notices Saul Fedirici becoming nervous, even panicky, while Tiberius sees that Dinah de Carneiro, while interested in the story, is becoming irritated at Fedirici, and catches de Carneiro muttering something to Fedirici about this being bad for his "public speaking work". By contrast, Maria Coronado, although startled by the whole story, seems mostly concerned to acquire a reliable body of evidence so that she can escalate the matter to her superiors (although she does become a little irritated with Fedirici's uncertain suggestions about how to handle the matter), and Kobo Tezuka simply takes a close interest in all the technical aspects of the business.

After a while, however, Fedirici drops out of the conversation, staring into space with the air of someone working in VR, and then returns to the discussion as something much more like his previous relaxed and charming self. He now seems to think that it would be best to go public with the whole problem as soon as possible, while making it clear that Nova Iquitos disowns any attempts at fraud and will cooperate with all investigations, to put the best face on the team's handling of the problem. Coronado seems happy with this attitude; de Carneiro maybe senses that he's taking charge of yet another social issue, and perhaps finds this irritating.

After some discussion, everyone agrees that a little more evidence-collection is indicated, and it is decided that two teams will set out straight away. One, consisting of Dr Liang, de Carneiro, Florence, and Jianwei, will head to the second oasis, where the snakebot was headed, to run some tests and collect some samples; the second, consisting of Tiberius, Vajra, and Tezuka, will take another look at what is left of the snakebot. Meanwhile, Fedirici will go pick up some samples from the nearest oasis and the nearby "fertiliser" dumping-spot.

The two groups are heading out in the same general direction at first, though, so they set out in company. As they are walking across the Martian terrain, a call comes in; an unnamed being requests an immediate VR meeting with Jianwei and Tiberius. They excuse themselves for a moment to take this, and drop into what proves to be a plain, featureless VR room, where they are greeted by a simple humanoid mannequin-like figure with speech patterns and mannerisms that indicate that it's a non-sapient AI. This being explains that it is delivering an automated response to pre-set conditions - a change in circumstances.

"Specifically, Nova Iquitos have just placed a pause on all their project reports, and requested that their experimental results be withdrawn from academic discussion pending an upcoming announcement."

(Subsequent checking will suggest that this was a very quick response; the pause must have been placed during the meeting just finished.)

"Given such a radical change in circumstances there, my task is to inform you that it is believed that something or someone at Nova Iquitos is the focus of attention of an entity known as Quipu. It is further believed that Quipu controls an unidentified TSA project - probably a memetic program of some kind. You may wish to proceed accordingly."

Reference to a standard dictionary shows that a "quipu" is a pre-Columbian record-keeping system from the region of Inca Peru - a system of knotted strings. As the NAI appears to have finished delivering its message, and shows little inclination to expand on matters further, Jianwei and Tiberius drop out of the meeting. They pass a quick summary of what they were told to their colleagues, and later provide a more detailed recording; Florence files it ("Hold this for me, Dougal"), and when she reviews it at leisure, is exasperated at the scantiness of the information, while Vajra, hearing the name Quipu in this sort of context, discovers that it has what seems to be a relevant reference pointer - which unfortunately leads to a blank, deleted space in its memory.

Anyway, the two groups continue on their way. Before they split up, Tiberius carefully questions de Carneiro over heshes disgruntled attitude towards Fedirici, coming to the conclusion that the latter has simply annoyed de Carneiro by being charming and socially successful, parlaying his charisma into a generally profitable career. At some point, he also researches the public speaking events that the Fedirici is apparently undertaking, finding relevant schedules on the Mars Web and trying to ascertain the sponsors and suchlike in case they proved to be relevant at a later date. The Europeans look into this further when they can, and note that the talks have very recently had title changes, de-emphasising the "success" of his work in favour of objective discussions of "events" at Nova Iquitos.

The two groups go their separate ways. At the scene of the earlier fight, Vajra deploys one of his surveillance swarms, and discovers four or five identifiable microbots from the snakebot's payload, while Tezuka prods around the remains of the hostile cybershell with interest, and Tiberius looks on.

The walk to the second oasis takes longer. On the way, Jianwei, reviewing the situation, sends a message asking that the rover that is on its way should come directly to this group - it won't pass anywhere near Nova Iquitos in that case. The group also draws de Carneiro out a little more regarding Fedirici, confirming the general impression that hesh is, frankly, jealous of Fedirici, thinking that he uses social skills to gain advantage in his scientific career. It seems that Fedirici is indeed becoming a minor public figure, and he or someone helping him is determined that he should look as good as possible. Jianwei has some training in memetics, and thinks that he's beginning to see a pattern here; Fedirici looks like the well-honed or well-chosen spearpoint of a serious memetic project.

At the second oasis, there's still no sign of microbot or cybershell activity, and Dr Liang begins collecting samples. She'll run a lot more tests later, when she has better facilities available, but even the portable gear she has with her can pick up traces of the planted fertiliser chemicals; evidently, this site too has been seeded, and the snakebot was doubtless on its way to clean it out. In fact, the group head out carefully in the direction of the first oasis, scanning the ground as they go, and sharp eyes spot an area of disturbed ground at a point where the snakebot, moving between the two sites, might well have been expected to burrow down or surface in the past. It will be interesting to examine the more distant sites... Which can best be accomplished with a vehicle. And so that group waits until the rover arrives. When it does, they check it as best they can, finding no signs of tampering, and set out to look for more evidence further afield.

Dinner and a Hop

March 9, m0039, continued

The Europeans return to their accommodation module to discuss their next steps. They call Quentin and arrange to acquire some IR-spectrum satellite imagery of their current location from standard civilian sources - this kind of thing is generally available for a modest fee, although a continuous real-time feed would be too much to ask for; rather, they'll get an image downloaded whenever an appropriate satellite happens to be looking this way. While this is being arranged, Vajra puts a camera on the roof of the module to try and keep some kind of permanent observation of the nearest oasis going, and runs a swarm over the module and everyone in it to check that they aren't being bugged. (He doesn't find anything.) The group also talks about next moves with Dr Liang; they decide that when their hired rover arrives the next day, they will lend it to her "as a courtesy" to help her carry as much equipment around as possible - and also have Florence go out with her as an "assistant". In fact, the point is that their rover is less likely to have been tampered with, and Florence will act as a bodyguard.

By now, dinner will be being prepared in the permanent part of the station, so the group heads that way, prepared to distract any spies among the Peruvians from what they're up to. Florence pulls a change of clothes from her luggage, and also makes suggestions about how Jianwei and Tiberius might dress; the idea is to aim for a general "naive kitty" look for herself, and smart casual for the others. Jianwei also extracts some Earth coffee beans from his luggage to take as a contribution to the meal. When they reach the dining room, however, they decide that much of this effort may have been wasted; the Peruvian scientists all seem distracted by their days' work and, while not actively hostile, aren't exactly being chatty. Still, Jianwei manages to make a little diplomatic small talk, Florence's appearance inevitably has some effect on the heterosexual males present, and Tiberius circulates, while Dr Liang is able to join the technical discussions comfortably enough. (She understands concepts such as "nitrogen micro-cycles".) The only real discovery of the mealtime comes when Florence, quietly looking in corners of the module, works out where the Peruvians store the output of their secret still.

