The Expanse 6: Babylon's Ashes [2] Quiz

Answer: His white whale

The white whale is a reference to the 1851 novel "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville, in which Captain Ahab relentlessly pursues the titular white whale. When Marco called Fred Johnson his white whale, Rosenfeld said that Marco had obviously not finished the book. In "Moby-Dick", Captain Ahab got himself and most of his crew killed in his pursuit of his white whale.

Answer: Weapons

Filip was already in many ways his father's right-hand-man, but being offered the important weapons station during a major battle was a sign of trust from Marco. Filip was responsible for launching torpedoes at the Rocinante (which also involved programming flight plans), and for operating the PDCs (point defense cannons) to destroy any torpedoes that the Rocinante sent back.

Answer: Bobbie got the Pella to maneuver into a cloud of point defence cannon rounds

The Rocinante had a keel-mounted railgun (an electric cannon that fired fast-moving projectiles) that pointed forward. During the chase, the Rocinante would flip itself end-over-end so it could fire its railgun back at the Pella. Despite the fast-moving projectile, the distances in space were still vast, and whenever the Pella saw the Rocinante flip, they would just dodge out of the way.

The problem was that the pilot of the Pella dodged out of the way the same way every time. Bobbie exploited this by firing the Rocinante's PDCs (point defense cannons) at the space where the Pella would dodge to.

The nearly invisible PDC rounds were much slower than the railgun shots, so timing was tight. Just as the cloud of PDC rounds reached the Pella, the Rocinante flipped to fire, making the Pella dodge into the slower bullets.

Answer: James Holden disarmed the torpedoes

During the fight between the Rocinante and Marco's ships, Holden was asked to distract Marco. He did the only thing he could: he opened a communications channel. They were both under too much thrust to actually say anything, but Holden and Marco got a good look at each other. Then Marco tried to distract Holden back by changing the camera feed to Filip's station.

After disabling the Pella, Bobbie sent five more torpedoes to finish it off. One hit, but Holden had disarmed all of them. Later, Amos confronted Holden about the "dud" torpedoes, and Holden immediatly fessed up. He said he'd disarmed them because Naomi's son was on the Pella, and he wasn't ready to take that away from her. Holden assured Amos that the next time they got into a fight he'd not pull his punches.

Answer: Fred Johnson

When undergoing a sustained high-g burn (ships would measure their acceleration in units of Earth's gravity, rather than their actual velocity), crew were injected with "the juice", a chemical cocktail to help them retain consciousness and prevent blood clots. It wasn't perfect, and the risk increased with age and time spent under high-g.

Fred was getting old, and even though the Rocinante "won" the fight, he still suffered a stroke and died. In the TV show, Fred Johnson died earlier, during the attack on Tycho Station in "Nemesis Games". Also in the show, Alex Kamal died of a stroke during a flight, even though his book counterpart survived. This was because the actor was let go between seasons five and six.

Answer: Marco did not take responsibility for failures

After the fight with the Rocinante, Filip learned that his father blamed him for the failure. Filip was controlling the weapons, so it was his fault the Rocinante was not destroyed. Filip felt this was unfair, as there were many stations on the Pella that contributed to the loss.

Later, when news came that Fred Johnson had died during the fight, the glory was shared by the whole crew. Marco was charismatic. He would celebrate victories with everyone, and make everyone feel like they were part of the team, but when there was a failure, he would find a scapegoat to blame, and it would never be himself.

Answer: Pa didn't know

Fred called a summit of the OPA factions to unite against Marco Inaros. Unfortunately, Fred died during the trip to the summit, and hadn't told anyone what his plan was. Holden needed everyone at the summit to agree to join together and follow Fred's plan, while frantically putting together a new plan of his own that he could pass off.

Answer: Anderson Dawes

Anderson Dawes was one of the biggest names in the OPA, and had sided with Marco early in the conflict. He was the OPA leader on Ceres Station, the largest population center in the Belt. He hadn't even been invited to the summit, but showed up anyway. Holden asked Dawes to step outside.

Despite being left out of the meetings, Dawes trusted Fred, and knew that Marco would be worse for the Belters in the long run. He approached the other OPA leaders at the summit to convince them to work with Holden. Dawes tailored his conversations to each member, saying opposite things to different people as needed. To one person, Holden was experienced, but to another, he was inexperienced. To one person, Holden was a thinker, while another was told that Holden acted from the gut.

