The Churn

Earth is crowded, polluted and poor, and in Baltimore crime either pays a person or kills them. Burton runs one of the city's criminal organizations, and a new private security force has arrived to clean the streets up. As the crackdown tightens, his hold on the city begins to slip.

Burton's crew includes his loyal lieutenant Erich, Lydia, a former prostitute, and Timmy, a young enforcer. With the pressure rising, they look for a way out of the life that has kept them alive.

Timmy is the young man who will later leave Baltimore for the stars and become Amos Burton, the mechanic aboard the Rocinante. The novella is an origin story for one of the Expanse series' most enigmatic characters, and it takes place before Leviathan Wakes.

It needs no prior knowledge of the series. The setting is a near-future slum on a worn-out planet, and the question running through it is whether anyone in Burton's crew can get out of Baltimore at all.