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..."

The House of Fragrant Jasmine

March 26, m0039, continued

The team does wonder if their missing tourist might have passed any cameras to which they might gain sufficient access - but they can't think of any good way to get recordings from very many. They do check the systems as the EU embassy,which is a few streets away from Northern Territories, but Vajra's careful scan of those recordings don't turn up any sightings. So their next move is to make contact with some local hotels, and try and find the one where Kurt Weber-Markt is or was staying. This is simply a matter of filtering tourist guide hotel lists by price, languages spoken, and other plausible criteria, and then working down the sorted list. In fact, they are some way down - at the tenth, rather more of a sleazy dive than most well-off tourists would favour, and described as such in the guides - before they strike lucky. However, the hotel systems are entirely cooperative,happily confirming that Herr Weber-Markt is indeed booked in there, but that sensors and housekeeping records show that he didn't return to his room last night. Before that, he spent three nights in residence; he apparently had company on the second night, but the hotel's policy is to respect guests' and visitors' personal privacy as far as possible in such matters.

Meanwhile, the team's AIs have been skimming news channels and gossip blogs, looking for reports of bar fights in town last night or since; if their missing tourist took a powerful disinhibition nanodrug, he might have got himself into that sort of trouble. There was no shortage of such brawls - Port Lowell is that sort of town - but careful scanning and filtering excludes them all. So the team's next step is to contact the U.S. Marshall's office once again, and this time, they receive a little more assistance; they have a confirmed, if very recent, missing person situation, and a specific request - more access to camera records from around town. With the U.S. office's aid, they soon have a few hours more of recordings, which Vajra and the other AIs are able to scan at high speed. They do soon have a few sightings of somebody who was probably Weber-Markt shortly after he left Northern Territories, giving them a broad idea of which direction he went in, but they can't find enough to track his path properly, and the Marshall's office can't find enough compliant businesses to improve the trail. The team does think about using chem sniffers as mechanical "tracker dogs", but their quarry was wearing a Martian environment suit, which inevitably tends to keep biological traces and scents in, and the trail would involve a lot of very busy streets; that idea won't fly.

So it's back to the Marshall's office (via the Web) and its patiently helpful LAIs, with another request; to track their missing person's financial activities since last night. That's heavily covered by privacy rules, of course, but law enforcement systems can politely subpoena their way through those. A few minutes later, a brief string of payment records come through the Web from Weber-Markt's bank. The team decides that the interesting data points are those which come after the moment when Northern Territories auto-billed him for very minor (but nonetheless doubtless somewhat inflated) furniture damage costs. About half an hour after that, he authorised a moderately significant payment, in the hundreds of Euros; ten minutes after that, he made a smaller payment - say, enough for a couple of drinks; and fifteen minutes after that, some other entity, with vendor access to his credit system, made a series of test inquiries about funds available and authorisations required - the sort of thing that a business might (more or less legitimately) do to determine whether someone had immediate access to funds up to some specific level. But no actual payment was made, and since then - silence.

The bank can also provide a little information about the agency which processed all these payments and inquiries, although not their ultimate source - that's carefully screened at this level of authority. It was, as Vajra comments, a Bank of No Questions Asked, legally on Chinese territory where the Marshall's writ carries little weight. But there are proper channels for such queries - and more importantly, appropriate channels, if one has some idea how the game is played, and the name of a government or two behind one. So Jianwei puts a call through to the Chinese financial authorities, and finds an official who would like to retain the goodwill of the U.S. Marshals Service, and who can call in some favours...

(As Jianwei doesn't need Florence to tell him, he probably owes a favour or two himself now, from the point of view of those Chinese officials. That's the way the game is played, on Chinese territory.)

Ten minutes later, the official calls back. He's turned up the name of a holding company which was generating those requests; it's a purely virtual sort of outfit, but it doesn't take much financial knowledge at all to determine that it's American-owned and focused in Port Lowell - or much reading between the lines to work out that the businesses for which it provides a financial interface are actually, basically, brothels. Pulling down the list of establishments, checking their known prices for various services against the first expenditure from Weber-Markt's credit account, and filtering for location against the direction he appears to have been walking last night, turns up one promising-looking name: The House of Fragrant Jasmine.

