The Expanse 7: Persepolis Rising [2] Quiz

Answer: Holden had a conversation on an open channel with code words

Bobbie and Clarissa needed to go outside to place their listening device. If they used any communicators while out there, even with the messages encrypted, the Laconians would detect the signals and know someone was snooping outside. Instead, Holden had a regular, benign conversation with someone else while everyone else listened in passively. Holden would use key words in his sentences to coordinate the other teams.

For example, when Holden said the word Gander, it meant the operation would begin in five minutes.

Answer: Explosives

The Voltaire Collective were a particularly violent OPA faction who did not play well with anyone less extreme. They were causing havoc on Medina without coordinating with any other faction, and the Laconian response was making it difficult for Saba to do his work.

The first step was to get the Voltaire Collective to agree to work together and to stop placing bombs. The Voltaire Collective agreed to help, but were a bit upset that Saba wanted to use their explosives mostly as distractions.

Answer: Holden set off a lot of alarms

The plan to get the encrypt box involved sending explosives into the strong room using a drone in the vents. They did not anticipate one of the operators in the room holding a dead man's switch, which would alert every Laconian as soon as it was released.

To get around this Holden decided to flood the system with as many alarms as he could, to hide their true intentions. He told Alex to set off the explosives after ten alarms. Holden pulled fire alarms, radiation alarms, and broke pipes and conduits. Holden was inevitably captured, but the operation was a success.

Answer: On the planet Ilus (book 4, "Cibola Burn")

These spheres would later be called "bullets." They were designed not by the entities that built the Ring Gate network, but by those that killed them. The bullets were meant to kill the ring-gate-builders, but on humans it just made them lose consciousness for a while. These time-loss events would occur whenever protomolecule-based technology (which itself was built by the ring-gate-builders) was used.

The last time one of these orbs had been seen was on Ilus, in "Cibola Burn." The bullet was what had shut down the entire planet, and what the ghost of Miller was investigating. The only other human to see the orb on Ilus was Dr. Elvi Okoye. The Laconians made it a top priority to find and recruit her.

Answer: A plate hitting a pond

The original analogy for detecting an event in the universe was a stone being thrown into a pond. The event was the stone hitting the pond, but someone wouldn't know about it until the wave reached them (in the universe, the wave moved at the speed of light). This was the maximum speed of information in the universe.

So when everyone in the Sol system experienced the time-loss event at the same time (confirmed after the fact), people wanted to know how the speed of light had been broken. One scientist explained that the speed of light was not broken, but the analogy needed to be amended. This event was like a plate hitting the surface of the pond, covering the whole pond at once, not needing any waves to travel to convey information.

Answer: Point Leuctra (where the Spartans were defeated in 371 BCE)

The Battle of Leuctra was where the Thebans stopped the Spartans, who were considered the greatest fighters in Greece. Sparta was the capital of the Laconia region in ancient Greece (and in modern times), so the Sol system chose to have a modern Leuctra to repel the modern Laconians.

Answer: Yes

Pallas was an asteroid and Tycho Station was an important ship-building station during the first six books in the series. In the thirty years between "Babylon's Ashes" and "Persepolis Rising", the two were combined into Pallas-Tycho Complex where the new void cities were constructed.

Trejo asked Drummer to surrender before he destroyed Pallas-Tycho, telling her that the blood of its crew would be on her hands. Drummer did not surrender, instead evacuating Pallas-Tycho. Trejo used Laconia's magnetic weapon to destroy the station, but this caused a time-loss event across the solar system. One upside to the sacrifice of Pallas-Tycho was that the Laconians no longer used their overpowered weapon, fearing another time-loss event.

Drummer would surrender to Trejo after the battle at Point Leuctra.

Answer: Bobbie beat up Amos

Amos was becoming deliberately provocative. He was looking for fights as an outlet. The underground's first meeting with the Voltaire Collective went over relatively well until Amos (brought along as a bodyguard) accused someone of looking at him funny and started a fist fight.

Amos still called Holden "Cap", and his respect for Bobbie was damaged when she did not mount a rescue mission for Holden when he ran out to salvage an operation.

Finally, Bobbie went to talk to Amos as his captain, but he was flippant, so Bobbie helped Amos process his grief the only way he knew how: by fighting with him. Both participants were injured, but it was not even a contest. Amos knew how to fight from bar brawls, while Bobbie had extensive training as a Martian marine. Amos was beaten to a pulp.

After the fight, Amos finally acknowledged his feelings with words. His friend Clarissa was dying, and he wanted her to be able to die at home (the Rocinante) surrounded by family (the crew), and ever since Laconia had come back, that plan had been jeopardized. Talking through his feelings got Amos sorted out and refocused on their mission.

