I.have a head cold today and looking at screens is painful, so for the first part of this.book I'm having Alexa read it to me.
Prologue
There's a giant ring past Neptune that was created by the giant squid ship that the Venus protomolecule created. Manéo Jung-Espinoza—Néo to his friends back on Ceres Station, is a slingshot pilot. The trick is you fire off just right and use the outer planets' and moons' gravities to take you where you wanna go. Neo is specifically trying to launch his little ship through the ring. He's psyched cause he's gonna be a legend. Unfortunately for him, the ring isn't just a ring. It's some sort of barrier and.instead of going through it, he smashes into it.
Ch 1 Holden
Things are real good on the Roci. They've made sooo much money doing escort.jobs that they're pretty much set for the next decade. They're buying crazy stuff like engine parts that will make the ship go so fast that none of them.could possibly live through it cause Amos thinks it's awesome. They're living it up on Ceres, gambling away giant piles of money and drinking actual scotch from Scotland. Insane.
Holden is in the pisser. Miller shows up again. Apparently this is a thing that happens routinely now. He shows up and spouts nonsense and disappears. Just like me in highschool.
He goes back to their table in the casino. Naomi comes back cause Alex got cleaned out and Naomi have him.her ships. They talk about Miller. He's still not making sense. They're debating whether it's really Miller and he's figured out how to contact Holden or if it's the protomolecule wearing a Miller suit.
They're talking about Neo shooting the ring. It's unsettling that his ship hit one side.of the ring and nothing came.out the other side.
Ch 2 Bull pg 21
Thus far the downside to this Alexa reading to me.is that I have to flip over to the kindle app to get page numbers
Carlos seed ibaka is called Bill by his friends. He doesn't like captain Ashford. Fred Johnson is too thin. Bull and Fred go way back to Fred's UN days. Neo crashing his ship into the ring is a big deal here too. Nobody knows what the ring is yet. Probably a portal and a bunch of little.green men are.gonna come.through and turn the solar system into a truck stop.
The OPA has retrofitted the Mormon ship to be a battle ship. It's impressive cause it's so big and they've added a ton of guns to it. But they all know it won't be useful in a real fight. Even so, they're taking it to the ring so the OPA has a presence there.
Bull grew up in Mexico in a house with a thousand cousins. When he was 16 he did his two years of hard labor when he was a kid so he could go to college. But he preferred booze and girls and fighting to.learning so he ended up going into the Army.
He and Fred are talking about how crap this Mormon ship situation is. The Earth 🌎 courts are gonna rule in favor of the Mormons and demand that the OPA pay them for the ship. The OPA ain't got that kinda money. Bull was gonna be number two on the Mormon ship. But Fred says Bull is gonna be head of security instead. It's political. They don't want an earther on the bridge of the OPA flag ship. Bull thought he was gonna be Riker, but instead, he's Lt Warf. Or is it Worf? Idk.
Ch 3 Melba pg 31
Melba is in a seedy casino in Baltimore. The place has a thick wrench of despiration and misogyny. She's there to get a fake ID. She's really Clarissa Mao, one of Jules Pierre Mao 's daughters. She's heading to the ring. the guy getti mg the IDs wants to renegotiate. He knows she's gonna do something big at the ring. He wants to be 50/50 partners.
melba isn't interested. She's got implants that make her super good at fighting. She kills everyone in the room. The problem is the comedown is real bad. How t the he'll is she gonna get out of here alive with the comedown ? She's throwing up. She grabs the IDs and jumps out the window. Nobody notices cause this is Baltimore. People jumping out of Windows covered in blood is pretty standard around these part s.
Melba is determined to expose James.Holden and restore her family's good name. I don't like her.odds.
Ch 4 Anna pg 41
Anna is a priest in Europa. She's got a parishioner that's being abused by her husband. Anna's talking to the husband and he's belligerent and unforgiving ng. She says she's gonna call the.police. He grabs her arm and she shoots her with a taser. The cops come to get him.
Anna goes home to her wife and 2 year old daughter and Anna starts to think about how if they don't go back to Earth soon they will never be able to. There's a letter from the U.N. About Anna's next assignment. Anna's wife says she should so the assignment but she's taking their daughter to Earth , to Moscow so she can grow.up on earth gravity.
Ch 5 Bull pg 50
They're calling the ship the behemoth and Bull is going around it with the.ship's XO Pa. They're looking at the bulkhead where they're going to mount a railgun. Bull says they're.gonna need.to add some more metal to reinforce the bulkhead pr.when the railgun fires it'll tear off.the.skin. Pa isn't hearing it. They've got schedules to keep and plans to execute and it's too late to make significant changes.
The ship used to be called the Navu and it would.have been a fine ship for a very long 1 g trip to way far out in space. But it's not built to be a battle.ship. Bull meets up with their head engineer Sam. You know Sam, she and Naomi are friends. Bull buys Sam a drink as he prepares to tell her about how Pa isn't willing to make the necessary changes. Bull says he'll figure out something.
