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...
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, May 31, 2010
The Knotted String
March 10, m0039, continued
The Europeans first walk back to their sleeping quarters to leave Florence's UAW (which would seem tactless to take to a friendly chat about problems in science) and to explain matters to Dr Liang first. They tell her their story so far, and then head over to the main Nova Iquitos quarters, where the Peruvian scientists are gathering in the dining room.
There, Jianwei explains that the explosion was the result of an encounter with a hostile cybershell, and then tells their story yet again, starting from the point where they boarded the road train - all illustrated with recordings from their personal AIs, date-stamped and validated. As he talks, he notices Saul Fedirici becoming nervous, even panicky, while Tiberius sees that Dinah de Carneiro, while interested in the story, is becoming irritated at Fedirici, and catches de Carneiro muttering something to Fedirici about this being bad for his "public speaking work". By contrast, Maria Coronado, although startled by the whole story, seems mostly concerned to acquire a reliable body of evidence so that she can escalate the matter to her superiors (although she does become a little irritated with Fedirici's uncertain suggestions about how to handle the matter), and Kobo Tezuka simply takes a close interest in all the technical aspects of the business.
After a while, however, Fedirici drops out of the conversation, staring into space with the air of someone working in VR, and then returns to the discussion as something much more like his previous relaxed and charming self. He now seems to think that it would be best to go public with the whole problem as soon as possible, while making it clear that Nova Iquitos disowns any attempts at fraud and will cooperate with all investigations, to put the best face on the team's handling of the problem. Coronado seems happy with this attitude; de Carneiro maybe senses that he's taking charge of yet another social issue, and perhaps finds this irritating.
After some discussion, everyone agrees that a little more evidence-collection is indicated, and it is decided that two teams will set out straight away. One, consisting of Dr Liang, de Carneiro, Florence, and Jianwei, will head to the second oasis, where the snakebot was headed, to run some tests and collect some samples; the second, consisting of Tiberius, Vajra, and Tezuka, will take another look at what is left of the snakebot. Meanwhile, Fedirici will go pick up some samples from the nearest oasis and the nearby "fertiliser" dumping-spot.
The two groups are heading out in the same general direction at first, though, so they set out in company. As they are walking across the Martian terrain, a call comes in; an unnamed being requests an immediate VR meeting with Jianwei and Tiberius. They excuse themselves for a moment to take this, and drop into what proves to be a plain, featureless VR room, where they are greeted by a simple humanoid mannequin-like figure with speech patterns and mannerisms that indicate that it's a non-sapient AI. This being explains that it is delivering an automated response to pre-set conditions - a change in circumstances.
"Specifically, Nova Iquitos have just placed a pause on all their project reports, and requested that their experimental results be withdrawn from academic discussion pending an upcoming announcement."
(Subsequent checking will suggest that this was a very quick response; the pause must have been placed during the meeting just finished.)
"Given such a radical change in circumstances there, my task is to inform you that it is believed that something or someone at Nova Iquitos is the focus of attention of an entity known as Quipu. It is further believed that Quipu controls an unidentified TSA project - probably a memetic program of some kind. You may wish to proceed accordingly."
Reference to a standard dictionary shows that a "quipu" is a pre-Columbian record-keeping system from the region of Inca Peru - a system of knotted strings. As the NAI appears to have finished delivering its message, and shows little inclination to expand on matters further, Jianwei and Tiberius drop out of the meeting. They pass a quick summary of what they were told to their colleagues, and later provide a more detailed recording; Florence files it ("Hold this for me, Dougal"), and when she reviews it at leisure, is exasperated at the scantiness of the information, while Vajra, hearing the name Quipu in this sort of context, discovers that it has what seems to be a relevant reference pointer - which unfortunately leads to a blank, deleted space in its memory.
Anyway, the two groups continue on their way. Before they split up, Tiberius carefully questions de Carneiro over heshes disgruntled attitude towards Fedirici, coming to the conclusion that the latter has simply annoyed de Carneiro by being charming and socially successful, parlaying his charisma into a generally profitable career. At some point, he also researches the public speaking events that the Fedirici is apparently undertaking, finding relevant schedules on the Mars Web and trying to ascertain the sponsors and suchlike in case they proved to be relevant at a later date. The Europeans look into this further when they can, and note that the talks have very recently had title changes, de-emphasising the "success" of his work in favour of objective discussions of "events" at Nova Iquitos.
The two groups go their separate ways. At the scene of the earlier fight, Vajra deploys one of his surveillance swarms, and discovers four or five identifiable microbots from the snakebot's payload, while Tezuka prods around the remains of the hostile cybershell with interest, and Tiberius looks on.
The walk to the second oasis takes longer. On the way, Jianwei, reviewing the situation, sends a message asking that the rover that is on its way should come directly to this group - it won't pass anywhere near Nova Iquitos in that case. The group also draws de Carneiro out a little more regarding Fedirici, confirming the general impression that hesh is, frankly, jealous of Fedirici, thinking that he uses social skills to gain advantage in his scientific career. It seems that Fedirici is indeed becoming a minor public figure, and he or someone helping him is determined that he should look as good as possible. Jianwei has some training in memetics, and thinks that he's beginning to see a pattern here; Fedirici looks like the well-honed or well-chosen spearpoint of a serious memetic project.
