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

by James S.A. Corey

It was hard to tell when they were all in vacuum-rated combat armor, but the marines looked calm. They’d been trained on Luna until maneuvering in light or null gravity and vacuum was second nature. They were put in cramped ships until advancing down claustrophobic metal corridors with blind corners at every intersection didn’t scare them. They were told that marines doing a full breaching action assault could expect as high as 60 percent casualties until that number stopped meaning anything.

It was all very clean, very organized. Centuries of warfare in the electronic age had distilled it to this.

The concussion rocket his marines had used to clear the corridor had burst them like overripe grapes. Fred’s vacuum-rated armor protected him from the smell of viscera, but it reported it to him as a slight increase in atmospheric methane levels. The stench of death reduced to a data point.

They made me the poster boy for disproportional response. They made me a butcher.”

A fast pull across the neck, and Fred could bleed out in four minutes. A stab in the kidney could take hours. Cut the cords that were tying his arms, and it could take years.