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Quiz about The Expanse 2 Calibans War 1
Quiz about The Expanse 2 Calibans War 1

The Expanse 2: Caliban's War [1] Quiz


"Caliban's War" was written by James S. A. Corey, published in 2012. It is the second novel in the Expanse series, in which Prax Meng searches for his daughter while a war rages over new protomolecule weapons. This quiz is part one of two.

A multiple-choice quiz by qrayx. Estimated time: 7 mins.
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Author
qrayx
Time
7 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
400,008
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
15
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
9 / 15
Plays
135
- -
Question 1 of 15
1. "Caliban's War" opened with Bobbie Draper of the Martian Marines out on patrol on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Bobbie, her squad, and the UN marines stationed nearby were attacked by some kind of monster. After the monster had slaughtered
everyone else, how did Bobbie kill the monster?
Hint


Question 2 of 15
2. Since "Leviathan Wakes", Fred Johnson had hired the crew of the Rocinante to keep the shipping lanes safe by hunting pirates. In "Caliban's War", James Holden's story is opened in medias res. What dire emergency was he dealing with? Hint


Question 3 of 15
3. Bobbie woke up in the medical bay. She was the only survivor of the fight with the monster on Ganymede, and the techs hadn't been able to view the camera footage from her suit. It turned out Bobbie's suit was an older model that had used older encoding for its video, and once they used the correct codecs, they were able to see her recordings. Why had Bobbie been wearing old armour? Hint


Question 4 of 15
4. Praxidike Meng was a botanist working on Ganymede at the beginning of "Caliban's War". His daughter Mei, and a group of other children, were patients of Dr. Strickland for which rare condition? Hint


Question 5 of 15
5. In the brief battle between Earth and Mars over Ganymede, lots of the moon's infrastructure was damaged. Fred Johnson asked the crew of the Rocinante to go to Ganymede to check out the situation. They went undercover on a ship called the Weeping Somnambulist, delivering relief supplies. When they got into Ganymede orbit, they were boarded by a UN inspections crew. During the inspection, why did Amos start antagonizing the UN marines? Hint


Question 6 of 15
6. As Prax watched Ganymede's society break down around him, what concept kept coming to mind? Hint


Question 7 of 15
7. When Holden, Naomi, and Amos were trying to land the Weeping Somnambulist on Ganymede, what did they notice? Hint


Question 8 of 15
8. When the protomolecule monster was activated on Ganymede at the beginning of "Caliban's War", what other event happened around the same time? Hint


Question 9 of 15
9. Prax's daughter, Mei, was taken from her daycare by Dr. Strickland just before the first battle on Ganymede. Prax tried to track her down, but Ganymede's regular emergency services had bigger problems to deal with. Prax found a hacker who was able to show him security camera footage of Dr. Strickland with Mei. What did the hacker want as payment? Hint


Question 10 of 15
10. On Ganymede, a freighter full of supplies was attempting to leave, but the local population was stopping it. The situation between the crowd and security was near a boiling point when Holden arrived. Holden started to reach for his gun to persuade the security members to back down, but Naomi stepped in and offered which other solution? Hint


Question 11 of 15
11. At the United Nations, Chrisjen Avasarala may have only been the Deputy Undersecretary of Executive Administration, but in her own home, she was the boss (and nani). What happened to little children who made a mess in Avasarala's house? Hint


Question 12 of 15
12. On Ganymede, Prax approached Holden and asked for help to find his daughter Mei. Holden, Amos, and Prax started following the trail Mei's kidnappers had taken, seen in security camera footage. During their trip, some friendly Pinkwater security officers offered to escort the group back to the docks where it was safe (for a nominal fee). What was Holden's counteroffer? Hint


Question 13 of 15
13. Prax and Holden found the kidnappers' hideout on Ganymede, but not Mei. The kidnappers were in the middle of packing up their gear and enjoying a pizza party when Holden burst in. Holden tried to negotiate with the kidnappers, but what action triggered a full firefight? Hint


Question 14 of 15
14. Fighting broke out between Earth and Mars a second time on Ganymede, so Holden got his crew and Prax out of there. On the trip back to Tycho, why did Naomi break off her romantic relationship with Holden? Hint


Question 15 of 15
15. Chrisjen Avasarala wanted to stop Earth and Mars from fighting, and used her power to try to hold back the more hawkish members of the UN military, like Admiral Nguyen. Avasarala had taken apart Nguyen's fleet, but he had managed to reassemble it somehow without her knowing. How was Avasarala compromised? Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "Caliban's War" opened with Bobbie Draper of the Martian Marines out on patrol on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Bobbie, her squad, and the UN marines stationed nearby were attacked by some kind of monster. After the monster had slaughtered everyone else, how did Bobbie kill the monster?

