Belt Mechanic

A dead friend.

Her signature on the ship

that killed him.

For readers of Murderbot, The Expanse, and a good Bosch case, set on a Belt station nobody's watching.

Amsa has worked the same Belt-station workshop floor for nine years. She fixes the ships that pass through it, takes cash, asks no questions, stays clear of inspections.

Then a friend turns up dead at a transit perimeter, and the manifest for his last run comes back twelve hundred kilos light. Twelve hundred kilos is exactly what a Belt mechanic and his tools weigh. She calibrated that ship herself, three weeks ago. Her name is on the log.

The official report will close his death as routine. Amsa knows it isn't.

So she takes a transit she shouldn't. She walks past a Mars inspection desk on a credential that won't survive a second look. And at the body, she finds an inspector already standing over it.

Six days. One name. One case.