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Saba hadn’t known it was coh him A small explosion, but the unofficial reports said at least one Laconian had been killed The official reports, apparently, were that it hadn’t happened at all That was a change The assassination attem

pt had been used to justify the crackdown Now the crackdoas just another day, and highlighting the attacks on the structures of poasn’t useful Nothing had to be justified any to project a sense of normalcy and inevitability And as far as Holden could tell, it orking

“Kind of quiet,” he said,

Naoht?” she said Ittoo

Back in the underground, Holden found Saba sitting at a duht, Saba’s hair and skin were nearly the same color In the backsplash from the screen, he almost seemed like a cartoon of himself He nodded at Holden and shifted a few centiive him room Holden sat

“Checking on the Stor entries spooled up The infor from the Laconians was encrypted on a variety of levels, and using more than one schema

“Dui,” Saba said “Everything between the station and the Storet access to the server that decrypts it, it’s just noise Plenty ot ht a tech eighteen ot a backdoor into the system we never noticed”

“Really?” Holden said “How’d you find it now?”

“Coyo told us,” Saba said, flashing a grin “Patriotism is weird shit”

Holden chuckled “Whatever works, I guess”

They sat for a moment in near silence Saba scratched his arain “Big coya seeot a little stone in her throat Any trouble with your crew?”

“Nope,” Holden said And then, “Ithat’ll cause a problem”

“Don’t guess you want to say what? Make me feel better to know”

Holden leaned forward The logs spooled past, storage filling with traffic thatBobbie wasn’t so he’d talked about before He wasn’t sure he wanted to start now, but he was living in Saba’s roo on his operations

“It’s not exactly my crew,” Holden said “I had some trouble with the union before all this happened”