"Alright, what are we looking at here?" Holden said. The crew of the Rocinante were huddled around Naomi's terminal again, inspecting the readouts on the dark little ship they had found nestled inside a crevasse scored deep into the surface of the lonely asteroid.

"Everything is completely shut down, no power readings of any kind," Naomi said. They had been over all these facts once already, but maybe a review would help them decide their next move. "There's no telling from here whether the engines were damaged, or just turned off."

"There's no way that ship just drifted all snug into that lil' hole like that," Alex countered. "The engines had to be working when it got parked there."

"No sign of damage anywhere that we can see on the hull," Amos commented from another terminal down the line, "but anything could have happened inside that ship. And we don't know what might still be on it." Amos didn't stand next to Naomi anymore. They still worked together as efficiently as they used to, but the companionship was gone. Now he hung around the edges of the group, assessing the situations on his own and looking to see where he fit in. Naomi tried to brush the idea off, but it really seemed like he was just waiting to tell them when it was time for violence.

"Whose ship is it?" Holden asked.

Naomi looked up at him. "Your OPA friends didn't tell you anything about a secret stealth fleet, huh?"

Holden shook his head, still staring at the screen. "They didn't know what was out here. Just that their operative pinged them from this location."

"If this was theirs, do you think Fred Johnson have even told you?"

"If it was theirs, they would know I'd find it and come back asking a hell of a lot of questions."

"Maybe that's part of their plan," Naomi shot back.

"That doesn't make any sense," Holden said.

"Guys, we're pretty sure this is the same kind of ship as the one that killed the Cant, right?" Alex asked. "And the fleet that attacked the Donnager." Holden and Naomi nodded. "So it can't be Martian, then."

"Doesn't seem likely," Naomi agreed.

"But why would the OPA blow up a ship full of Belters, like the Cant?" Holden asked.

"Wouldn't be the first time, if it suited their 'greater causes,'" Naomi said, mouth twisted in disgust. There was a moment of silence as everyone remembered the tragic stories of terrorist actions OPA splinter groups had claimed credit for, over the years.

Holden surprised everyone with his next suggestion. "Why don't we get Kenzo up here, see what he makes of this?" Naomi turned and looked at him incredulously. "I'm not buying his corporate espionage story. He might know something useful."

"If you don't think he is who he says he is, why would you ever think you can trust him to be helpful?" Naomi asked.

Holden shrugged, with his shoulders like an Earther. "He was pretty useful getting us out of that jam with the Martians. Knew a lot about MCRN ships for a corporate spy. Maybe he'll know something useful about this ship, too."

Naomi shook her head. "It's a shitty plan."

"Probably," Holden said with a self-deprecating smirk, but headed down the ladder to get their prisoner anyway.

Naomi heaved a sigh, looked down the line at Amos. He was scowling too. At least they had that in common right now, thinking their captain was a naïve, optimistic idiot. Or maybe that's not what Amos was thinking at all. She opened her mouth to say something to him, closed it again and looked away.

It felt like Amos was on the other side of a chasm. She wished they were back on the Cant. A sudden burst of grief threatened to choke her. If they were just going about their old life with its endless list of work to do, she was certain she and Amos would fall back into rhythm so easily. But on the Rocinante, there was nothing to occupy their time in the same way. Naomi's new roles, administrating the ship's systems and comms, gave her plenty to do up on the ops deck; plenty of reasons to interact with Holden, and Alex, and not much for Amos. Truth was on the Roci he just wasn't at her right hand anymore. Now he was the only engineer on a ship that basically ran itself, and he spent most of his time on the lower levels, scrounging up the kind of work that they used to do together.

Perhaps this was going to turn into their new normal; a comfortable distance that with time would slowly lose the flavor of loss. Maybe eventually she wouldn't miss their quiet intimacy, the unspoken understanding and support. Naomi certainly couldn't see how they would be getting any of that back, now that her fear of him was out of the bag. And it seemed every new turn of events on this ship gave Amos more reason to flaunt his violent potential, reminding both of them of that aspect of Amos that Naomi just couldn't accept or respect.

