Amsa calibrated Hassan Vesely’s ship three weeks ago. The manifest declared nine hundred kilos against a twenty-one hundred kilo limit. Twelve hundred kilos light. Twelve hundred kilos was Hassan.

The Mars desk has filed it transit death. Mariner Dome will run the investigation, and in five days the engineer who signed the ship off lands on the blame list. That engineer is Amsa.

On the Mars side, Inspector Kvor is already pulling the Belt’s cargo records on a body that hasn’t been officially filed yet — five minutes before Vee surfaced the news to her workshop. He’s reading her clean, or he’s building a case. Either way the road goes the same direction.

Six days of quiet investigation across two jurisdictions. One Belt mechanic with a recycler debt three years cold and Vee in her ear. One inspector who never wrote a report he didn’t double-check. The case closes on the page. The arrangement that produced it does not.

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