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There were a few bodies lying outside the fire, bleeding out on the corrugated metal floors Holden couldn’t tell if they were Amos’ handiwork The old Holden would have asked The new one didn’t

“Nao to hear her voice

“I’ trouble out here”

“Is it …” He heard the dread in her voice

“No Not the protoh Seal up the ’locks,” Holden told her, the words coht “War happens to us, leave and rendezvous with Alex Don’t go to Tycho”

“Jio to Tycho Fred did this Don’t go back to him”

“No,” she said Her new o That’s an order, XO”

At least she would get away, Holden told himself No matter what happened on Ganymede, at least Naohtmare Julie, dead in her shower, but with Naomi’s face flashed in his rief that escaped him Amos turned and looked back at him, but Holden waved him on without a word

Fred had done this

And if Fred had, then Holden had too

Holden had spent a year playing enforcer to Fred’s politician He’d hunted ships and killed theed the man he’d been into the man he was now, because some part of hioverned outer planets

And Fred had secretly been planning … this

Holden thought of all the things he’d put off so that he could help Fred build his new solar system order He’d never taken Naomi to meet his faone to Earth But he could have flown his family up to Luna to meet her Father Tom would have resisted He hated travel But Holden had no doubt that in the end he would have gotten them all to come meet her once he explained how i his need to find his daughter, made Holden realize how badly he wanted to knohat that was like To experience that sort of hunger for the presence of another hueneration to his parents To show they they had put into hi He wanted, al before, to see the looks on their faces when he showed them a child His child Nao his ti breaker, and now by this betrayal Holden swore to himself that if he made it off Ganyain, and Holden noticed that they were back at the port He shook hiotten there

“Looks clear,” Amos said