And he was only more frightening now that he wasn't obeying her, or anyone else, unquestioningly anymore. In her mind she turned over what Holden had said passed between them at the airlock. Was Amos truly ready to kill, against Holden's direct order, without consulting her or anyone? He had admitted to her once that he didn't usually trust his own conscience. Had she really lost him that far?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Holden's return with their prisoner. Naomi turned the display to their best image of the mysterious ship.

Episode 8: Salvage

"What the hell is that?" Kenzo asked.

"I was hoping you could tell us." Holden replied.

"Looks dead," he said.

Naomi sighed. "Yeah, you're a great help." She toggled the image to the side.

"EMF reflection practically zero across all main bands," Kenzo noted from the readings. "It's nice stealth tech."

"We already figured that out." Naomi couldn't stand the way he was always pointing out the obvious, dodging questions and avoiding giving them anything real.

"Who has ships like that?" Holden asked.

"Mars, of course. But this is not a design I've seen before, must be one of the new ones."

"It's not Martian," Holden said firmly.

"No one else builds stealth, no one else can afford to," Kenzo argued. Then he paused, turned to Holden. "This is what Fred Johnson sent you out here to find."

"I don't think he knew it was out here," Holden said.

Naomi started to feel worried. Holden was already volunteering too much information, playing right into Kenzo's dumb act. They had absolutely no idea what his true agenda was; they did not need to be letting him in on their plans.

"Bullshit. A dead stealth ship sitting next to a rock, looks just like a rock, unless you know exactly where to look. You guys are out here to salvage this," Kenzo accused.

"We're not on a salvage mission." Holden's voice was tight, and the emotional intensity was ratcheting up in the room.

By habit, Naomi looked over at Amos. His face had not changed at all.

"Fred Johnson is a terrorist," Kenzo said stridently, "You can't-"

"We're not on a salvage mission!" Holden shouted. He stepped in, just had to explain himself to Kenzo. Couldn't let him believe they wanted to be party to anything about this ship and what it had done. "We're here looking for survivors. And some answers. If we're lucky."

"Main airlock's open," Naomi interjected, trying to get Holden back to the task at hand, before he said too much more, "but the hull seems to be intact. There could still be air inside."

"All right then," Holden said, face looking haunted. "We're going in."

Fear of the unknown tightened Naomi's throat. "Remember what happened the last time we went into one of these?" she warned.

"Yeah, well, this time we've got guns of our own," Alex reassured her, stroking the Roci absently.

Holden leaned in to Kenzo. "Suit up. You're coming with us."

"Me? What? Why?"

Naomi suppressed an eye roll. This was another bad idea. Why was Holden so willing to trust this guy?

"And meet your new bodyguard," Holden said, turning to Amos. The big man gave Kenzo a wink and a smile. Gross. Naomi watched Holden step over to Amos, leaning in and saying something low in his ear.

Amos listened attentively, then pasted that fake smile back on his face. "Sure thing, Skipper."

Naomi pushed Kenzo toward him. "Move." She just wanted this over with. She hated seeing Amos with Kenzo, taking every excuse to show off his monstrosity. It only widened the rift she felt between them, eroding her ability to relax around Amos even further.

Still, Naomi was glad to see Holden and Amos working together; Holden willing to trust Amos with a job and Amos willing to follow orders. It was exactly what had to happen if they were all going to stay together. Naomi felt an odd pang of jealousy as she realized that what was truly needed here was for Amos to start looking to Holden the way he used to look to her.

As soon as they were done with the decontamination sequence back on the Roci, Naomi was pulling off her EVA suit and rushing to her station on the Ops deck. Whatever that stuff on the Anubis was, it had shaken her more deeply than anything they had been through yet. Which meant she needed data. All the data that she could get from this safe distance. The more she knew about it, the better she could protect herself and everyone else. Before they left, she had set the Roci's scanners to monitor every output from that ship that she could think of. If anything bad happened to them this time, she had wanted to increase the chances that there might be a useful record of it.