This House has a nicely-designed Web frontage with a strongly Asian sort of style, but a very little careful assessment shows that the memetics here are mildly deceptive; it's really aimed primarily at Westerners looking for a little bit of safe exoticism. It's also a cybershell house, making its business not only legal but pretty uncontroversial by most public moral standards. Unless it's offering anything more dubious under the counter - and the standard guides don't suggest that it is - it may well be an entirely legitimate business.

So the team decide to pay a visit, and to be entirely open about their purpose for doing so. Still, they'd rather not look too aggressive, so they decide that only Jianwei and Florence will go in, while Vajra waits on the street outside, ready to provide support. As they may have to go direct from there to the meeting with Sandy, Florence dresses respectably (for her) in a little black dress (which happens to be armoured nanoweave - it's the only little black dress she's got), with some trashier clothes in a bag to change into later.

The House of Fragrant Jasmine does indeed have the look of a respectable sort of establishment, with a front-of-house reception area monitored by what is evidently a LAI that speaks to visitors through hidden loudspeakers. When Jianwei explains a little of the reason for their visit, it expresses concern and tells them that the manager will want to talk to them; some of the hangings that cover all the walls roll back, and a door opens silently, giving them admission to another room, similarly comfortable but a little more businesslike, with seats facing an ornate desk.

Another door, in the far side of the room, opens, and the manager, "Mistress Zeng", appears. She appears entirely human and ethnically East Asian; she's dressed in "silk" robes and makeup that mix the styles of a wealthy Chinese matron and a Japanese geisha. When she speaks, however, her words emerge from more hidden loudspeakers; her lips never move. She sits at the desk, and Jianwei explains something about the disappearance of Kurt Weber-Markt.

Mistress Zeng expresses concern at this story, but declares that she is unable to help; "If any person were able to assist with this matter, I am sure that they would do so ... however, it has been less than a day since this person vanished; I am sure he will reappear unhurt..." It is quite obvious that she is stonewalling (in a manner that accords with the house's style).

So Florence decides to try a slightly different approach. It's a fair bet that a place like this, however legitimate and respectable, will have some sort of acquaintance with the Martian triads - and her training, prior to her rescue by the Royal Navy, including a certain amount of appropriate protocol. So she speaks up, in Mandarin, and using terms that imply a Triad sort of attitude. "We're sure that you wouldn't want to put anyone to the trouble of waiting?"

This evidently throws Mistress Zeng a little; "I have no wish to trouble anyone..." although it doesn't change the situation instantly; all she says is "I suggest that you await developments..."

This leads to a tricky pause in the conversation - but then a wall-curtain whirs back to reveal another observer - a cyberdoll-style cybershell, built to resemble a physically imposing human male, and Mistress Zeng implies that the visitors might now depart. They do so, although there is a momentary face-off in the outer office, when Florence raises her hand in a gesture to tell the cybershell bouncer to step back, and the bouncer tries but fails to trap her hand. It seems to be LAI-operated, but to have a distinctly assertive programmed personality.

In any case, the team meet up again outside, and as the two organics brief Vajra, they turn back towards Northern Territories. Next on their schedule is Florence's appointment with Sandy...

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.

Observations and Assessments

March 10, m0039, continued

And so the team are on their train, in a carriage temporarily defined as EU territory, for a twenty-hour journey. Actually, the trip is going to be divided in two; once they reach a stop on the edge of more densely inhabited territory, they're booked to transfer to a sleeper car. Meanwhile, this two-carriage train picks up only a few more passengers - Chinese colonists, only one of whom decides that a carriage occupied by a bunch of foreigners, one of them a Felicia who's nursing an automatic weapon, is preferable to one occupied by a group of large gentlemen whose manner screams "Chinese government agents" (and even he sits as far from the group as possible).

Just moments before the train reaches the stop where they're due to change, Jianwei efforts in preparing reports for the embassy are interrupted by a call over the Web. The caller speaks as though she knows him, and identifies herself as "Diana D'Ollio".

"Oh yes," says Jianwei, guessing that this is the bartender from the elevator car, "I've been thinking about you..." Which is no more than the truth; however, he asks her to call back in ten minutes, by which time he's able to chat as he eats takeaway Chinese food in the sleeping compartment.

