Fred looked over at the mech driver as she piled the opened crates into a stack to ship back for reprocessing. When he spoke, his voice was low enough it would only carry to Holden. “Both of which would mean they had a high-level working knowledge of the security system, but not enough access to wipe the records completely.”

“That narrows it down?”

“A little, maybe. Could be a UN black ops team. They could have done something like this. Or Mars.”

“But you don’t think that’s it, do you?”

Fred chewed his lip. He pulled up his hand terminal, typed in a series of codes, every tap sharp and percussive. An alert Klaxon sounded and gold-and-green alert icons appeared on every display from Holden’s hand terminal to the door controls to the mech status panel. Fred pushed his fists into his pockets with a satisfied grunt.

“Did you just lock down the station?” Holden said.

“I did,” Fred said. “And I’m keeping it locked down until I’ve got some answers. And Monica Stuart back.”

“Good,” Holden said. “Extreme, but good.”

“I may be a little pissed off.”

The contents of Monica’s quarters were laid out on the gray-green ceramic counters of the security lab. No blood, no images, and the background soup of DNA from thousands of people who’d been in contact with the objects in the last week, usually with too small a sample to identify an individual. This was what was left. A clothing bag, its zipper ripped and hanging open in a mindless smile. A shirt Holden remembered her wearing when he’d seen her a few days before. Her crippled hand terminal with its shattered display. All the things that hadn’t belonged to the station when it rented her the space. It seemed small, like there wasn’t enough there. He realized it was just that he was thinking of it as the collection of a lifetime. Probably she had other possessions somewhere else, but maybe she didn’t. If they didn’t find her alive, maybe this was all she’d have to leave behind.

“You cannot be fucking serious,” Sakai said for what seemed like the third or fourth time. The chief engineer’s face was red, his jaw set. He’d arrived at the security station a few minutes after Fred and Holden, and Holden was a little surprised Fred hadn’t had him thrown out yet. “I have eight ships inbound within the next week. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to match orbit and float until we decide whether we’ll let them in?”

“Seems like a good start,” Fred said.

“We have supplies due to ship on half a dozen contracts.”