Back in their own module, the team talk further. Dr Liang stands by the opinion that these people are honest; the manipulation of the experiments is, she is sure, being conducted by some unknown outside party. Thinking more about the matter leads Vajra to pull down some data on visitors to Nova Iquitos over the last few months, which Jianwei systematically analyses. He notices that some people who were due to come here never actually showed up, and Dr Liang is able to shed some more light on these; in one case, a laboratory accident took a researcher out of circulation for a while, and in another, an unexpected research grant from a University of Mars committee distracted the would-be visitor. Furthermore, these were people - not Peruvians, it's noted - with strong connections to the sort of online journals which have been publishing the provisional experimental results. The group's provisional conclusion is that somebody with very good connections and resources is trying to protect whatever has been done here from exposure.

Furthermore, Quentin now has a good collection of IR images for them to work with. The group look them over, searching for the sort of anomalies that would escape casual attention; Jianwei and Tiberius apply intelligence assessment training, but it's Vajra's patient, methodical processing that achieves a useful result. There's a persistent warm spot, just a little way from the edge of the nearest oasis, that doesn't look quite like a natural variation in rock surface qualities, but which could be consistent with the heat output from a fuel cell sufficient to run a small set of microbot hives. The thing is probably buried deep enough to be hard to excavate with the gear that the group have easily available, but they decide to watch it carefully.

In fact, Vajra goes out and plants a surveillance swarm in the relevant area - but the others have other concerns on their minds. The hour is getting late, and only Vajra can go without sleep. Hence, the organics in the group retire to their curtained bunks, leaving Vajra watching the swarm and real-time IR imagery, along with various other data streams.

March 10, m0039

In the early hours of the next morning,Vajra, running its periodical scans, notices that the hot spot has started moving. It wakes up the organics, and everyone quickly agrees; something is shifting at a fast walking pace in the direction of the next closest oasis. Other cameras don't show anything - whatever is involved is apparently tunneling deep in the loose soil and sand. Fortunately for the group, that makes it relatively slow; they can quickly plot a way to intercept it.

The Europeans prepare, while Dr Liang, commenting that this is presumably some kind of cybershell of unknown capabilities that may not want to be noticed, opts to stay in the accommodation module. Along with heatsuits and night vision gear, the group pick up weapons, including a double-barreled "urban assault weapon" for Florence - who spends a few moments wondering aloud exactly what sort of high-powered explosive rounds to load into its larger smooth-bore barrel. (This may be the sort of thing that persuades Dr Liang not to come along.) The group decide to split up; Vajra and Florence will attempt to track the thing, while Tiberius and Jianwei will move to the point where they think it's headed.

But first, Florence and Vajra set out to recover Vajra's surveillance swarm, then set out to catch up with the moving trace. They both have access to efficient GPS systems; Florence also has excellent night vision equipment, but Vajra lacks such gear, so Florence lends it her glasses and relies on her own Felicia eyes - which are more than adequate, given the illumination provided in the Martian night by the insolation mirrors high above. Still, they have some difficulty being sure of exactly what is where - but they catch up with the trace soon enough, and Florence moves ahead alone to see if anything is visible on the surface.

She's still blundering around a little, though, it seems - because she doesn't see the movement on the surface of the loose Martian soil until she's almost on top of it, which happens to be the moment when the tunneling cybershell surfaces, doubtless knowing that it can move faster above than below ground and thinking itself safely undetected. Fortunately, it proves to be as unaware of Florence as she was of it. As the cybershell - another snakebot, but much larger than the last, relatively unsophisticated in general design, longer than a man is tall, with a broad body - appears, she reflexively brings her weapon to bear and triggers its targeting systems; a fraction of a second later, its head rotates like a turret and it evidently sees Florence. She notes instinctively that it has three lens-like apertures, when two eyes are generally enough for a basic cybershell, which suggests that the third may be something else - and that consideration makes her complete her aiming move and pull the weapon's second trigger almost without conscious thought.

At nine metres range, many fighters might go for a centre-of-mass shot, but Florence, knowing that designs like this usually have their processor - or at least a major control node - in the leading section, and also wanting to eliminate that probable weapon, and being confident in her own abilities, goes for a head shot - and succeeds.

The large-caliber shaped-charge round rips into the cybershell, blasting it backwards and evidently causing massive system failures. Florence, however, remembers what happened last time she helped disable a hostile 'shell - and this one is much bigger. Still moving on instinct, she twists round and jumps, covering a dozen metres in a single leap thanks to the low Martian gravity - and landing close by Vajra, who is just coming up to see what's happening.

"What's the problem?" Vajra pulses to Dougal.

"Self-destruct charge," Dougal sends back, having caught Florence's subvocalisation. Vajra drops to the ground.

The grenade planted in the snakebot does indeed choose that moment to detonate, but Florence and Vajra are safe enough - the blast is only a little more than a loud noise and a wave of heat at this distance, and no shrapnel reaches them. Still, the explosion is detectable some way across the desert. Jianwei and Tiberius call immediately; reassured that their colleagues are unhurt, they set off at a fast trot to help investigate on the spot. Calls also arrive from the research station; Jianwei declares that no one is hurt, and promises more explanation soon.

Once everyone is reasonably confident that the cybershell is no longer a danger, the group sets to work investigating it. It's a pretty basic design - while they can't pin down its exact origins this time, this type of snakebot chassis is fairly standard, and the brain, body construction, and power/motor and weapon systems are all either standard fabrications or off-the-shelf purchases. (The weapon was in fact a dual dazzler/high-power laser unit.) It wasn't overly robust, although it was quite heavily built; much of the structure consisted of a set of integral microbot hives. The swarms in those seem to have been fairly thoroughly cooked in the explosion, although Vajra makes a mental note to return to the spot tomorrow and search the surrounding area for less damaged microbots that may have been thrown outwards by the blast; that will be easier in daylight.

By now, the staff at Nova Iquitos are calling; they've noticed that explosion, and although they've been reassured that everyone is well, they're naturally curious, at the very least. So once they Europeans have collected as much data as they can, Jianwei calls the Peruvians back. He decides that it's time for a talk with them, and they're going to have to know that there's something strange and dubious going on here. Dawn won't be very long now; he asks them to gather for a meeting in their base shortly.

And so the European team gathers up as much evidence as they think they can usefully carry, and sets out back to the mobile station.

Shifting Sands

March 8, m0039, continued

Aunty loads up a forensics skill set program, and under her direction, Jianwei begins carefully examining the snakebot, as the various AIs present scan the Web for relevant information. It's a pretty standard design; technically, some components may be covered by patents, but fabricator blueprints for things like this are easily available on sources such as the TSA Web. (In fact, Dougal finds what may well be the blueprints for this exact design on a grey-area site, despite Florence's attempts to tell him that he shouldn't look in such places.) The head section has been pretty much completely destroyed; the brain chip was evidently a standard-over-the-counter unit, but has been fried too thoroughly for any sort of identifying code to be recovered, let alone any software. The snake had quasi-realistic fangs, and by borrowing some analysis equipment from Dr Liang, the party concludes that it was probably loaded up with some kind of synthetic drug or toxin for use in combat; it also had small tanks further back along the body, which could have held the bacteriological cultures that ended up in the module's water supply. This, it's clear, was definitely the sabotage agent here. The motors, moving parts, and body shell look to have been constructed and assembled in a minifac, and the blueprints used prevented it from including any sort of serial numbers or ID codes.