Naomi felt Amos behind her as she rushed up to her station. She felt awkward and comforted by his presence all at once. Things weren't fixed between them, but she had heard the concern in his voice as he called her name over the radio, and he had been staying close to her ever since they reunited at the airlock. She knew she wasn't imagining it because Holden had custody of Kenzo right now, while Amos was glued to her side.

Naomi didn't even glance at him, afraid she'd have the wrong expression on her face and she'd ruin it. But she felt some extension of her mind reaching back and touching him, basking in the support his presence had always provided her. Even if this time she may have been exaggerating it, it still felt good.

Naomi sat down in her chair and began calling up scanner reports, looking for any changes in the readouts that might have come when the mysterious substance had seemed to awaken. She was so glad Holden had seen what she had seen, drawn the same conclusion. A life form. Biotech. And probably lethal.

"What happened in that engine room?" Amos asked from behind her.

"I'm not sure," Naomi said, poring over the readouts on temperature, radio waves, energy use. "There was something… coating the reactor. When you turned it on, it started glowing." Possibly the spike in energy output on this scanner report corresponding to that moment was slightly lower than it should have been. Possibly. "Then I swear I saw it moving."

"Freaky," Amos said, tone completely nonplussed.

Naomi finally turned to look at him, eyebrows climbing.

"Hey, if you say it was scary, I believe you," he backpedaled.

"I have never seen anything even remotely like it. It was like something living, that was drawing strength from the reactor." Naomi shuddered and turned back to her reports, but there was little else to find in the numbers.

"You're going to Eros, aren't you," she heard Kenzo's voice, and two sets of boots clanging up the ladder. "Aren't you?" he repeated as Holden ignored him. "If this Lionel Polansky is going to be anywhere, it'll be there. I know that place," he said emphatically.

Amos and Naomi looked at each other. Why was Holden still sharing information with this guy, and why were they coming up to Ops? They both stepped over to get involved in this conversation.

Kenzo was still talking. "I got hooks in systems all over Eros. Let me help you find him." Holden looked like he was actually considering this. "And if I do, you let me walk."

Naomi sucked in her breath, and felt Amos stiffen beside her. That was a really bad idea. This was not someone they could trust. And Holden looked about to fall for it.

"Okay," Holden said. Naomi's heart fell. "When we find Polansky. Not before." Then he turned his gaze to her and Amos. It was harder, more commanding than she had ever seen from him. Warning them not to undermine him on this decision. She looked away from him pointedly; Amos intensified his glare. They didn't agree, but they followed the unspoken order. "Anybody object to us turning that ship into scrap?" Holden asked next, changing the subject.

"Hell no," Amos said, pleasure in his voice.

"Well, I do-" Kenzo started.

"Anyone except you," Holden said. Then he looked back at Naomi.

At least this was a plan she could get behind. "Do it," she said. Whatever that glowing biotech stuff was, it might have killed two ships and a research station.

Kenzo kept talking anyway, as they all took their stations to carry out the command. "Look, you control that ship. You have a bargaining chip. Why would you destroy something you control?"

"Because that ship is a weapon," Holden fired back at him, "And that thing on it felt like a weapon, too. And I don't think Fred Johnson, or Earth, or Mars, or anybody should have it."

Amos was already up in the gunner's chair. "Torpedos armed and ready," he called down to them. Holden and Naomi turned to the display at Holden's station, the Anubis still barely visible against the rock of the asteroid.

"Fire," Holden growled. All eyes were fixed on the image of hated ship as it turned white in its own little supernova. Naomi thought she heard Holden whisper: "Remember the Cant."

This is how it gets better with Amos, Naomi thought. Nothing talked about, no explanations, just one day he's over it and back by her side. It didn't feel one-hundred-percent, but warmth and openness were creeping back into his face when Amos looked at her. He wasn't the type to acknowledge he was feeling better, and calling attention to it might only set them back. So she contented herself with matching his steps as they all made their way down the dark streets of Eros station.

