Shapes Shifted

Scorpius 15-17, m0039

And, yet again, things turn quiet for a while for the team, as diplomatic activity continues frenziedly behind the scenes.The E.U., however, can afford to stand back, look politely neutral - and work out how to exploit its new knowledge of the identity of a couple of great power agents and a US Air Force orbital weapons platform. Lipinski is politely persuaded to play along with all this, while the insurance company eventually accepts the evidence filed by the team and re-instantiates Prof. Zajdel - in various artificial environments and rented cybershells at first, as her explorer-research shell is a bespoke model and getting a new one built will take a few days.

Scorpius 18, m0039

Indeed, this is what leads to the next interesting call on the team's time, as late one morning, the embassy's NAIs inform Jianwei that they have a report that may be of interest; it looks like a routine commercial dispute, but the name attached has links to himself.

It is indeed Prof. Zajdel, who is happy to speak to Jianwei - she's only had brief conversations with him before now, and she's politely grateful for his part in sorting out what happened to her recently. However, this call is about business. She has in fact recently visited Port Lowell, and rented a cybershell for the purpose - a standard-model polypede. Her visit ended a few hours since, and she returned the cybershell to the rental company office. However, a little later, her AI aide reported that the company, Cruz & Cruzcampo Shell Hire, was continuing to bill her account for the rental; its systems insist that it hasn't been returned.

There's obviously an anomaly here, and a curious one - management systems are usually more reliable than this - so Jianwei calls up the other two team members, and they decide that a personal visit to Cruz & Cruzcampo would be indicated. Florence extracts herself from the dojo where she's keeping her martial arts training honed, and goes home to change, while Vajra simply disconnects from the Web work that he's performing. They all meet up a couple of blocks from the hire company office, and approach the place together. It's essentially a warehouse-garage with a small front office, and a group including two biomorphs showing up in person causes the management systems to escalate matters promptly to their human manager, who is polite but insistent - despite what Zajdel's logs may say, their records show no sign of the polypede being returned.

The team get in touch with Zajdel, and she authorises the hire company to activate the polypede's transponder - something covered by the hire contract's privacy clauses. However, the attempt doesn't actually work; whatever is running the cybershell currently is evidently exploiting its built-in privacy controls. The Cruz & Cruzcampo manager admits to being a little concerned at all this, and pulls some imagery off the building cameras, which does indeed show the polypede arriving when Zajdel claims to have returned it - and leaving very soon afterwards. It's a modular, reconfigurable, multi-purpose unit, but it appears to be using its standard mobile configuration - basically, that of a large spider. Attempts to pull more relevant data off the company systems run into problems, however; privacy laws and agreements can be a nuisance sometimes.

So the team wonder how to track the unit. It's not an unusual design - a rugged multi-purpose industrial model, but that sort of thing is not overly rare on Mars - but it does have a moderately distinctive finish. (Florence comments that Prof. Zajdel seems to have a taste for heavy-duty shells; the others point out that she is a geologist.) The team dives into the Web.

They make an inspired guess and go looking for hobbyist bot-spotters. Yes, the breed exists, and it soon becomes clear that there is some serious snobbery about the difference between personal observation and mere NAI-monitored camera logging. Aunty fails to locate many of their Web sites, though. Meanwhile, Dougal has been searching through recent MarsTube posts, but not finding anything relevant here; it doesn't seem that the polypede can have been doing anything very odd in public. So he takes over Aunty's search, and tracks down the hobbyist discussions, then hands the addresses off to Jianwei. Jianwei in turn assesses the memetics of this subculture, and begins posting as a new enthusiast.

And Vajra has been working through a list of E.U.-owned businesses in this neighbourhood, politely requesting recordings from their external security cameras. Collating these, he's able to track the polypede as it made its way through the industrial-commercial quarter of Port Lowell - up until a point when it simply stops showing up, an hour or so ago. The team heads for the area where it was last observed. As they go, Jianwei's probing around the bot-spotter sites, with careful mentions of an "interesting polypede" dropped as bait, elicits more imagery. Once they are in the right area, the team are able to narrow their tracking efforts down to one building - a warehouse and shipping centre owned by a company called Thorium Logistics.

Thorium are in the industrial equipment supply business; essentially, they hold stocks of assorted industrial components for purchase by local users who discover more or less urgent needs. Thus, their building has a front office open to personal visits - a sales counter, in fact.

First, Jianwei talks to the NAI on the door, which quickly decides that there is some kind of issue here ("stolen property?") beyond its authority, and escalates matters to a human supervisor. Meanwhile, Vajra probes local Web space, looking for a ping response from the polypede; he gets a brief response, but a moment later, that address no longer shows any reaction. He decides that they are closing in on their search subject, and heads round the back of the Thorium building to monitor the fire exit door there, while putting a swarm of observation microbots into the air.

The Thorium management become uncomfortable when confronted with Jianwei's questions and Vajra's Web traffic logs, which seem to indicate some kind of anomaly in their building management systems, and shift the problem over to a legal advisor, one Joseph Kwak. Jianwei explains the situation yet again, and persuades Kwak to get Thorium to let himself and Florence into the building. As they glance around, Aunty analyses the imagery that she's getting off Jianwei's optic nerve, and identifies a relevant anomaly, which she highlights obligingly in Jianwei's vision. It appears that the polypede has got into the depths of the warehouse, reconfigured itself into work arm configuration and locked onto one of the shelving units, and is accumulating a small stack of shipping boxes and modules.

Jianwei relays this instantly to Kwak, who swears audibly and relays the problem to the Thorium management team. Their technical advisor instantly sets the warehouse management systems to restart themselves, and the polypede appears to notice that; it detaches itself from the shelving unit and begins shifting into its spider configuration.

Jianwei and Florence decide that things are turning dangerous. Jianwei backs rapidly out of the building while Florence drops down below the level of the counter, draws her pistol, and begins taking careful aim. She's determined enough about the polypede design to realise that, unfortunately, the sort of ammunition she can employ legally in this area won't penetrate its outer casing - but that its camera systems aren't especially protected.

The polypede rushes for the counter (and the doorway beyond), and Florence lets it come quite close; she's only going to get one chance here, after all. Then she opens fire. Her Felicia precision and trained skill serves her well, as one of her first three bullets slams through one of the polypede's camera lenses, and two more go into the other. The cybershell careens into the other side of the counter, and Florence vaults over it and lands on the polypede's back - but this second part of her plan proves superfluous, as her fire has taken out one of the modular machine's local processing nodes - the one assigned to sensory processing - and it has shut down completely.