The Europeans decide that this was most likely an attempt to delay Dr Liang, rather than being aimed at them; while it's just possible that the snakebot was inserted on the road train after Quentin booked them onto it, the timescales involved were tight, and the attack method was very poorly chosen if they were the intended victims. But if Harvey and Dr Liang had been the only people on board, and had fallen ill, Sundance would have turned back to a different human community. As yet, though, they can't say with any certainty why anyone would have done this; Dr Liang has no idea - she's just an academic planetologist. Harvey comments that he picked the passenger module up at Heze, a Chinese community which is large enough to have rental minifac facilities available.


In any event, given that the plan was most likely to cause a delay, the party decide to move on as soon as they've finished checking the road train for other sabotage attempts as best they can. (They don't find any, although that's only a moderate reassurance, given that they don't have professional-grade search gear, and state-of-the-art sabotage techniques can be very easy to hide.) Harvey says that he can increase the speed of travel a bit if anyone thinks that it's a good way to get back at the people who poisoned him, but the time that's been lost or that might be regained is pretty trivial compared to the length of the journey in total, so the group decides not to take the small risk involved. Still, they retire to sleep as Sundance drives on through the night.

March 9, m0039

The next morning, after an uneventful night, the group goes over the details of the road train's schedule with Harvey some more. Given the arrangements at the rental company depot at Heze, it wouldn't have been too hard for anyone to identify this as the module he'd be using, or for the snakebot to get aboard. He's carrying some goods and supplies for Nova Iquitos - passengers aside, this is a pretty routine run for him... No one can see much more to chase up at this point. The Europeans do wonder who might benefit from falsification of good results from the oasis tests; it would make the Peruvian scientists look good, or at least lucky, of course, and by the time their work proved less useful than this implied, the benefits might have been harvested. But is all this enough to justify fraud and murder? Jianwei also looks at the bodies sponsoring Dr Liang's trip, and checks some background; while they're mostly international academic bodies and journals, he's somewhat puzzled to note that there may be more American influence involved than he might have expected.

The road train reaches Nova Iquitos around midday. The mobile station consists of a set of movable living and laboratory modules, arranged in a loose ring a few hundred yards from one of a cluster of ecological oases. The current inhabitants are the core staff only - as Tiberius can attest, the place sometimes has other temporary staff, usually visiting academics, but for now there are just four people present: Dr Maria Coronado, the station director, Saul Fedirici, the assistant director in charge of research (i.e. the one in charge of actually doing science), Dinah de Carneiro, the systems controller (responsible for running the scientific systems from day to day), and Kobo Tezuka, the chief technical officer (i.e. the hardware maintenance specialist). In addition, anyone spending time on the station will end up making the acquaintance of Burbuja, a management LAI running on its local network. Tiberius remembers Coronado and Fedirici (and Burbuja) from his previous time on the station; de Carneiro and Tezuka are new, as other staff have rotated out in the last year. He himself hasn't been replaced; admittedly, one small station has limited use for a fully trained doctor, especially given the sort of software assistance available to anyone in a medical emergency - he spent a lot of his time previously assisting with biological research and being there as a reassurance for visitors.

Coronado greets the newcomers warmly - she and Fedirici seem genuinely pleased to see Tiberius again, and any cultural prejudices notwithstanding, seem to be prepared to treat a ghost as a person, and the same person as they previously knew. Tiberius recalls her as a brisk, businesslike character, but she's apparently in an outgoing mood today, happy to invite all the visitors (including Liang and Harvey) to lunch. Still, it's Fedirici who perhaps ends up doing the most talking over the meal; Tiberius remembers him as a charismatic character who always tended to act as the research team's spokesman and guide for visitors.

On the European side, Jianwei takes the lead as usual, and is quite open about the reason for the visit, explaining that Tiberius's death wasn't an accident but apparently involved a deliberate attack. The Peruvians appear genuinely shocked at this, and profess themselves anxious to help with the investigation. Nor do they seem too hostile to Dr Liang, although the fact that she's undeniably here to check up on their work could make for social difficulties. During and after lunch, the conversation breaks up into smaller groups; for example, Vajra falls into conversation with de Carneiro, who is an asex; Vajra feels a kinship with the disavowal of human passions that this suggests. However, Jianwei for one senses that de Carneiro isn't entirely lacking in emotional issues; there's a slight sense of irritation directed towards Fedirici, who maybe gets the lion's share of credit for the research work being conducted at the station, simply because he talks about it best.

Meanwhile, Harvey heads out once more on his way after unhitching the rented accommodation module, which is soon linked up to the station's power supply, and Dr Liang begins setting up her equipment. As the others talk to the locals, Florence becomes bored and decides to take a walk and a look around the local scenery. Inevitably with her,  this involves climbing some of the local rock formations, which she manages with ease, thus gaining a good view of the whole area.

It's from this position that she notices something odd - perhaps it's just a trick of the light, but there seems to be a sense of movement on the relatively smooth surface of the nearby oasis area. She continues watching for a while, and records what she can with the integral cameras in her night vision glasses, then calls the others. Vajra analyses her recordings, and tentatively agrees with her assessment; there are subtle shifts in tone or texture, likely only visible from above and from a distance. As soon as they can, the other three Europeans get away from the station buildings and head for the oasis, while Florence climbs down and extends her "stroll" towards the next nearest such site - a few miles away, but easy enough to reach.

There's not a lot to see at the nearest oasis, but now that they know what to look for, the newcomers provisionally confirm the impression yet further - there's maybe something under the sand, operating over a wide area - probably a cyberswarm. Vajra drops a surveillance crawler swarm and sets it watching, while the teams' AIs load tracking skill sets. With these, they pick up signs of something maybe having surfaced just outside the area of the ecological test; following the trail, they decide that some specific substance is being extracted from the oasis and dumped just out of sight of it. They collect samples as best they can, and head back towards Nova Iquitos.

On their way, a figure comes in sight coming the other way; it's Dr Liang. She's interested and concerned to hear what they have to say; all this is beginning to look like a bad case of academic chicanery, which isn't something that she expects or likes to see. She's also puzzled by another matter. She's received a message through private communication channels that she thinks must have come from one of her sponsoring bodies, but which is unclear - it lacks headers or signature. What it says, though, is that she can probably trust Tiberius.

Which bemuses Tiberius and the other Europeans as much as it does her. But anyway, they hand off some of the samples they've collected; she has the best scientific kit here, after all. She runs a quick analysis, and confirms their suspicions; these look like extra nutrients for the bacterial/fungal cultures in the oasis. Again, this looks like a fraud being hastily removed from view; given that she hasn't been hurrying to set up her tests, she might well have missed this material, even if she hadn't been delayed by the poisoning on the road train.

