FFFF

[X] "...I like the three of you. Not just as colleagues with useful skills, even psychological ones."

Juketta listens, thinks about it and then nods. "I'm glad. We're both too short of attachments that aren't professional."

"I mean, we're still colleagues but I don't really think I need a counsellor right now. I need friends."

"Then we should take more leisure time together."

"What do the three of you like to do in your spare time?" You say, to cover the fact you don't really know what your own hobbies are. You make another attempt to drink your horrible, too spicy coffee. You find yourself wishing for a soft drink to wash away the cloying chemical dryness. You find yourself wishing desperately for plain old ice coffee like they brew–

In a certain place–

On Hera–

A coffee house that brewed it exactly the way you liked. You wonder, actually if that might be a way to find Chalita. Those same tastes.

"Well, Alietta isn't really much of a leisure person. She mostly likes to meditate on celestial phenomena, history or martial arts. Minetta likes competitive sports and old ruins. I like art galleries and symposiums, but that's really just me taking work home."

"I wonder if there's any good art galleries here." You look around. "Mara is definitely going to insist we meet again the moment I send her that key. It's her style. She'll want to push."

"Are you really going to bring that woman into my leisure activities?" Juketta shakes her head then smiles. "Actually there's a rather good one down from the university. That would mean we could get Luyu to cover us."

"It would." You nod. "Maybe you should go help Reizay too. I don't know for a fact she's not going to try to grab me and it'd be better if fewer of us were at the meeting."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"Luyu will be there, and it'd have to be a grab." You lean back and set the coffee aside. "We can see the art gallery together without my annoying ex around."

Juketta makes no comment, but you realise what you said.


Mara does indeed ask to meet immediately when you send her the code. You send her the gallery address, high up in one of the city's main towers. It's a large, well lit space, with walls of a creamy colour on which the mostly dark coloured paintings stand out like windows into another world. They're mostly works by local artists, almost all of them midnight ocean abstracts. There's a strange longing to them.

You wonder if this is the fruit of a culture that knows they truly have only one life to lead. Outside, the storm has slackened off to a windy downpour, but whether due to a softening of Nereidi attitudes or just a problem with whatever weather machine they have, you can't say. The Liaison is late, but sends her apologies. It would make you somewhat paranoid if you didn't trust Luyu, currently stuck deep into some high place overlooking you with what she assures you is the absolute best sniper weapon for the job.

A few minutes later you get a ping on your link and turn to see her, striding towards you with pendulum-swinging limbs and the clomp of her platforms on the floor. She's styled her hair with a white-flower fascinator, it looks great, she looks insufferable. Behind her is Medea with a dove-grey bikini, an optical band over her eyes, a large umbrella she's shaking off and furling and a sour expression.

Mara looks theatrically around as she arrives. "Not worried your pretty Rose friend will be jealous?"

"I think she trusts me to hold myself back around you."

"How foolish of her." Mara smirks at you. It's incredibly annoying. You really want to - nevermind. Mara is still going. "But if you can contain yourself a little while longer, I have had a look at your footage. It's pretty good, there's a couple of editing seams ECHO CHAMBER will cry about but you have the goods of them firing on an ancient temple and I have enough pull to get this play in local networks. It helps that they aren't actually that popular locally. Bunch of swaggering mercenaries, taking up space, harassing local girls, you know the story. Easy to spin into a story of trigger-humpers hounding for more pay at the expense of other people's homes."

"Do you think it'll stop the war?"

"It'll stop the rush to war, put the hawks on the back foot for a moment. Which suits both of us fine, and buys some time. It won't change the broader situation of tension or get rid of the people who want it to snap. Anyway. Question!" Mara is looking expectantly at you.

"Yes?"

"Do you know why did the mercs started shooting at the Nereidi cordon just as you were trying to leave?"

It's a fair question. It's also the exact weak point where you used Alex. "They were probably on edge and overreacted to the Nereidi reacting to us. It was a lucky break, we'd have been cut up pretty badly otherwise."

"Mm hmm. War is so chaotic. That's why I leave it to the experts. Anyway…" she puts hands behind her back and leans forward, making you step back, except she manoeuvred you in front of a pillar at some point so you actually can't get away as she keeps talking up at you from just in front of your tits, "if you want to remake some old memories, just remember my door is always open." She winks.

"I'm fine."

"Sure, sure, whatever's good for you. It looks like you met someone fun at the temple anyway, that video girl. Jessica was her name? She seemed like she'd be your type."

This is a warning. It's also a threat. You've opened a civilian attack surface outside the solidarity of your unit and she has eyes on it. There's no way to know how to interpret this and that ambiguity itself is certainly intentional.

"Now you're just prying", you say, as you extricate yourself sideways and get a clear line to an exit. "Thanks for your help."

"No problem!" She beams, as you walk away.



You step out into the rain, glady, and exhale into the white noise of the rain. Let it wash away the tension Mara wound around you. Hopefully you've managed to cool things off for now. You doubt this is your opponents' only play.