"Last place that Lionel Polansky showed up on the nets, is here," Kenzo announced as they approached a sleazy-looking motel called the Blue Falcon.

They walked in silently, trying not to call attention to themselves. There were several patrons wandering around the lobby, and a tired-looking man helping a customer at the front desk. Holden stopped a respectful distance away from them, clearly waiting for his turn. The rest of the group spread out, aimlessly exploring the space. The lobby was out of style and clean only by the strictest definition of the word. The air had a damp smell to it; the environmental controls were clearly in need of maintenance. And there was a poster of some scenic view from Earth on the wall. Naomi hated everything about the place.

A can fell heavily from a vending machine in the wall, and everyone jumped. Naomi wondered why she was feeling so tense. Sure, they had no idea what they were about to walk into, but that was becoming business as usual for the Roci crew.

Holden walked up to the desk. "I'm looking for a friend who checked into a room here. Lionel Polansky." The clerk just stared at him, not reacting.

"It's a special friend," Amos added from his position at the center of the room, not moving a muscle, "It's his birthday." There was only a barest hint of threat in his voice.

The man behind the desk paled, drawing some kind of conclusion about them and starting to comply. It took him an awful long time. Naomi felt anxiety creeping up the back of her neck, wanting him to get on with it. "I got an L. Polanksy in room 22. Call up for you?"

"No," Holden said. "No, it's a surprise thing, thank you." He dropped the fake smile from his face when he turned to Naomi. He stepped in close, spoke under his breath to her. "Maybe I should go up on my own, not freak the guy out."

"Maybe take Amos," Naomi replied. She didn't want to think what might happen if there was an altercation up there, even if Holden had a gun strapped under his arm.

"Alone is fine," Holden replied, voice sounding tightly controlled. He didn't trust Amos to have his back?

Naomi frowned and looked over at Amos. Then it suddenly clicked why she was feeling so nervous. He was standing like he expected violence to erupt at any moment: stance grounded, hands ready to draw, eyes scanning the room. Naomi whipped her head around, trying to figure out what threat he was seeing.

"Hey!" she heard Amos shout. She saw Kenzo running, and then it suddenly seemed like everyone in the room had a gun and they were all firing. She felt Holden pushing her, covering her with his body and directing her to hide behind the front desk. He squeezed in next to her, then pulled out his pistol.

The sound of repeated gunshots was deafening. She could only hope Amos and Alex were ok; if the shots were continuing it had to mean at least one of them was still in the fight. She held her breath every time Holden leaned out to take a few shots. "We're running out of ammo," Holden called after what felt like forever.

Moments later, eveything fell silent. Holden turned around and stood up from his crouch slowly, looking out at the room. When no one shot him, Naomi decided it was safe to stand up too. Her eyes immediately sought Amos, then Alex. She felt a knot loosen in her stomach when they both looked unhurt. Everyone was staring at a man with a gun she doesn't think had been there before the firefight started. He carried himself with a relaxed confidence and evidently had just saved them.

"James Holden," the stranger said, like he was surprised, but seeing him made an odd kind of sense. "Shit just follow you around, don't it kid."

"Are you a cop?" Holden asked. That was Naomi's assumption as well.

"Not anymore," the stranger replied wryly.

Naomi picked her way across the debris to Amos, who caught her eye for only a second and waved her off with a shake of his head. He wasn't taking his attention away from their new friend. Naomi frowned, then changed course to check on Alex. The Martian was staring at the bodies on the ground. Naomi laid one hand on his arm carefully. He jumped a little and looked up at her. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

"Yeah…" he said, eyes not quite focused on her. "Yeah. Sure. Managed not to get hit, at least," he shrugged.

"That came out of nowhere," Naomi said. "Was that… for us?" She shuddered, suddenly regretting leaving the relative safety of the OPA-run station. She hadn't really believed until now that whoever was behind all these atrocities might be gunning for them personally.

"Hey, thanks for the assist," she heard Holden say, addressing the one stranger still standing in the room. "Now who the hell are you?"

"Anybody else know you were coming here?" he asked, ignoring the question and taking control of the conversation.