Meanwhile, Florence reports by radio from the second oasis; she isn't sure, but she doesn't think that there are any strange soil movements here. Presumably, the clearance is being conducted first at the place where Dr Liang could be expected to look first. And Vajra continues to run some subtle surveillance at the first oasis, while the party wonders if they could somehow locate, say, the clean-up swarm's power supply - probably a buried power pack somewhere.

The Venom of the Serpent

March 8, m0039

Back on a maglev train, the group discuss the next phase of their investigation. First, though, Tiberius mentions that he has received a Web message from an acquaintance in Military Intelligence, which among other things, notes that, so far as that organisation has been able to establish, the hospital where he was uploaded is run ethically, and there have been no signs of the Chinese "Bureau" agencies taking an interest there lately; the privacy of his scan has probably not been compromised. Perhaps of more immediate importance, the agency has noted Tiberius's activities and concerns since his restoration, and having checked its own data sources, it has reason to believe that American Space Intelligence Agency operatives were active in or near the same part of Mars when Tiberius suffered his accident - although the SIA is unwilling to explain what exactly they may have been doing there.

This leads to a little discussion in itself. It seems unlikely that the SIA would be responsible for shooting down Tiberius's hopper - while they and the Europeans sometimes work at cross purposes, the two factions aren't actively hostile - but it's possible that Tiberius diverted to meet an SIA agent, although he can't suggest any reason why he'd have done so. Anyway, it's more information to consider. The group also discusses how to handle the visit to the Peruvians, although Florence rapidly loses interest as the planning grows more detailed and conditional.

As they travel, they are also contacted by Quentin, who tells them that he's arranged transport for them to the Nova Iquitos site. It's been hard to find a vehicle to rent - they're heading into more sparsely populated territory - but he's been able to book passage on a cross-country road train. However, the group aren't entirely happy with this; it will leave them on site with no transport of their own if they suddenly find that they have to leave in a hurry. Quentin is apologetic, but vehicle availability is a problem... Eventually, though, he says that, if they can avoid getting into trouble for twelve to twenty-four hours or so, he can arrange for a rented rover to drive itself to the site and make itself available for them after that time.

Eventually, the maglev train reaches the team's stop - which proves to be a halt rather than a station. They disembark, and determine that they have a couple of hours to wait before the road train arrives. Sitting around on their luggage proves boring, so they decide to take a walk and look at the local rock formations.

After a little while, they hear another maglev arrive from the other direction and stop, and Web tags indicate that someone else has disembarked. They contact the new arrival by radio, and discover that it is Dr Ming-Mei Liang, a Chinese planetologist, who is meeting the same road train; when they say what they are doing, she asks to patch through to their cameras, and promptly spends ten minutes telling them about the science of the rock formations. They return to the halt, and discover Dr Liang sitting with a large travelling case; however, she says that she isn't packed for a long visit - this is simply her professional equipment.

She's happy to talk, and explains that she too is visiting Nova Iquitos; indeed, it emerges that it was her who arranged for the road train to come this way and to have a passenger module installed - Quentin then got lucky on the party's behalf, as the module has enough spare capacity for them. Dr Liang, it seems, is heading this way to perform some research. Nova Iquitos have recently been reporting some much better-than-expected performance by the ecological "oases" they monitor - gene-crafted bacteriological/fungal cultures planted out in the Martian desert, part of the terraforming process. This has attracted a certain amount of attention, as it would be good news for the terraformers if these results are accurate, but they do seem very good, so it seems like a worthwhile idea for an impartial scientific investigator to review them in situ.

The road train arrives, and proves to be owned and run by a single driver - an organic human, not an upload like some Martian truckers. This is Harvey Hernandez, an American citizen who wears a Stetson over his heat suit and speaks with a definite drawl. Hernandez seems amiable and spry enough, but some of the party decide that he has something of the look of an elderly man; indeed, he eventually lets slip that this is his second career - he spent forty years working as an accountant. He's a rejuvenated eloi, and a recurver.

The PCs and Dr Liang load their luggage onto the road train and climb into the passenger module. This proves comfortable enough, with sufficient bunks for all of them (with sound-deadening curtains), giving Florence a chance to catnap a little, and also a fully functional miniature kitchen. It's docked immediately behind the train's tractor unit, with a linked airlock, and once the whole assembly is underway again, Harvey leaves the driving to his personal AI, Sundance, and comes through to join them and talk. He doesn't get company on many trips, and while this may not worry him, he's happy enough to have someone to chat to.

The travellers swap stories of Mars and elsewhere, and get on well enough, although Harvey's taste for Country and Western music on the sound system might become wearing (Florence decides that she likes it in small doses). Eventually, the group call up dinner; Harvey's systems specialise in Tex-Mex cookery, and can produce a passable taco if one allows for the possible provenance of the "meat". However, as the travellers eat and drink, both Harvey and Dr Liang look a little oddly at their drinks, although the Europeans, their taste buds adjusting to unaccustomed spicing, don't notice anything. Harvey steps over to the recycling system maintenance panel and begins checking diagnostics as all the organic travellers begin to look a little queasy.

Harvey sits down looking distinctly unhappy before he can complete the maintenance checks, and both Jianwei and Florence are feeling fairly seriously unwell by now; however, Dr Liang didn't eat or drink as much when she noticed the odd taste, and Tiberius has the benefits of a boosted liver, installed in his original body during his military career and carried over in the spec for his bioshell, which counteracts the toxins without difficulty. He considers the diagnostics available from his computer-body interface systems, and recognises the problem instantly; a bacteriological infection that sometimes occurs in some types of water recycling system. It's supposed to be a rare problem, easily eliminated by competent maintenance, but sometimes people do get sloppy.

As Florence takes to her bunk and then grabs a bowl more or less in time (leaving her cleaner swarm with a little work to do on her fur later) and Jianwei and Harvey sit groaning, Tiberius checks the vehicle's medical supplies and his own portable kit, and comes up with a reasonable set of treatments. Then he tells his AI aide, Vediovis, to load the system's maintenance manual, takes Harvey's place at the panel, and works out how to purge and reset the water recycling system. By now, Sundance is asking if it should turn the vehicle back towards the nearest community with medical facilities, but this is vetoed all round; Tiberius's treatments seem to have been effective, and there's some sense among some of the travellers that this may not be as much of an accident as it looks.

So Vajra sends a swarm into the interior of the module's life support systems, using it to look for anomalies - and finds one. Something - larger than a swarm element, small enough to fit in the access spaces - moves quickly across one microbot's field of view. So Vajra pulls up more schematics and consults with Jianwei, who has an eye for tactics. Then, he and Tiberius begin to move and dismantle some elements of the system, isolating their target. Eventually, they give it no more places to hide - and they are ready when the miniature snakebot pops into view.