<<Make it out okay?>> Luyu asks.

<<Yeah. No duress, codeword is Gx+E[J2MpX}hD"p!<gSS>. What's the situation?>>

<<The squirt and the maths freak are still in the university with the Academician talking to the locals about various musty archeological records. Mirareki is meeting with a local Firewatch cell to see if she can get us some help, though this mere-mortal politics stuff isn't really their concern. You backing her up might help, if you don't mind the risk they'll want to have a look inside your head.>>

That doesn't sound too pleasant. On the other hand, getting some competent local assistance that probably isn't in Mara's pocket to redress the balance against your enemies would be helpful. You could also go rejoin Juketta and Reizay at the university and if they've found anything useful or any.

Finally, you could leave both of those things to their own groups, and do something else. For instance you could see about meeting the Nereidi ambassador directly, which Mara's influence would probably let you achieve.

[ ] Go to the University
[ ] Go meet with Firewatch
[ ] Try to get a meeting with the Nereidi
[ ] Something else (write in)

[X] Go to the University

You head into the university, taking a slightly circuitous route in order to avoid being followed. There's street cameras and drones of course, which Mara probably can use to track you depending on how deeply she's penetrated the mess of local networks. If you decide to go to Hera, you'll need a better set of urban countermeasures.

The centre of learning is a low village of structures stuck amid the high towers of the rest of the city, with a set of squat, well decorated blocks of white marble and blue stone. The main campus is surrounded by an outer fringe of dorms and student cafes.

The place has that illness of new institutions which have no history but define themselves in comparison to places that do. Self-consciously august architecture with gleaming columns and the kind of vaguely feminine abstract art that's meant to suggest a connection running back to the precursors. There's none of the subtle degradation that lends gravitas to buildings that have actually aged. It also wasn't designed for this much rain, and the protective coating that is meant to gleam in bright sunlight instead looks greasy. Plumes of falling water pour from the edges of a new, badly fitted storm field.

The crowd is notably younger here, and almost all communion. You get a few odd looks, and wonder if they think you're one of the occupation forces, then realise they'd be more likely to think you're a journalist. Mara has worked fast. There's already streams of students converging at the base of one of the larger sculptures and exchanging speeches and/or arguments from the plinth about offworld thugs destroying priceless archaeological heritage. You see clips of your footage projected on one of the rain sheets. This was, you realise, probably one of Mara's starting points. This is a prime audience to get mad about the specific crime in evidence.

You follow Reizay and Juketta's beacon up into one of the buildings, passing through without any kind of security check into what seems to be a public museum, with skeletons of ancient earth and Nereidi life forms, together with various artefacts, to find Juketta, Reizay, Jessica and the Academician up on the second floor, looking over a rusted silver artefact that's labelled as a probably alien device of unknown origin from a Nereidi find, probably a trade good, but which you recognize immediately as looking very much like the things the post-Nereidi had.

It's been a while since you've seen Reizay. You didn't really expect her to be wearing a bikini, but she's found or made one: Monochrome defined in canted right-angles that fetchingly frames the data code on her chest. You don't think you've seen her dressed like this before. She sees you and tries not to look embarrassed, and does a decent job of it too. She's instead doing her best to look studious.

With them is a local, a muscular woman with freshly applied dark eyeshadow and a dark bikini. Her aspect is amused, possibly by Reizay.

"Ah, Stella. Did it go well?" Juketta asks.

"It went fine. I assume you've seen the videos. How are we doing here?"

"I did see the video!" Jessica blurts. "I've done a quick response already. It's crazy seeing some of my own footage out like that. Uh but I only did a short one. I'm trying to keep my head down a little bit, you know, obzek."

"Best to be cautious." You're not sure how much good it will do but it's a good frame of mind for the moment. "Anyway, I don't believe I've met your colleague."

The Academician nods. "Stella, allow me to introduce Mistress Selko, who has made a study of unknown cultural finds from the Nereidi past. I've worked with her for many years, and we were discussing this artefact with what we know from the temple."

You frown inwardly at this breach of opsec but it's spilt milk under the bridge, and you'd probably have had to do it anyway. You just wish the Academician had consulted you.

"Indeed." Selko says. "I've viewed your footage of the deeper parts of the temple. Fascinating. I must ask how such a thing could have failed to come to light before."

"The footage is authentic." Jessica insists. "You can see the watermarks."

"Indeed so. I already had it analysed the moment you sent it to me." Seiko smiles superciliously. "I'm not doubting you. I'm merely curious." She lowers her voice. "I will say that if there is some group, perhaps the Chrysanthemum, covering up information on the Nereidi, it would make sense of some recent events. Let me show you another piece."