Her two team-mates cautiously enter the building, as other observers appear on the scene - including a dirigible flying camera which, it turns out, is being teleoperated by "DD", who is evidently continuing to watch the team's career with interest. Vajra carefully links his own shell up to the damaged polypede, and manages to gain access to some of its memory stores; actually, a non-sentient process in one of its subsidiary processors makes a rather crude attempt to copy and run an executable process to his systems. His firewalls block that with trivial ease, and he takes a copy of the program.

At about this time, more cybershells show up; Marshall Kirkowicz is responding to reports of gunfire, and for that matter suggestions of some kind of rogue AI, and her remote cybershells are quickly on the scene. She's feeling a little jaundiced today, and she's also alert enough to note that Vajra has been interfacing with the disabled cybershell; she instantly warns him to be careful with the data copies that she guesses he's acquired. Then, as she acquires more information on the likely nature of the problem from somewhere, she becomes increasingly terse and firm on the topic; in the end, Vajra and Jianwei undertake to retain only encrypted copies of the data, in secured storage.

In fact, the nature of this incident becomes clear over the next few hours, as everyone talks to everyone else and some people insist on openness. It appears that this problem originated in the Belt, where an enterprise called Skyward Mining attempted to develop a Von Neumann-style mining system - a set of modules with self-replicating capability. Unfortunately, they neglected to include enough safety interlocks into the code, and the design went rogue. It's not actively malicious, and the software involved is non-sapient, although that in itself might make it more dangerous in some circumstances; it simply seeks to replicate itself at every opportunity. Unfortunately, it was designed to interface with Thorium Logistics inventory and shipping systems, and it still seems to have extensive backdoor access to that software. The polypede was, it turns out, rented for short-term use by Skyward before their problems were detected and their R&D site in the Belt was sterilised, and the rogue code managed to secrete itself in one of the thing's modular, distributed control system modules. Prof. Zajdel returning the thing happened to give it the chance to boot itself into a control module, and it set to work trying to build more mining complexes on Mars.

This isn't, so far as anyone can tell, a major threat to life and limb - more of a nuisance, and enough of an embarrassment to a lot of people that they've gone to the trouble of keeping it relatively quiet. Well, talk of rogue self-replicating AIs does tend to get humans all nervous and panicky...

Answers and Amnesia

March 27, m0039, continued

The embassy cameras show the visitor; it appears to be the cyberdoll cybershell that was acting as security at the House of Fragrant Jasmine when they visited there. The team agrees to meet it, and it is ushered through the embassy's security systems (which don't detect any weapons or other threats) to a meeting room.

There, it initially greets them with the stiff formality of a low-empathy LAI, but having established that they are still interested in the case of Herr Weber-Markt, it pauses for a very brief moment, and then begins talking a little more fluently; it's apparent that it's now being teleoperated, presumably by Mistress Zeng. In any case, it declares that the House of Fragrant Jasmine has now come by information regarding the missing gentleman; he is well, and it would seem unfortunate if anyone were to worry too much about him. The House of Fragrant Jasmine does not want trouble - they are a legitimate business, after all. It might useful if, when Herr Weber-Markt reappeared, someone could speak to him and make sure that he understands that it is in his interest if not too much is said.

Jianwei says that this can certainly be passed on to the gentleman.

The cyberdoll states that Herr Weber-Markt may well be on a bench in the south-western public greenhouse in half an hour's time, and departs.

The team extract such equipment as seems appropriate (especially surveillance swarms for Vajra and a pistol or two for Florence) and which is legal for them on American territory, and head out themselves. They guess that, as he isn't Mars-adapted, Weber-Markt may well be in the Earth-normal pressurised section of the greenhouse - and they are correct. He is sitting on a bench, stroking one of the lightly genetically modified cats that are free to run around that section, and looking a little vague. Jianwei approached him and greets him.

"Oh - you know me?"

Jianwei explains that people have been concerned for him, and that they have been looking for him as EU representatives, and asks what happened to him.

"Oh - you know me?"

It soon becomes evident that Weber-Markt isn't entirely compos mentis, but has severe short-term memory problems at this point - so the team quickly summons an ambulance and books space in a hospital. After a moment, Aunty diagnoses Transient Global Amnesia - which occasionally occurs naturally, probably as a result of momentary neurological or blood supply failures, but which is really quite rare. In fact, these days, it's surely much more likely to be the result of some kind of nanodrug - emulating the triggers for the condition is actually quite easy. Such nanodrugs are generally illegal, of course.

The team gets Weber-Markt to a hospital (checking as they go that his wearable virtual interface is in his bag - although currently powered down), and the hospital runs a series of scans and ends up agreeing with Aunty. The nanodrug used on him was a smart piece of design (but then, there are several functional specifications for this sort of thing on the TSA Web); it's already largely broken down to barely-identifiable components. When the team asks for a detailed blood check for other nanodrug remnants, the hospital is happy to oblige, and remarks that, by the looks of the results, the patient may well have been treated with a high-grade "cleaner" treatment - not only are there no other nanodrugs in his system at present, but the remains of any that were there have been cleaned out by something very efficient.

Anyway, the good news is that the patient is rapidly recovering from his condition, and in fact, after running the obligatory array of tests, the hospital have no basis on which to keep him in. So the team escort him back to the embassy. By now, having recovered most of his memory function, Weber-Markt is becoming entirely coherent and distinctly taciturn. But rather than pester him too much at first, the team concentrates on his wearable. With his consent, Vajra dismantles it, takes a digital image of its (routinely encrypted) memory, reassembles it, and boots it up. It seems to be fine - but it turns out to have been restored, doubtless very recently, from the last backup that Weber-Markt took prior to his evening adventure.

For some reason, the expert psychologist Jianwei is having some difficulty reading Weber-Markt - Aunty actually does better - but it doesn't take any expertise at all to realise that his primary emotion at the moment is embarrassment, maybe with a touch of nervousness - but if the House of Fragrant Jasmine set out to intimidate him, they must have been quite polite about it. Still, the team get enough out of him to decide that that establishment is probably, if not provably, responsible for his disappearance.

But he doesn't want to talk much, so they agree that he should return to his hotel. Florence escorts him there in a taxi - and flirts a little, giving him her Web address and saying "call me if you want when you're feeling better". She'd like to get more information out of him, and she's prepared to put some effort into this. Meanwhile, Jianwei puts a call into the Marshall's office, and she calls him back fairly promptly (she's at work and it's not bar brawl time yet). He and Vajra bring her up to date on the situation, expressing their suspicions about the House of Fragrant Jasmine and possible Triad involvement; when Florence joins in while walking back towards the embassy, she's even more emphatic about this.