Florence fires first, but the snakebot ducks away from her tangler shell, which merely makes a mess on wall. However, the thing is unable to evade Jianwei's electrolaser bolt, and lies twitching and writhing for long enough for Florence to score a clean hit with a second tangler shot. Then Tiberius's army background kicks in, and he suggests that everyone takes cover - he's trained to expect miniature cybershells to incorporate self-destruct systems. Everyone follows his lead, with varying degrees of agility and haste, but the snakebot takes a while to recover any sort of control, and any autonomous self-destruct systems it may include evidently aren't set too sensitive. Eventually, Vajra decides that he can afford to take a risk, grabs a cushion from the seating, and tries to use it to screen the effects if the snakebot does explode. He's still trying to get the cushion in place when it does explode, in fact, but it only carries a small charge, and the tangler covering it effectively absorbs the blast.

There are some parts of the snakebot left intact, though; it may be time to try some ad hoc forensics.

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.

The Ghost Doctor

Libra 28, m0039, continued

The team report back to the embassy, where Schmidt acknowledges a job well done and accepts their report. After lunch, they head out to look around the town for extra resources that they may need for their work; they also find that there's a shipping box being held in the embassy stores for Florence, which turns out to contain the additional weapons which she requested; they are now fully equipped, they feel (and, when visiting many communities, Florence may have to carry some of her gear in electronically locked boxes with diplomatic service seals). In due course they take a walk out of Port Lowell to acclimatise themselves a little more to the Martian environment, testing their biomod adaptations to the conditions and so on; Florence practices the flamboyant martial arts moves in which she's been trained, proving that she can get clear over the head of a human opponent in a standing leap, and also confirms that her sidearms are fully functional.

Libra 28-March 2, m0039

Over the next couple of days, the team settles into their new posting, completing any necessary paperwork, learning their way around Port Lowell and the surrounding region, and trying out some of the bars and restaurants which they've had recommended to them. Port Lowell is a rather drab corporate town, perhaps, and the architecture is rarely worth a detour, but the variety of nationalities there, many of them fairly well-paid corporate or diplomatic employees, does ensure some fairly healthy nightlife. It also ensures steady employment for the consular functions of the E.U. embassy, and the team learns something about the mundane practicalities of all that; they may, after all, sometimes be assigned to deal with routine business when there's no call for their special talents.

The embassy itself is a modest-sized building, not much more than a large house - even on Mars, many of the staff do much of their work over the Web from home or from wherever they've been sent, and the team have no permanent office of their own, although they should have priority claim to hot desks when they can show need. They also discover that Quentin rules almost as much space in an ancillary building as the embassy proper provides; providing special resources required by E.U. contractors and even trans-shipping material is a large part of the embassy's function.

March 3, m0039

Then, when they arrive at work one morning, the team find that they have a brief meeting scheduled with Colette Schmidt. She comes straight to the point.

"It would appear that we have a possible murder case involving an E.U. citizen. Unfortunately, the incident happened nearly an Earth year ago now, but we've only just learned that it may not have been an accident, so the trail may be rather cold. However, the victim may naturally have rather strong feelings on the subject. I'd like you to go and talk to him in person - all else aside, he may need some moral support just now."

"Ah - he's been ghosted?"

"Yes. His name is Dr Tiberius Vartex. He's here on E.U. government sponsorship, so we have a duty to him. You'll have to travel to Haiyuan City..."

The team decide to set out straight away, reviewing the details of the case on the maglev as they go. Tiberius Vartex, it turns out, was - is - an English-born ex-military medical doctor who came to Mars as part of the E.U. special skills secondment programme. About a year or so ago, he was asked to act as medical officer for "Nova Iquitos Station", a semi-mobile Peruvian scientific unit operating on the eastern edge of the Elysium Planitia. After a couple of weeks there, he arranged to take a routine break, borrowed one of the unit's hoppers (with NAI pilot), and set off to fly to one of the Chinese-international towns west of Olympus Mons (with multiple refuelling stops along the way). He never made it; his hopper came down somewhere along the way. Luckily for him, a Chinese medical team were in the (very general) vicinity in their ambulance hopper, were able to reach the site within an hour or so, discovered his body in a somewhat-recoverable condition, and had the time and equipment to get him into nanostasis.

He was then transferred to a full hospital, initially in New Shanghai, where doctors confirmed that only an upload was feasible, and his E.U. contract certainly covered that. However, suitable facilities are still quite thin on Mars, and the most efficient approach proved to be to leave him in the hands of the Chinese medical services. Then, his medical plan, any living will arrangements that he'd made, and general custom, suggested that his ghost should be installed in a cloned bioshell - but that would take months to prepare and grow, and the best available facilities for that were in Haiyuan City. The hospital therefore didn't attach any particular priority to completing the upload; after all, while computer resources are cheap, they aren't free, and ghosts running on static systems in VR sometimes get uncomfortable. Hence, although the scan was run soon enough, and the conversion/compilation eventually followed, and was quite successful according to validation analysis, Dr Vartex's ghost was only really run, for initial test and acclimatisation purposes, a few days ago, when his bioshell was confirmed as functional and nearly ready for use.

Which was when Dr Vartex himself started raising questions about what happened to him. He hasn't said much yet, and he comes across as rather dour and still perhaps slightly traumatised by what happened to him, but he's dropped broad hints in messages to the embassy that he's highly suspicious of something. Anyway, he may need some practical or psychological support when he's first installed on the bioshell. The team also skims the official report on the hopper accident, which does strike them immediately as rather thin; the investigation was conducted by Chinese police, as the nearest authority to the crash scene, but given that they were dealing with a TSA vehicle and an E.U. citizen, it was perhaps predictable that they might not have been especially thorough.

With all this in mind, the team reach Haiyuan, and make their way to the hospital, where they meet Dr Feng, the attending surgeon on the case. He's pleasant but businesslike, persistently referring to Dr Vartex as "your program"; the Chinese don't grant ghosts full civil rights, which would explain a certain casualness in their attitude to the personal side of this matter, although there's no evidence that they were at all incompetent in regard to the technical aspects. He also reminds everyone that the process usually fails to recover the contents of very recent short-term memory - the last few minutes, possibly even hours, of the patient's life - and remarks that, while the procedure appears to have been quite successful in this case, there is always some danger of loss of other conscious memories or skill functions. It's clear that this is pro forma stuff, intended to protect the hospital against legal trouble, although the points he's making are entirely valid. Anyway, Dr Vartex has been running on the hospital mainframe, but it seems that his bioshell is checked out and ready to use, so the team are soon taken through to the room where a couple of technicians are linking it up to the download system.

(Any suspicions that such technicians will have loaded some compliant NAI onto any new shell in testing hours if not days ago, and then amused themselves seeing what they could order it to do, would of course be intolerable slanders on an entire profession. Anyway, the bioshell shows as being in perfect working order, complete with some minor internal upgrades that were included in the specification received by the hospital and a variety of protective nanomods.)

