From the Bookshelf of Around the Year in 52 Books …

Holden reached up and scratched his own greasy hair with distaste. The Knight was too small for showers, and the zero-g sinks were too small to stick your head in. Amos had solved the hair-washing problem by shaving all of his off. Now he just had a ring of stubble around his bald spot. Somehow, Naomi’s hair stayed shiny and mostly oil free. Holden wondered how she did that.

She was right. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, he handed off to Naomi. He’d been doing it for years. She was smart, capable, usually unflappable. She’d become a crutch, and she’d been through all the same trauma he had. If he didn’t start paying attention, he’d break her, and he needed not to do that.

Naomi slumped down with a noisy, extended exhale.

“See, this is why I can’t ever be in command,” she said.

“Don’t like making tough calls with incomplete information?”

He’d never been to Titan. Suddenly he wanted to go there very much. A few weeks of sleeping late, eating in fine restaurants, and lying on a hammock, watching Titan’s colorful atmosphere storm above him sounded like heaven. Hell, as long as he was fantasizing, he threw in Naomi walking over to his hammock with a couple of fruity-looking drinks in her hands.

She ruined it by talking.

“At least Naomi got away,” Holden said.

“That is good.”

“She’s amazing. She’d never put Amos and Alex in danger if she could help it. I mean, she’s serious. Professional. Strong, you know? I mean, she’s really, really…”

“Pretty, too,” Miller said. “Great hair. Love the eyes.” 

Holden had to suppress a smile. Telling an angry woman how attractive her anger made her would make it stop being cute very quickly.

They looked at each other across the narrow space, the implications heavier than a ten-g burn.

*

Shaddid snapped at the comment like a shark.

*

His nerves stopped screaming, and consciousness returned like a reluctant schoolboy.

*

One of the vice squad shouted something angry about her files being locked again, and a computer tech scuttled across the station house like a nervous cockroach.

*

If they let the station turn into a riot zone, let order fail, all these lives would get turned into kibble like a kitten in a meat grinder.

*

Miller poked at the words like a tongue at the gap of a missing tooth.

Holden:  Amos, do the thing!
Amos:  All respect, Captain, but I'm not going to do the thing.
Holden, musing to himself:  hmmm ... It's Amos, he knows what he's doing.
Holden: Carry on, Amos.
Amos: Roger that, Captain!