Answer: She didn't kill the monster.

Bobbie was lying on the ground as the monster killed the last Martian Marine. Before it could move on to Bobbie, it shuddered and sprouted an extra set of limbs, and then immediately blew up. The blast knocked Bobbie unconscious, but it also threw her kilometers away from the battlefield, which saved her life. Minutes after the fight, one of Ganymede's orbital mirrors fell on the site, crushing all evidence of the monster.

It was later learned that the scientists creating the protomolecule hybrids (the monsters) could not reliably control them. The protomolecule would always eventually figure out how to break its programming. The scientists installed a bomb on each monster that would detonate when that happened, to prevent their experiment from running out of control. When the monster fighting Bobbie grew two new limbs, that was not part of the original programming, and the bomb activated.
2. Since "Leviathan Wakes", Fred Johnson had hired the crew of the Rocinante to keep the shipping lanes safe by hunting pirates. In "Caliban's War", James Holden's story is opened in medias res. What dire emergency was he dealing with?

Answer: He could not make coffee.

The whole galley on the Rocinante was down so Amos could fix something. Holden had just woken up to fight pirates, and was upset that he couldn't get his caffeine fix before he had to work, telling Naomi, "I can't fight pirates without coffee." Amos knew his captain, and had made a thermos before shutting things down.

Holden was a bit of a connoisseur of coffee, and his love for the drink was mentioned throughout the series.
3. Bobbie woke up in the medical bay. She was the only survivor of the fight with the monster on Ganymede, and the techs hadn't been able to view the camera footage from her suit. It turned out Bobbie's suit was an older model that had used older encoding for its video, and once they used the correct codecs, they were able to see her recordings. Why had Bobbie been wearing old armour?

Answer: Getting a new custom-fit suit was a difficult process.

Bobbie wore an old Goliath III suit of the Martian Force Recon Marines, instead of the new Goliath IV. Bobbie was larger than most other people, standing more than two metres tall, and massing in at more than one hundred kilograms, all muscle. Going through the requisition procedure for a custom-fitted suit was so much of a hassle that Bobbie just elected to keep her old suit.
4. Praxidike Meng was a botanist working on Ganymede at the beginning of "Caliban's War". His daughter Mei, and a group of other children, were patients of Dr. Strickland for which rare condition?

Answer: They had weakened immune systems.

Mei and her patient group had Myers-Skelton Premature Immunosenescence. Without her daily medicine, her immune system would start to shut down, and then a minor infection might kill her.

Prax was initially concerned that Mei's kidnappers didn't know about her condition, and that she would die within a week of disappearing. He was relieved when he found out that her doctor had taken her.

Dr. Strickland was actually Carlos Merrian, one of Protogen's psychopathic scientists. He had set up a practice to find immune-compromised children to use as test subjects because they had fewer systems he had to account for when creating the delicately balanced protomolecule hybrids.
5. In the brief battle between Earth and Mars over Ganymede, lots of the moon's infrastructure was damaged. Fred Johnson asked the crew of the Rocinante to go to Ganymede to check out the situation. They went undercover on a ship called the Weeping Somnambulist, delivering relief supplies. When they got into Ganymede orbit, they were boarded by a UN inspections crew. During the inspection, why did Amos start antagonizing the UN marines?

Answer: To distract them from Holden

Alex was left on the Rocinante in hiding, and everyone else went to Ganymede on the Somnambulist. Naomi posed as the captain while Holden and Amos were regular crew. Holden was wanted by the UN, so he had grown a beard to try to disguise himself (it was not very effective).

Naomi showed the inspections officer around the Somnambulist while the marines watched Amos and Holden. Holden became nervous about being recognized. Amos saw Holden acting strange, which would have brought on even more attention. To save his captain, Amos started antagonizing the marines to shift their focus to him.
6. As Prax watched Ganymede's society break down around him, what concept kept coming to mind?