The download runs, all validation checks show positive, and Dr Vartex opens his eyes. Jianwei greets him and introduces himself and the other two, and suggests that they move to the hotel which has been booked for all of them. Vartex agrees, and the necessary administrative concerns are quickly resolved with the hospital. Jianwei requests that all backup copies of the new ghost be transferred to E.U. systems, along with the raw scan data from Dr Vartex's brain; although it would of course be impolite to mention any such thing to the Chinese, this could be used at a later date to validate the compilation job, if any suspicions arose about tinkering. As Dr Vartex won't have full human-equivalent rights in Chinese territory, Jianwei also suggests that he should set up another E.U.-registered holding company, with Dr Vartex as sole owner and himself as a non-executive director and the ghost and bioshell as its assets when it is operating in territory where they are regarded as property. This is handled in seconds; meanwhile, Dr Vartex downloads the last available backup of his assistant NAI over the Web and installs it as a secondary process on his computer. It comes as close as a NAI can manage to expressing surprise over the time that has passed since it last ran, and at its new situation.

And so the four beings head to the hotel, a comfortable but plain place in the business district, and the consular team can ask what's been worrying the unsmiling Dr Vartex. He confirms that he does indeed find the circumstances of his accident suspicious, but he hasn't wanted to say much to anyone while he was running on the hospital computers; being ex-military, he is fully aware that software running on a system controlled by someone else has no useful guarantees of security at all, and anything he chose to say might therefore have been readable by unknown parties.

As to the actual problem; Vartex looked over the details of his flight (which, no, he doesn't remember), and realised that he had been taking the obvious direct route from the Nova Iquitos base to his destination - until a few minutes before the crash, when the hopper made a slight but definite diversion. It was just a few degrees, but enough to require some explanation - which isn't available. He too has reviewed the official report, and the more that anyone in the group looks at it, the more they agree that it's clearly a very standard piece of writing, blaming the crash on an unspecified mechanical or software failure which of course can't be identified because the crash destroyed much of the vehicle.

It's getting late in the day by now, and the group all have rooms booked for the night in the hotel, so they settle in there to consider the matter further. Looking at the hopper flight log in detail, they realise that, at the same time it changed course, it switched from full real-time logging on external storage - the norm, which provides useful "black box" details - to a minimal level of recording, showing little more than bearing, speed, and altitude. Still, they can get a little from this; notably, they eventually discover that the hopper had begun a slow, controlled descent a few minutes before the catastrophic events of the crash, and so was lower than normal operating altitude at that time, although not yet quite low enough to raise a red flag for the routine Chinese investigation.

Next, Vajra pulls what he can find in the way of satellite imagery of the area of the crash from around the time of the accident off the Mars Web. This is relatively skimpy - better images almost certainly exist somewhere, but a lot of the satellites in orbit round the planet belong to military organisations - but it seems to confirm that confirm what aviation management records also say; that there were no other air vehicles in the vicinity. However, later, examining these images at length and especially scrupulously, the team will decide that there may well have been a ground vehicle very close to the point where the hopper's descent path would have brought it to land.

Everything does now seem to be pointing to foul play, but there are many unanswered questions remaining. Why did the hopper change course? Could its NAI have been subverted somehow? Who wanted it to land, and who may have been waiting for it? And still, what brought it down? The next step seems to be to examine the wreckage, and a quick records check shows that the Chinese investigators removed it - or at least the largest parts - to their facilities in New Shanghai. So the team decides to travel their on the next day, and make a few arrangements before retiring to sleep (or in Vajra's case, to meditate).

March 4, m0039

Another slightly boring maglev journey takes the four Europeans to their next destination, and a taxi then takes them to Police HQ, where Jianwei's immaculate grasp of procedure and the team's diplomatic credentials earn them admission to a storage unit on the edge of town. A large tray slides out of a stack, and the team are presented with a fine collection of scrap metal, consistent with the model and type of hopper and the story that it hit the ground at some speed. They are also given a large collection of images recorded at the site before anything was moved by the investigators. This isn't a perfect forensics exercise, though; the Chinese only collected up fairly large pieces. At Jianwei's instruction, Aunty loads up a forensics skill set, and under her direction, wearing suitably advanced anti-contamination gear provided by the building owners, he begins a careful examination of the wreckage. This isn't exactly conclusive, but it does look as though, at one point on the hull, where the jet exhaust emerges alongside the tail structure, the metal may have been driven inwards with explosive force - not outwards, as would be expected if the problem was an engine explosion, and not consistently with ground impact either...

"Okay, we have prima facie evidence that you were shot down."

Looking at the damage and the forensics program outputs, Florence, the team's weapons expert, decides that something large-calibre but man-portable was probably involved. That may be a small relief.


The team identify certain crucial elements of the wreckage, and make a formal request to the Chinese authorities that these should be transferred under forensic seal to E.U. embassy custody. It's been a long time, unfortunately, but it's possible that sufficiently fine examination could find further evidence of weapons fire. A SEFOP round would almost certainly leave traces of explosively-forged metal; a HEMP round or other shaped charge might only leave small traces of very volatile materials. Out of interest, they also request and receive footage from the medical unit's cameras. (Jianwei asks briefly if Vartex wants to look at this, given that it's likely to contain rather gruesome images of his own former body. Vartex points out that he's both ex-military and a doctor.) This doesn't add much to their information, but confirms that the wreckage was indeed much as the Chinese investigators' information indicates.

Working methodically along the chain of evidence, the team decide that their next stop should be the crash site itself - it's been a while, but the site has probably gone undisturbed, out there in the wilderness. Of course, this will mean quite a bit more travel; more than 1,500 miles by maglev - a full day's travel - to the nearest substantial community (the place where the medical team were fortuitously based, in fact), where they can rent a heavy rover vehicle, and then another three or four hundred miles to the site - another full day, and they'll need to rent a fuel trailer along with the rover to get them home again. Well, at least if they then decide to locate Nova Iquitos Station, it's just further in the same direction along the equatorial railway. They are only a little concerned that they may be about to tangle with people who are prepared to kill in the course of their machinations - and Florence doesn't seem worried at all.

Port Lowell Welcomes

Libra 27, m0039 (continued)

The train takes all day to travel from New Shanghai to Port Lowell (only slightly delayed by the clutter of cargo maglevs emerging from the ugly mining town of Hanggin Qi), in which time, Jianwei composes a report on the events on the elevator to submit to the ambassador before they even arrive. She will undoubtedly see the public postings on this subject at some point, so Jianwei thinks it best to be the ones who draw them to her attention, and best to reassure her that the matter won't become a greater problem. The report is well written and deftly phrased, but lacks his often keen sensitivity to the political complexities of his new posting...

He also spends a few minutes explaining to Florence that, while her new job isn't secret as such, some discussions with unknown parties may require a degree of discretion - handing matters off to himself may sometimes be best. The three discuss possible ways of dealing with "Double Delta" in future; it might be useful to establish a position of mutual obligations with a journalist - or it might be too chancy. The subject is left open for now. Another idea that arises and is agreed is that Jianwei should be appointed a non-executive director of the EU-registered company which legally has ownership of Vajra in certain territories (and of which Vajra is sole owner, of course); Jianwei and Vajra set the legalities in motion.

