The Expanse 8: Tiamat's Wrath [1] Quiz

Answer: Chrisjen Avasarala, former leader of the U.N.

Chrisjen Avasarala was an important character in "The Expanse". She became the head of the U.N. during the worst disaster Earth had ever seen, and saw through the crisis with aplomb. She died of old age at her home on Luna. So of course Laconia would not let an opportunity slide to co-opt her legacy. Avasarala had a state funeral and a mausoleum built on Laconia (even though it was the Laconians who were responsible for the calamity that defined Avasarala's reign). Holden, as an unwilling guest on Laconia, got to catch up with old friends at the funeral, who had been invited now that the war was over.

Answer: The Prisoner's Dilemma

The prisoner's dilemma is a simple game in which two players decide, independently, whether to co-operate or defect. It demonstrates the opposing forces of doing what is best for an individual, and what is best for the group. When playing multiple rounds, many different possible strategies emerge, and when simulated, the best strategy is often "tit-for-tat," in which the player starts off cooperating, and then will always match what the other player did in the previous round.

This concept of game theory, and assuming tit-for-tat as the optimal strategy, was used extensively in "Tiamat's Wrath." It was how the Laconians tried to test the alien technology for intelligence. Theresa would use it to decide what to do at the end of the novel, when she found she was the only one left trying to cooperate.

Answer: A dog

Muskrat was a black Labrador retriever and one of the few non-human animals from Earth to exist on Laconia. Muskrat was Theresa's faithful companion, who was also kind of a litmus test for the other humans. Muskrat got along very well with James Holden, an enemy of Laconia, but she did not care at all for Colonel Ilich, Theresa's teacher.

Answer: Tiny

Amos seemed to have nicknames for a lot of people. Most did not understand why and did not fight it (except Avasarala). Presumably Amos called Theresa "Tiny" because she was just fourteen years old.

Answer: Prisoners were exposed to the protomolecule for study.

When Duarte broke away from Mars with a fifth of its fleet, they stole the only known protomolecule sample on their way out. As a burgenoning militaristic society, Laconia was strict and did not have the resources to house prisoners, and could not return them to Mars.

The punishment for most crimes and infractions was a death-sentence, but a useful one. Laconia needed more protomolecule for study and to build its technological superiority. Criminals were put in the Pens and infected, turning into the vomit zombies first seen on Eros in "Leviathan Wakes."

Answer: A diamond the size of Jupiter

One way to store data reliably is on crystalline structures, which do not need constant power to maintain their states. The ring gate builders created a giant carbon crystal in the Adro system, probably as a giant library of all their knowledge, and then cleared the system of all other matter so things like radiation and collisions would not affect it.

Answer: Full-submersion couches

The problem with traveling quickly was not whether the ships could accelerate that fast (missiles used the same drives, but moved much faster). It was the humans inside the ships that limited the speed. Accelerating too much would crush any part of a human filled with air and could also push blood away from the brain. To counter this limitation, the full-submersion crash couch was invented, in which the ship's crew were fully submerged in highly oxygenated fluid, filling even the lungs.

This way, the humans would not be compressed as much when accelerating so fast.

Answer: Nothing

Bobbie's boarding party successfully took control of the freighter and captured the political officer on the bridge, but before they could get him out (or even put him in an EVA suit), the freighter's escort ships shot the freighter full of holes. The political officer and the partisan who had helped plan the operation both died from air loss.

Bobbie's team still completed their secondary objective: stealing the cargo of the freighter which was carrying supplies from Laconia for the Heart of the Tempest. The Gathering Storm was finally able to replenish its fuel, ammunition, and get some spare parts.

Answer: On Jupiter's moon Callisto

The fight for the political officer's freighter happened when Jupiter blocked the line of sight to Earth, where the Heart of the Tempest was stationed. The Gathering Storm could not fly away from Jupiter because the Laconians would see their drive plume, and be able to figure out where they went.

They had to hide on Callisto, one of the four Galilean moons, which had a human settlement and a shipyard. It gave the crew an opportunity to enjoy some shore leave (even if it was forced and under false identities).

Answer: In a cargo container on freight haulers

Naomi was playing what she called the "shell game." She lived in a cargo container on a freighter, occasionally being transferred to a new freighter, often with most of the crew not ever knowing that she was there. From her container, she helped coordinate the resistance and manage its intelligence.

Answer: Ship-to-ship torpedoes

When Naomi sent out messages, she could not afford to have the signal traced back to her. Tightbeam and signal broadcasts could be followed back to their origins. She received information by listening to general broadcasts, with messages hidden in the metadata or encoded.

When she needed to send her own messages out, she would put it on a torpedo, have it dropped out of an airlock, wait for a random amount of time, and then it would fly around randomly for a while before transmitting its data in a burst, and then destroy itself. Saba had his own passive listening devices that would catch the message.

Answer: The captain said Naomi was in an apprenticeship program, which had a different list

Naomi was hiding in a container, and could not afford to be discovered by the inspection team. She moved out to join the crew with a false identity, and her home was dismantled and dispersed, made to look like any other container. She also had some injections in her face to temporarily change its shape to fool any scanners or anyone who might recognize her. They could not alter the ship's records to insert her into the crew; any tampering prior to an inspection would invite too much suspicion.

The Laconian running the inspection scanned every crew member, including Naomi, who did not appear on the list. Despite her transformation, the captain of the ship recognized who she was and came up with a cover story on the spot. He said that Naomi was in an apprenticeship program, which was on a different list due to union rules. The Laconian bought the story and moved on. Afterwards, the captain was just happy to have helped someone famous.

Answer: Auberon

Auberon was one of the most successful and populous human colonies. It had a thriving technology industry focused on helping humans adapt to new biospheres. When Naomi was there she stayed at the lunar outpost (because she could not function in the full gravity of the planet itself) with Chava Lombaugh, who had been a part of the Rocinante's temporary crew in "Nemesis Games".

The story of the resistance on Auberon was fleshed out in the novella "Auberon", released a year after "Tiamat's Wrath".

Answer: A barely stable neutron star

Unlike every other system, the Tacoma gate was "above the ecliptic," though this didn't mean much for a system with only one object: a neutron star. The plane of the ecliptic was defined by the star's spin, with the gate looking down at its pole. Like the Adro system, the Tacoma system was clear of any other matter to prevent the neutron star from gaining any more mass and triggering a supernova.

Answer: Two ring gates were destroyed

The Tacoma gate was looking down at the pole of the neutron star. Lots of high-energy objects (stars, black holes, galaxies) have jets of radiation that are emitted from their poles. When the Laconians set off their bomb ship, it pushed the neutron star past the tipping point, triggering a supernova, with a particularly strong jet of radiation pointed at the gate.

The Falcon barely made it through the gate before the jet hit, which blasted through the Tacoma gate, across ring space, and hit the Thanjavur gate on the other side. Both gate were destroyed, which was previously thought to be impossible.

The missing gates were first noticed when the coordinates for the existing gates changed to keep the gate spread equally throughout the sphere. The 80 000 thousand people of the Thanjavur system were suddenly cut off from the rest of humanity.