I'm aware, by way of Estelle's inbox, that there's some curiosity about why I've publishing my investigation in real time. Well, I'm about to tell you. After my last article, about Jacobsen and Hoshi and Holly, I was contacted by someone I'd have never heard of otherwise. He's a freighter captain who's contracts might be a little bit blatantly illegal, and he wanted to tell me about one of them. Maybe it's relevant to my investigation; maybe it's not. Either way, it was interesting, and it got me thinking.

Captain Anonymous was chartered to take a Something from Beta Aquilae to Alpha Centauri by way of Sirius. That's not the normal way to make that trip, but it seemed easy enough and the pay was good. The first two jumps were normal, but when they entered Sirius, something seemed off. The Alliance patrols just buzzed them through and the Syndicate patrols ignored them. Besides, on the way there, he'd started thinking about a heist at Gulnara Station two days ago. The pirates got their prize out of Antares through the Beta Aquilae node, the same system where he'd picked up the contract. Carrying stolen Alliance property would get him way more than a smuggling rap, and getting through Sirius without someone causing trouble just doesn't happen. The whole op was starting to set his teeth on edge - so he peeked into the box. Here's what he found.

"I don't know what I was looking at. Part of a ship, maybe. It wasn't right. Some kind of mechanism at the center - didn't look Vasudan; maybe Ancient, maybe something else; I'm not a historian. The rest... Red and black metal, if you can call it that. Unmistakable. Shivan. Shivan tech and that something else, all twisted together. Don't know what it's for. Don't want to. I'm not too proud to admit I dumped the container and jumped."

This was 27 July, 2336, an hour before midnight, galactic standard time. A few hours later, an unregistered freighter entered Alpha Centauri from Sirius, chased by strike bombers which the Alliance denies were theirs. Look up the footage if you haven't seen it. So, a Shady Someone tries to give a Shivan Something to Mystery Vasudans while customs looked the other way, all on Regulus' doorstep. Is there a link? I don't know, but my gut says maybe. In the mean time, please, keep writing in if you know, suspect, heard a rumor about, or have weird dreams about anything you think I should know.