It turns out that her software agents alerted her to a report appearing on a technological problems board; wildly misbehaving hoppers aren't exactly common on Mars, and the incident earlier that day is sure to draw attention - she's merely got in first. She was quite impressed by the video footage she found, and is politely amused by Jianwei's responses to her probing. (Well, politely by her standards. "Oh yes - you're government scum, not corporate scum, aren't you?") She knows some basics that the team also picked up - that the hopper, which had only recently arrived at the maglev stop, was the property of a small hire company with rather obscure ownership, now that anyone checks. The software and software-hardware combination (supposedly) involved are being investigated, but no other anomalous behaviours seem to showing up so far. She suspects that there's more to be found.

"I don't suppose that you can give me anything else to look up while you decide what you can tell me?"

"No," Jianwei replies, "but do check the news for the last 36 hours."

"Okay. That's not just a distraction for the next six or twelve, is it?"

"I don't know."

"Fine, okay. By the way, do bear in mind that not all of my colleagues are as subtle and polite as me..."

She ends the call, and the train journey continues, with the train stopping occasionally for other passengers. Dr Vartex explores the benefits of his new part-electronic condition, turning his hearing down so as to sleep more easily. But as everyone settles in, the unsleeping Vajra notices one passenger, apparently confused and in the wrong carriage, pausing for oddly long outside the group's compartment. He puts some surveillance dust out through a ventilation vent, and is pleased to determine that there are no obvious booby-traps or weapons outside; however, when he follows this up with a bug-hunter swarm, he does find some other surveillance dust. So he sends a surveillance swarm further afield, into the carriage where the "lost" passenger is now sitting, and manages to identify him and acquire a decent video image. Running this through a facial recognition system and accessing a few public databases achieves a quick success; this is a known professional freelance reporter. So Vajra leaves messages with his colleagues' AI aides

March 11, m0039

When the organic team members awake, they all consult silently and decide on a policy. Florence lends Vajra her cleaning swarm, and he uses that and his other resources to locate and gather up the dust that's supposed to be watching them. They put it in a disposable cup, to be left in the compartment when they depart.

When the maglev train eventually reaches Port Lowell, Dr Vartex receives a message from "some people he knows", and announces that he's going to have to leave the others now; somebody to whom he evidently feels obliged to respond has called him in for a debriefing. The others bid him goodbye and head to the embassy, where Colette Schmidt calls them all in for a meeting in person. Once they're all seated and basic courtesies have been observed, she gives an invisible signal, and one whole wall of the room turns into a viewscreen, showing a virtual space that is designed to look like an extension of the office. This space holds one chair, which is occupied by a figure - clearly an avatar, not designed to look entirely realistic; a man all dressed in grey, with his grey-tinged face partly in shadow.

Schmidt introduces this as "Mr Grey", a representative of certain agencies who've been assisting with background investigations regarding recent incidents, and then hands things over to him. Mr Grey nods and begins to talk.

First, he apologises for any mistakes on the part of his organisation that may have caused or exacerbated the team's recent problems. It's clear that they became mixed up in a complex situation, made worse by what was probably sheer coincidence in that they found themselves in company with Dr Liang. Anyway, it would be useful to know more, so "appropriate people" have been trying to extract more information from the SIA, who have been slow to respond; it seems probably that they've been escalating questions of need-to-know right back to Earth orbit. Still, they've released a little more now.

So the EU now has a file on "Quipu", although they aren't necessarily sure that it exists as anything more than a codename for some temporary operation, or perhaps just a piece of disinformation. There really isn't much to go on. The betting in European circles is now that, a year ago, the SIA determined, through what the EU thought was an exchange of routine information, that Dr Vartex was on good terms with British military intelligence, and used the information that they had about him to lend them weight when they requested a private chat with him, out in the desert. However, "Quipu" (if it exists) must have spotted that something was going on, decided that having someone with potentially hostile allegiances actually working in the middle of its operation at Nova Iquitos was dangerous, and chose to eliminate this potential threat by a brutally direct method.

After Dr Vartex was saved for uploading by the Chinese medical team, Quipu must have decided that he was no longer a threat, or that attacking him in a Chinese hospital installation was too dangerous. Hence, it left him alone there, and was evidently slow to respond when he and the team began investigating his murder. The team then became entangled with Quipu's countermeasures against the problem posed by Dr Liang, and in the end, after they helped her work, it may simply have panicked or turned downright malicious. The attack with the hopper may have been a desperation measure, or an opportunist attempt to remove both the immediate threat of Dr Liang (and her collected samples) and a possible hostile agent in the person of Dr Vartex - or both.