At the second oasis, there's still no sign of microbot or cybershell activity, and Dr Liang begins collecting samples. She'll run a lot more tests later, when she has better facilities available, but even the portable gear she has with her can pick up traces of the planted fertiliser chemicals; evidently, this site too has been seeded, and the snakebot was doubtless on its way to clean it out. In fact, the group head out carefully in the direction of the first oasis, scanning the ground as they go, and sharp eyes spot an area of disturbed ground at a point where the snakebot, moving between the two sites, might well have been expected to burrow down or surface in the past. It will be interesting to examine the more distant sites... Which can best be accomplished with a vehicle. And so that group waits until the rover arrives. When it does, they check it as best they can, finding no signs of tampering, and set out to look for more evidence further afield.
The Europeans first walk back to their sleeping quarters to leave Florence's UAW (which would seem tactless to take to a friendly chat about problems in science) and to explain matters to Dr Liang first. They tell her their story so far, and then head over to the main Nova Iquitos quarters, where the Peruvian scientists are gathering in the dining room.
There, Jianwei explains that the explosion was the result of an encounter with a hostile cybershell, and then tells their story yet again, starting from the point where they boarded the road train - all illustrated with recordings from their personal AIs, date-stamped and validated. As he talks, he notices Saul Fedirici becoming nervous, even panicky, while Tiberius sees that Dinah de Carneiro, while interested in the story, is becoming irritated at Fedirici, and catches de Carneiro muttering something to Fedirici about this being bad for his "public speaking work". By contrast, Maria Coronado, although startled by the whole story, seems mostly concerned to acquire a reliable body of evidence so that she can escalate the matter to her superiors (although she does become a little irritated with Fedirici's uncertain suggestions about how to handle the matter), and Kobo Tezuka simply takes a close interest in all the technical aspects of the business.
After a while, however, Fedirici drops out of the conversation, staring into space with the air of someone working in VR, and then returns to the discussion as something much more like his previous relaxed and charming self. He now seems to think that it would be best to go public with the whole problem as soon as possible, while making it clear that Nova Iquitos disowns any attempts at fraud and will cooperate with all investigations, to put the best face on the team's handling of the problem. Coronado seems happy with this attitude; de Carneiro maybe senses that he's taking charge of yet another social issue, and perhaps finds this irritating.
After some discussion, everyone agrees that a little more evidence-collection is indicated, and it is decided that two teams will set out straight away. One, consisting of Dr Liang, de Carneiro, Florence, and Jianwei, will head to the second oasis, where the snakebot was headed, to run some tests and collect some samples; the second, consisting of Tiberius, Vajra, and Tezuka, will take another look at what is left of the snakebot. Meanwhile, Fedirici will go pick up some samples from the nearest oasis and the nearby "fertiliser" dumping-spot.
The two groups are heading out in the same general direction at first, though, so they set out in company. As they are walking across the Martian terrain, a call comes in; an unnamed being requests an immediate VR meeting with Jianwei and Tiberius. They excuse themselves for a moment to take this, and drop into what proves to be a plain, featureless VR room, where they are greeted by a simple humanoid mannequin-like figure with speech patterns and mannerisms that indicate that it's a non-sapient AI. This being explains that it is delivering an automated response to pre-set conditions - a change in circumstances.
"Specifically, Nova Iquitos have just placed a pause on all their project reports, and requested that their experimental results be withdrawn from academic discussion pending an upcoming announcement."
(Subsequent checking will suggest that this was a very quick response; the pause must have been placed during the meeting just finished.)
"Given such a radical change in circumstances there, my task is to inform you that it is believed that something or someone at Nova Iquitos is the focus of attention of an entity known as Quipu. It is further believed that Quipu controls an unidentified TSA project - probably a memetic program of some kind. You may wish to proceed accordingly."
Reference to a standard dictionary shows that a "quipu" is a pre-Columbian record-keeping system from the region of Inca Peru - a system of knotted strings. As the NAI appears to have finished delivering its message, and shows little inclination to expand on matters further, Jianwei and Tiberius drop out of the meeting. They pass a quick summary of what they were told to their colleagues, and later provide a more detailed recording; Florence files it ("Hold this for me, Dougal"), and when she reviews it at leisure, is exasperated at the scantiness of the information, while Vajra, hearing the name Quipu in this sort of context, discovers that it has what seems to be a relevant reference pointer - which unfortunately leads to a blank, deleted space in its memory.
Anyway, the two groups continue on their way. Before they split up, Tiberius carefully questions de Carneiro over heshes disgruntled attitude towards Fedirici, coming to the conclusion that the latter has simply annoyed de Carneiro by being charming and socially successful, parlaying his charisma into a generally profitable career. At some point, he also researches the public speaking events that the Fedirici is apparently undertaking, finding relevant schedules on the Mars Web and trying to ascertain the sponsors and suchlike in case they proved to be relevant at a later date. The Europeans look into this further when they can, and note that the talks have very recently had title changes, de-emphasising the "success" of his work in favour of objective discussions of "events" at Nova Iquitos.
The two groups go their separate ways. At the scene of the earlier fight, Vajra deploys one of his surveillance swarms, and discovers four or five identifiable microbots from the snakebot's payload, while Tezuka prods around the remains of the hostile cybershell with interest, and Tiberius looks on.
The walk to the second oasis takes longer. On the way, Jianwei, reviewing the situation, sends a message asking that the rover that is on its way should come directly to this group - it won't pass anywhere near Nova Iquitos in that case. The group also draws de Carneiro out a little more regarding Fedirici, confirming the general impression that hesh is, frankly, jealous of Fedirici, thinking that he uses social skills to gain advantage in his scientific career. It seems that Fedirici is indeed becoming a minor public figure, and he or someone helping him is determined that he should look as good as possible. Jianwei has some training in memetics, and thinks that he's beginning to see a pattern here; Fedirici looks like the well-honed or well-chosen spearpoint of a serious memetic project.
