One of the largest asteroids in the belt, Vesta serves as the headquarters of Argus Extraction Defense. It was the site of the first Article 4 OETG compliance audit in 2124, which Argus initially obstructed before permitting limited access. Vesta was also the location of Chen Huo’s assassination in 2138 — he was killed there before he could announce the legislative package that became Chen’s Bill. Under the 2134 Argus settlement, Vesta was required to surrender all embodied cognition units to UN custody. The 2165 Colonial Census recorded ~47,000 residents — the Belt’s largest non-UN settlement, built on the company-town model around mining and forge/manufacturing.