In any case, it failed, and with Dr Liang under Chinese government protection and the EU prepared to make it clear that attacks on the team will be investigated strenuously, the threat is hopefully now over. Anyway, Mr Grey thanks everyone - and the wall screen switches off.

Colette Schmidt has one or two things to add to this. It seems that Dr Vartex is probably being checked over by his old military superiors, who can't be entirely happy that his brain scans have been in Chinese hands for a year - but she's seen his record, and while he had routine military clearance, there was nothing in his past (that she can discover) that was either deeply secret or of great interest to the Chinese (or his scans would perhaps have been pulled out of Chinese hands much sooner). The current "debriefing" will presumably include tests and checks to make sure that he hasn't been edited; if those don't find anything, though, it's unlikely that the military will be entirely sure about him.

However ... Schmidt is pleased to be able to say that she suddenly seems to have acquired a little more funding for the consular services team project, somehow. Hence, the team can now add one more member - and she wonders if the existing members would mind if that new member was in fact Dr Vartex. After all, he's an EU citizen, a medical doctor with military experience; it might be hard to find anyone better.

The team agree happily enough, and so the decision is formalised; Dr Vartex will be asked if he'd like the job. Then, Jianwei raises one more matter; the contact from "DD". The main question is how much they can release to her; he thinks that she could be a useful press contact, and he'd rather not antagonise her; on the other hand, the Nova Iquitos affair presumably rates as at least somewhat secret. He and Colette Schmidt review the matter, and she gives him permission to admit to some elements of the incident, and perhaps to hint at a little more - but mostly, he should be careful. He's going to have to be cagey if he speaks to "DD" again, while playing matters by ear.

From Above and Below

March 10, m0039, continued

Back at Nova Iquitos, Dr Vartex receives a couple of messages. One, from the E.U. Martian Medical service, is simply a request for him to monitor Florence's psychological stability - they're aware that she's used live ammunition recently, and this sort of thing causes them concern. The other is from his contacts in the intelligence community, who say that they've been attempting to follow up some issues of concern to him, and have come to the conclusion that the SIA were up to something a year ago, and that they may well have sought to draw him in for some reason; they had access to enough E.U. recognition codes that, yes, a call from them might have caused him to divert his hopper on that crucial day. Meanwhile, Vajra uses available optical equipment to examine the microbots it salvaged from the snakebot's load, cross-referencing what it can determine about the design and construction with Web research. While the results aren't conclusive - whoever built these things made intelligent efforts to cover their tracks, and there's certainly nothing as incriminating as a serial number to be found - Vajra's best guess is that these things were constructed using the kind of equipment and technical references most usually found in TSA territory.

Meanwhile, in the rover, Jianwei has been composing a report for the embassy, summarising his view of recent events and including a recording of the recent anonymous message conference, all flagged for the ambassador's personal attention. Among other things, he's concerned that if somebody - presumably "Quipu" or some other TSA agent of influence - is playing tricky memetic games here, they may switch from the previous line to a claim that the Nova Iquitos researchers are the victims of sabotage by another faction - and while the E.U. aren't the obvious people to set up as the villains in that case, anything is possible.

Then, as the party in the vehicle arrives at the third oasis, a Web conference call comes in for Jianwei, Dr Vartex, and Vajra. Jianwei remains in the vehicle to deal with this as Florence escorts Dr Liang, who starts taking samples. It seems that the Ambassador Schmidt has been alerted to events around Nova Iquitos (not least an explosion) by Quentin, and has seen Jianwei's interim report. Hence, she's been pursuing matters with some energy, passing requests for more information on to appropriate contacts. "They pursued the matter further, and apparently made contact with some ... supposedly helpful acquaintances of their own. And do you know what they received in reply?"

Jianwei ventures guesses along the lines of "flat denial".

"Not even that, in fact, Mr Chen. They have been told absolutely nothing. One might almost think that the SIA were embarrassed. Our own contacts seem quite unhappy with them.

"Can you hear a buzzing sound at your end, Mr Chen?"

Jianwei, who can hear no such sound in the vehicle, says as much.

"Well, that is strange, because that is what one usually hears when one has kicked over a hornet's nest. Oh, and some other people are apparently concerned that Ms Adele has been using live ammunition.