"No. No, I don't think so," Holden replied.

"They do now." He tossed Holden a hand terminal. Naomi came over to get a look. On it they saw video footage of themselves, walking into the Falcon, then a screen cap of the room number they had been looking for. All from the perspective of someone standing right next to them.

"Kenzo!" Naomi exclaimed. "That son of a bitch." The spy must have had some kind of surveillance tech they had missed, like contact lenses. She knew it had been stupid of Holden to trust him so much, taking him along on their missions like he was on their side… and he had called down some kind of hit squad on them?

The stranger started talking to someone on his own hand terminal, then strode purposefully up towards the motel rooms. "Hey, hey!" Holden called, as they all moved to intercept him. "We need to talk."

The stranger bristled under Holden's reaching hand, stopped and turned around slowly.

"Who the hell are you? And what are you doing here?" Holden demanded.

"I'm going to room 22. Now any second, there's going to be a group of thugs coming through that door, this time with badges. You touch me again, there's gonna be another body on the floor." Then he smiled almost apologetically at Holden.

Holden turned back and looked at the rest of them. Standing in front of Naomi, Amos cocked his head in some kind of response to the query in Holden's eyes. The stranger was already heading up the stairs; Holden signaled them all to follow.

Naomi tried to stay calm as they moved through the corridor, but it was a difficult task when everyone was on edge and they still had no idea what they were walking into. She was also keenly aware of being the only one without a gun. That had been her own choice; standing next to the airlock back on the Roci she had been quite sure she had no interest in putting blood on her hands today. Now, she almost regretted those convictions. Then she saw a frightened Alex almost shoot an old man in the face for opening his door at the wrong moment, and she felt validated in her choice again.

When they reached room 22, Holden and Amos took up positions on either side of the door, ignoring the lanky stranger who was just standing right in front of it. Holden signaled to Amos to turn and rush the door, but the stranger surprised them both by kicking in the door himself. "Julie?" he called, walking inside with barely a trace of caution. Holden, then Amos, stepped in after him, guns at the ready.

"Who's Julie?" Naomi asked Alex, as the two of them peered in the door apprehensively. Alex didn't answer.

The room was dark. A truly unpleasant aroma hit her nose. "What's that smell?" Holden asked.

"Sweat," Amos responded. "Sick." Then his voice sounded puzzled. "Ozone?"

Naomi smelled it too as she walked in behind them. There was a disgusting combination of human misery and odd chemical reactions suffusing the place.

"Scopuli," Holden read aloud, from a uniform on the floor. So this really was their survivor's room.

"Somebody put up a bitch of a fight," Amos said, light on his gun scanning broken glass and equipment all over the room.

"No, they were turning things off," Naomi said, as she realized what the clues were saying. "Same as that reactor." Confirming her theory that the blue stuff needed an energy source to be active.

"Nobody touch anything," Holden ordered. They saw the stranger heading for the back room. "Wait, wait!"

Everyone rushed in after him, then stopped short at whatever they found. Naomi slipped past Holden to take a look. "Oh my god," she said, as her brain tried to make sense of what she was seeing. It had once been a woman, but the body was suffused by something… inorganic. The angles of it were familiar, the same as the material coating the reactor on the Anubis. A bioweapon, indeed.

"Jesus." Alex swore behind her.

The stranger dropped to his knees. He knew her. "Julie…" he whispered, voice choked with grief.

Episode 9: Critical Mass

"Don't touch her," Holden cautioned as the stranger bent over the horribly disfigured body. "She could be contagious." The man gave him a look like he was insulted, but he retracted his hand.

"Come on boys, we gotta go," Alex said. "Cavalry's on its way." He was right; the stranger had said that station security were already en-route. Better to slip away, pretend this never happened. If this was Lionel Polansky, she was beyond their help.

"If he wants to stay, let him," Amos said over Holden's shoulder, then turned on his heel and left the room. Naomi was glad someone gave Holden that advice, what with his compulsion to save everyone.

"There's nothing you can do about her," Naomi said softly to the stranger.

