The Expanse 4: Cibola Burn [2] Quiz

Answer: They had both worked with Detective Miller.

In "Leviathan Wakes", the first novel of "The Expanse", Detective Miller's partner at Star Helix Security was Havelock. Havelock quit Star Helix when Ceres Station became unsafe for non-Belters. Later in the book, Miller met up with the Rocinante crew to find Julie Mao, and then her killers. Havelock helped the group by providing the location of the secret Thoth Station.

Answer: An island blew up.

The longer humans spent on New Terra, the more things woke back up. The first anomaly after Holden arrived was a malfunctioning robot an hour's drive out of town. Chandra Wei blew it up.

Next, one of the thirteen evenly-spaced moons melted, turning it into an angry red orb in the sky.

New Terra was dominated by one massive continent on one side of the planet, which housed First Landing, and an archipelago on the other side. Without warning, one of the islands exploded, creating a tidal wave kilometers high. Everything looked nice on the other side of the planet, but the ships in orbit assured the people of First Landing that they had six hours until they were hit by the storm front. The humans suspected an old fusion power plant had tried to come online, and had failed spectacularly.

Answer: It could make water.

Food and water were going to be the two most important resources once the disaster hit. The ability to make potable water made the chemical analysis deck worth the effort to salvage.

It was also useful for blood assays when combating the blindness organism, and Elvi used it to create acetylene for a jury-rigged engine.

Answer: Nuclear fusion no longer worked.

Fusion shutting down was a big problem because all spaceships used a fusion drive for propulsion and power. Without fusion, the three ships around New Terra could no longer correct their constantly decaying orbits, and had to run life support systems off finite backup power cells. The ships suddenly had a very short amount of time (days) until they burned up in Ilus's atmosphere.

The sun never went out, so the lockdown on fusion did not extend too far beyond the planet.

Answer: Instant death

The slugs were covered in a neurotoxin that would instantly paralyze a human, causing respiratory failure, followed quickly by death. They did not like water, so trenches were dug around sleeping areas to prevent them from getting close. People were also put on slug duty to carefully remove the slugs and their slime from the ruins they were using as shelter.

The process got harder as everyone also started to go blind.

Answer: Green

Before the storm hit, only one colonist, a young boy, had any signs of infection. His eye slowly started to go cloudy and green. Elvi surmised that these were the organisms living in the clouds, which turned them a green hue. She had been afraid of a local organism finding a way to exploit the new humans on the planet, but the boy's immune system seemed to be keeping the eye infection at bay.

Then the storm hit. The organism's numbers exploded, and found their way into every human. None of the life on Ilus had official names, so Elvi named the blindness organism "Skippy".

Answer: Holden took cancer medication daily.

In "Leviathan Wakes", Holden got a massive dose of radiation on Eros. Since then, he took daily oncocidals to keep the cancers at bay.

Cancer is a clump of fast-reproducing cells, so cancer medication often targets those cells (other fast-reproducing cells include hair cells, which are often killed off as part of cancer treatments). Holden's daily cancer medications were keeping the fast-reproducing invasive cells at bay. To cure the blindness, everyone was given cancer medications, which were easily synthesized onboard the Edward Israel in orbit.

Answer: They sent Basia Merton to break her out.

Alex had already threatened to destroy the Edward Israel if Naomi was harmed or killed, but while she was still alive on the ship he was reluctant to shoot.

The decaying orbits posed an engineering problem, and the best engineer in the system was in the brig of the Edward Israel. Holden tried talking to Murtry one last time, but the chief of security would not budge, so Holden gave Alex the go-ahead to get Naomi back. Alex put Basia in power armour, gave him a gun and a welding rig, and sent him out to the Edward Israel while painting it with targeting lasers. The plan was for Basia to sneak in, cut Naomi out, and get out without much fuss while Alex distracted them. The plan did not work out quite like that, and Basia was pinned down by the militia on the Edward Israel soon after entering the ship.

Answer: Havelock escaped with Naomi.

For most of the novel, Havelock trusted Murtry to prioritize the safety of RCE employees above everything else. His trust was slowly eroded as the situation on New Terra deteriorated. Murtry claimed to be interested in protecting RCE employees and property, but he was actually more interested in establishing RCE's claim to the planet over the original colonists. Murtry even explicitly asked for a shelter with RCE markings be shipped down after the storm hit, so when the next wave of humans showed up after the first ones had all died, the only structure on the planet would support the RCE claim.

When Basia Merton showed up to rescue Naomi, Havelock finally made his choice. He chose the side that wanted to try to save the humans on New Terra, rather than erect a headstone. He was Naomi's guard, so he was able to get her out past the militia before they even knew he had changed sides. He went with Naomi and Basia back to the Rocinante.

Answer: The Rocinante could not dodge shuttle debris.