However, when she's half-way back, the Marshall breaks away with a mutter of "that's worrying". It seems that she's set some of her systems to monitor camera feeds around the city for signs of Sandy, and he's now been located - entering Weber-Markt's hotel. She doesn't have resources in place to deal with this very promptly, but she's happy if the team can do something...

Florence turns and breaks into a run - that's faster than looking for a vehicle, she decides - while Vajra goes online in search of a taxi. A quick and impressive display of optimised resource management later, one slides up outside the embassy, its doors snapping open as Vajra and Jianwei appear. Hence, they reach the hotel just as Florence is heading up the stairs to Weber-Markt's room on the second floor, having decided that the old-fashioned lift is too slow. Some fast acrobatics in Martian gravity later, she's on the right corridor and sliding smoothly down it to the correct door - but she can't hear anything through it except perhaps faint voices...

Downstairs, the other two are still talking to Marshall Kirkowicz, raising the possibility of getting that door unlocked for Florence - but that would require legal action, so it's quicker for Jianwei to turn his diplomatic skills on the human desk clerk. He's quite smart, it seems; his voice echoes in Florence's ears.

"The door will open on your mark - just say the word."

"Mark!"

Florence enters the room in a diving roll, but takes a fraction of a second to acquire the situation fully. Sandy isn't combat-trained like her, but his basic street smarts are sufficient for him to recognise her as that customer from yesterday, and to make him decide that she must be annoyed with him or something.

"What is going on?" Florence demands.

"You? Look, whatever complaints you have about that stuff..."

"I am an EU agent, assigned to protect Herr Weber-Markt..."

Florence tries to intimidate Sandy into compliance by popping her claws with a snarl, but his nerve - or his stupidity - holds. He rises from the chair he's sitting in, drawing the gun which he has openly on display - it's a large-calibre airgun, the sort usually tagged as a "tangler pistol" but quite capable of firing other specialised payloads. She draws her own 10mm pistol much faster and fires, but he ducks. Then he returns fire, but he's not trained with guns at all, and this is a wild snap shot, so something merely hits the wall near the increasingly panicked Weber-Markt, who's sitting on the bed.

Florence decides that it would be better to take this to close quarters, steps over, and kicks, punching the high heel of her boot into his ribs. He staggers, and she follows up with a hand-claw slash that leaves him bloodied and reeling. Deciding that she doesn't quite want him dead, she activates her zap glove, but he just manages to hold off her first strike with that, and fires again - and misses again. She throws a precise hand-strike that permits no counter, and he drops as high-frequency electricity pulses through his body.

Meanwhile, Weber-Markt has panicked and run, barrelling down the corridor - straight into Vajra and Jianwei. He tries to barge them aside, but his shoulder-charge is ineffectual, and Vajra gets a simple judo hold on him while Jianwei talks him down.

Everyone convenes back to his room and the story comes out. So far as Weber-Markt is concerned,Sandy simply showed up, talked his way in, then began demanding money with large hints of blackmail and a few menaces. Sandy seemed to think that Weber-Markt was responsible for some great inconvenience that he's suffered, and wanted payment in compensation... But Weber-Markt is really quite confused at this point.

Sandy, on the other hand, is recovering from his (literal) shock, only to find an annoyed catgirl sitting on his head and demanding information. (Florence's mood probably wasn't improved by the realisation that his pistol was firing some kind of aggressive nanotech payload - probably not lethal, but likely to have been painfully disabling.) He admits to selling Weber-Markt nanodrugs that were maybe rather stronger than the norm; somehow, this seems to have led to him being visited by someone (the team assume a Triad agent) who demanded that he compensate someone else for Weber-Markt's actions while under the influence. This has made him unhappy. As for the EU team - "I bet it was Consuela put you up to this, wasn't it? Damn idiot ... can't make up his mind what he wants ... complaining about what I get for him..."

"How would she - uh, he - have known about all this, then?"

"Well, he was in Northern Territories the other night."

Jianwei persuades him to provide a photograph of "Consuela's" physical appearance. The team aren't overly surprised to recognise their neighbour, Mika Hernandez. Before they can follow that up, though, they have to deal with Marshall Kirkowicz, who didn't hurry - she picked up enough from their Web feeds to decide that the situation was no longer urgent - but who now appears with salami on rye in one hand and the expression of a cop with paperwork in her near future. Various low-to-medium-weight charges will be thrown at Sandy, and the EU team's report will be taken under advisement in other respects.

So the team head back to the embassy to file a (slightly more comprehensive) report there. Later, when much virtual paperwork has been completed, they return to their apartment block - but Jianwei stops one floor down, and knocks on the door.

"Consuela?"

"You'd better come in," says Mika Hernandez, with a sigh.

Jianwei thanks him for alerting them to the problem with Weber-Markt, while pointing out that it might have been easier if Hernandez had been a little more open - as it was, he (or she) inspired a lot of distracting suspicions and theories. Jianwei maybe hints that the whole case involved a lot more physical danger and Triad activity than perhaps was the case, although his comment of "I don't appreciate having members of my team menaced with guns" is of course entirely truthful; he wants Hernandez to take a little more care, if there's ever a next time. From Hernandez's point of view, though, this was an honest attempt to do a small favour for a neighbour (while doing a large possible disservice to an annoying and unreliable nanodrug dealer), while preserving some personal privacy.

Jianwei leaves it there. "Oh," he says on the way out of the door, "nice avatar programming, by the way."

Hernandez shrugs. "It's just based on an old body scan of myself," he replies.

Footnote: It's not clear if the PCs will ever quite work out exactly what various people's motivations were here, but they came out of the incident feeling far more cynical and concerned about the motivations and actions of the House of Fragrant Jasmine than was entirely justified. On the one side, believe it or not, the House's staff were trying to save Herr Weber-Markt embarrassment.

They may be - at many levels - a perfectly legitimate business, but they're still, when all's said and done, a brothel. One of their selling points is discretion. If they called in the law, or a third party like their insurers, whenever a customer got a little carried away, they'd lose custom. On the other hand, when a paying customer is, as it seems, not entirely himself, then politely restraining him until he recovers his equilibrium, and then settling things quietly, actually counts as doing him a favour.

The fact that Sandy's over-strength disinhibitor took a little while to wear off, while Herr Weber-Markt's credit account wouldn't cover the damage he'd done, meant that this process dragged on a bit longer than expected, which made the situation rather sticky.

(Still, Herr Weber-Markt's behaviour after the team got him back showed that he, umm, was indeed potentially embarrassed.)

And on the other hand... They found that they had a Triad problem of their own.