Then, as the maglev train begins to cross the long, high bridge across Lake Candor towards Port Lowell, the travellers receive a courtesy call from Quentin at the embassy. He reminds them that the organic pair have a couple of apartments rented for them as their initial accommodation - in an American-owned building, perhaps unfortunately, but there isn't much EU-owned rental property in Port Lowell - and says that he has taken the liberty of arranging for a maintenance case for Vajra's humanoid cybershell to be delivered to the same address. He's also booked a taxi to get them there.

The train slips down a spur line and docks with the sealed station. (Port Lowell isn't a fully domed city, but most buildings are pressurised.) The travellers disembark, making sure that their luggage comes too (the diplomatic pouch definitely included) with the aid of a porter shell from the station. The automated taxi (a yellow-painted box on wheels) then takes them to the apartment building - another dull box, which the architect has attempted to make interesting by placing each floor slightly skew to those above and below. The building AI greets them cordially and provides another porter shell to help them carry their things up the couple of floors to their new homes, which are adjacent on the same level.

They enter and begin settling in; the flats are small but immensely technologically efficient, of course, and have configured themselves into the colour schemes that they requested in advance. Vajra finds his maintenance case, and Jianwei uploads his personal choice in art from his implant to the wall screens.

Then there are knocks on the doors of both flats; the external cameras in both cases show fairly well-dressed young men holding what appear to be pizza boxes. Jianwei and Florence open their doors at much the same moment, and realise that their visitors are both on the same mission - and so they accept the neighbourly offers of pizza, and invite everyone into Jianwei's flat. The pair are Manuel Lacardio and Mika Hernandez, who live in a shared home on the floor below. (Yes, it would be possible to reconfigure Jianwei and Florence's flats into one large unit, but the design and construction of the building makes the task non-trivial.) It seems that some parts of this building are already occupied and some are not; these two will be the newcomers' closest neighbours for now.

Manuel and Mika are, it turns out, lower-middle management employees at the Mars Development Corporation - the American company which manages a great deal of activity on Mars, including the construction of Port Lowell and indeed the letting and maintenance of this very building. Both are Mars-adapted, having come down the elevator a couple of years since with a view to making careers on the planet and with the Corporation, although Manuel has spent some of the time since employed by a company other than MDC, before being re-hired in a higher position than the one he left (a notoriously standard "MDC career surge" move). They're affable enough in a youthful sort of way, and despite their cultural background, they are at least tolerably polite to Florence and Vajra - although there's little that Vajra can contribute to this meeting, being unequipped to eat pizza or drink the beer which Jianwei purchases through the house management system. There is a slight sense that Manuel for one is reflexively polite to Florence because of her very attractive (and exotic) looks, although the exact nature of the relationship between the visitors isn't stated.

Jianwei takes the opportunity to find out a little more about Port Lowell from a local perspective, and when Florence asks "Where's good to party?", Manuel and Mika are both happy enough to discuss the nature and quality of many local bars and clubs - working out what national jurisdiction each acknowledges, and hence exactly what substances and recreations may be legally available there, is evidently something of a local preoccupation. Once the visitors depart, Vajra quietly checks the flat for surveillance devices, but it doesn't seem that the visit involved any such ulterior motives.

Libra 28, m0039

The next morning, the new embassy employees have a 9:30am appointment with the ambassador, which reminds Florence that she can revise her wardrobe choices ("Hurray for gravity - I can wear skirts and heels again"). Jianwei attempts to offload the diplomatic pouch onto the embassy staff systems on arrival, but is advised to take it in and deliver it in person. Frau Doctor Ambassador Colette Schmidt is waiting at her desk, and proves politely businesslike; she received Jianwei's report, and has seen "Double Delta's" news postings (which indeed flick across the wall screens behind her desk as she greets her new staff), but she accepts that the unfortunate incident on the elevator probably was handled as well as could reasonably be expected. She is also very pleased to receive the diplomatic pouch; she uses her voice ID and personal codes to open it, extracts a sealed package from amongst the digital modules (mostly one-time pads, it seems safe to assume), and immediately calls for "Catherine", who proves to be a domestic spiderbot. Schmidt hands Catherine the package with instructions to "prepare one cup straight away, then follow my usual rationing schedule". Florence nods sympathetically, commenting that not even the Triad conditioning to fit herself perfectly for Mars can make her like the local coffee. The ambassador suggests that the Triads might think more in terms of green tea, to the quality of which she cannot speak.

Anyway, she expresses the hope that the newcomers are settling in, and that they can find... But then, the ambassador adopts the remote look of someone receiving a high-density information update. Vajra notes that the data flows in her vicinity have indeed increased in the last few seconds; presumably, her personal AI recognised that the importance of her dealings with her visitors was declining, and the importance rating of some new item of data was high enough to permit an interruption at that point.

"It would seem that we have a task for you already," she says. "One of our people - an EU citizen - who has been consulting for Ajiwau Ramen has, as I believe the expression is, gone postal. He appears to be holed up in his employers' offices here in Port Lowell. His name is Herge Bertrand. See if you can prevent any casualties."

The team leave the office briskly as the embassy systems summon another taxi and basic information on the problem begins to flow to their personal systems. Florence is a little unhappy that she hasn't yet obtained all the sidearms which she had arranged to have available on the planet, but she does have a tangler pistol on hand, everyone has at least a little nanoweave armour, and Vajra is able to arrange for his personal microbot swarms to be transported to the destination from the flats. Florence doesn't feel overly impeded by her (quite short) skirt, and the Triads were quite careful to engineer her joints and tendons so that she can fight perfectly comfortably in high heels...

Ajiwau's offices turn out to be yet another blandly unremarkable Port Lowell commercial building, set back from the road behind a Japanese-style raked gravel garden - and now surrounded by security men in smart dark uniforms, the look of which is only spoiled a little by the fact that each has a picture of a ramen bowl on the left breast. Jianwei takes the lead in trying to find out what is going on, but is slightly stymied by language problems until he manages to locate the team leader, a stressed-looking security manager who mutters something about Bertrand having an argument with the company, arriving earlier than anyone else that morning, and triggering the building fire suppression system when his colleagues arrived, driving them back out. There are no casualties (so far), but anyway, the security manager is a busy man, but he has this situation in hand...

Brushed off somewhat, the team manage to attract the attention of one other person who isn't part of the Ajiwau contingent - a woman of indeterminate age (but definitely not young), her steel-grey hair swept back in a tight plait, wearing a jacket that is bulky enough to suggest armour, a cap, and a visor that is probably armoured, and accompanied by a small cluster of businesslike cybershells. She introduces herself as Marshall Althea Kirkowicz. The US Marshalls Service has no jurisdiction here at this moment - the incident has so far taken place entirely on a Japanese corporation's own territory - but if anything spills onto the street, she will have due cause to react; for now, she's here to monitor the situation.