At the second oasis, there's still no sign of microbot or cybershell activity, and Dr Liang begins collecting samples. She'll run a lot more tests later, when she has better facilities available, but even the portable gear she has with her can pick up traces of the planted fertiliser chemicals; evidently, this site too has been seeded, and the snakebot was doubtless on its way to clean it out. In fact, the group head out carefully in the direction of the first oasis, scanning the ground as they go, and sharp eyes spot an area of disturbed ground at a point where the snakebot, moving between the two sites, might well have been expected to burrow down or surface in the past. It will be interesting to examine the more distant sites... Which can best be accomplished with a vehicle. And so that group waits until the rover arrives. When it does, they check it as best they can, finding no signs of tampering, and set out to look for more evidence further afield.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Dinner and a Hop
March 9, m0039, continued
The Europeans return to their accommodation module to discuss their next steps. They call Quentin and arrange to acquire some IR-spectrum satellite imagery of their current location from standard civilian sources - this kind of thing is generally available for a modest fee, although a continuous real-time feed would be too much to ask for; rather, they'll get an image downloaded whenever an appropriate satellite happens to be looking this way. While this is being arranged, Vajra puts a camera on the roof of the module to try and keep some kind of permanent observation of the nearest oasis going, and runs a swarm over the module and everyone in it to check that they aren't being bugged. (He doesn't find anything.) The group also talks about next moves with Dr Liang; they decide that when their hired rover arrives the next day, they will lend it to her "as a courtesy" to help her carry as much equipment around as possible - and also have Florence go out with her as an "assistant". In fact, the point is that their rover is less likely to have been tampered with, and Florence will act as a bodyguard.
By now, dinner will be being prepared in the permanent part of the station, so the group heads that way, prepared to distract any spies among the Peruvians from what they're up to. Florence pulls a change of clothes from her luggage, and also makes suggestions about how Jianwei and Tiberius might dress; the idea is to aim for a general "naive kitty" look for herself, and smart casual for the others. Jianwei also extracts some Earth coffee beans from his luggage to take as a contribution to the meal. When they reach the dining room, however, they decide that much of this effort may have been wasted; the Peruvian scientists all seem distracted by their days' work and, while not actively hostile, aren't exactly being chatty. Still, Jianwei manages to make a little diplomatic small talk, Florence's appearance inevitably has some effect on the heterosexual males present, and Tiberius circulates, while Dr Liang is able to join the technical discussions comfortably enough. (She understands concepts such as "nitrogen micro-cycles".) The only real discovery of the mealtime comes when Florence, quietly looking in corners of the module, works out where the Peruvians store the output of their secret still.
Back in their own module, the team talk further. Dr Liang stands by the opinion that these people are honest; the manipulation of the experiments is, she is sure, being conducted by some unknown outside party. Thinking more about the matter leads Vajra to pull down some data on visitors to Nova Iquitos over the last few months, which Jianwei systematically analyses. He notices that some people who were due to come here never actually showed up, and Dr Liang is able to shed some more light on these; in one case, a laboratory accident took a researcher out of circulation for a while, and in another, an unexpected research grant from a University of Mars committee distracted the would-be visitor. Furthermore, these were people - not Peruvians, it's noted - with strong connections to the sort of online journals which have been publishing the provisional experimental results. The group's provisional conclusion is that somebody with very good connections and resources is trying to protect whatever has been done here from exposure.
Furthermore, Quentin now has a good collection of IR images for them to work with. The group look them over, searching for the sort of anomalies that would escape casual attention; Jianwei and Tiberius apply intelligence assessment training, but it's Vajra's patient, methodical processing that achieves a useful result. There's a persistent warm spot, just a little way from the edge of the nearest oasis, that doesn't look quite like a natural variation in rock surface qualities, but which could be consistent with the heat output from a fuel cell sufficient to run a small set of microbot hives. The thing is probably buried deep enough to be hard to excavate with the gear that the group have easily available, but they decide to watch it carefully.
In fact, Vajra goes out and plants a surveillance swarm in the relevant area - but the others have other concerns on their minds. The hour is getting late, and only Vajra can go without sleep. Hence, the organics in the group retire to their curtained bunks, leaving Vajra watching the swarm and real-time IR imagery, along with various other data streams.
March 10, m0039
In the early hours of the next morning,Vajra, running its periodical scans, notices that the hot spot has started moving. It wakes up the organics, and everyone quickly agrees; something is shifting at a fast walking pace in the direction of the next closest oasis. Other cameras don't show anything - whatever is involved is apparently tunneling deep in the loose soil and sand. Fortunately for the group, that makes it relatively slow; they can quickly plot a way to intercept it.
The Europeans prepare, while Dr Liang, commenting that this is presumably some kind of cybershell of unknown capabilities that may not want to be noticed, opts to stay in the accommodation module. Along with heatsuits and night vision gear, the group pick up weapons, including a double-barreled "urban assault weapon" for Florence - who spends a few moments wondering aloud exactly what sort of high-powered explosive rounds to load into its larger smooth-bore barrel. (This may be the sort of thing that persuades Dr Liang not to come along.) The group decide to split up; Vajra and Florence will attempt to track the thing, while Tiberius and Jianwei will move to the point where they think it's headed.
But first, Florence and Vajra set out to recover Vajra's surveillance swarm, then set out to catch up with the moving trace. They both have access to efficient GPS systems; Florence also has excellent night vision equipment, but Vajra lacks such gear, so Florence lends it her glasses and relies on her own Felicia eyes - which are more than adequate, given the illumination provided in the Martian night by the insolation mirrors high above. Still, they have some difficulty being sure of exactly what is where - but they catch up with the trace soon enough, and Florence moves ahead alone to see if anything is visible on the surface.