When they started trying to work out why this customer they had in the very comfortable holding cell (er, private medical unit) somewhere was behaving so foolishly, they realised that he'd been supplied with a not-very-legal nanodrug. So they asked people they knew about this, and said people may just possibly have got annoyed. Not at the House, mind - at whichever moron was dumping that sort of stock on the casual market for the sake of a quick buck. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets law enforcement all worked up, even in Port Lowell. Which is terribly bad for business. So the Tria... people they knew supplied the House with some extra handy nano and asked them to resolve this as quietly as possible. Which they did, using the EU team. (Somebody there might have gone for a more brutal solution, or at least a stronger amnesia nanodrug, but of course the EU team were now known to be sniffing around - so tact was indicated.)

Then Sandy, who was being leant on by the Triads for costing them money, screwed it all up again.

Madame Zang is really feeling quite hard-done-by at this point, please understand. There she is, trying to run a legitimate business without offending anybody, and she's got deranged customers smashing the pleasure units up, the Triads telling her how to run things, a bunch of EU agents barging in and giving Triad hand-signs, and now Marshall Kirkowicz leaning on her. It's not easy in her line of work.

=====

Afterword: Jianwei comments at some point that he has come out of this with a certain amount of respect for the House of Fragrant Jasmine, who handled this incident in a professional and effective fashion. It's just a shame that their business involves working with the Triads - although unfortunately, that's probably unavoidable.


And somewhere, somebody's wearable makes a random connection and pulls a few seconds of ancient 2D video off the Web. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown..."

Dealer's Hand

March 26, m0039, continued

It occurs to someone that the House of Fragrant Jasmine might have external security microphones, so the team move away from that building before they talk much more. One problem that they need to discuss is how to analyse any brainbug that Florence may purchase from Sandy - if there's any point to this exercise, it should be to discover what sort of business he's doing. They call Quentin, but he can't help much, and indeed turns mildly ironic at the question; the embassy does not find it has much need for brainbug analysis. However, Vajra looks around the Port Lowell business listings on the Web, and finds advertisements from a few more or less appropriate-seeming commercial laboratories.

They then find somewhere where Florence can change, and she switches to clothes that she judges appropriate for a rather geeky catgirl looking to have fun at a party - a halter top and so forth. She has an eye for style, but she isn't much of an actress; however, with some suggestions from the socially alert Jianwei, she manages to look the part. She's certainly advertising the adaptations that allow her to tolerate Martian pressures and temperatures.

Then, Vajra and Jianwei settle into their chosen cafe across the way from Northern Territories, and start playing a game of chess with a physical board and pieces by way of cover. (Actually, they both use cheap chess skill sets to handle the process of play.) Florence, meanwhile, slips into the bar, and then has to wait for Sandy. He's a little late, but only ten or fifteen minutes. She approaches him and asks if he has what she wants; he smiles, maybe nervously, and produces a capsule. "That should do what you want. Take when you get to the party, or just after..."

Actually, it seems to Florence that Sandy is twitchy, maybe nervous - but she's no real expert in human psychology. Anyway, he now names his price - 250 Euros, which strikes her as high for one dose, even for something rare and borderline legal at best, if its effects are relatively short-term. Mostly to maintain her cover story, she haggles a little, and he takes 25 Euros off, having evidently expected this, but he won't go any lower. Well, this is on expenses...

Speaking as if it's an afterthought (which it is, really), she also asks if he might also be able to provide something else, for a friend of hers - a disinhibitor for standard human male brain structure and chemistry. He thinks for a very brief moment, then shakes his head; he might be able to get something, given a little time, but he can provide nothing just now, and Florence is saying that she wants it straight away. She shrugs, saying that her friend will have to wait, and departs the bar.

Crossing the road, she quickly links up again with the other two, and hands off the capsule, which Vajra carefully bags up. Then he contacts the most promising laboratory which he identified (although he's not entirely sure if any of them look especially well equipped for the task), and they dispatch a cybershell courier which rolls up to the party a few minutes later, and takes the sample away in an internal compartment.

Meanwhile, the party briefly thinks about back-tracking Sandy, using the chemsniffer which Jianwei is carrying; they can identify his scent now, if only by scanning the capsule and subtracting traces which they can identify as coming from Florence. Vajra, who has training in such tasks, isolates the relevant biochemical traces and passes the data to Aunty, who seems to have the best tracking capability - but she can't pick up enough signs of Sandy to follow him. He was wearing a Mars suit, after all, and these streets are moderately busy.

Following an alternative train of thought, Jianwei looks at Dougal's recording of Florence's conversation with Sandy, and concludes from analysis of his body language and vocal intonations that he is - or was - quite stressed, and in particular, that he needed cash. Vajra, who also has relevant training, agrees - Sandy was hustling like his life depended on it.

So the group retire once again to the cafe to await the analysis results and to watch the front of Northern Territories for Sandy reappearing. They also catch a meal there, although that proves to be a mistake - this place isn't worth considering for the quality of its cooking. A couple of hours later, a preliminary report comes in from the laboratory - complete with a flag indicating that the authorities have been informed about this item, as its legality is highly questionable in multiple jurisdictions. (In fact, Quentin calls a few moments later, telling the team that the embassy has just been notified that they may be in breach of EU law.) It's difficult to say exactly what a nanodrug will do without lengthy, expensive, and tricky modelling of the behaviour of the target brain type in toto, which this lab isn't equipped to attempt, and this nanodrug doesn't match any of the standard database entries - but even Triad black labs put some standard identification "headers" into product molecular structures, if only to facilitate stock control, and this one looks very likely to be the sort of thing used in Triad brothels to make their bioroid staff more enthusiastic about their work. It's a short-term effect, though, albeit likely a powerful one.

In other words, it's very likely a powerful short-duration Felicia libido enhancer. Florence comments that, well, this might be considered to meet the requirements that she expressed to Sandy, although it's not something that she'd really have wanted if she'd been a real (naive) customer.

The team drops an e-mail to Marshall Kirkowicz, telling her what they've discovered, attaching the analysis data supplied by the lab, and suggesting that she looks for matches on her own, doubtless better, databases. She's off-duty at present, but one of her LAIs takes the message.

Then, they give things until midnight, but in the absence of any sign of Sandy, they head off to sleep - leaving a surveillance swarm on the street to record what it sees. Similarly, Florence tells Dougal to monitor news channels for any relevant reports and to wake her if necessary.

March 27, m0039

They get back to their apartments, but before they can settle down, Jianwei gets a call from the mystery woman (well, mystery female avatar). "Hi - Consuela here..." She claims to be merely asking how the business is going, and continues to present herself as a concerned citizen, despite Jianwei's fairly open attitude of suspicion. She takes his passing remarks about the video recordings on the Web in her stride - the team later tries to identify anyone who might have been her in those images, but lack sufficient data - and mentions "taking the Fifth", which the team think might mark her down as from an American cultural background. When Jianwei presses about her attitude to Sandy, she scowls and refers to him as a creep; the team's joint opinion is that she may well have been burned by him in the past. Then she politely drops the link.

