The Butcher of Anderson Station (The Expanse, #1.5)

by James S.A. Corey

Five generations of grubbing for air, packing extended families into surveying ships with seven bunks, looking back at a sun that was hardly more than the brightest star. It was hard to think of any of them as human anymore.

“You changed, Colonel. The way you behave changed after Anderson Station. Before that, you were just another inner planets asshole who didn’t give a shit whether the Belt lived or died. You stuck to your bases and your stage-managed outreach programs and the station levels where the security gets paid by Earth taxes. And now, you’re not.

“You found something out, then?” “Fuck off, Dawes.”

“Colonel, are you double-checking my work here, sir?”

“Sir, I’ve got my orders just like you do. We did what we could, but Psych Ops is standing down now. Your turn.”

“Let me talk to them,” Fred said. “Maybe if they hear it from a different voice, they’ll understand—” “Sir,” Santiago cut in. “I am not authorized to do that. You want to argue about it? Call General Jasira back at OPCOM. Santiago out.”

little pressure, and the rifle would send a hundred spikes of steel thinner than needles through his brain.

And you’re trying to waste that very valuable resource.

I was supposed to check her suit seals, but I was in a mood. I was fifteen, you know?

“There was a message sent to us as we went in,” he said. “A message I didn’t see until it was too late.”

Also, a running feed that looks like a straight dump of the security cameras.”

in a panicked screech. “We just needed some time! We’re surrendering!”

But his last tightbeam to Psych Ops had gotten through just fine. They’d known.

“But this time it was different?” Dawes said. He didn’t sound sarcastic or angry. Just curious.

“That man had a crippled baby girl,” Fred said. “I killed him.”

“I killed him because he wanted her to have enough air to breathe,” Fred said. “I killed her daddy while he was trying to surrender, and they gave me a medal for doing it. So there you go. That’s what happened on Anderson Station. What are you going to do about it?”

“They used me. They made it about sending messages to everyone that you don’t fuck with Earth, because look at the shit we’ll do just because you spaced an administrator on a nowhere station. They made me the poster boy for disproportional response. They made me a butcher.”

want to die, it will do that girl and her father absolutely no good. If you want to make it up to her and all the people like her, I could use your expertise. You’re a rare resource. You’ve got knowledge and training,

“This was a recruitment, then.”