She's still blundering around a little, though, it seems - because she doesn't see the movement on the surface of the loose Martian soil until she's almost on top of it, which happens to be the moment when the tunneling cybershell surfaces, doubtless knowing that it can move faster above than below ground and thinking itself safely undetected. Fortunately, it proves to be as unaware of Florence as she was of it. As the cybershell - another snakebot, but much larger than the last, relatively unsophisticated in general design, longer than a man is tall, with a broad body - appears, she reflexively brings her weapon to bear and triggers its targeting systems; a fraction of a second later, its head rotates like a turret and it evidently sees Florence. She notes instinctively that it has three lens-like apertures, when two eyes are generally enough for a basic cybershell, which suggests that the third may be something else - and that consideration makes her complete her aiming move and pull the weapon's second trigger almost without conscious thought.
At nine metres range, many fighters might go for a centre-of-mass shot, but Florence, knowing that designs like this usually have their processor - or at least a major control node - in the leading section, and also wanting to eliminate that probable weapon, and being confident in her own abilities, goes for a head shot - and succeeds.
The large-caliber shaped-charge round rips into the cybershell, blasting it backwards and evidently causing massive system failures. Florence, however, remembers what happened last time she helped disable a hostile 'shell - and this one is much bigger. Still moving on instinct, she twists round and jumps, covering a dozen metres in a single leap thanks to the low Martian gravity - and landing close by Vajra, who is just coming up to see what's happening.
"What's the problem?" Vajra pulses to Dougal.
"Self-destruct charge," Dougal sends back, having caught Florence's subvocalisation. Vajra drops to the ground.
The grenade planted in the snakebot does indeed choose that moment to detonate, but Florence and Vajra are safe enough - the blast is only a little more than a loud noise and a wave of heat at this distance, and no shrapnel reaches them. Still, the explosion is detectable some way across the desert. Jianwei and Tiberius call immediately; reassured that their colleagues are unhurt, they set off at a fast trot to help investigate on the spot. Calls also arrive from the research station; Jianwei declares that no one is hurt, and promises more explanation soon.
Once everyone is reasonably confident that the cybershell is no longer a danger, the group sets to work investigating it. It's a pretty basic design - while they can't pin down its exact origins this time, this type of snakebot chassis is fairly standard, and the brain, body construction, and power/motor and weapon systems are all either standard fabrications or off-the-shelf purchases. (The weapon was in fact a dual dazzler/high-power laser unit.) It wasn't overly robust, although it was quite heavily built; much of the structure consisted of a set of integral microbot hives. The swarms in those seem to have been fairly thoroughly cooked in the explosion, although Vajra makes a mental note to return to the spot tomorrow and search the surrounding area for less damaged microbots that may have been thrown outwards by the blast; that will be easier in daylight.
By now, the staff at Nova Iquitos are calling; they've noticed that explosion, and although they've been reassured that everyone is well, they're naturally curious, at the very least. So once they Europeans have collected as much data as they can, Jianwei calls the Peruvians back. He decides that it's time for a talk with them, and they're going to have to know that there's something strange and dubious going on here. Dawn won't be very long now; he asks them to gather for a meeting in their base shortly.
And so the European team gathers up as much evidence as they think they can usefully carry, and sets out back to the mobile station.
The Europeans return to their accommodation module to discuss their next steps. They call Quentin and arrange to acquire some IR-spectrum satellite imagery of their current location from standard civilian sources - this kind of thing is generally available for a modest fee, although a continuous real-time feed would be too much to ask for; rather, they'll get an image downloaded whenever an appropriate satellite happens to be looking this way. While this is being arranged, Vajra puts a camera on the roof of the module to try and keep some kind of permanent observation of the nearest oasis going, and runs a swarm over the module and everyone in it to check that they aren't being bugged. (He doesn't find anything.) The group also talks about next moves with Dr Liang; they decide that when their hired rover arrives the next day, they will lend it to her "as a courtesy" to help her carry as much equipment around as possible - and also have Florence go out with her as an "assistant". In fact, the point is that their rover is less likely to have been tampered with, and Florence will act as a bodyguard.
By now, dinner will be being prepared in the permanent part of the station, so the group heads that way, prepared to distract any spies among the Peruvians from what they're up to. Florence pulls a change of clothes from her luggage, and also makes suggestions about how Jianwei and Tiberius might dress; the idea is to aim for a general "naive kitty" look for herself, and smart casual for the others. Jianwei also extracts some Earth coffee beans from his luggage to take as a contribution to the meal. When they reach the dining room, however, they decide that much of this effort may have been wasted; the Peruvian scientists all seem distracted by their days' work and, while not actively hostile, aren't exactly being chatty. Still, Jianwei manages to make a little diplomatic small talk, Florence's appearance inevitably has some effect on the heterosexual males present, and Tiberius circulates, while Dr Liang is able to join the technical discussions comfortably enough. (She understands concepts such as "nitrogen micro-cycles".) The only real discovery of the mealtime comes when Florence, quietly looking in corners of the module, works out where the Peruvians store the output of their secret still.
Back in their own module, the team talk further. Dr Liang stands by the opinion that these people are honest; the manipulation of the experiments is, she is sure, being conducted by some unknown outside party. Thinking more about the matter leads Vajra to pull down some data on visitors to Nova Iquitos over the last few months, which Jianwei systematically analyses. He notices that some people who were due to come here never actually showed up, and Dr Liang is able to shed some more light on these; in one case, a laboratory accident took a researcher out of circulation for a while, and in another, an unexpected research grant from a University of Mars committee distracted the would-be visitor. Furthermore, these were people - not Peruvians, it's noted - with strong connections to the sort of online journals which have been publishing the provisional experimental results. The group's provisional conclusion is that somebody with very good connections and resources is trying to protect whatever has been done here from exposure.