"I have come to the conclusion that it might be wisest if we were to extract you from that situation there. I will open some back channels to the Chinese, but you had best see what Dr Liang wants for herself - but do help her to leave if she wishes. Anyway, I've somehow suddenly acquired the budget to send you a couple of rented hoppers; I'll leave it up to you how you use them."

The call ends, and Jianwei determines that the hoppers will arrive at Nova Iquitos in a couple of hours. The best option seems to be to use then to travel to the nearest stop, and then return home on the maglev. So he speaks to the others, including Dr Liang, about how they should handle matters. He's not going to disobey the instruction to withdraw from the area, and while Dr Liang would like to take more time to conduct tests and so on, he has little difficulty convincing her that it might be safest for her to depart as well. However, the group at the third oasis does take the time to collect a few more samples and to conduct a brief examination of the soil around the site. Dr Liang concludes that this site too has been seeded with fertiliser, albeit slightly less than the first two - a bit of variation in the results would doubtless help avoid having them look too suspiciously uniform - and there are some signs of soil disturbances that might indicate a snakebot coming and going. However, these last are in the direction of a fourth, nearby oasis, and not of the first two; it's a fair bet that there's at least one more snakebot out here somewhere, and possibly a couple.

So the team then mounts up on the rover and heads back to Nova Iquitos, arriving at about the same time as as the two rented hoppers sent by the embassy. They speak briefly to the Peruvians, warning them that there may be two or three more dangerous snakebots out there around the other oases. Then they quickly load their luggage into the two hoppers, instruct their rented rover to take itself back to its base, and take off, with Florence and Jianwei in one (Florence actually flying it, to keep in practise), and Doctors Vartex and Liang in the other, with Vajra riding in the luggage compartment, patched into the on-board computer system and the craft's sensors.

The actual flight to the nearest maglev halt goes uneventfully, and the hoppers begin an approach to its landing strip, Florence leading the way. Then, the group see another hopper rolling out onto the field, and just have time to note that it isn't responding to standard traffic management signals when its ducted fans turn to a vertical take-off configuration, and rather than make any sort of economical short take-off run, it throws itself into the air - and at them.

Florence's trained reflexes kick in, and she easily evades the attempted ramming; the hopper simply carries on, aimed at the second incoming craft, where Vajra is by now issuing instructions to the controlling LAI. This too manages to avoid the attack, and the hostile hopper temporarily loses control, hurtling off into the sky.

This gives first Florence and then the second hopper's LAI time to make hasty but safe landings, and as Jianwei hastily logs the incident for any subsequent investigators, Florence vaults quickly out of the cabin, Dr Liang is evidently unnerved and confused by the incident, and Dr Vartex works to keep her calm and get her to get away from the hopper - but by now, the attacker has turned around and is coming back. Florence springs to the cargo bay doors of her vehicle, using her implant to tell both them and her weapons case to open up as she goes. Her UAW is ready to hand, and she picks it up - it arms itself as its stock recognises her hand - and spins around in time to see the hostile hopper bearing down on her. Her implant overlays targeting data on her vision, and she fires the shotgun barrel, once.

Her explosive shell enters one of the hopper's wing-mounted ducted fans, and detonates, shattering rotor blades and damaging mechanisms. The high-tech craft handles the disruption remarkably well, but its automatic emergency stability systems cut in, and it drops neatly to the ground. Members of the group hasten over to it and hit any emergency cut-out switches they can find.

Meanwhile, however, another group of people have emerged from the maglev halt buildings and are approaching rapidly; large oriental individuals, all similarly and plainly dressed, and all with drawn guns. The Europeans turn to meet them, some with their own weapons still in hand, and there is a brief tense moment, especially as, despite Jianwei's smoothly tactful greetings, they seem uncertain what to make of most of the newcomers and highly suspicious - but their personal identity codes mark them as Chinese government agents, and it's clear that they're here to escort Dr Liang safely back to Chinese territory.

And so the two groups settle down and wait for the next train - which turns out to have two carriages, both empty. The Chinese agents take over one, and the Europeans decide that it's most tactful to use the other. Some quick administrative footwork by Jianwei has that effectively declared E.U. diplomatic territory for the duration of their occupancy, which allows Florence to keep her weapons to hand, just in case... But anyway, the group begin their long return haul to Port Lowell.