So Vajra analyses the recording of the conversation, and notes that it has very low comms lag overall. "Consuela" was close by, although it's impossible to say quite how close. Given that she seemed to know that Jianwei had just got home, the conclusion must be that she's observing them somehow - maybe, say, from a nearby location, or even through access to the building's shared security camera network.

The next morning, the team heads into the embassy to start with - and almost immediately receive a call from Marshall Kirkowicz. She got their message of last night; she also received an alert from the commercial analysis lab, very slightly earlier. "You're going to pull diplomatic immunity on me, aren't you?"

She is prepared to be tolerant - "Okay, I'll treat this as a report of a probable crime, not you being party to a drug deal" - especially as, in technical terms, this is more a substance licensing issue than a drug-crime issue. So Jianwei repeats his suggestion of a cross-check of molecular signatures, and the Marshall sort-of agrees.

Anyway, she drops the call. The team are just running their analyses of the various recordings when the embassy systems send them a message: "There is an individual to see you..."

She Walked Into My Office...

March 20-23, m0039

Over the next day or so, things turn quiet - no more attacks occur. Eventually, Marshall Kirkowicz drops by the embassy to talk to the team, She says that the incident seems to have put a rocket under law enforcement in Bako; while she doesn't hear everything, she believes that law enforcement there has run a series of sweeps, pulling in various individuals with connections to the Triads and elsewhere. She strongly suspects that the contract on Ouku/Kabra has been terminated; it will be drawing too much attention - and anyway, the European team have reason to believe that payment will no longer be coming through. She asks in passing about what the team know about the background to the incident and subsequent events, but the team can't tell her much; Florence for one shrugs and simply comments that "EU ambassadors are not without contacts".

(Florence also asks if she can recommend any bars, but doesn't get a very positive response; Kirkowicz mostly seems to regard bars as sources of trouble, and if she has any favourites of her own, they're quiet places which play a lot of traditional American music. Despite Dougal's recently acquired taste for country & western, they don't sound much fun to Florence, while Kirkowicz may not even want people to have the sort of fun that Florence is seeking.)

Anyway, given the circumstances, the Marshall has been able to arrange for the patient to be transferred to a major hospital in Robinson City, with a high level of security guaranteed. Tiberius is willing to authorise the transfer as acceptably safe - provided that he can go along and assist with this phase of the treatment. Hence, he disappears from Port Lowell for a time - and then, he announces that his personal plans have changed. The hospital is in fact willing to offer him a full-time position - good medical staff are still not that common on Mars, and he feels that he can do most good this way. He'll keep an apartment in Port Lowell, and he may still be available to the embassy from time to time, but he has evidently found himself somewhere where he can lose himself in his work.

March 26, m0039

After a couple more days of quiet, Jianwei is working in his office at the embassy one day, when his secretarial systems notify him that he has a caller in VR. Even his not-especially-trained eyes spot that this nameless newcomer is employing either a custom-design avatar or something selected with a lot of careful shopping; the visitor appears as a shapely woman in a classic little black dress, with a broad-brimmed black hat, high heels, and long black gloves. The effect is undeniably striking, but the face which meets Jianwei's look from under that brim is merely tolerably attractive rather than stunning, as might be expected with such a calculated image design. One thing that Jianwei's training in interpersonal relations does pick up is that the avatar moves easily and smoothly; it's almost certainly been matched carefully to the user's personal somatic model - she is almost certainly female, and probably looks somewhat like what Jianwei is seeing - or at least, she has looked like that for an extended period in the recent past.

Anyway, the visitor explains that she has "some information that you might need to know". She was, she says, in an Australian-territory bar, "Northern Territories", last night, when she saw one of the regulars, who goes by the name of "Sandy", doing business with someone who was pretty obviously a rich European tourist. Sandy isn't someone she likes, but he's one of those people who it's sometimes hard not to hear about - he handles all sorts of stuff "from the Belt" (implying that he's a low-level criminal entrepreneur with connections to the Triads). But he's been down on his luck lately, and in any case, the visitor wouldn't consider him to be a good place to go for recreational purchases, if you're sensible.

Anyway, the tourist retired to a private room at the back of the bar for a few minutes, then made to leave in a hurry. He somehow got into a dispute with one of the bar's bouncers on the way - and punched the man out. Sandy, meanwhile, had faded even sooner.

The implication is that someone for whom the EU might have to take responsibility has indulged in something - probably a brainbug - with radically unfortunate effects; some preemptive investigation does seem indicated. The visitor can't or won't offer much more information on the topic, though, and de-resolves shortly after telling this story; Jianwei calls the team together to decide how to proceed.

Their response involves a certain amount of caution, verging on paranoia. Certainly, they seem obliged to follow up the story, but they aren't sure why anyone would have told it to them - to set "Sandy" up for a fall, perhaps? They're determined to be careful. They do try putting a call through to Marshall Kirkowicz, but don't get much help there - she's a busy person, and they don't have a name to put to their report, while the location they're talking about is off her area of responsibility - there's a slight sense she thinks they're wasting her time, frankly.

So they begin by checking the Web site belonging to "Northern Territory", discovering that its slogan seems to be "What's Your Pleasure?"; it appears to be set up to exploit Australian extraterritorial status, Australia having especially relaxed laws in many areas, apart from weapons. (It's not as if there's much of an Australian population on Mars.) Some Web reviews confirm the impression; this is a bar where most things go and can probably be bought, provided that you don't annoy other clients too much. Jianwei also downloads a VR art appraisal system and has Aunty run it over the recording of the visitor's avatar; its conclusion is "good but not haute couture" - the clothes are a style cliche, but a cliche that's lasted 150+ years obviously has its strengths, while the system guesses that the face is either the one that the user wants for a very personal reason, or their original face which they've since changed in reality. The only other angle to check immediately is European tourists gone missing or in trouble, but there are no obvious answers there, and too many Europeans on Mars; they need to narrow their search first.