Furthermore, Quentin now has a good collection of IR images for them to work with. The group look them over, searching for the sort of anomalies that would escape casual attention; Jianwei and Tiberius apply intelligence assessment training, but it's Vajra's patient, methodical processing that achieves a useful result. There's a persistent warm spot, just a little way from the edge of the nearest oasis, that doesn't look quite like a natural variation in rock surface qualities, but which could be consistent with the heat output from a fuel cell sufficient to run a small set of microbot hives. The thing is probably buried deep enough to be hard to excavate with the gear that the group have easily available, but they decide to watch it carefully.
In fact, Vajra goes out and plants a surveillance swarm in the relevant area - but the others have other concerns on their minds. The hour is getting late, and only Vajra can go without sleep. Hence, the organics in the group retire to their curtained bunks, leaving Vajra watching the swarm and real-time IR imagery, along with various other data streams.
March 10, m0039
In the early hours of the next morning,Vajra, running its periodical scans, notices that the hot spot has started moving. It wakes up the organics, and everyone quickly agrees; something is shifting at a fast walking pace in the direction of the next closest oasis. Other cameras don't show anything - whatever is involved is apparently tunneling deep in the loose soil and sand. Fortunately for the group, that makes it relatively slow; they can quickly plot a way to intercept it.
The Europeans prepare, while Dr Liang, commenting that this is presumably some kind of cybershell of unknown capabilities that may not want to be noticed, opts to stay in the accommodation module. Along with heatsuits and night vision gear, the group pick up weapons, including a double-barreled "urban assault weapon" for Florence - who spends a few moments wondering aloud exactly what sort of high-powered explosive rounds to load into its larger smooth-bore barrel. (This may be the sort of thing that persuades Dr Liang not to come along.) The group decide to split up; Vajra and Florence will attempt to track the thing, while Tiberius and Jianwei will move to the point where they think it's headed.
But first, Florence and Vajra set out to recover Vajra's surveillance swarm, then set out to catch up with the moving trace. They both have access to efficient GPS systems; Florence also has excellent night vision equipment, but Vajra lacks such gear, so Florence lends it her glasses and relies on her own Felicia eyes - which are more than adequate, given the illumination provided in the Martian night by the insolation mirrors high above. Still, they have some difficulty being sure of exactly what is where - but they catch up with the trace soon enough, and Florence moves ahead alone to see if anything is visible on the surface.
She's still blundering around a little, though, it seems - because she doesn't see the movement on the surface of the loose Martian soil until she's almost on top of it, which happens to be the moment when the tunneling cybershell surfaces, doubtless knowing that it can move faster above than below ground and thinking itself safely undetected. Fortunately, it proves to be as unaware of Florence as she was of it. As the cybershell - another snakebot, but much larger than the last, relatively unsophisticated in general design, longer than a man is tall, with a broad body - appears, she reflexively brings her weapon to bear and triggers its targeting systems; a fraction of a second later, its head rotates like a turret and it evidently sees Florence. She notes instinctively that it has three lens-like apertures, when two eyes are generally enough for a basic cybershell, which suggests that the third may be something else - and that consideration makes her complete her aiming move and pull the weapon's second trigger almost without conscious thought.
At nine metres range, many fighters might go for a centre-of-mass shot, but Florence, knowing that designs like this usually have their processor - or at least a major control node - in the leading section, and also wanting to eliminate that probable weapon, and being confident in her own abilities, goes for a head shot - and succeeds.
The large-caliber shaped-charge round rips into the cybershell, blasting it backwards and evidently causing massive system failures. Florence, however, remembers what happened last time she helped disable a hostile 'shell - and this one is much bigger. Still moving on instinct, she twists round and jumps, covering a dozen metres in a single leap thanks to the low Martian gravity - and landing close by Vajra, who is just coming up to see what's happening.
"What's the problem?" Vajra pulses to Dougal.
"Self-destruct charge," Dougal sends back, having caught Florence's subvocalisation. Vajra drops to the ground.
The grenade planted in the snakebot does indeed choose that moment to detonate, but Florence and Vajra are safe enough - the blast is only a little more than a loud noise and a wave of heat at this distance, and no shrapnel reaches them. Still, the explosion is detectable some way across the desert. Jianwei and Tiberius call immediately; reassured that their colleagues are unhurt, they set off at a fast trot to help investigate on the spot. Calls also arrive from the research station; Jianwei declares that no one is hurt, and promises more explanation soon.
Once everyone is reasonably confident that the cybershell is no longer a danger, the group sets to work investigating it. It's a pretty basic design - while they can't pin down its exact origins this time, this type of snakebot chassis is fairly standard, and the brain, body construction, and power/motor and weapon systems are all either standard fabrications or off-the-shelf purchases. (The weapon was in fact a dual dazzler/high-power laser unit.) It wasn't overly robust, although it was quite heavily built; much of the structure consisted of a set of integral microbot hives. The swarms in those seem to have been fairly thoroughly cooked in the explosion, although Vajra makes a mental note to return to the spot tomorrow and search the surrounding area for less damaged microbots that may have been thrown outwards by the blast; that will be easier in daylight.