In a normal fight, a ship would use its PDCs to destroy inbound torpedos, and would then dodge out of the way. During this fight, the Rocinante was hooked up to the Barbapiccola in an attempt to pull it into a higher orbit, and could not dodge. Instead of being hit by one large shuttle, the Rocinante was hit with a thousand small shuttle pieces that tore through the ship like a shotgun. No one was killed, but the crew had to spend precious hours patching the holes and damaged equipment, and could no longer pull the Barbapiccola up.

Answer: Fayaz attacked Murtry.

Murtry took the only working cart to go after Holden, leaving Amos with the broken one. Elvi convinced Amos to let her come along if she was able to help fix the second cart (she had Amos rig an acetylene engine while the chemical analysis deck produced acetylene for fuel). Elvi then brought along Fayez, calling it their honeymoon.

Fayez, an RCE geologist, was one of the few peacemakers on New Terra. Because there was no geology to study, he spent his days buying the colonists drinks, and talking to people. He tried to humanize both sides, and to get people to cooperate.

When they caught up to Murtry, he had deliberately laid a trap that was likely to (and did) get Chandra Wei killed. It also knocked Amos to the ground, and would have killed him if not for his armour. Fayez called out Murtry's bad-faith arguments, and hit Murtry before Amos was executed. Fayez was shocked by his own actions, but quickly committed by following up with another attack. It was enough for Amos to try to grab his shotgun. Instead of getting drawn into a dangerous firefight, Murtry just ran away, knowing Amos couldn't follow.

Answer: The Rocinante shot him with its rail gun.

The Rocinante still had a rail gun that ran on a separate (and not depleted) battery. The Rocinante was using the rail gun as a ship drive to pull the Barbapiccola into a higher orbit when the militia attacked again, this time with improvised missiles. Havelock knew the people in the militia, and tried to talk them down. Earlier, the Rocinante's PDCs could have killed the entire militia in a heartbeat, but the shuttle attack had disabled that system. For this fight, Havelock just didn't want to have to shoot at his former colleagues with a regular rifle. Matthu Koenen, the new leader of the militia, was furious with Havelock and kept pressing his militia to be more aggressive, until Alex had a clear shot with the rail gun and stopped him permanently.

After Koenen's death, the militia stopped their attack, and even offered to help repair the damage they had done. Their offer was declined.

Answer: Miller spoke through a robot.

To get Holden north to the point Miller wanted him to look at, Miller used the planet's material transfer network (a planet-wide subway system). When they came to a cave-in, Miller left to find a still-functioning construction robot, and commandeered it. The robot was able to generate sounds, so for the first time since "Leviathan Wakes", Miller actually spoke.

Later, at the processing centre, Elvi met Holden and the Miller-bot (which was a massive, terrifying creature made of spikes, blades, and tentacles). Miller introduced himself to Elvi, the only human to ever hear him other than Holden. Elvi went with the Miller-bot to investigate the void while Holden went back to deal with Murtry.

Answer: The Barbapicola

The Barbapicola was the oldest and largest of the three ships in orbit. She had been maintaining a low orbit to make transfers of lithium ore easier. When fusion was shut off, the Barb did not have much spare power to move to a higher orbit. The next ship was the Edward Israel, which had a few more weeks than the Barb. And then there was the Rocinante, which had the most time, and was light enough and had enough power to put itself into an orbit that would allow its crew to die of starvation before they hit New Terra's atmosphere.

The Rocinante had tried twice to pull the Barbapicola up, and had been foiled twice by the RCE militia. RCE was technically separate from the Edward Israel, so while Captain Marwick could not stop the militia from attacking, they could not stop him from rendering aid. The Rocinante devised a plan to evacuate the crew of the Barbapicola to the Edward Israel, to which Marwick agreed. The Barbapicola burned up in New Terra's atmosphere shortly after the full evacuation. Fusion was re-enabled before the Edward Israel suffered the same fate.

Answer: Holden apprehended Murtry for trial back on Earth.

Poetically, Holden met Murtry across a bridge over a chasm. They had one last chat to see if they could work out their differences, but it was no use. Holden did learn that Murtry hadn't killed Amos, which was the only thing that stopped him from shooting Murtry dead. Holden didn't wait for a proper duel to start, but promptly shot Murtry in the leg (and then a few more times) to disable the man, and then kept him from falling off the bridge so he could be taken back to Earth to stand trial. Murtry insisted he had done everything by the book, but Avasarala, the most powerful person in the UN, owed Holden a favour, so Holden wasn't worried.

Amos and Chandra Wei were on opposite sides, but there was an affection there, too. Amos was not angry at Murtry for getting the drop on him, or shooting him. No, Amos was angry that Murtry had forced him to kill Wei in the ambush. Holden had to take precautions to make sure Murtry actually made it back to Earth in one piece to stand trial.