"And if you stay here, you'll never find out who did this to her," Holden said, real emotion in his voice. No one deserved to end up like that. The man didn't move, and so they walked away, and left him to his grief.

The crew regrouped as they came back down the hallway. The men all had their pistols at the ready again, moving ahead of Naomi. She felt as shiver of fear as she saw Amos, then Holden and Alex, duck through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs and raise their guns. There must be trouble in the lobby already.

"Drop them," a voice called.

"Not happening," she heard Amos reply.

"Easy," Holden said as she rounded the corner herself. There was one man in the room, holding his gun on their group with the confidence of authority. The station security response, she assumed.

Everyone was silent, and then their grieving stranger stepped heavily down the stairs behind them.

The newcomer seemed to recognize him. "Jesus, Miller." The stranger named Miller waved his hand at Amos as he walked past, suggesting he could lower his gun. Amos ignored him. "What the hell have you got yourself into?" the cop continued. "Ain't no way I can clean all this up." He sounded shaken as he indicated the wreckage of the gunfight.

"You got that right," Amos said.

"We're not asking you to do anything," Holden replied in the same moment. Miller just kept trudging, as if in a trance. He moved right through everyone's line of fire without batting an eye. "We're just going to walk out of here real easy; we didn't see each other."

"Look, you stay right where you are," the cop ordered. Miller stopped next to him. They exchanged a few low words, and the cop pointed his weapon at the ground.

Holden lowered his arms slowly, then signaled for everyone to move out. They scurried toward the front door as a group, Amos covering them. Naomi heard Holden tell the cop not to touch anything in the room as they passed. She certainly hoped he'd listen.

Miller had caught up with them as they made their way through the crowded halls of Eros station, trudging silently behind their little group. "We need to find out what he knows," Holden said to Naomi as they walked up ahead.

"Don't push him too hard right now. He's having a hard time dealing with what we saw. That girl meant something to him. It was a shock finding her like that." She tried hard to get the anxious and impatient captain to see it from their new companion's point of view. When emotions ran that high, it was hard to convince someone to act logically. They found an unlocked maintenance hatch, ducked in to regroup.

"Doesn't look like we were followed," Amos reported after a few minutes of watching the crowd passing by half a level above them.

"That's a relief," Naomi responded. They were onto something really bad. And who knew how deep it went.

"Okay, I'd say we're all in a bit of trouble here," Holden began, addressing the room but meaning the message for Miller. "So why don't we just figure out-"

"What were you doing following Julie?" Miller asked, squatting forlornly on the floor.

"We didn't know who we were looking for," Holden replied.

"Who were those thugs back at the hotel?"

"We don't know."

"Any goddamn thing you do know?" Miller asked.

"All that stuff on her, we saw it before," Naomi supplied. "On the Anubis." She was rushing to keep the conversation focused, before anyone's wild emotions got the better of them.

"The Anubis," Miller echoed, like he knew the name. Suddenly he launched himself to his feet, turned and shoved Holden into the wall. "What happened to her? What happened to her?!"

"Settle down!" Holden commanded through gritted teeth, holding Miller back from him without trying to escalate the violence.

"Back off!" Naomi shouted as the two men grappled with each other. Miller was frantic, like he was ready to take it all out on Holden right now. "Back off!" Something wasn't happening, that was supposed to be happening right now. "Amos!" she shouted when she realized. "For God's sake, do something!"

"What we should be doing is leaving," Amos replied, still in his post watching the corridor. He turned and gestured emphatically, the fighters slowing down enough to listen. "The cops are gonna be all over us. We need to get back to the Roci, and off this rock, now."

"He's right," Alex said.

Naomi could sense what was coming next. "We shouldn't separate."

Amos scowled like he was disappointed in her and spun on his heels, ripping the hatch doors open and leaving the tight corridor without a word.

"I'm gonna go prep the ship for dust-off. You guys meet us there," Alex said, following the big man. Both of them were covering their fear pretty ineffectively with a show of angry disgust.