By now, the staff at Nova Iquitos are calling; they've noticed that explosion, and although they've been reassured that everyone is well, they're naturally curious, at the very least. So once they Europeans have collected as much data as they can, Jianwei calls the Peruvians back. He decides that it's time for a talk with them, and they're going to have to know that there's something strange and dubious going on here. Dawn won't be very long now; he asks them to gather for a meeting in their base shortly.
And so the European team gathers up as much evidence as they think they can usefully carry, and sets out back to the mobile station.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Shifting Sands
March 8, m0039, continued
Aunty loads up a forensics skill set program, and under her direction, Jianwei begins carefully examining the snakebot, as the various AIs present scan the Web for relevant information. It's a pretty standard design; technically, some components may be covered by patents, but fabricator blueprints for things like this are easily available on sources such as the TSA Web. (In fact, Dougal finds what may well be the blueprints for this exact design on a grey-area site, despite Florence's attempts to tell him that he shouldn't look in such places.) The head section has been pretty much completely destroyed; the brain chip was evidently a standard-over-the-counter unit, but has been fried too thoroughly for any sort of identifying code to be recovered, let alone any software. The snake had quasi-realistic fangs, and by borrowing some analysis equipment from Dr Liang, the party concludes that it was probably loaded up with some kind of synthetic drug or toxin for use in combat; it also had small tanks further back along the body, which could have held the bacteriological cultures that ended up in the module's water supply. This, it's clear, was definitely the sabotage agent here. The motors, moving parts, and body shell look to have been constructed and assembled in a minifac, and the blueprints used prevented it from including any sort of serial numbers or ID codes.
The Europeans decide that this was most likely an attempt to delay Dr Liang, rather than being aimed at them; while it's just possible that the snakebot was inserted on the road train after Quentin booked them onto it, the timescales involved were tight, and the attack method was very poorly chosen if they were the intended victims. But if Harvey and Dr Liang had been the only people on board, and had fallen ill, Sundance would have turned back to a different human community. As yet, though, they can't say with any certainty why anyone would have done this; Dr Liang has no idea - she's just an academic planetologist. Harvey comments that he picked the passenger module up at Heze, a Chinese community which is large enough to have rental minifac facilities available.
In any event, given that the plan was most likely to cause a delay, the party decide to move on as soon as they've finished checking the road train for other sabotage attempts as best they can. (They don't find any, although that's only a moderate reassurance, given that they don't have professional-grade search gear, and state-of-the-art sabotage techniques can be very easy to hide.) Harvey says that he can increase the speed of travel a bit if anyone thinks that it's a good way to get back at the people who poisoned him, but the time that's been lost or that might be regained is pretty trivial compared to the length of the journey in total, so the group decides not to take the small risk involved. Still, they retire to sleep as Sundance drives on through the night.
March 9, m0039
The next morning, after an uneventful night, the group goes over the details of the road train's schedule with Harvey some more. Given the arrangements at the rental company depot at Heze, it wouldn't have been too hard for anyone to identify this as the module he'd be using, or for the snakebot to get aboard. He's carrying some goods and supplies for Nova Iquitos - passengers aside, this is a pretty routine run for him... No one can see much more to chase up at this point. The Europeans do wonder who might benefit from falsification of good results from the oasis tests; it would make the Peruvian scientists look good, or at least lucky, of course, and by the time their work proved less useful than this implied, the benefits might have been harvested. But is all this enough to justify fraud and murder? Jianwei also looks at the bodies sponsoring Dr Liang's trip, and checks some background; while they're mostly international academic bodies and journals, he's somewhat puzzled to note that there may be more American influence involved than he might have expected.
The road train reaches Nova Iquitos around midday. The mobile station consists of a set of movable living and laboratory modules, arranged in a loose ring a few hundred yards from one of a cluster of ecological oases. The current inhabitants are the core staff only - as Tiberius can attest, the place sometimes has other temporary staff, usually visiting academics, but for now there are just four people present: Dr Maria Coronado, the station director, Saul Fedirici, the assistant director in charge of research (i.e. the one in charge of actually doing science), Dinah de Carneiro, the systems controller (responsible for running the scientific systems from day to day), and Kobo Tezuka, the chief technical officer (i.e. the hardware maintenance specialist). In addition, anyone spending time on the station will end up making the acquaintance of Burbuja, a management LAI running on its local network. Tiberius remembers Coronado and Fedirici (and Burbuja) from his previous time on the station; de Carneiro and Tezuka are new, as other staff have rotated out in the last year. He himself hasn't been replaced; admittedly, one small station has limited use for a fully trained doctor, especially given the sort of software assistance available to anyone in a medical emergency - he spent a lot of his time previously assisting with biological research and being there as a reassurance for visitors.
Coronado greets the newcomers warmly - she and Fedirici seem genuinely pleased to see Tiberius again, and any cultural prejudices notwithstanding, seem to be prepared to treat a ghost as a person, and the same person as they previously knew. Tiberius recalls her as a brisk, businesslike character, but she's apparently in an outgoing mood today, happy to invite all the visitors (including Liang and Harvey) to lunch. Still, it's Fedirici who perhaps ends up doing the most talking over the meal; Tiberius remembers him as a charismatic character who always tended to act as the research team's spokesman and guide for visitors.
On the European side, Jianwei takes the lead as usual, and is quite open about the reason for the visit, explaining that Tiberius's death wasn't an accident but apparently involved a deliberate attack. The Peruvians appear genuinely shocked at this, and profess themselves anxious to help with the investigation. Nor do they seem too hostile to Dr Liang, although the fact that she's undeniably here to check up on their work could make for social difficulties. During and after lunch, the conversation breaks up into smaller groups; for example, Vajra falls into conversation with de Carneiro, who is an asex; Vajra feels a kinship with the disavowal of human passions that this suggests. However, Jianwei for one senses that de Carneiro isn't entirely lacking in emotional issues; there's a slight sense of irritation directed towards Fedirici, who maybe gets the lion's share of credit for the research work being conducted at the station, simply because he talks about it best.