So the team decide to hit the bar - but doing so in a group might be problematic, so they'll send Florence, who's best equipped to look after herself, in alone, while the others hold themselves ready in another place just down the road. Lunchtime seems like the best bet, so that's when Florence goes in, less heat-suited up than most of the clientele, and orders a clone-meat kangaroo burger. (Her nonhuman physique attracts a little extra attention, but not enough to worry about.) She knows enough about how the shady side of things go to get a feel for how business is done here; the bar's own stock isn't overly remarkable (kangaroo meat and Castlemaine XXXX aside), but the place provides a venue for a range of dealings in moderately dark corners, and offers booths - for a small extra charge - that are doubtless used when a customer wants to try a brainbug or whatever straight away. She also notes that the place is set up as a Faraday cage - there's no transmissions in or out, except through a cable link provided by the bar, which demands access to content and reserves the right to block what's sent. It's far from perfect privacy, but it's as good as a place like this can reasonably offer (and it might make calling for help harder, should trouble break out).

Florence next finds a way to ask the (human) barman if "Sandy" is around, and is pointed towards a nondescript fellow who turns out to have an American accent. She's thought of a line that would explain her interest in him.

"Got anything that'll work with my biochemistry?"

"Maybe. What sort of thing are you after?"

"Just something for a good-time party girl, you know?"

"Hmm. I might be able to get something. Can you come back here later? About 7?"

Florence agrees to that, and ends the conversation. However, she has no more luck socialising with anyone in the place, so she eventually heads out (noting in passing that the bouncer currently on duty appears undamaged) and links up with the other two a few minutes later.

They discuss what she's learned, and wonder if there's any way to discover what happened last night. Florence has the idea of checking video/InVid sharing sites - and sure enough, by dint of some appropriate search term selection, Vajra soon finds one or two recordings. They show the interior of the bar, someone with a definite rich-tourist look leaving in a hurry and brushing past a bouncer, a brief exchange - and then the tourist throwing a snap punch that evidently catches the bouncer unawares, putting him on the floor. It doesn't look like a very expert attack by Florence's standards, although the tourist might possibly have basic self-defence training and be using target-marker software; it was a lucky blow, and a bouncer who didn't bother to continue the fight given that the opponent was out of the door before he was back on his feet. But if the tourist has purchased a disinhibition brainbug that can make him act that way, he may indeed be in trouble - or be causing it.

Of course, the recording does give the team an image of the individual, which they can run against records of EU citizens on Mars - and now they get a match. Kurt Weber-Markt is an Austrian citizen - and when Jianwei places a call to his address of record, he gets a "Not Available" response. Well, at least they have an actual problem to solve now. Unfortunately, though, there's not much more of use in the recording - no sign of anyone who might be the mystery visitor, for example.

But another thing they think to check is comments on the InVid site; there are a few, of course, mostly casually if slightly maliciously amused, some slightly concerned. One, though, a casual "Yeah, I saw this - it really happened", comes from a familiar name; Mika Hernandez, the team's downstairs neighbour. So they call him, and find him amiably helpful; he hasn't much to add, but he tells them what he can - except on the matter of Sandy, mention of whom makes him rather evasive.

So the team files a Probably Missing Person report with the Marshall's Office for Kurt Weber-Markt, and plan their next step.

Dead Presidents

March 20, m0039

The team remain on guard overnight. The feeling among the others is that Florence should be allowed her full sleep - she needs the most, and should anything blow up, they want her fresh, alert, and even-tempered - while Vajra doesn't need anything so ludicrously organic, and links itself into the embassy's fairly extensive security camera network while deploying its own personal surveillance swarms in case the network is somehow compromised. But Jianwei and Dr Vartex still decide that one of them should be awake at any time. So they take a watch each, with Dr Vartex staying up first; while he's awake, he sorts out a medically-approved nanodrug treatment that will keep Jianwei at peak performance for a night or two of this, then looks for but fails to find a full software model of the same treatment to run against his own brain emulation. However, when Jianwei takes over, Aunty manages to track that down for him.

Anyway, time passes until the morning without anything untoward happening, and the team continues theorising about and researching their current mission over breakfast. First, they look into Ouku's business connections, but don't find much there; so far as they can tell, he's simply investing in a range of ethnic-African software enterprises in Bako, none of them obviously controversial or dangerous; with the development of the space elevator on Earth (with its base in Kenya), this sort of investment could be seen as sensibly forward-looking. Not many Earth-based investors come all the way to Mars to look at businesses in person, but perhaps Ouku simply felt like exploring the solar system a bit; his itinerary since he arrived on Mars a few days ago certainly included some of the routine, obvious tourist spots.

Then the team decide to try looking into his family, to see if that turns up anything more useful. Vajra communes with Ouku's wearable LAI some more, and it comments that, while Ouku doesn't have much in the way of an acknowledged relatives, there was one family back in Kenya with whom he would socialise on a basis that suggested blood relationships more than business or friendship. Their family name is Kabra; the team starts looking around their Web presence.

What this suggests is that the Kabras are quite well off, in a quiet sort of way - indeed, if anything, they might seem to avoid publicity. However, they seem to have adequate resources; their significant Web presence is mirrored in servers on Mars, despite the fact that, Ouku aside, they don't have much in the way of contacts out here, which suggests that they have enough money to spend on such barely-relevant luxuries. (Unfortunately, Vajra makes a misjudgement in its research on this subject, and is thoroughly distracted by a completely unrelated Kabra who's a member of the Kenyan national amateur soccer team.) They have business interests, but nothing exceptional.

Then Colette Schmidt calls in to check that the team are okay and to see if they need anything. The team gives her a quick summary of the medical news and of what they know so far about the patient, which leads them to mention the Kabras. That seems to remind her of something; she says that she needs to speak to someone about this. Jianwei angles for more information before she disconnects, and she simply says "Bear in mind - the Dead Presidents Society is a myth..."

That term is vaguely familiar, and Vajra runs it through its standard search engines - and is promptly inundated with links. The Dead Presidents Society is supposedly a conspiracy of "retired" politicians, former national leaders and the like, who, thanks to modern medicine, aren't doing anything as conventional as dying off, and who are therefore running the solar system from behind the scenes. Jianwei has heard this sort of nonsense before, of course, but pays it little heed; still, this seems like a hint, so they cross-reference the names they have available against Kenyan political history - and quickly score a result.

Steven ("Steve") Kabra was foreign minister of Kenya, and quite a noteworthy figure on the international diplomatic scene, back in the 2050s. Pictures of him are ...  not inconsistent with the appearance of the patient. The party of which he was a member was eventually forced out of power by a series of corruption scandals, some involving him directly, and no longer exists as such; the parties which replaced them have fractured somewhat in the decades since. Kabra was widely distrusted at the time of his resignation, but as usual in political history, time has mellowed everything somewhat; commentators might now describe him as flawed but not an entirely bad figure.

This leads the team to speculate on who might have a motive to attempt to kill him after all this time. Of course, an individual might still bear a grudge, but his corruption was more of the nature of taking backhanders from foreign contractors than anything else; it's unlikely that anyone would still regard him as the cause of their personal ruination.

