"Hawaiians?" Robbins asked.

"Of course not," Szilard said. "It's mostly Tamils, from what my data tell me. They don't name the system, they just live there."

"What's so interesting about this system?" Robbins said.

"The fact that less than three days ago a Special Forces cruiser disappeared in it," Szilard said.

"It was attacked?" Robbins asked. "Destroyed?"

"No," Szilard said. "It disappeared. No contact once it arrived in the system."

"Did it hail the colony?" Robbins asked.

"It wouldn't have done that," Szilard said, in a flat tone that suggested to Robbins that he shouldn't pursue the details.

He didn't. "Maybe something happened to the ship when it reentered real space," he said instead.

"We skipped in a sensor done," Szilard said. "No ship. No black box. No debris along the projected flight path. Nothing. It's gone."

"That's weird," Robbins said.

"No," Szilard said. "What's weird is that it was the fourth Special Forces ship this has happened to this month."

Robbins stared at Szilard blankly. "You've lost four cruisers? How?"

"Well, if we knew that, Colonel, we'd be off stomping on someone's neck," Szilard said. "That fact that what I'm actually doing is eating this steak in front of you should be an indication we are as in the dark as anyone."

"But you do think someone is behind this," Robbins said. "And it's not just an issue with the ships or their Skip Drives."

"Of course we do," Szilard said. "Having one ship disappear is a random incident. Having four disappear in a month is a fucking trend. This is not a problem with the ships or the drives."

"Who do you think is behind it?" Robbins said.

Szilard set down his utensils, irritable. "Christ, Robbins," he said. "Do you think I'm talking to you because I don't have friends?"

Robbins smiled wryly, in spite of himself. "The Obin, then," he said.

"The Obin," Szilard said. "Yes. The ones who have Charles Boutin tucked away somewhere. All the systems our ships disappeared from either are close to Obin space or are planets the Obin contested for at one point or another. That's a slender thread, but it's what we have at the moment. What we don't have is the how or why, and that's where I was hoping you might be able to shed some light."

"You want to know where we are with Private Dirac," Robbins said.

"If you don't mind," Szilard said, and picked up his utensils again.

"It's slow going," Robbins admitted. "We think the memory breach happened because of stress and sensory input. We can't put the same sort of pressure on him that combat did, but we have been introducing him to parts of Boutin's life one piece at a time."

"His records?" Szilard asked.

"No," Robbins said. "At least not the reports and files on Boutin that were written or recorded by other people. Those aren't from Boutin himself, and we don't want to introduce an outside point of view. Cainen and Lieutenant Wilson are working with primary sources—Boutin's recordings and notes—and with Boutin's things."

"You mean things Boutin owned?" Szilard asked.

"Things he owned, things he liked—remember the jellybeans— or things from other people that he knew. We've also taken Dirac to the places where Boutin lived and grew up. He was originally from Phoenix, you know. It's just a quick trip down by shuttle."

"It's nice he gets field trips," Szilard said, only a little dismissively. "But you said it was slow going."

"More of Boutin is coming out," Robbins said. "But much of it seems to be in personality. I've read Private Dirac's psychological profile; up to now he's been something of a passive character. Things happened to him rather than him making them happen. And for the first week or so he was with us he was like that. But over the last three weeks he's been becoming more assertive and more directed. And that's more in line with who Boutin was, psychologically speaking."

"So he's becoming more like Boutin. Fine," Szilard said. "But is he remembering anything?"

"Well, that's just it," Robbins said. "There's very little memory coming back. What's coming back is mostly about his family life, not his work. We'll run him recordings of Boutin making voice notes of his projects and he'll listen to them blankly. Show him a picture of Boutin's little girl, and he gets twitchy for a minute, and then he'll tell you about what was going on in the picture. It's frustrating."

Szilard chewed for a moment, thinking. Robbins took advantage of the pause to enjoy his water. It wasn't quite as refreshing as he'd previously suggested.

"The memories of his little girl don't lead to any tangential memories coming up?" Szilard asked.

"Sometimes," Robbins said. "A picture of Boutin and his daughter at some research base he was stationed at reminded him of some of the work he'd been doing there. Some early research on consciousness buffering, before he came back to Phoenix Station and started working on it using the technology we'd gotten from the Consu. But he didn't remember anything useful, in terms of why Boutin would decide to turn traitor."

"Show him another picture of Boutin's daughter," Szilard said.

"We showed him all we could find," Robbins said. "There aren't that many. And there aren't any of her physical things around—no toys or drawings or anything like that."

"Why not?" Szilard asked.

Robbins shrugged. "She died before Boutin came back to Phoenix Station," he said. "I guess he didn't want to bring her things with him."

"Now that's interesting," Szilard said. His eyes looked like they were focused on something at a distance, a sign he was reading something off his BrainPal.

"What?" Robbins said.

"I pulled Boutin's file while you were talking," Szilard said. "Boutin's a colonial, but his work for the Colonial Union required him to be stationed at Military Research facilities. The last place he worked before coming here was at Covell Research Station. Ever hear of it?"

"It sounds familiar," Robbins said. "But I can't place it."

"Says it was a zero-g-capable research facility," Szilard said. "They did some biomedical work, which is why Boutin was there, but it was mostly weapons and navigation systems. This is interesting: The station was actually positioned directly above a planetary ring system. It was just a klick above the ring plane. Used the ring debris to test their close-quarter navigation systems."

Now Robbins got it. Rocky planets with ring systems were rare, and ones with human colonies rarer still. Most colonists preferred not to live where stadium-sized chunks of falling rock plunging through the atmosphere were a common occurrence rather than a once-in-a-millennium sort of thing. One with a Military Research station orbiting overhead—that was pretty singular.

"Omagh," Robbins said.

"Omagh," Szilard agreed. "Which we no longer own. We could never prove that the Obin originally attacked the colony or the station. It's possible the Rraey attacked the colony, and then the Obin attacked them when they were weakened from fighting us and before they could be reinforced. Which is one reason we never went to war with them over it. But we know they decided to claim the system for their own pretty damn quickly, before we could mount a force to take it back."

"And Boutin's daughter was on the colony," Robbins said.

"She was on the station, from what the casualty lists say," Szilard said, sending over the list for Robbins to view. "It was a large station. It would have had family quarters."

"Jesus," Robbins said.

"You know," Szilard said, casually, forking the last bite of steak into his mouth, "when Covell Station was attacked, it wasn't entirely destroyed. In fact, we have reliable data that suggest the station is largely intact."