Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

Holden hadn’t had much chance to look around the rest of the hospital. After leaving the docks he’d hurried straight to his crew’s room and hadn’t left since. But now, as he moved through the halls and intersections toward the exit, he had a chance to look over the full extent of the damage the catastrophic speed limit change had caused.

Every bed in every room was filled with injured people, and sometimes the benches and chairs in the waiting areas. Most of the injuries were contusions or broken bones, but some were more severe. He saw more than one amputation, and quite a few people hanging in traction with serious spinal injuries. But more than the physical damage, there was the stunned look of shock on every face. The sort of expression Holden associated with the recent victims or witnesses of violent crime. The Rocinante had tracked and disabled a pirate slaver ship a few months back, and the beaten and starving prisoners pulled from her hold had looked like this. Not just hurt, but robbed of hope.

Someone with a doctor’s uniform watched Holden push the bed past, his eyes following their progress, but exhaustion robbing him of curiosity. From a small room to his right, Holden heard the electric popping sound of a cauterizing gun, and the smell of cooking meat filled the air.

“This is horrifying,” he whispered to Naomi. She nodded but said nothing.

“None of us shoulda come here,” Alex said.

Doors and corners, Miller had warned him. The places where you got killed if you weren’t paying attention. Where the ambushes happened. Could have been a little more explicit, Holden thought, and then imagined Miller shrugging apologetically and bursting into a cloud of blue gnats.

Amos, half a dozen meters ahead, came to a four-way junction in the corridor and turned right. Before Holden could cross half the distance to the turn, a pair of OPA goons walked into the intersection from the left.

They paused, looking over Naomi and Alex snuggled up in the rolling bed. One of them smirked and half turned to his companion. Holden could almost hear the joke he was about to make about two people to a bed. In preparation, he smiled and readied a laugh. But before the jokester could speak, his companion said, “That’s James Holden.”

Everything after that happened quickly.

The pair of OPA thugs scrambled to get at the shotguns slung over their shoulders. Holden shoved the rolling gurney into their thighs, knocking them back, and gave the corridor a frantic glance looking for a weapon. One of the thugs managed to fumble his shotgun down off his shoulder and rack it, but Naomi scooted forward on the bed and drove her heel into his groin. His partner stepped back, finished getting his hands on his shotgun, and pointed it at her. Holden started to run forward, knowing he was too slow, knowing he’d watch Naomi blown apart long before he could reach the gunman.

Then both gunmen turned toward each other and slammed their faces together. They slumped to the floor, guns falling from nerveless fingers. Amos stood behind them, grimacing and massaging his left shoulder.

“Sorry, Cap,” he said. “Got a little too far ahead there.”

Holden leaned against the corridor wall, legs barely able to support him even in the light gravity. “No apologies. Nice save.” He nodded toward the shoulder that Amos continued to rub with a pained look. “Thought that was broken.”

Amos snorted. “It didn’t fall off. Plenty left in here for a couple of idiots like this.” He bent down and stripped the two fallen men of their weapons and ammunition. A nurse walked up behind Holden, a plastic case in her hands and a question on her face.

“Nothing to see here,” Holden said. “We’ll be gone in a minute.”

She pointed at a nearby door. “Supply closet. No one will notice them in there for a while.” Then she turned and went back the way she came.

“You have a fan,” Naomi said from the bed.

“Not everyone in the OPA hates us,” Holden replied, moving around the gurney to help Amos drag the unconscious men into the closet. “We did good work for them for over a year. People know that.”

Amos handed Holden a compact black pistol and a pair of extra magazines. Holden tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt down over it. Amos did the same with a second gun, then put the two shotguns onto the gurney next to Naomi and covered them with the sheet.

“We don’t want to get in a gunfight,” Holden warned Amos as they began moving again.

“Yeah,” Amos said. “But if we’re in one anyway, it’ll be nice to have guns.”

The hospital exit was a short distance down the right-hand hallway, and suddenly they were outside. Or as outside as you could get in the Behemoth’s massive habitation drum. From outside, the hospital structure looked cheap and hastily assembled. A football-field-sized shanty made of epoxied carbon and fiberglass. A few hundred meters away, the edge of a city of tents spread out like acne on the drum’s smooth skin.

“That way,” Naomi said, pointing toward a more permanent-looking steel structure. Holden pushed the gurney, and Amos walked a few meters ahead, smiling and nodding at anyone who looked at them. Something in Amos’ face making them scurry away and not look back.

As they approached the squat metal structure, a door opened in the side and Sam’s pixie face appeared, waving a hand at them impatiently. A few minutes and some twisty corridors later, they were in a small, empty metal-walled room. Amos immediately dropped to the floor, laying his left arm and back flat against it.

“Ow,” he said.

“You hurt?” Sam asked, locking the door behind them with a small metal keycard, and then tossing the card to Naomi.

“Everyone’s hurt,” Holden said. “So what the hell is going on?”

Sam blew her lips out and ran one greasy hand through her red hair. The streaks of black already in it told Holden she’d been doing a lot of that. “Ashford retook the ship. He’s got some sort of coalition of bigwigs from the UN Navy, the Martians, and some of the important civilians.”

“Okay,” Holden said, realizing that his lack of context made most of that sentence pretty meaningless, but not wanting to waste time with explanations. “So the people roaming the halls with guns are Ashford’s?”

“Yep. He’s taking out anyone who helped Bull or Pa with the original mutiny, or, y’know, anyone he thinks is a threat.”

“From the way they tried to shoot us, we’re on that list,” Naomi said.

“Definitely.” Sam nodded. “I haven’t been able to track down Pa, but Bull called me, so I know he’s okay.”