However, while they discuss possibilities, Vajra notes a buzzbot with minimal identification tags approaching the front door of the embassy. That's still unsealed - the embassy needs to be able to continue its routine business, after all - and the front door opens in response to a standard IR laser pulse request from the visitor, which identifies itself as making a package delivery. Aunty checks a database and notes that it appears to be a cheap-looking minifactured knock-off of an old military design - indeed, the body shape still includes something that might be mistaken for a weapons pod. Anyway, Vajra takes charge of the interaction, and tells the machine to leave its package at the front of the building. It says that it has been instructed to make a personal delivery; Adele somehow thinks that this would be a bad idea, and when Vajra relays the group's insistence that the buzzbot come no further into the building, it pauses for a moment, and then destroys the door leading to the interior of the embassy with a couple of pistol-caliber explosive shells.

Florence springs to a defensive position, and Vajra gives her an AR view of the building and the buzzbot's position on her head-up display. She takes aim through a doorway, and as soon as the buzzbot appears, she opens fire. It dodges her first shot, but she's faster than it is, and before it can return fire, she hits it with a second HEMP round, blowing it apart.

Vajra scans the exterior of the building; eight more such buzzbots are incoming, and they split four to the front of the building and four to the back. The party attempts to contact Marshall Kirkowicz, but she is out of contact at the moment (breaking up a barroom brawl, in fact); still, they notify her watching cybershells that the embassy is under attack. Meanwhile, Florence heads for the front lobby, and Dr Vartex and Jianwei head for the back, where a fire exit door looks like a vulnerable entrance point - and indeed, it is rapidly shattered by more explosive fire.

One buzzbot enters at each point, and both meet explosive shell fire. (Being EU government employees on EU territory, the party feels legally able to employ high explosive multi-purpose ammunition.) Florence's target takes a direct hit; Dr Vartex misses his, but the blast as his shot hits the adjacent wall throws it into a spin, and Jianwei's electrolaser pistol finishes the job. Two more enter, and Florence again deals with one; Dr Vartex is somehow thrown off-balance by the need to shift targets, and suffers a worrying moment before Jianwei brings the buzzbot down with another electrolaser pulse.

Then, as the team brace for more attacks, they hear a double cry of "Yee-hah!" over public comms channels. Marshall Kirkowicz's own flying cybershells enter the fray; striking from behind, and employing superior hardware and much better automation, they eliminate the remaining attackers in seconds. Dr Vartex finishes off one twitching buzzbot with a single shell, then quickly heads back to check that his patient is still stable.

The embassy is a mess, of course, and the team aren't surprised when the ambassador calls in. She sounds annoyed, but not at them, and declares that she's bringing another party into the conversation, who turns out to be using a standard anonymous avatar, but who has a female voice and a Spanish accent; Schmidt addresses her as "Penelope", and introduces the team as people who've just been shot at as a consequence of Penelope's actions. Penelope does seem startled and apologetic at this. Jianwei asks if she was the person who called them the night before, and she admits as much; another thing that the team catches in the exchange is that Schmidt was at some point Penelope's student.

In any case, Penelope undertakes to deal with this problem as best she can, and suggests that people watch news reports from Kenya. Schmidt informs her that certain old debts are now paid; Penelope in turn admits to owing a favour to the consular services team. After she signs off, Jianwei puts together some hints and half-remembered references, does some online research, and pulls up the publicly available information on Penelope Vasquez, currently Head of what passes for the Political Sciences Department at the University of Mars - and previously, under her old name of Penelope Valdovar, President of Catalonia from 2049-52.

Meanwhile, Vajra has used local traffic management records to track the paths of the attacking buzzbots back, and has decided that they flew in from Lake Candor. Given their limited range and speed, that makes a certain boat - currently sailing briskly toward the other side of the lake - quite suspicious. When Marshall Kirkowicz arrives in person at the embassy, Vajra shares that information, and the Marshall agrees with the conclusion, and gets in touch with the Bako police to try and arrange an arrest. Those members of the team who know anything about professional criminal behaviour assume that anyone on that boat will not have been the shooter in the mall yesterday - it's too easy for modern law enforcement to prove connections that can place the same person at two different crime scenes. Whoever commissioned this attempted hit will have hired a team rather than an individual.

But the person or persons ultimately responsible may well be distracted right now. Within a few hours, stories appear on the Earth news feeds saying that no less that three senior members of the current ruling coalition in Kenya have just resigned unexpectedly - and a quick cross-check shows that all of them are members of a party descended from the main opposition party back when Steve Kabra was a minister. It seems that Penelope Vasquez or some of her friends have been exerting some pull...

The Sniper's Target

March 11-18, m0039

Over the next few days, things fall relatively quiet. Dr Vartex moves into a new flat - the embassy has found him one in a block near to that where the others are living - and promptly sets up a sterile room there in case he ends up providing any medical services from home. He also checks over the medical facilities at the embassy and has them upgraded a little for his own use, and goes looking for additional work between his duties with the team. It's becoming obvious to the others that his rather grim attitude when they first met him wasn't just a passing consequence of his situation then; he's something of a dour workaholic by nature.

Meanwhile, Florence is hitting the bars of Port Lowell once again, working her way down a fairly long list. This is mostly because she's enjoying herself, although she does make some unsuccessful attempts to get a feel for the way the local underworld might be arranged. For variety, she also visits a couple of restaurants with Jianwei.

He, meanwhile, has called a certain reporter back, first thanking her for the warning regarding fellow professionals ("Anything interesting happen?" "Not really..."), then asking her if she'd traced back from the incident with the rogue hopper. Unfortunately, she proves to have been rather clueless on this, so Jianwei suggests that she checks the academic publications stream, and should maybe expect some kind of government action in the next few days - "although we're not sure what, because we're not quite sure who was responsible for anything either"...

"DD" thanks him for the tip. After that conversation, he checks his desk; as the leader of the team and its one professional civil servant, he generally has a bit of virtual paperwork to deal with.

As for Vajra, that AI goes shopping for some new swarms, and then goes looking to see if there is any kind of AI demimonde locally. He doesn't find one yet, but he assumes that there must be something to find.

Mostly, though, the team settle into routine work for a while, helping tourists, providing visiting businessmen with enough guidance and protection to help them feel well-served by the government, assisting with mundane embassy business or medical work, and generally settling into life on Mars. Actually, the Nova Iquitos incident doesn't seem to have stirred things up very much; it seems that any and all factions involved are playing this quietly for now.

