TJ invites the crew out to celebrate his promotion to Master Sergeant, along with the half dozen remaining Concord marines on Lison. The rest are split between searching for any trace of klicks on Bauble and safeguarding the techs refitting Mindara Station.
Concord techs provide a partial reconstruction of the data from the 3D fragments, confirming the corsair Ysala looted the Gallagher vault. They learn she moved its contents to Leen and marked it with a locator beacon.
Samantha gets command pins commissioned for the crew in the shape of sparrows – gold for Mayhem as captain, and silver for the others, except Conrad’s one has gold trim as de facto first officer.
People finally discover Hadley is mute, as opposed to merely not talkative. Fortunately, Sam knows sign language. It later turns out that she also speaks Aleerin. No one thinks to enquire about this.
Conrad gets a call to say his “niece” has been arrested. He and Cinque go to bail Sonya out. She took the fall for Mags, a friend of hers caught up with a dealer pushing Sciseed, known locally as Red. Conrad fills her in on his contingency plans and they find out she lives in a small 2-bed apartment in one of the dodgier areas of Upper Tier. It’s relatively well kept, given she’s a teen living alone. She offers them the main bedroom if they need somewhere to crash; it’s been unoccupied since her mother’s death.
Cinque makes some headway on his pilot training, but takes a break to go treasure hunting on Leen with the others. They are able to track the locator beacon to the Solar colony of Mahatay before Ysala contacts them with a threat to desist and kills the signal. When sensor scans reveal little more of use, they land at the settlement, claiming they are setting down to fix a botched repair.
A customs inspector named Armando Fuentes gives the ship a once-over, tells them not to bring any serious firepower into the town, then gives them a lift to the dome. He is a mine of information, but only while booking rooms at La Siesta do they discover that a terraforming team recently discovered a treasure in underground caves. The team brought back a few bars of rhodium as proof, but were unable to locate it again when they returned with heavy-lift equipment. Now, hundreds of colonists are spending their downtime treasure hunting.
Conrad and Cinque go to speak with the team’s scout, Lakota Sharpe. They confirm the rhodium forge-bar she found came from the Gallagher vault. She has been researching the local wildlife and thinks Minshore Crystals have camouflaged the cave entrance. They warn her that pirates stole the treasure and may be about to reclaim it. She proposes working together to prove her theory; they can keep the treasure in exchange for her making contact with the Minshore. With all in agreement, clandestine preparations are hastily made.