Answer: Laconian power armour had command overrides

With the encryption box and days of recorded data, the underground was finally able to start reading some of Laconia's messages. One thing they found out about was that the Laconian power armour that their marines wore had override commands. The suits' communications, weapons, and joints could all be frozen if the correct command was broadcast.

Bobbie was appalled. If someone wanted a Martian marine to do something, it was just an order over the radio. She figured that a new nation founded by traitors to Mars might still be concerned about traitors in their midst, explaining the top-down overrides.

The underground started looking for a way to spoof the override signal to disable every Laconian marine when they launched their final operation.

Answer: Holden had already been transfered to Laconia

When the magnetic weapon was used in real space everyone experienced a time loss event, and a mysterious orb appeared on the Heart of the Tempest. Trejo sent video of the orb back to Singh, who did his own research, finding out that a similar orb had been reported on Ilus by captain James Holden of the Rocinante. The same Holden who happened to be in Singh's brig right then.

Singh first interrogated Holden about the Medina Station underground, but didn't get much. He switched to asking about the orb, and Holden told Singh to find Dr. Elvi Okoye. Holden's knowledge of the orb was deemed more important than his knowledge of the underground, so Singh shipped Holden to Laconia where he could better help Laconia's scientists.

Answer: Clarissa Mao, the technician

The final operation was for the crew of the Rocinante to escape Medina Station. Clarissa and Naomi were tasked with knocking out the sensors for the fight. They worked with a man name Jordao, who was an informant for the Laconians. He led them into a Laconian trap.

The two old ladies should not have been any match for five Laconians, but they hadn't counted on Clarissa's implants (the leaky ones that were killing her). For the last time, Clarissa activated her implants to gain heighten reflexes and a numbing to pain.

She was able to kill all five Laconians and their informant, but suffered injuries and bullet wounds. She died in Naomi's arms.

Answer: Laconian hulls healed themselves

The hulls of the Laconian ships were, like all of their technology, based on the protomolecule. The new hulls would automatically regenerate themselves when damaged. When the Sol system hit Trejo's ship with rail gun rounds and missiles, the ship seemed to just absorb the hits and close up the holes as fast as they were made.

When Bobbie, Amos, and the rest of the boarding team landed on the hull of the Gathering Storm, Amos started cutting through the hull, but it healed before anyone could jump in. Amos had to make a smaller hole and constantly cut back the regenerating edges while the rest of the team jumped through one-by-one.

Answer: Steal the Gathering Storm

Whenever boarding a ship, there were two places a team had to secure: the bridge and engineering. Someone at either one of those stations could scuttle the ship. Amos managed to take engineering and Bobbie secured the bridge. The Gathering Storm was understaffed because the marines on Medina Station had been frozen in their power armour. All the non-armoured Laconians were called in while the marines were out of commission, leaving only a skeleton crew on the Storm.

When Bobbie got to the bridge, she offered the captain an ultimatum: they either all live, or they all die. The captain responded with, "You expect me to believe you won't steal the ship?" Bobbie hadn't until the captain mentioned it. She did end up stealing the ship, and would use it to great effect in the next novel, "Tiamat's Wrath."

Answer: Disproportionate responses

Singh adhered to the Laconian code of conduct, which was strict and harsh. It worked well with other Laconians, but his rigidity did not mesh well with the Belters he was governing on Medina Station. Every time the underground resisted him, his responses were sweeping and brutal; a show of overwhelming power to frighten the resistance into submission. It only ever made the resistance more firm. Both of his chiefs of security, Tanaka and Overstreet, tried to caution him away from harsh punishments that would exacerbate the situation, but Singh did not listen.

In their final operation, the underground had: neutralized the Laconian marines in their own armour, opened all the detention cells, knocked out Medina's sensors, escaped with most of the impounded ships, including the Rocinante, and stole his own ship, the Gathering Storm, all while Singh cowered in a public toilet.

Singh accepted full responsibility for the colossal failure, but was ready to move forward ... by making an example of almost every Belter left on Medina Station. Unfortunately for Singh, Overstreet had orders to maintain the image and integrity of the Laconian Empire. Because Singh had ordered Overstreet to kill Laconian citizens who had not been found guilty of a crime, it was instead Singh who became the example.

Answer: The Freehold system

Freehold was the system the Rocinante had visited at the beginning of the novel. It had a small new colony, and was largely unexplored and undeveloped. There were plenty of places to hide a couple of ships, even if the Laconians knew which system to search. They even brought Payne Houston, the governor of Freehold, back with them.