Answer: Cascade failure

Prax was familiar with the concept of a cascade failure from his work in a biology lab. Catastrophic events happened frequently, but natural systems were diverse and robust, and could survive those events. Artificial systems (such as those in a biology lab) were not robust, and a single event could bring down the whole thing in a cascade failure. The death rate on Ganymede was increasing since the attack, which made sense to Prax. It was not the blunt-force trauma of a battle that killed most people. It was the food and medical supply shortage that came after that did more damage.

Prax often thought about the cascade when considering his daughter's immune system, Ganymede's social and environmental structures, or the new protomolecule hybrids.
7. When Holden, Naomi, and Amos were trying to land the Weeping Somnambulist on Ganymede, what did they notice?

Answer: Food freighters trying to take off were blocking relief food from landing.

Ganymede was the first rocky body beyond Earth with a magnetosphere, which protected it from the solar wind better than any other Belter station, ship, or rock. This made it the best place to grow food in the Belt, which in turn made it the only rock Earth and Mars both maintained a presence on after their coalition broke down.

When Earth and Mars started fighting, the food shipments from Ganymede stopped. The people of Ganymede started to starve, but corporate-owned food freighters still wanted to take off to feed the rest of the Belt.

Holden and his crew had to wait for hours in Ganymede's orbit for a berth to be available. They were waiting for food freighters to take off so they could land relief food. Holden was stunned by the absurdity of the situation.
8. When the protomolecule monster was activated on Ganymede at the beginning of "Caliban's War", what other event happened around the same time?

Answer: There was a spike of protomolecule activity on Venus.

At the end of "Leviathan Wakes", a protomolecule-infected Eros crashed into Venus, and started building complex structures under the clouds. Whenever the protomolecule hybrids became active, protomolecule activity on Venus would surge, like a nerve response.

The most interesting/terrifying part was that Venus reacted immediately, with no delay from the speed of light, showing once again just how much more advanced the protomolecule builders were than humans.
9. Prax's daughter, Mei, was taken from her daycare by Dr. Strickland just before the first battle on Ganymede. Prax tried to track her down, but Ganymede's regular emergency services had bigger problems to deal with. Prax found a hacker who was able to show him security camera footage of Dr. Strickland with Mei. What did the hacker want as payment?

Answer: Chicken

Civilization on Ganymede had been reduced to food barter. The most prized commodities were protein sources. Prax paid the hacker the first time with vegetables, which was how he found out Dr. Strickland had taken Mei. If he wanted the hacker to actually follow the doctor across multiple cameras, he would have to find chicken.

After they met, Holden supplied Prax with "chicken product", which they hoped would be enough. When they went back for the rest of the footage, the hacker tried to jack up the price. This triggered Amos, and the hacker was beaten nearly to death. After they had the new footage, Naomi commented that she probably could have gotten the footage for them.
10. On Ganymede, a freighter full of supplies was attempting to leave, but the local population was stopping it. The situation between the crowd and security was near a boiling point when Holden arrived. Holden started to reach for his gun to persuade the security members to back down, but Naomi stepped in and offered which other solution?

Answer: She asked Alex to shoot down the freighter if it took off.

The ship was one of the food freighters that was trying to take off, and an angry, hungry mob didn't want to let it go. A spokesperson was trying to reason with the mob, to no effect.

Holden was going to threaten the security officers, but when he reached behind him for his gun, Naomi took his hand. She openly called Alex, who was hiding nearby on the Rocinante, and asked him to shoot down the freighter if it attempted to take off. Realizing that they were going to lose the food either way, the security guards left, letting the mob have their food. When Holden asked how Naomi had thought to do that, she said she just tried to act the way he would have, because he was starting to act the way Miller used to.
11. At the United Nations, Chrisjen Avasarala may have only been the Deputy Undersecretary of Executive Administration, but in her own home, she was the boss (and nani). What happened to little children who made a mess in Avasarala's house?

Answer: They got tickled.

Avasarala was always working, even at home when her grandchildren were visiting. Avasarala had been away too long, so her granddaughter Kiki lured her into a water balloon ambush. Despite her enraged face, Avasarala's only punishment was severe tickling.

She loved her grandchildren, sneaking chocolates to them, and enjoying the few moments of levity they provided when distracting her from UN work.
12. On Ganymede, Prax approached Holden and asked for help to find his daughter Mei. Holden, Amos, and Prax started following the trail Mei's kidnappers had taken, seen in security camera footage. During their trip, some friendly Pinkwater security officers offered to escort the group back to the docks where it was safe (for a nominal fee). What was Holden's counteroffer?

