Story so far
Amos Burton leads Prax through the Io lab, shotgun level, following the signs to the primary lab past fleeing staff. In the specimen gallery they find Strickland, who has just murdered his handler and now poses as a coerced victim who 'saved' the children. Amos sees straight through it — 'You're one of Protogen's pet sociopaths, and I ain't buying any damn thing you're trying to sell' — provoking the doctor's true cold rage.
When Prax, holding Mei, declines revenge, Amos ends it himself: a single auto-shotgun blast takes Strickland's head off, and he shrugs. His child-protective fury, the engine of the whole hunt, delivers the reckoning. He then handles the extraction with brisk competence — clearing a security barricade with grenades from the rear, loading the six children into radiation-safe transports, teaching Prax to pull rather than push the carts across Io's surface — and gets everyone back aboard the Rocinante, the mission Holden trusted him with complete.
Appearance
A big, bald, bearded Earther in light Martian armor, shotgun steady and level, calm and conversational with an undercurrent of anger.
Role
Rocinante mechanic who executes the child-experimenter Strickland and extracts the rescued children.
Relationships
Strickland — The child-experimenter whose victim act he rejects and whom he executes with a shotgun blast.
Prax — The father he escorts to Mei and for whom he does the killing Prax won't.
Mei — The child he helps secure and evacuate, fulfilling his vow to bring her home.
Bobbie Draper — The Marine he meets on the surface, goo-covered from her kill, and pulls aboard after her suit's emergency blow.
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 16 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 3
- The Rocinante's big, blunt, endlessly capable mechanic, fiercely loyal to Holden and the ship.
Chapter 7
- The Rocinante's mechanic, a shrewd former criminal who covers Holden's poor smuggling by baiting UN marines.
Chapter 14
- The Rocinante's mechanic, whose amiable menace boils into raw, unfamiliar rage when a child is held hostage.
Chapter 15
- The Rocinante's mechanic, meticulously arming for the raid, who bonds with Prax and quietly hands him a gun.
Chapter 20
- The Rocinante's mechanic who steadies a panicking Holden, refuses to abandon the wounded — and is shot in the head at the airlock.
Chapter 22
- Battered but alive, Amos resets his own shattered nose and spearheads the breakout, keeping his gallows humor through the bombardment.
Chapter 23
- The mechanic works the aft guns through the Ganymede escape, bantering with the ship he treats like a beloved partner.
Chapter 27
- Amos boards the vacuum cargo bay beside Holden, admits his own fear, and battles the monster hand-to-hand.
Chapter 28
- Amos hauls the pinned Holden clear, then finds the incendiary charge the monster planted — a bomb he recognizes at a glance.
Chapter 30
- Concussed but game through the bomb-repairs, Amos opens up to Naomi about his Baltimore 'squeeze trade' childhood — and why he'll kill for Mei.
Chapter 34
- Amos catches the collapsing Prax with sober tenderness, celebrates getting fired by getting laid and a new job, and glimpses of his scarred, tattooed past show.
Chapter 40
- Amos votes the crew into a company and Holden into the captaincy, defining himself simply: a grease monkey who wants a captain who'd take a bullet for him.
Chapter 41
- Amos resets Prax's dislocated knee, then gently but chillingly loyalty-tests him about the abuse smear — ready to space him if it were true.
Chapter 50
- Before the split mission, Amos brings Holden the hardest hazmat suit and swears to get Prax and Mei off Io — anything that reaches them will have to kill him first.
Chapter 51
- Amos gears up for the Io lab assault with grim good humor, then plunges into the base with Prax when Bobbie stays outside to face the monster alone.
Chapter 52
- Amos fights through the lab to the children, sees through Strickland's victim act, and executes him without hesitation once Prax declines to.