The team wonder if Bertrand has chosen to explain his actions, and a quick look into local virtual space shows that he has; he's published an open statement, in fact. Vajra downloads the document and skims it in a few seconds at computer speeds, and reports that it appears remarkably coherent and reasonable - something on which Jianwei agrees with a quick look. Bertrand has dispute with Ajiwau, and specifically with their corporate security. As a contract employee, he is (or was) entitled to their services in lieu of police protection in the highly corporate town of Port Lowell, but when he was recently physically assaulted in a bar in the town, they provided what he considers to be grossly inadequate assistance. All attempts at resolution having failed, he's taking this action. Glancing slightly further at the document, Jianwei forms the impression of a rather professional exercise in memetic design; all quite slick, even. The nearest it comes to ranting, really, is in the comments on Ajiwau corporate security...

Talking of whom, Aunty - who can speak Japanese - is attempting to monitor the situation with the on-site team, who appear to be forming up to attempt an initial assault, having determined that there are no innocent third parties in the building. They make a frontal entry through the lobby in textbook style, and then there is a pause. Then there are a number of loud explosions, and the assault team withdraw from the building at some speed, although still in textbook fashion.

The EU team note that the assault force apparently suffered no losses. Florence, who has some experience with firearms, notes that the explosions were really too loud for small arms fire. (She also downloads some building plans, and begins looking at options for intrusion on her own account. She could always climb the side of the building or something.) Following some polite but fast and forceful requests in the right quarters, Vajra manages to gain access to some of the building internal cameras, and identifies Bertrand sitting in his office, looking completely calm and with the distracted air of someone composing something on his computer systems. At some point, it occurs to Jianwei that this whole exercise might even be some kind of distraction - but there is no sign of Bertrand having a partner or an alternative strategy, and no other reports of trouble in the town.

They try sending him a message, requesting a chance to talk, but that simply ends up in an in-box, and probably in a long queue. So the consular services team decides to take a simple approach, and walk in the front door. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of one of the Ajiwau security staff, but Jianwei breezes straight past him with a shrug. He continues to take the lead in moving through the lobby area, but not fast - and not only are Florence and Vajra right behind him, but Vajra has a crawler surveillance swarm deployed immediately in front of the whole group. It's this that spots the first signs of Bertrand's preparations for more uninvited visitors, and Vajra reacts with electronic speed and precision. Indeed, his warning reaches the other two in good time, and he and Florence hit cover as the flash charge goes off. Jianwei, with ordinary human reflexes and no combat experience, doesn't, and is left rather ruffled and partially deafened for the rest of the day. However, his nerve holds completely, and he refuses to let this stop him.

Hence, the team find Bertrand, still sitting in that office, calm and even prepared to apologise a little for that incident. By now, it's completely clear that he is in full control of himself; it's possible that someone should have checked his job qualifications, which are in the area of situational memetics. He's using that skill, and so far as he's concerned, things are going just fine. However, Jianwei suggests that he may need some help negotiating his way out of this situation; Ajiwau could press charges for assault or property damage or whatever... Bertrand, in reply, points out that no one has been hurt, the property damage so far has been minimal - and Ajiwau are a culturally very Japanese corporation, with a distinct concern for face. He fully intends to negotiate a way out with no charges pressed and a mutually acceptable set of compensations, and if Ajiwau corporate security are left looking humiliated, well, good. Still, he's not ungrateful for Jianwei's offer to handle some of the negotiations at this point.

So the team head back to the front of the building (although Vajra does quietly leave a few surveillance microbots in the office). Jianwei goes out the front door, looking ostentatiously harmless, while the other two remain in the lobby, ready to respond to developments as seems best. By now, the Ajiwau team appear to have called up a van full of shotgun-sized weapons to supplement the pistols of various kinds which they were previously carrying; they still look like a bunch of restaurant doorkeepers being pushed to operate slightly beyond their capacities, but now they have bigger guns. Still, Jianwei begins talking to their team leader, saying that he's spoken to Bertrand and that the fellow is prepared to cease his action in return for various assurances, including a guarantee that no prosecutions will be forthcoming. (He also points out that Bertrand, a memetics expert, is definitely manipulating Ajiwau's memetics in all this.) The team leader is slightly thrown by this, but consults his senior managers, and after a few minutes, agrees to the terms and conditions.

Jianwei relays this to Bertrand, who has in any case been monitoring the conversation. He seems quite satisfied with the result, but cautious. "You're a diplomat," he says to Jianwei, "does that mean you know about the law?"

"A little," Jianwei replies cautiously.

"So this agreement, which we've all recorded, would be fully binding on them?"

Jianwei thinks for a moment. "I believe so, yes."

"That's good. See you later, then."

The choice of words makes the EU team suspicious, but they don't have much time to act before Bertrand triggers another set of charges. These don't make so much noise, but they do flood much of the building with chemical smoke. Vajra attempts to use his surveillance microbots to see what else Bertrand is up to, but loses connection; Florence, who has been deeply irritated by this latest gesture, thinks about what his options might be, given what she knows about the layout of the building, and begins looking for a way to catch him.

Meanwhile, members of the Ajiwau team have taken this as a sign that they still have a fight on, and trigger their next planned assault on the building. Something grenade-sized comes through a window into the lobby; Florence reflexively dives behind a pillar, but Vajra doesn't react in time and is in fact knocked off his feet when the concussion charge detonates. The Ajiwau team storm into the building, but Florence guesses that they won't find Bertrand in the office any more, and deftly leaves by the door through which they've just come, meeting Jianwei outside.

The pair instantly agree that the best thing to do is to quietly make their way round to a point which Florence has identified at the back of the building. When they get there, Jianwei spots a furtive figure making his way down an external fire escape, and points him out to Florence, who has her tangler pistol out by now. She carefully takes aim, and when Bertrand reaches the bottom of the stairs, she hits him with a couple of rounds loaded with sticky strands. He quickly pulls himself free, but by then, she is up to him and making it very clear how angry she is.

Jianwei arrives a moment later. "You're an idiot" he tells Bertrand. So far as he's concerned, he'd negotiated a safe ending to the situation, and Bertrand put everyone back into danger. Bertrand, on the other hand, seems to think that he's scored one final point on Ajiwau's security people, and feels confident that the company's decision to back down and buy a quiet ending to the incident will hold. In any case, Jianwei and Florence haul him around to the front of the building, and essentially force him to apologise to the Ajiwau security team leader as his team straggle back out of the building. However, it does seem that the agreement should hold, and when Vajra has emerged and collected up his microbot swarms, they decide to take Bertrand back to the EU embassy for his own safety. They make a point of sitting with Vajra and Florence on either side of Bertrand and Jianwei facing him, and while they are on the way, Jianwei chews him out further for his reckless behaviour, hopefully cowing him sufficiently that he can be quietly removed from Port Lowell without him deciding to indulge in any more memetically-loaded gestures first.

Indeed, the team manage to extract an undertaking from Bertrand that he will be leaving Port Lowell, although running him off Mars altogether doesn't look feasible. They make a note to attempt to keep track of his movements, just in case he does anything unwise. "In order to provide consular services more efficiently, it would make sense to keep track of him. After all, our AIs have predicted that he is likely to have need of such services in future..." When they've finished filing a report on the incident, they also get clearance from the ambassador to send a summary of most of the details to Marshall Kirkowicz, making a point of mentioning that Bertrand will be leaving town - which they suspect will please her.

But that is something they deal with after lunch...