Answer: Help Holden find Mei in exchange for a ride off Ganymede

Wendell, the Martian leader of the Pinkwater team was skeptical, but when Amos pointed out that it was the poorly disguised James Holden making the offer, he took the offer seriously. Holden gave Wendell and his team the Weeping Somnambulist, the ship he had originally come to Ganymede on. Holden got off Ganymede on the Rocinante.
13. Prax and Holden found the kidnappers' hideout on Ganymede, but not Mei. The kidnappers were in the middle of packing up their gear and enjoying a pizza party when Holden burst in. Holden tried to negotiate with the kidnappers, but what action triggered a full firefight?

Answer: Prax cocked his gun.

Prax wanted to go with Holden and Amos to find the kidnappers, and his conviction persuaded Amos to let him come along. Amos gave Prax a pistol. Prax had never used a gun before, and everything he knew about them came from action movies. In action movies, in a tense situation, people would cock their guns when making an important point.

When Prax met the kidnappers, he cocked his gun while making a point, which immediately escalated a tense situation into a firefight. Prax managed to not get hit and never fired a shot.

Afterwards, Amos took the pistol back from him, saying it hadn't been a good idea to give it to Prax in the first place.
14. Fighting broke out between Earth and Mars a second time on Ganymede, so Holden got his crew and Prax out of there. On the trip back to Tycho, why did Naomi break off her romantic relationship with Holden?

Answer: Holden insisted Fred Johnson was responsible for the new protomolecule monsters.

As far as Holden could tell, Fred Johnson was the only person in the galaxy with any protomolecule sample. Saturn's moon Phoebe, the original carrier, had been destroyed by Mars. The infected Eros had crashed into Venus, and all remaining ships and labs belonging to Protogen had been destroyed. The only sample left that Holden knew of was the one he had taken off the Anubis and given to Fred.

Naomi was getting concerned about Holden. He was turning to quick, violent solutions more readily than he used to. When they landed on Ganymede and a fake customs agent tried to shake down the crew, he drew his pistol to scare the man off. His insistence on accusing Fred outright, rather than thinking things through or giving him the benefit of the doubt, was the last straw for Naomi.
15. Chrisjen Avasarala wanted to stop Earth and Mars from fighting, and used her power to try to hold back the more hawkish members of the UN military, like Admiral Nguyen. Avasarala had taken apart Nguyen's fleet, but he had managed to reassemble it somehow without her knowing. How was Avasarala compromised?

Answer: Soren Cottwald, her assistant, was working for Nguyen.

To Avasarala, Soren was polite and competent. When Bobbie was hired and their desks were near each other, his true colours started showing. Soren was dismissive of both Bobbie and Avasarala, and used some unprofessional words to describe his boss.

The first thing that made Bobbie suspicious was that Soren did not immediately take a data card to Data Services when ordered. Later, Soren took the card and headed in a different direction. Bobbie followed him and found him handing off the card to one of Nguyen's flunkies in a bar, where she confronted him.

Soren had been found out, so he put together a smear campaign to discredit Bobbie, saying she was secretly working for the Martian Intelligence Service. It was a convincing report on the surface, but it did not sit well with Avasarala. Then Avasarala saw Soren bite the inside of his lip, and she knew what had happened. Soren was nervous, which meant the report was false, which meant Soren was working for someone else. Avasarala marveled at how expertly she had been outplayed, and promptly fired Soren.
Source: Author qrayx

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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Related Quizzes
This quiz is part of series The Expanse novel series:

A list of quizzes for all works in "The Expanse" novel series (novels and novellas), in publication order.

  1. The Expanse 1: Leviathan Wakes [1] Average
  2. The Expanse 1: Leviathan Wakes [2] Average
  3. The Expanse 1.5: The Butcher of Anderson Station Average
  4. The Expanse 2: Caliban's War [1] Average
  5. The Expanse 2: Caliban's War [2] Average
  6. The Expanse 2.5: Gods of Risk Average
  7. The Expanse 3: Abaddon's Gate [1] Average
  8. The Expanse 3: Abaddon's Gate [2] Average
  9. The Expanse 3.5: The Churn Average
  10. The Expanse 4: Cibola Burn [1] Average
  11. The Expanse 4: Cibola Burn [2] Average
  12. The Expanse 5: Nemesis Games [1] Average

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