Fred floated ahead of him strapped into a bright yellow salvage mech. The rescue-and-recovery kit looked like a massive backpack slung across the mech’s shoulders. A burst of white gas came from the mech’s left side, and Fred drifted elegantly to the right. For a moment, Holden’s brain interpreted the dozens of shipping containers clustered in the empty space outside the massive warehouse bays as being below them, as if he and Fed were divers in a vast airless sea; then they flipped and he was rising up toward them feetfirst. He turned the HUD back on, resetting its display priorities, and one container took on a green overlay. The target. Monica Stuart’s prison, or else her tomb.

“How’re you doing back there?” Fred asked in his ear.

“I’m solid,” Holden said, then curled his lip in annoyance and turned his mic on. “I’m solid except that this isn’t my usual suit of armor. The controls on this thing are all just a little bit wrong.”

“Keep you from dying if they start shooting at us.”

“Sure, unless they’re good at it.”

“We can hope they’re bad,” Fred said. “Get ready. I’m heading in.”

As soon as they’d identified the container, Holden had thought they’d send out a mech, haul it into a bay, and open it. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of booby traps until Fred pointed it out. The container’s data showed awaiting pickup, but the frame that should have said what ship it was slated for was garbled. The image from Monica’s feed didn’t show anything beyond the access door. For all they knew, she could be sitting on tanks of acetylene and oxygen wired to the same circuit as the docking clamps. What they knew for certain was that the main doors were bolted and sealed. But even those could be wired to a trigger. The lowest-risk option, according to Fred, was to cut a hole into the visible doorframe and send someone in to take a look. And the only someone he was sure he could trust was Holden.

Fred positioned himself in front of the container’s doors, and the mech’s massive arm reached back and plucked the r-and-r pack loose. Fred unpacked it with a speed and efficiency of movement that made it seem like something he did all the time. The thin plastic emergency airlock, a single-use cutting torch, two emergency pressure suits, a distress beacon, and a small, sealed crate of medical supplies all took their places in the vacuum around him like they’d been hooked in place. Holden had spent enough years bucking ice to admire how little drift each piece of equipment had.

“Wish me luck,” Fred said.