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“So what are you saying?”

“I’o see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt”

An intriguing new er had a day job, but it did give hi Nao the exposed ribs of the Rocinante’s flank with a plasma torch in his hand and looked for cracks, he pondered where ships could go when they disappeared Monica was right; the nuh to be just random system failures There were a lot of other possibilities, even discounting her proto in coincidence about when he’d first started spending ti on was that radical OPA factions were launching attacks on inner planet holdings like Callisto And even Earth

A violent faction of the OPA was dead set against colonization And, now, colony ships loaded with supplies were vanishing without a trace Also, Medina Station – nee Beheates – was solidly in the control of the OPA Itnarrative, even if he didn’t have any actual evidence that it was true

In that scenario, the ships would be boarded by OPA pirate crews, the supplies taken, and the colonists… spaced? A grueso humans had ever done to each other But that left the ships They’d keep the ships, and then they’d have tothe transponder codes The fact that the Rocinante was no longer the Tachi was proof that the OPA had that ability

“Sakai,” Holden said, chinning the radio frequency to the private channel he and the chief engineer shared “Yo, you around?”

“Problem?” he replied in a tone of voice that sounded like he was daring Holden to have a problem Holden had learned not to be offended by it Impatience was Sakai’s default state

“More of a riddle”

“I hate riddle

s,” Sakai said

“Let’s say you’re trying to figure out if soed the transponder codes Hoould you find those ships, if you had to?”

The engineer huffed thoughtfully for a moment

“Don’t look for theships,” Sakai replied “Look for the new ones that show up out of nowhere”

“Yes, good That,” Holden said, “is exactly right Thanks”

He stopped at a cracked weld between the inner hull and one of the ship’s ribs and started touching it up with the torch His faceplate darkened, turning the world into a black place with one bright blue light in it While he worked, he thought through how you’d track the istry was a good place to start, but you’d drown in data trying to do it manually If Naomi were here, he had no doubt she’d have been able to build a program to find what he wanted in ten raineers on the payroll, and if he —