“I know a few guys still serving at Hecate, sure.”

“So I was wondering if I could get you to do a little favor for me.”

“Sure, of course,” Alex said. And then a fraction of a second later, “What is it?”

“I’ve got a kind of hobby thing going on,” she said, looking pained. “It’s… unofficial.”

“Is it for Avasarala?”

“Sort of. The last time she was through, we had dinner, and some of the things she said got me thinking. With the new worlds opening up, there’s a lot of change going on. Strategies shifting. Like that. And one of the big resources Mars has – one of the things that there’s going to be a market for – is the Navy.”

“I don’t understand,” Alex said, leaning back in his chair. “You mean like mercenary work?”

“I mean like things going missing. Black market. We’ve been through a couple pretty major wars in the last few years. A lot of ships got scrapped. Some of them it seems like we just lost track of. And the Navy’s stretched pretty thin. I don’t know how much energy they’re putting into tracking things right now. You know there was an attack on the Callisto shipyards?”

“Saw something about that, yeah.”

“So that’s an example, right? Here’s a big incident, and the first response is all about identifying who was behind it and rebuilding the defenses.”

“Sure,” Alex said. “You’d want to do that, right?”

“So figuring out exactly what was lost in the attack is on someone’s to-do list, but it’s not the top. And with all the shit going on, it may never get to the top. And everyone kind of knows that, even if they aren’t saying it.”

Alex drank, put down the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So if there’s a profiteer on the base, they could take the opportunity to lift some equipment that survived, sell it on the black market, and call it lost.”

“Exactly. I mean to some degree, that’s always happening, but right now, with things a little chaotic and getting weirder all the time?”

“And with Mars losing a lot of its people to colony ships.”

“Yeah, that too,” Bobbie said. Her expression was hard. Alex sat forward, his elbows on the table. The smell of trout and black sauce still hung in the air, though the plates were gone by then. On the screen at the front of the restaurant, a young woman in a parody of business wear danced to a computer-generated pop tune. Alex hadn’t been able to make out the language; at a certain speed every language sounded equally meaningless.

“You’re telling me that you’re investigating the sources of black market military equipment flowing off Mars.”

“Weapons,” Bobbie said. “Medical supplies. Ammunition. Power suits. Even ships.”

“And you’re doing it on your own, for fun, because of something Chrisjen Avasarala said to you.”

“I’m kind of working for her.”

Alex laughed. “I’m almost afraid to point this out, but you started off saying you needed a favor. You haven’t told me what the favor is.”