Meanwhile, Harvey heads out once more on his way after unhitching the rented accommodation module, which is soon linked up to the station's power supply, and Dr Liang begins setting up her equipment. As the others talk to the locals, Florence becomes bored and decides to take a walk and a look around the local scenery. Inevitably with her, this involves climbing some of the local rock formations, which she manages with ease, thus gaining a good view of the whole area.
It's from this position that she notices something odd - perhaps it's just a trick of the light, but there seems to be a sense of movement on the relatively smooth surface of the nearby oasis area. She continues watching for a while, and records what she can with the integral cameras in her night vision glasses, then calls the others. Vajra analyses her recordings, and tentatively agrees with her assessment; there are subtle shifts in tone or texture, likely only visible from above and from a distance. As soon as they can, the other three Europeans get away from the station buildings and head for the oasis, while Florence climbs down and extends her "stroll" towards the next nearest such site - a few miles away, but easy enough to reach.
There's not a lot to see at the nearest oasis, but now that they know what to look for, the newcomers provisionally confirm the impression yet further - there's maybe something under the sand, operating over a wide area - probably a cyberswarm. Vajra drops a surveillance crawler swarm and sets it watching, while the teams' AIs load tracking skill sets. With these, they pick up signs of something maybe having surfaced just outside the area of the ecological test; following the trail, they decide that some specific substance is being extracted from the oasis and dumped just out of sight of it. They collect samples as best they can, and head back towards Nova Iquitos.
On their way, a figure comes in sight coming the other way; it's Dr Liang. She's interested and concerned to hear what they have to say; all this is beginning to look like a bad case of academic chicanery, which isn't something that she expects or likes to see. She's also puzzled by another matter. She's received a message through private communication channels that she thinks must have come from one of her sponsoring bodies, but which is unclear - it lacks headers or signature. What it says, though, is that she can probably trust Tiberius.
Which bemuses Tiberius and the other Europeans as much as it does her. But anyway, they hand off some of the samples they've collected; she has the best scientific kit here, after all. She runs a quick analysis, and confirms their suspicions; these look like extra nutrients for the bacterial/fungal cultures in the oasis. Again, this looks like a fraud being hastily removed from view; given that she hasn't been hurrying to set up her tests, she might well have missed this material, even if she hadn't been delayed by the poisoning on the road train.
Meanwhile, Florence reports by radio from the second oasis; she isn't sure, but she doesn't think that there are any strange soil movements here. Presumably, the clearance is being conducted first at the place where Dr Liang could be expected to look first. And Vajra continues to run some subtle surveillance at the first oasis, while the party wonders if they could somehow locate, say, the clean-up swarm's power supply - probably a buried power pack somewhere.
Aunty loads up a forensics skill set program, and under her direction, Jianwei begins carefully examining the snakebot, as the various AIs present scan the Web for relevant information. It's a pretty standard design; technically, some components may be covered by patents, but fabricator blueprints for things like this are easily available on sources such as the TSA Web. (In fact, Dougal finds what may well be the blueprints for this exact design on a grey-area site, despite Florence's attempts to tell him that he shouldn't look in such places.) The head section has been pretty much completely destroyed; the brain chip was evidently a standard-over-the-counter unit, but has been fried too thoroughly for any sort of identifying code to be recovered, let alone any software. The snake had quasi-realistic fangs, and by borrowing some analysis equipment from Dr Liang, the party concludes that it was probably loaded up with some kind of synthetic drug or toxin for use in combat; it also had small tanks further back along the body, which could have held the bacteriological cultures that ended up in the module's water supply. This, it's clear, was definitely the sabotage agent here. The motors, moving parts, and body shell look to have been constructed and assembled in a minifac, and the blueprints used prevented it from including any sort of serial numbers or ID codes.
The Europeans decide that this was most likely an attempt to delay Dr Liang, rather than being aimed at them; while it's just possible that the snakebot was inserted on the road train after Quentin booked them onto it, the timescales involved were tight, and the attack method was very poorly chosen if they were the intended victims. But if Harvey and Dr Liang had been the only people on board, and had fallen ill, Sundance would have turned back to a different human community. As yet, though, they can't say with any certainty why anyone would have done this; Dr Liang has no idea - she's just an academic planetologist. Harvey comments that he picked the passenger module up at Heze, a Chinese community which is large enough to have rental minifac facilities available.
In any event, given that the plan was most likely to cause a delay, the party decide to move on as soon as they've finished checking the road train for other sabotage attempts as best they can. (They don't find any, although that's only a moderate reassurance, given that they don't have professional-grade search gear, and state-of-the-art sabotage techniques can be very easy to hide.) Harvey says that he can increase the speed of travel a bit if anyone thinks that it's a good way to get back at the people who poisoned him, but the time that's been lost or that might be regained is pretty trivial compared to the length of the journey in total, so the group decides not to take the small risk involved. Still, they retire to sleep as Sundance drives on through the night.
