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Chapter Thirty-Six: Holden

W

hen the Martians came for him—two men and tomen, all in uniform and all armed—Holden’s isolation-drunk mind had spun out in a dozen directions at once The captain had found rooain about what happened on the station and they were going to throw him out an airlock and they’d had news that Naomi was dead and they’d had news that she wasn’t It felt like every neuron he had fro It was all he could do not to launch himself off the cell’s wall and into the narrow corridor

“The prisoner will please identify himself,” one of the men said

“James Holden I ht? Because I’ve been trying to find soot here, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t so much as a dust mite in this place besidesHe’d been alone and scared for too long He hadn’t understood howhim Even if he hadn’t beento be real soon now if nothing changed

“Record shows prisoner identified hi”

The corridor outside the cells was so narrow that two guards ahead and two behind was effectively a wall The low Martian gravity made their bodies more akin to Belters than to hi in over him Holden had never felt so relieved to be in a tiny, cramped hallway in his life But even the relief was pushed aside by his anxiety The guards didn’t actually push hiested that he really should match the in his cell, it seee distance

“Was there any word fro on?”

“You’re being evacuated,” the ree? Why are you surrendering?”

“We lost the politics,” one of the women behind him said

If the skiff they loaded him onto wasn’t the same one that had taken hih that he couldn’t tell the difference There were only four soldiers this time, all of them in full combat armor The rest of the spaces were taken up by ht at first they were the wounded, but when he looked closer, none of the worse than minor injuries It was the exhaustion in their faces and bodies that made them seem broken The acceleration burn wasn’t even announced The thrust barely shifted the crash couches All around him, the Martians slept or brooded Holden scratched at the hard, flexible plastic restraints on his wrists and ankles, and no one told hin

He tried to do the math in his head If the new top speed was about as fast as a launched grenade, then every hour, they’d travel… As tired as he was, he couldn’tIf he’d had his hand terminal, it would have been a few seconds’ work Still, he couldn’t see asking to have it And it didn’t ain The proxi bread with someone as his father Caesar and also Fred Johnson and trying to find the salt It took him a h that when the other ship’s crew banged against the airlock, Holden could hear it Fro he kneas a slightly different scent in the air So rich and oddly humid And then four new people stepped into his view They were Belters A broad-faced wo white beard, and two shaven-headed ht have been twins The twins had the split circle of the OPA tattooed on their arht They’d surrendered to the Behemoth That eird

One of the marines, still in battle arn of fear Holden gave theeant Alexander Verbinski,” the Martian said “I have been ordered to hand over this skiff and her crew and coreement of surrender”