Answer: The Rocinante was not at Tycho Station

Naomi was the only person in Marco's life whom he could not control; who had left him. Over the years, Marco had kept an eye on Naomi, hoping to sometime "fix" that blemish on his record.

Marco kept track of where the Rocinante was. While attacking Tycho Station could be rationalized to be a good strategic move, he mostly wanted to go there because that was where Naomi was. When he learned that the Rocinante had departed Tycho without him noticing, he immediately changed his plans, and started chasing the Rocinante to the Ring Gate.

Answer: Ring Station

The combined Earth-Mars fleet launched a large number of torpedoes and decoy landing craft at Medina Station, which were destroyed en masse. One seemingly random craft "malfunctioned" to fly off course, taking it close to Ring Station and its defensive network of railguns. This landing craft carried Amos and Bobbie to the real objective.

The plan was to take the railguns intact so they could be used against Marco's fleet when it showed up. Unfortunately, the only way to disable them was to destroy their power source. The Earth-Mars fleet would need to find a new way to defend Ring Space from Marco.

Answer: Nagata

Filip was in a bar on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Callisto had been where Filip had stolen the Martian stealth coating during the prologue of the previous novel, "Nemesis Games". At the bar, the Belters he met were not happy with Marco Inaros, and had suffered personal tragedy during Filip's attack. Filip had been having doubts about his father, and running into Belters who did not share Marco's vision was the last straw for Filip.

Filip was called to get back to the Pella for their departure to Medina. Instead Filip dropped his gun and hand terminal into a recycler, and sought a new life. Despite having no history, the employment broker helped Filip by providing him a form to get into the system. Instead of his father's name, he used his mother's.

Answer: They had both lost spouses to the war

Michio Pa had helped take the Saturn system from the Free Navy. During the attack her ship had been disabled, she and her wife Laura had been badly injured, and two more of her spouses, Evans and Oksana, had died.

Avasarala had not heard from her husband, Arjun, since Marco's rocks hit Earth. He was presumed dead. Avasarala said she also knew the pain of losing a spouse, and asked Pa to finish the fight with her. Pa, unfortunately, was regrowing skin and organs on Titan, unable to help. The defenders of Medina would have to fight alone.

Answer: Marco disappeared when transiting through the gate

Since the previous novel, ships had been disappearing. About half of them turned out to be Duarte's defecting Martian ships, but that still left quite a few unaccounted for. Naomi figured out the reason at the eleventh hour. They were disappearing around the Ring Gates during high-traffic periods. The gates had a collective maximum energy threshold. Massive and/or fast ships had more energy, and if too much energy went through the gates in a short time, then the gates would make them disappear. After transiting through a gate, there was a refractory period before the next ship could safely transit. This effect would later be called "going Dutchman", named after the Flying Dutchman ghost ship.

The defenders of Ring Space used this new knowledge to their advantage. Just before Marco entered Ring Space, they sent one of the own ships through a different gate with enough energy to be just below the threshold. When Marco's fleet hit their gate, they exceeded the threshold, and were all disappeared.

Answer: Michio Pa

The opening of over a thousand possible new colony worlds was going to be devastating to the Belt. Instead of living on space stations, or in the shells of asteroids, people from the Belt could find more stable lives on new worlds. The problem was that about a third of them would never be able to live on the new worlds with their significant gravity because of how frail their bones and muscles were. To make sure that these vulnerable people were not forgotten, James Holden thought up the Transport Union to regulate and oversee inter-colony trade, providing reliable employment for Belters in the new reality.

Avasarala agreed with the idea, and proposed Holden be its first president. Holden was caught off guard, immediately explaining why it was a bad idea to constantly have Earthers in power over Belters. Holden's first choice for president was Michio Pa, who was in turn surprised, but accepted the position. Holden's second choice was going to be Naomi.

Answer: Namono and Anna Volovodov

In the prologue Namono was living with her wife Anna (a viewpoint character from the third book, "Abaddon's Gate") and daughter Nami in Abuja, Nigeria. The prologue was a snapshot of a regular day in the aftermath of Marco's asteroid strike in the Sahara desert.

The epilogue was from Anna's perspective, and was another regular day, except this time as part of their months-long journey to a new colony life on Eudoxia.