Story so far
Amos Burton, leg and hand still in medical apparatus and neck bandaged ('serious injury better than anyone else Holden knew'), loads the last gear and lifts off with the Rocinante. Nursing a huge repair list ('you guys let someone use my girl for target practice'), he trails Holden to the med bay where Murtry lies handcuffed to a couch, his shattered arm regrowing. When Holden reminds him he was never actually forbidden to see Murtry, Amos asks to come along, then has Holden step out for a private word.
He tells the chief he doesn't resent the tactics — 'Smart move taking me from behind… I appreciate a good player' — but draws the one hard line: 'you made me kill Wei. I liked Wei.' And he promises a reckoning on his own terms: 'when I do finally beat you, you won't be helpless.' The threat leaves Holden waiting anxiously around the corner, half-afraid Amos has just killed the man.
Appearance
A big, broad, bald Earther man; here a walking casualty — leg and right-hand medical rigs, a neck bandage giving him a piratical look, moving with grim satisfaction.
Role
Holden's enforcer; the recovering survivor who serves the captive Murtry a personal, patient promise of vengeance for Wei.
Relationships
Adolphus Murtry — The captive he warns he'll return to beat 'when you won't be helpless,' for making him kill Wei.
Chandra Wei — The friend Murtry used as bait and got killed, the one line Amos won't forgive.
Holden — His captain who lets him have a private, ominous word with the prisoner.
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 14 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 6
- The [[Rocinante]]'s blunt mechanic and enforcer, angling for shore leave and never forgetting that the money's good.
Chapter 13
- Holden's muscle on the surface, who reads Murtry instantly as a killer who 'gets off on it' and warns him off — one killer to another.
Chapter 20
- On watch in the commissary bar, Amos clocks Basia's warning without alarm and hands him the good whiskey — 'you look like you need it.'
Chapter 21
- Amos arrives with Basia at the burning house and drops the RCE officer sent to cuff him with one punch — 'Nope.'
Chapter 27
- Amos puts a gun to Murtry's head over Naomi's capture, stands down at Holden's order with a promise — 'I'm gonna kill you' — and warns this all ends in blood.
Chapter 33
- Amos strong-arms dawdling colonists into the ruins, hauls Elvi's water-maker, and — refusing to leave a little girl to die — sets out to rescue the missing Dahlkes as the storm hits.
Chapter 34
- In the storm's lull, Amos leads a search party with Wei into the ruined dark for the Dahlkes — and comes back having found nothing but obliteration.
Chapter 35
- Back from the ruined recon, Amos backs Holden's evacuation ultimatum with his hand on his pistol — and shares an easy, mutual-respect rapport with RCE's Wei.
Chapter 43
- Amos rebuilds submerged mine carts and scavenges one working battery so Holden can reach the scattered drops — working alone in his slug-torched shelter, going blind but refusing to come inside.
Chapter 49
- Bonding with the RCE enforcer he calls Chandra, Amos accepts Holden's charge to guard the colonists — offering to just 'solve' Murtry, and settling for last man standing while the captain goes north.
Chapter 52
- With Murtry gone north after Holden, Amos jury-rigs an acetylene-burning cart on Elvi's trick and follows — his job to keep the chief from killing anyone, wherever the chief happens to be.
Chapter 56
- Reaching the alien plant, Amos faces down his friend Wei — then is shot in the back by Murtry's ambush, and though he blasts the chief's armor to ruin, he's left gravely wounded and grinning on the ground.
Chapter 62
- Alive after all, Amos is up on the scaffold planning the Roci's repairs with a maimed hand — needing new fingers grown — proving Holden right that if everyone else lives, so does he.
Chapter 63
- Aboard the departing Roci, a maimed Amos loads gear, then follows Holden to the captive Murtry — telling him plainly he'll be back to finish it, and this time Murtry 'won't be helpless.'