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The following day the data fro in He authorized his ter payh the list

Lots of new ships were showing up around Mars and Earth, but that was to be expected The shipyards were cranking out new and refurbished vessels as fast as the ineers coulda play for the ring gates and the worlds beyond the on planets and were already physiologically adapted to it came from the two inner worlds Only a tiny fraction of those ships had gaps in their records that Paula’s progra, but even a brief search led Holden to believe that the flagged ships were mostly paperwork errors, not piracy

There were also a scattering of suspicious new ships in the Belt Those were ical place to hide theion of space thick with ships and other h the Belt list one ship at a time

The Gozerian appeared out of nowhere in the docks at the Pallas refinery in the right date range The records listed it as a probate transfer, but were vague on who’d died and what relation the nener had to the old Holden guessed the answer to those two questions was person who used to own the ship and person who killed theh that it almost certainly was the result of piracy, but the Gozerian was listed as a non-Epstein light-hulledship A rock hopper The records from Pallas backed that up, and a search of the list of seventeenits description No one was going to e of the solar syste that didn’t have an

Epstein drive There were e

Holden checked the Gozerian off his list and h the entire initial list from Paula it was three aht, so he caught a couple hours of rack ti thruster cables through a fog of sleep deprivation

By the time his shift was over all he could think about was a little dinner and a lot of sleep, but the data strea for him with nearly fifty new ships So he picked up a carton of noodles on his way hoh the list

The Mouse Pie was a gas freighter and didn’tlist The Vento first appeared before the date range he was interested in, and a query to the last dock it had visited confirmed the dates were correct The Blasphemous Jester was listed as Epstein equipped, but a search of the service records showed that the drive had been out of co it as a short-hop shuttle in teakettle mode ever since

On and on and on through the nain with a cryptic “Visited ot some shit to do Back later” Holden slurped up another one cold and now had the consistency of earthwor, he wondered It was shocking to realize howthrough endless lists looking for one thing that doesn’t fit Talking to every single potential witness over and over Pounding the paveht say

It was thinking about Alex that twigged his h the list until he found a ship designated the Pau Kant The last location was roup, an asteroid group relatively close to the orbit of Mars but with a high inclination Mars control had caught a ping from the Pau Kant and then lost it shortly after They’d

But prior to that single and short-lived appearance, the Pau Kant didn’t seem to exist in any other records He couldn’t find any description of her hull type or drive Nor were there any owner records he could track down He’d moved it to his list of ships to look into later, but so his brain itch

The Hungaria group wasn’t a terrible place to hide things 434 Hungaria was about twenty kilometers across Plenty of roup would clutter up the results of anyone looking for ships with a telescope The location was intriguing too If the OPA radicals were collecting ships to pirate colony transports, the inner Belt was not a bad staging area They’d also launched an attack on Earth in the recent past That it had failed didn’twas exactly the sort of first step another atteht take

The Hungaria asteroids were a long way from Tycho’s current location, and Holden didn’t have a ship But they were pretty close to Mars, and Alex was there If he had access to a ship, it wouldn’t be too long a trip to go take a peek See if the Pau Kant was still out there, tethered to the rock and staying dark And if itships? Well, that would be interesting to take back to Fred

Holden put his terled up to record his face, and said, “Alex Hey, hope things are going well out there, and that Bobbie is good So, I’ve been looking into this thing with aria Any chance you have access to a ship? If you need to rent one, feel free to pull the funds froo see if a ship na out there parked and dark Specs on the transponder code attached to this e”

He put all the information he had on the Pau and its most recent location froo on, and it felt like a long shot, but Alex would enjoy the flight and Holden illing to foot the bill so he didn’t feel too bad about asking