Their departure hit Naomi like a punch in the gut. While they were right, she couldn't believe they were willing to abandon everyone like this. Not Amos. He had never turned his back on her like that before, not when there was a hint of danger... maybe things weren't as fixed between them as she had let herself believe.

Though a little part of her was also surprised that she wasn't right on their heels. It was the way she had been living for years, mostly looking out for herself. It had been a long time since she had felt a loyalty like the one she was beginning to feel for Holden. Other than what she had had with Amos, of course. And apparently he wasn't going to let her have both.

Naomi turned, just a touch forlornly, back to her chosen companions. Holden and Miller had separated, the former holding his hands out in a calming gesture. They still only had eyes for each other. "We both followed Julie here," Holden said. "We both have part of the story. I want the truth as bad as you do."

They were taking a few minutes to let Miller calm down, give him some space to open up. Naomi had made a quick connection to Alex's hand terminal, just to reassure herself they were all still on the same page. She was too angry and hurt to call Amos. After she and Holden got a bit more information out of Miller, they'd decide if they were offering him a ride off the station, and everyone would reunite back at the ship.

Naomi looked over at Miller, decided he looked calm enough to start being reasonable. "What was Julie doing on the Anubis?"

"She was OPA, she found some new bio-weapon they were putting together on Phoebe."

"So did we," Holden said.

"She wanted to steal it," Miller continued. "So they couldn't use it on Belters." His voice dropped to a forlorn whisper. "They used it on her."

Naomi looked over at Holden, making sure he was paying attention to how much pain this man was in.

"She was an Earther," Miller said. "She died for the Belt."

A massive quaking rocked the station. "What the hell was that?" Holden asked, as the crowd in the street above them began to scream. More shockwaves followed, and panicked people began running down their service corridor.

Attention, Eros Station has experienced a radiation hazard breach, said a voice over the loudspeaker.

Alex pinged Holden's hand terminal. "Did you guys hear that?"

"We sure did," Holden responded.

"Son of a bitch," Alex said, "a ship just blew up in the docks."

"The Roci?" Naomi asked, searching her own terminal for information.

"No, it wasn't in that bay. That's the good news. The bad news is, ships are all locked down tight."

"We're stuck here," Amos said into Alex's terminal, voice tight.

"Shit," Naomi swore. The crowds were getting rowdy, and men in heavy armor had appeared to herd them toward the radiation shelters. She wondered if they should follow, get themselves to safety. But something didn't feel right. Miller and Holden weren't moving, either. They watched for a few minutes, waiting for more information before they made their move.

"What are we looking at?" Holden asked Miller after a while.

"Alright see them cops? That's CPM, station security. They're gangsters with badges. One teams rounds 'em up, the other shakes 'em out. This was planned. They have assignments. They knew it was going to happen."

"How could they know a ship was going to blow up on the docks?" Holden asked. He caught up after a second. "They blew it up themselves."

Suddenly, Miller slid open the service door, stepped out purposefully into the chaotic hall.

"Hey!" Holden called, reaching out after him. "Where the hell are you going?"

Naomi grabbed onto Holden's arm, pulled as hard as she could to keep him inside their hiding spot. "Let him go!" It was one thing to stay and get information out of the guy, it was another to start charging around the station instead of getting somewhere safe. This mystery was not worth their lives.

"Miller's onto something," Holden growled staring her down ferociously. "The Cant, the girl…"

"It's not your problem," she pleaded. "And it's not your fault." His eyes took on a bewildered cast, but he seemed to be calming down. "None of it is."

"Okay," he said, and really seemed to be processing her words. Grateful for them, even. "But now I'm making it my problem." The determination was still there. "Meet me back at the Roci. I'll be a few hours, tops." He turned to rush after Miller.

Naomi pulled him back again. "We're better when we stick together," she pleaded. She didn't trust he'd make the smartest calls without her, and she was finding that she didn't want to face this crisis without him.

Holden's resolve didn't budge. "If I'm not back in three hours, leave." Then he turned and walked away from her again.

And now everyone had left her.