March 9, m0039
The next morning, after an uneventful night, the group goes over the details of the road train's schedule with Harvey some more. Given the arrangements at the rental company depot at Heze, it wouldn't have been too hard for anyone to identify this as the module he'd be using, or for the snakebot to get aboard. He's carrying some goods and supplies for Nova Iquitos - passengers aside, this is a pretty routine run for him... No one can see much more to chase up at this point. The Europeans do wonder who might benefit from falsification of good results from the oasis tests; it would make the Peruvian scientists look good, or at least lucky, of course, and by the time their work proved less useful than this implied, the benefits might have been harvested. But is all this enough to justify fraud and murder? Jianwei also looks at the bodies sponsoring Dr Liang's trip, and checks some background; while they're mostly international academic bodies and journals, he's somewhat puzzled to note that there may be more American influence involved than he might have expected.
The road train reaches Nova Iquitos around midday. The mobile station consists of a set of movable living and laboratory modules, arranged in a loose ring a few hundred yards from one of a cluster of ecological oases. The current inhabitants are the core staff only - as Tiberius can attest, the place sometimes has other temporary staff, usually visiting academics, but for now there are just four people present: Dr Maria Coronado, the station director, Saul Fedirici, the assistant director in charge of research (i.e. the one in charge of actually doing science), Dinah de Carneiro, the systems controller (responsible for running the scientific systems from day to day), and Kobo Tezuka, the chief technical officer (i.e. the hardware maintenance specialist). In addition, anyone spending time on the station will end up making the acquaintance of Burbuja, a management LAI running on its local network. Tiberius remembers Coronado and Fedirici (and Burbuja) from his previous time on the station; de Carneiro and Tezuka are new, as other staff have rotated out in the last year. He himself hasn't been replaced; admittedly, one small station has limited use for a fully trained doctor, especially given the sort of software assistance available to anyone in a medical emergency - he spent a lot of his time previously assisting with biological research and being there as a reassurance for visitors.
Coronado greets the newcomers warmly - she and Fedirici seem genuinely pleased to see Tiberius again, and any cultural prejudices notwithstanding, seem to be prepared to treat a ghost as a person, and the same person as they previously knew. Tiberius recalls her as a brisk, businesslike character, but she's apparently in an outgoing mood today, happy to invite all the visitors (including Liang and Harvey) to lunch. Still, it's Fedirici who perhaps ends up doing the most talking over the meal; Tiberius remembers him as a charismatic character who always tended to act as the research team's spokesman and guide for visitors.
On the European side, Jianwei takes the lead as usual, and is quite open about the reason for the visit, explaining that Tiberius's death wasn't an accident but apparently involved a deliberate attack. The Peruvians appear genuinely shocked at this, and profess themselves anxious to help with the investigation. Nor do they seem too hostile to Dr Liang, although the fact that she's undeniably here to check up on their work could make for social difficulties. During and after lunch, the conversation breaks up into smaller groups; for example, Vajra falls into conversation with de Carneiro, who is an asex; Vajra feels a kinship with the disavowal of human passions that this suggests. However, Jianwei for one senses that de Carneiro isn't entirely lacking in emotional issues; there's a slight sense of irritation directed towards Fedirici, who maybe gets the lion's share of credit for the research work being conducted at the station, simply because he talks about it best.
Meanwhile, Harvey heads out once more on his way after unhitching the rented accommodation module, which is soon linked up to the station's power supply, and Dr Liang begins setting up her equipment. As the others talk to the locals, Florence becomes bored and decides to take a walk and a look around the local scenery. Inevitably with her, this involves climbing some of the local rock formations, which she manages with ease, thus gaining a good view of the whole area.
It's from this position that she notices something odd - perhaps it's just a trick of the light, but there seems to be a sense of movement on the relatively smooth surface of the nearby oasis area. She continues watching for a while, and records what she can with the integral cameras in her night vision glasses, then calls the others. Vajra analyses her recordings, and tentatively agrees with her assessment; there are subtle shifts in tone or texture, likely only visible from above and from a distance. As soon as they can, the other three Europeans get away from the station buildings and head for the oasis, while Florence climbs down and extends her "stroll" towards the next nearest such site - a few miles away, but easy enough to reach.
There's not a lot to see at the nearest oasis, but now that they know what to look for, the newcomers provisionally confirm the impression yet further - there's maybe something under the sand, operating over a wide area - probably a cyberswarm. Vajra drops a surveillance crawler swarm and sets it watching, while the teams' AIs load tracking skill sets. With these, they pick up signs of something maybe having surfaced just outside the area of the ecological test; following the trail, they decide that some specific substance is being extracted from the oasis and dumped just out of sight of it. They collect samples as best they can, and head back towards Nova Iquitos.
On their way, a figure comes in sight coming the other way; it's Dr Liang. She's interested and concerned to hear what they have to say; all this is beginning to look like a bad case of academic chicanery, which isn't something that she expects or likes to see. She's also puzzled by another matter. She's received a message through private communication channels that she thinks must have come from one of her sponsoring bodies, but which is unclear - it lacks headers or signature. What it says, though, is that she can probably trust Tiberius.
Which bemuses Tiberius and the other Europeans as much as it does her. But anyway, they hand off some of the samples they've collected; she has the best scientific kit here, after all. She runs a quick analysis, and confirms their suspicions; these look like extra nutrients for the bacterial/fungal cultures in the oasis. Again, this looks like a fraud being hastily removed from view; given that she hasn't been hurrying to set up her tests, she might well have missed this material, even if she hadn't been delayed by the poisoning on the road train.
Meanwhile, Florence reports by radio from the second oasis; she isn't sure, but she doesn't think that there are any strange soil movements here. Presumably, the clearance is being conducted first at the place where Dr Liang could be expected to look first. And Vajra continues to run some subtle surveillance at the first oasis, while the party wonders if they could somehow locate, say, the clean-up swarm's power supply - probably a buried power pack somewhere.
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