Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

“Amos will make sure you’re not interrupted,” he finally said.

“Right,” Bull said. “Tell them why that’s reassuring.”

“Oh. Well, when Amos is angry he’s the meanest, scariest person I’ve ever met, and he’d walk across a sea of corpses he personally created to help a friend. And one of his good friends just got murdered by the people who are going to be trying to take this office.”

“I heard about that,” Anna said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Holden said. “And the last people in the galaxy I’d want to be are the ones that are going to try and break in here to stop you. Amos doesn’t process grief well. It usually turns into anger or violence for him. I have a feeling he’s about to process the shit out of it on some Ashford loyalists.”

“Killing people won’t make him feel better,” Anna said, regretting the words the second they left her mouth. These people were going to be risking their lives to protect her. They didn’t need her moralizing at them.

“Actually,” Holden said with a half smile, “I think it might for him, but Amos is a special case. You’d be right about most anyone else.”

Anna looked across the room at Amos. He was sitting quietly by the front door to the broadcast office, some sort of very large rifle laid across his knees. He was a large man, tall and thick across the shoulders and chest. But with his round shaved head and broad face, he didn’t look like a killer to Anna. He looked like a friendly repairman. The kind who showed up to fix broken plumbing or swap out the air recycling filters. According to Holden, he would kill without remorse to protect her.

She imagined trying to explain their current situation to Nono. I’ve fallen in with killers, you see, but it’s okay because they are the right killers. The good guy killers. They don’t shoot innocent chief engineers. They shoot the people who do.

Monica was asking Holden something. When he started to answer, Anna got up and left with an apology to everyone and no one. She dodged through the crowded office, smiling and patting people on the arm as she passed, distributing gentle reassurance to everyone around her. It was all she had to offer them.

She pulled an unused chair over next to Amos and sat down. “Red,” he said, giving her a tiny nod.

“I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his arm. He stared down at it as though he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Okay,” he said, not asking the obvious question. Not pretending not to understand. Anna found herself liking him immediately.

“Thank you for doing this.”

Amos shifted in his chair to face her. “You don’t need to—”

“In a few hours, we might all be dead,” she said. “I want you to know that I know what you’re doing, and I know why, and I don’t care about any of that. Thank you for helping us.”

“God damn, Red,” Amos said, putting his hand on hers. “You must be hell on wheels as a preacher. You’re making me feel the best and worst I’ve felt in a while at the same time.”

“That’s all I wanted to say,” Anna said, then patted his hand once and stood up.

Before she could leave, Amos grabbed her hand in an almost painfully tight grip. “No one’s gonna hurt you today.”

There was no boast in it. It was a simple statement of fact. She gave him a smile and pulled her hand away. Good-hearted unrepentant killers were not something she’d had to fit into her worldview before this, and she wasn’t sure how it would work. But now she’d have to try.

“All right, people, listen up,” Bull yelled out over the noise. The room fell silent. “It’s zero hour. Let’s get the action teams divided up and ready to go.”

A shadow fell across Anna. Amos was standing behind her, clutching his large gun. “Defense,” he called out. “To me.”

A group of maybe two dozen extricated themselves from the general crowd and moved over to Amos. Anna found herself surrounded by heavily armed and armored Belters with a few inner planet types mixed in. She was not a tall woman, and it felt like being at the bottom of a well. “Excuse me,” she said, but no one heard her. A strong hand gripped her arm, pulled her through the knot of people, and deposited her outside of it. Amos gave her a smile and said, “Might want to find a quiet corner, Red.”

Anna thought about trying to cross the room back to Tilly and Monica, but there were too many people in the way. Amos had a sort of personal field that kept anyone from standing too close to him, so Anna just stayed inside it to keep from getting trampled on. Amos didn’t appear to mind.

“Assault team,” Holden called out, “to me.”

Soon he had a group of two dozen around him, including Naomi and Alex from the Rocinante, the four Martian marines, a bunch of Bull’s security people, and Bull himself. The only people in the group without obvious physical injuries were the four marines. Alex and Naomi looked especially bad. Naomi’s shoulder was bound tight in a harness that immobilized it and her arm, and she winced every time she took a step. Alex’s face was swollen so badly that his left eye was almost completely closed. Blood spotted the bandages around his head.

These are the people who helped stop Protogen, who fought the monsters around Ganymede, she told herself. They’re tough, they’ll make it. It sounded thin even in her own head.

“Well,” Bull said. The crowd seemed to be waiting for last words from him. “I guess this is it. Good hunting, everyone.”

A few people clapped or called out to him. Most didn’t. Across the room Monica was talking to her camera people. Anna knew she should join them, but found herself not wanting to. All these people would be risking their lives to buy her time. Her. So it was all on her whether the whole plan succeeded or failed. If she couldn’t convince an entire flotilla of ships from three separate governments that turning off their power for a couple hours was the right thing to do, then it would all be for nothing. She found herself wanting to delay that moment as long as possible. To keep it from being her responsibility as long as she could.

“Better go, Red,” Amos whispered to her.

“What if they’re all too scared to shut down their ships?” she replied. “We’re in the haunted house, and I’m about to tell everyone that the way to escape is to turn out all the lights. I would find that unconvincing in their shoes.”