The thing Holden hadn’t known— No, that wasn’t true. The thing Holden had known, but hadn’t appreciated, was the number of ships moving through the rings and out to the vast spread of new planets. Monica’s full logs tracked the almost five hundred ships that had made the transit. Many were smaller even than the Rocinante, traveling together in groups to make a claim on a new and unknown world or else to join newly founded steadings on places with names like Paris and New Mars and Firdaws. Other ships were larger – true colony ships loaded with the same kinds of supplies that, generations before, humanity had taken out to Luna, Mars, and the Jovian moons.
The first one to vanish had been the Sigyn. She’d been a converted water hauler a little newer than the Canterbury. Then the Highland Swing, a tiny rock hopper that had been nearly gutted to put in an Epstein drive with three times the power a ship like that could ever have used. The Rabia Balkhi that she’d shown him had the best footage of its transit, but it wasn’t the first or the last to disappear. As he went through, he made note of the types and profiles of all the missing ships to forward on to Alex. The Pau Kant could be any of them.
There was another pattern to the vanishing too. The ships that went missing did so during times of high traffic when Medina Station’s attention was stretched between five or six different ships. And afterward – this was interesting – the ring through which the missing ship had passed showed not a spike in radiation but a discontinuity – a moment when the background levels changed suddenly. It wasn’t something that other transits seemed to have. Monica had interpreted it as evidence of alien technology doing something inscrutable and eerie. Knowing what they did now, it looked to Holden more like a glitch left over where the data had been doctored. Like switching the crate that Monica had been taken away in or vanishing into a men’s room and never coming out, someone would have had to hide the “missing” ships coming back through the ring. If there was a similar glitch in the sensor data of the ring that led back to humanity’s home system —
“Holden?”
The security office around him was empty. Fred had cleared it for his “personal use” – meaning as the center for his private investigation of how deeply he had been compromised. The security personnel Holden had walked past coming in seemed nonplussed to be turned out of their own offices, but no one had raised any objection. Or at least none that he’d heard.
Fred stood in the archway of the short hall that led to the interrogation rooms. He was in civilian clothes, well tailored. A scattering of white stubble dusted his chin and cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot and the yellow of old ivory. His spine was stiff though, and his demeanor sharp enough to cut.
“Did you hear something?” Holden asked.
“I’ve had a conversation with an associate of mine who I’ve known for a long time. Light delay always makes these things painfully slow, but… I have a better idea what I’m looking at. A start, anyway.”
“Can you trust them?”
Fred’s smile was weary. “If Anderson Dawes is against me, I’m screwed whatever I do.”
“All right,” Holden said. “So where do we start?”
“If I could borrow you for a few minutes,” Fred said, nodding back toward the interrogation rooms.
“You want to question me?”
“More use you as a prop in a little play I’m putting on.”
“Seriously?”
“If it works, it’ll save us time.”
Holden stood. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then it won’t.”
“Good enough.”
The interrogation room was bare, cold, and unfriendly. A steel table bolted to the floor separated the single backless stool from three gel-cushioned chairs. Monica was already sitting in one. The cut on her face was looking much better – little more than a long red welt. Without makeup, she looked harder. Older. It suited her. Fred gestured to the seat at the other side for Holden, then sat in the middle.
“Just look serious and let me do the talking,” he said.
Holden caught Monica’s gaze and lifted his eyebrows. What is this? She cracked a thin smile. Guess we’ll find out.
The door opened, and Drummer walked in. Sakai followed her. The chief engineer’s gaze flickered from Holden to Monica and back. Drummer guided him to a stool.
“Thank you,” Fred said. Drummer nodded and walked tightly out of the room. She might have been pissed at being kept out of the proceedings. Or maybe it was something else. Holden could see how something like this could lead to crippling paranoia pretty quickly.
Fred sighed. When he spoke, his voice was soft and warm as flannel. “So. I think you know what this is about.”