"She did mention wars as a possibility though. What sort of wars were written about in the books?"

"Back in their past there were wars over resources and occasionally insults or matters of honor. More recently there's been a number of wars to end slavery. It's hard to tell but it sounds like they're setting up real governments instead of puppet states. It's also a lot more common for wars to end in rapid surrender by one side or the other even going so far as complete conquest sometimes, I can't see most human civilizations accepting that."

"We certainly didn't, though the secession wasn't much of a war by human standards."

"I hope you're right Emily. It would be nice to have allies, though unless something bizarre happens there isn't going to be a war here. The worst the Network would do outside of extreme circumstances is blacklist this world and never come back. Like that plague world."

The team continues chatting about their research until the representative finishes whatever they need to do.

She lets them know fairly soon that there's a field just outside of town they can set up their tents in, though they might want to wait for something nearer a city.

"Is there likely to be a new place we ought to move to today? If it won't be until tomorrow we can just setup a smaller camp before we settle on our final location."

"It won't be until tomorrow at the earliest, I'd expect."

"We'll just setup a small camp then. It doesn't take long and it gives us the ability to take off our helmets so we can eat solid food."

"I can imagine that'd be desirable, yes," she says with a small smile.

"Do you have a map or someone who can show us where we should setup?"

"My assistant Starmir will lead you there, yes," she says, gesturing to a blond man, wearing a purple knee-length dress, who grins and waves, balancing his papers, before stepping forward.

"Hello!" he says.

"Hi there."

"If you'll come right this way, I can show you to the field - it's a small drive."

Sapphire nods to her team and those of them who had been sitting stand up. "Lead the way."

He leads them out, points out his car, and relays verbal directions, written directions, and a map of the town in case they lose track of him - "We have so little traffic normally that shouldn't happen, and gossip about you guys hasn't had a big chance to get out, so I don't think that'll change - "

"Good to know." The team gets into their cars and follow when he starts driving.

He takes them to a field outside of town. It looks like it's used for agriculture, but whatever's usually here has been rotated out and the field's lying fallow.

"This look good to you all?"

"Definitely, this would be enough space for a full camp and we're only setting up a temporary one." She turns to her team, "Alright, let's not be too show-offish, also this is temporary so no boring."

Sapphire helps the others get out four tents and upack them. Then the team backs up.

The tents spring open with spikes driving themselves into the ground the whole process takes about half a minute, Emily can't quite hide the smile on her face. Each tent has a sizable entrance section. Three of them are smaller about large enough for two people while the fourth is larger and tall enough to stand up in.

The assistant whistles. "Neat. Looks useful, too."

"Yeah, it saves a lot of time when we don't need to setup the tents by hand."

"Probably you could have robots set them up more easily, too, right? - Though I'm not an engineer or anything, I just read the Intrepid Stars serial..."

"Our robots aren't the best at doing complex tasks requiring a lot of fine control, at least not outside of very carefully controlled conditions. They'd also take up more space than we can easily spare."

"Oh, I meant if they're self-deploying, the robot could just drop one in the right spot - I guess that'd mostly come up if you were trying to set up a base camp ahead of people, though. Fiction tends to assume sending robots into space is cheaper than anyone who needs to breathe."