She takes you down a long gallery to a side chamber, looking little-used and stacked with boxes along one wall. But against the other is a suspension tank containing. an elaborate 3D jigsaw in the very approximate form of a Nereidi. Pale stone is filgreed with blue veins in a pattern you realise after a moment isn't quite arbitrary. A great depth of meaning is held within, you can tell it's there. But it's opaque to your lay eyes. "The discoverer, Yushi - pioneer of our field, one of my mindstate ingredients in fact - called it a 'homunculus'. It's made of a number of different components that fit together in a rough map of Nereidi physiology. I assume you know how they work? Each individual is a composite, or colony, of symbiotic organisms. Anyway," she barrels on, "the homunculus is designed to mirror that, though a couple of parts are missing. There's others like it, but until now we've not been able to decipher their information encoding for any of them. But I think if we look them all in light of what you've found in Reefside…"

She makes it several more sentences and you've completely lost the plot before Juketta gently intervenes.

"The most common theory is that Neredi are in fact, collective beings, rather like the man'o'wars of ancient Gaia. Not an individual as such but a series of different components that work together in a collective being."

"I see." You nod. "So this machine is the same architecture. A colony."

"Yes. We believe it was a device the Nereidi used to speak with other species, so it might help us in being able to deal with the current crisis. We never had enough components though. However with the revelations that the Mercury Plate technology… that's what we call the artefacts you found in the bottom of the Temple… are actually from another Nereidi clade, I believe I may have located several of the components."

Finally you seem to be getting somewhere. Selko takes you into a back area with a security key card and you walk through what must be a staff area of the museum. There's not many people about, which you find fortunate. The similarity of the Communions in their basic colouration is a bit weird. You glance outside as you go, and see a figure standing out in the rain.

A tall woman wearing an off-white bikini under a translucent raincloak like furled arthropod wings. A custom rain halo plucks the drops from the air around her head and funnels them through invisible fields in elegant curls down her back. A pair of wooden platform sandals keep her feet out of the wet. She's watching a group of students yelling about the war and the offworld mercenaries.

"That's Academician Menti, the department head." Selko says. "She's actually quite brilliant, for all she got her position because of family connections."

"She's from some grand family?"

"Oh yes. From one of the speakers. Do you know much of our history? They were the original organisers of the mission. They have a lot of influence."

"I see."

Another security pass through a door and into the back area of the lab. "How hard are those security passes to get?" You ask.

"Actually, very. They're a two factor thing linked to our mind state signature. There was a bit of an espionage scare on Nereidi artefacts a few years ago." Her heels click as she leads you into a much planer white lab area, where she pauses with a smile. "Of course it doesn't stop everyone. Shenla, I don't think you're supposed to be in here."

Another Communion is at the desk working on a workstation. She has a frumpy frilled one-piece and an off-the-shelf haircut that doesn't really match her face. She glances up and holds up a card. "I have a pass."

"A temporary one into the library stacks, not the offices. What are you doing at Ninara's machine?"

"It's private." The other Comunion smiles. "What are you doing bringing foreigners back here?"

"Private, as you say."

"Well then." She waves at the station, shutting it down. "I guess we have nothing further to speak about." She brushes past you, heading out.

"Who's she?"

"Ah, another academic here, or really more of a senior student." Selko sniffs. "Ex-girlfriend of Academician Ninara in fact, the one who found the artefacts we're going to look at. I hear it ended badly. Ninara vanished off to the bush for a while to get away from her and since then she's been scurrying around."

She walks to a locked drawer at the side, inputs a code and then pulls out a tray full of shining silver components. She looks through them rapidly and frowns. "This is odd. I think we have some parts missing from this find."

"What's missing?"

"The parts we need, obviously, and a few others." The Communion sighs. "It looks like someone has taken things."

"Someone's taken them?" Academics are never best with procedure. "You said the woman who discovered them is away right now, so who…" And then mid-sentence, things click horribly into place.

"Selko," you snap. "When was the last time someone contacted Ninara?"

"Well, I talked to her before she left," she says, taken aback. "I'll call her satellite link but she doesn't like to be bothered. I swear, if she's made off with these irreplaceable artefacts out into the wilderness, I'll really need to have words."

Her eyes unfocus for a moment, then return. "She's not in touch. Maybe her equipment is on the blink, or she's-"

"I think the same people trying to suppress investigations of the temples are trying to clean up other loose ends."

Selko shrinks back. She wants to protest but you can see her mind working. She saw the same video you did.

"That's… well I suppose we can't rule it out. Ninara…" she looks at you, a little pleadingly. "What do we do?"

You've arrived here and found not what you wanted but the footsteps of your enemies. They've taken the pieces you need to solve the puzzle and possibly the person too.

[ ] Ninara's ex was snooping around. Catch up before she can go too far.
[ ] Investigate the access logs for the artefacts. If passes are linked to the mindstate that might give you some clues.
[ ] Have the ship conduct a scan of the area where the professor went missing.
[ ] Engage with campus security on this, both to see what you can find out from security systems, and to gauge how much they might be in on it.