March 19, m0039

Then, early one afternoon, a Web conference call comes in to the team members from the embassy. It appears that one Stephen Ouku, a Kenyan citizen, has been attacked in the African-dominated town of Bako, across Lake Candor from Port Lowell, and has ended up in hospital for intensive emergency treatment. This wouldn't normally be of any specific interest to the EU - but, on this occasion, it seems that someone thinks otherwise. Ouku is apparently considered important, and the EU has agreed to provide him with secure treatment for a short period. There's doubtless a political element here, but details are hazy as yet. Anyway, Ouku is being evacuated from Bako, and a medical hopper is now incoming with him aboard, set to arrive in Port Lowell in a few minutes. The team are being scrambled to provide him with the treatment and protection that he may need; they're required to drop what they're doing and deal with this.

The team summon a rented ambulance over the Web, converge on the airfield in time to meet the chartered private medical hopper, transfer the unconscious patient under Dr Vartex's supervision, and head for the embassy - which they've decided is the best place to keep him while they (a) deal with the treatment he still requires, and (b) work out quite what's going on here. Ouku's wearable computer has been shipped along with him, and Vajra interfaces with that and rapidly gets on very good terms with his LAI, while Dr Vartex sets to work in the ambulance, cataloguing his injuries, assisted by Aunty, who's working through the ambulance's sensors and data feeds from Dr Vartex. It looks like he's taken a couple of hits from small-caliber SEFOP rounds, probably micromissiles (Dr Vartex's forensic judgement seems to be working better than his medical skills right now); one made a serious mess of the interior of his torso, while the other went through his spine. The medics in Bako reached him in time to stabilise him, and the damage is of course all reparable with 2100-era medicine - given time - but he's currently being kept alive by extensive exterior life support, while an assortment of other technology is currently replacing much of his nervous system.

Still, Dr Vartex and Aunty consider that he should make a full recovery - provided that nothing else happens to him. That, however, may require that whoever caused the current damage should be prevented from finishing the job - and the rest of the team consider that they need more information if they're going to ensure that. They briefly consider waking the patient up to find out what he can tell them - an idea that recurs once or twice in the ensuiong discussions - but Dr Vartex notes that, although this would technically be possible, it would be somewhat risky (as well as probably highly distressing) for the patient. Medical ethics apply here; Dr Vartex can't authorise the procedure without a lot more justification.

So the others begin researching Stephen Ouku, in an attempt to determine who might be trying to kill him. The basics are easy enough to discover, largely just by asking his LAI; he's a wealthy Kenyan citizen, visiting Mars in general and Bako in particular from Earth on business. It looks like he's considering investing in various software development projects in Bako (a centre of the Martian software industry), and was involved in talks on that matter; he's evidently personally quite rich. At around this point, Dr Vartex notes that, although his patient appears to be somewhere around 50, there are signs of extensive rejuvenating treatments, and he's generally getting the impression that looks may deceive here; further cursory examination, and interrogation of that LAI, suggest that Ouku is more like 90. He's evidently something of a classic eloi, although maybe more engaged with managing his own investments than some.

However, when Vajra and Jianwei hit the Web to research his past in more detail, they hit a curious brick wall; there's very little or nothing available about him before about 20-25 years ago, although he was evidently quite rich even then. His LAI declares that it's been with him for about 15 years; not implausible, but, of course, no help in tracing him back before that. The researchers use a little EU authority to request more information direct from his home country, but Kenya, although not badly off in 2100, doesn't have the best or most reliable public records system

Meanwhile, a familiar face has shown up at the embassy door, and requests a meeting. U.S. Marshall Althea Kirkowicz has, it seems, learned of the arrival of Ouku in Port Lowell, and of the preceding circumstances. She's quite amicable about all this, and she freely acknowledges that anything that happens within the embassy is EU business, but the peace and safety of Port Lowell is her concern. She declares that she'll station a couple of airborne cybershells in the area outside, in case anything should happen; they'll show (red, white, and blue) tags in the European team's augmented reality.

That conversation done, the team reviews recent visual and auditory records from Ouku's LAI. It seems that he was at some kind of reception in a suite in a hotel in Bako; the room had picture windows overlooking an enclosed and pressurised mall, and while Ouku was standing near those, the attack came through the glass. The AI's sensors weren't aligned to get much detail of that or the responses of other people present, but analysis doesn't show anything suspicious. Jianwei then makes a call to the police force at Bako, and manages to charm them very passably; they have of course been investigating the incident, and have determined that the shooter had infiltrated the staff/maintenance areas of a building at the other end of the mall - it's not a high security site, so wearing maintenance overalls and looking confident did the job, while the shooter was smart enough to avoid facing any security cameras. The cops have swept the shooter's position with forensic gear, and promptly suffered a massive overload of DNA information; he must have dumped a quantity of dust picked up in a public space ("he vacuumed a bus" is the police slang). They're trying to narrow things down, but not getting very far. They've also, as Jianwei thinks to enquire, found some of the remains of the SEFOP shells on the floor of the mall, but these melted and blasted fragments don't carry much useful information. However, when Florence sees the images, she identifies them as 15mm micromissiles, and her judgement of the scene is that they were likely fired from a carbine - which fits with the "maintenance equipment bag" being carried by the unidentifiable shooter on some pictures. This certainly looks like a competent professional hit.

And so the team sets up a perimeter while still wondering quite why they've become involved with this incident. Someone reacted fast to what happened, it seems, and that someone had enough pull to have an EU ambassador instructed what to do - but Earth is close enough that messages could have got there and back in the time. Alternatively, there are a few EU member warships in near-Mars space, and it's just possible that the commander of one of those would have system access codes that could produce this result, given the perceived need.

What looks like the best clue on that subject comes that night, just as Florence, who has a feline need for enough sleep, is curling up near to the medical facilities. A call comes in from somewhere - on Mars or in low orbit, to judge from the lag and available message path information, although its exact origins are as carefully disguised as the voice that the team hear. Someone wants to check on Mr Ouku's condition, and also to thank the team for their efforts. That someone doesn't want to say very much (at this point at least), but denies any knowledge of the source of the attack... They do seem curious about it, though; "I don't suppose you know what weapons were used?"

"Two 15mm gyroc micro missiles with SEFOP warheads, probably fired from a Carbine," Florence immediately replies. This produces a somewhat surprised expression from the other end, noticeable through the masking software. Either the mystery caller is unfamiliar with weapons, or they are unfamiliar with the sort of embassy employees who can casually identify such things. In general, whoever it is doesn't come across as very accustomed to this sort of situation. Despite the voice masking, Jianwei, who is not only a professional diplomat but who has some training in linguistics, deduces that the speaker is almost certainly from an Indo-European linguistic background, and is most likely female.

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...