“Not in a court of law. But our G7Turings went through a lot of data. We composed a digital simulation of Bronkal for the three days prior to Yuri and I arriving, and extending two days after. She turned up with two associates when we were in the middle of interviewing Joaquin Beron. We backtracked her through the hubs to Tokyo. Before that, we have no idea. The Japanese criminal intelligence agency was unaware she was in their country.”

“And the hellbuster missile? Don’t tell me she came through your hubs carrying it?”

“No,” Yuri said. “We have deep sensors on every trans-stellar hub. You can’t carry weapons between star systems.”

“Because you don’t need to,” Jessika said. “We had a little more luck with the hellbuster. It was a custom fabrication in Yarra, Althaea’s capital. Someone called Korrie Chau brought it in through the Bronkal commercial transport hub in a taxez about four minutes before Yuri shut the hub down. The taxez was registered as a public vehicle, but that was a false flag; it belonged to him. He used to move a lot of illegal fabrications around in it.”

“You did some good work there, tracing him,” Alik said.

“We lost seven of the tactical team members in that explosion,” Yuri said in a dangerously level voice. “And Christ knows what Baptiste’s people did to poor old Lucius as well. Ainsley made sure we had whatever resources we needed afterwards.”

“The hellbuster part wasn’t difficult,” Jessika said. “We found Korrie Chau and his taxez ten hours later, in a parking lot less than two kilometers from the docks. Cancer had slit his throat.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t leave loose ends,” Alik said.

“Forensics tore Chau’s place apart. We shipped entire rooms back to our crime labs for analysis. Forensic accounting tracked his payments, but they were all from one-shot finance houses based on independent asteroid settlements. Most of them don’t even have a human population; they’re just a bunch of G5 and G6Turing rock squatters.”

“So you don’t know who paid him?”

“No.”

“But you think it’s the Olyix?”

“Not directly, but their actions, their acceptance of what they see as our normality, were ultimately what started this,” Yuri said. “I told you, there are consequences to what they have been doing. We know Baptiste Devroy went on the run as soon as Jessika and I turned up at Horatio’s flat. So he’d obviously got some kind of monitor there. And Hai-3 knew who I was trying to find when I showed up at their Geneva embassy. Whatever people are getting snatched for, the Olyix are at least aware of it.”

“Why, though?” Kandara asked. “What’s their motive?”