A pilot who voluntarily chose to conduct an in-flight rotor evaluation would request a reduced fuel load, remove non-essential interior weight, and file a different flight plan. None of those things had occurred and every operational decision made around that flight by the people who prepared it was consistent with a passenger flight and inconsistent with the explanation that had stood for 17 years. Inside the communications module of the roadster, Laurel found a voice recording stored on a separate media chip beneath the factory unit, one that Augustus had made in the vehicle several days before he died, speaking directly and quietly to Cyrus Vane. Augustus's voice on that recording was unhurried and precise. He described the component substitution, named Northstar Dynamics, and said that Hollis had been presented with the complete analysis and had directed him in a private conversation to sign a document certifying the components as meeting original specification.
He said he would not sign the document. He said the meeting the following morning was intended to force the matter into the open before the affected components were installed in any additional aircraft. He said he had asked Cyrus to protect the machines and the documents if the board meeting did not produce the outcome he expected. The recording ended in the middle of a sentence. Stopped before Augustus named the person who had proposed the aircraft substitution as though the device had reached its capacity or been deliberately ended.
Merit Vale appeared the following afternoon with a motion arguing that the recording and all associated documentation should be declared inadmissible because the discovery had occurred in property whose ownership remained under active dispute. Clay's attorney filed an opposition. The court agreed to provisionally preserve the evidence pending resolution of the title question. And that resolution, it turned out, was sitting in the bankruptcy file in a sealed envelope that had been logged into the court record and never opened. Filed under a case subcode that no one had checked until Clay's attorney requested a full physical document audit.
The envelope had been in the bankruptcy administrator's archive for the entire duration of the dispute. It was marked for court opening only in the event of an ownership dispute, sealed with a wax impression that the court document examiner confirmed was consistent with the personal seal maintained by Augustus Wickliffe's private office, and it had been filed 3 days before his death with a court-certified timestamp. The contents were three pages. The first was a written instrument transferring custody of 12 specified vehicles, each identified by chassis number and tail number, to Cyrus Vane for the exclusive purpose of conducting an independent safety analysis under conditions of custodial confidentiality. The second was a supplemental authorization granting Cyrus the right to maintain possession beyond the initial custody period if, in his judgment, the investigation was being interfered with by any party connected to Wickliffe Aerospace.