The worst part of being head security officer is that your.role is just internal. You don't have any input on how the.ship interacts with the outside world. Bull is alone in his office and even though he's not supposed to, he makes the changes to the plan Pa said no to. He has put in the change request as tech support. Bull tells Sam to get it done quick before Pa Notices. Now they're talking about drug use on the ship. Bull wants to put a.stop to.The drug use on the ship. Specifically there was a key d got his knee busted up, he was clean, but Bull thinks the mech operator was on something. Sam isn't giving up the name of the mech operator so Bull is gonna have to investigate by himself.
Ch 6 holden pg 60
Holden is worried about this job they took on Titania. It's to escort a ship to the ring. Way other side of the solar system. Seems wierd. They're waiting for.The customer. They're twenty minutes late. Holden calls them. They call him and say they're canceling the contract. Also suggesting they GTFO cause someone is heading their way. Amos grabs his shotgun and throws a rifle to Holden. They have no clue what's coming. 8 minutes before the ship can leave.
A blonde earther lady shows up. She's good looking and she smells nice. She's serving him lawsuit papers. The Martians want their ship back. This sucks hard. The Martians have also filed suit in Earth.
There's a documentarian that is gonna get them out of their jam. Freedom of press covers government leans on ships. The problem is the documentarian also wants to interview the crew. ALlso, the.story is.The ring. Holden blames Miller. He's not sure how, but somehow this is Miller's doing.
The documentary crew is an earth lady, a Martian camera man and a blind sound guy.
Ch 7 melba pg 71
melba is having a rough go of it on the ship she took up on. Mostly cause the identity she took on claimed to know a ton of stuff she didn't. She's planting a bomb.
she's thinking about what it.might have been like to visit her dad in prison. Her life on this ship is kinda like prison. She has freedom, but she chooses to isolate. The crew notices an d they hate her fo r it. Her plan is to blow up this ship and then send out a fake video of Holden taking credit and declaring the ring was now controlled by the OPA. The idea is that if Holden is besmirtched enough the evidence against her family would come into question.
Ch 8 Anna pg 81
Anna's on U.N. Ship and they're on their way. She's touring the ship. She sends a message to her wife and daughter. It's rough being on a ship at full G when you were on a moon for two years. She's wondering how her wife and daughter will handle being in full earth gravity. She goes to a VIP dinner. Anna is a methodist.
There's some drama between a rich lady named Tilly, the Secretary General s wife. This goes on as she's an athiest talking with a bunch of religious people. They start talking about the ring and what it is and what it means to society. Tilly's like "it's wormhole duh" and the religious people are like "but how does that impact our vision of God" and there's some people Tilly makes fun of in orange robes from the people assending religion cause it sounds made up. We just make up stuff now huh?
Things get super dramatic when a young fellow douses himself with alchohol and declares he's doing this for the Afghan people and lights himself on fire. The drama doesn't last long becuase they're on a battle ship with robust fire supression systems. He gets sprayed with white foam and in a second or two a bunch of navy folk drag him away. Tilly says "maybe this trip won't be boring after all"
ch 9 bull pg 93
He's trying to find the drugs. Bull knows that there's plenty of people doing plenty of bad stuff on the ship. He can't stop it all, but he wants to keep it at a manageable level. He's following a guy named Alexi who sells pixi dust. He finds Alexi at a water treatment plant. He's busy working on a tank. Bull goes in the back and finds a dufflebag in a locker room full of Pixi dust. Alexi shows up and Bull punches him in the face. The other two security people Bull brought with him ask if they're going to the brig. Bull says " we got a brig?" Bull takes Alexi to an airlock. He launches Alexi out of the airlock. He puts the pixi dust in the airlock and tells the crowd that if any other pixi dust joins it, that would be cool.
Bull is meeting with Captain Ashford. Ashford is pacing back and forth. Ashford declares that this is unacceptable. He's upset that Bull killed a member of his crew without due process. Ashford says Bull will be taken back to Tyco and tried for murder. Bull's argument is we don't have that kinda law and order here because it's not a space station. this is a battle ship. We need military order.
Ashford says from here on out, if anyone needs to go out an airlock, it's him that should be pushing the button.
ch 10 Holden pg 102
Things are awkward with the documentary film crew. The documentary crew is only allowed access to the galley and quarters. Holden and crew have been hiding in ops or engineering or the machine shop. They have dinner and it's kward. they've all got skeletons in their closets and they aren't real big on shari mg with a documentary crew. As they're talking about not wanting to talk about stuff Holden realizes he doesn't know much of the things the crew doesn't want to talk about. Since Holden is the captain, it's now his job to be sooooo interesting that the documentary crew leaves the rest of the Rico's crew alone. Miller shows up and tells Holden about how clearing a room is important. For the next week's Holden does a lot of talking to the crew. Amos swears a lot so none of the footage they get of him is useful.
a week out from the ring they catch up to the behemoth. Amos notices how many weapons they've strapped on. The Roci does some analysis on the behemoth and figures if it ever really fired.half.those guns, it would tear itself apart.
Monica, the head documentary crew person, asks Holden how he liked working for.the.OPA Holden does that thing where you talk a lot about something else.so you don't have to answer the question.
Ch 11 melba
Melba's doing a better job with the crew. Like how she noticed that they have a wierd difference in their drive signature now. This is mainly as a noob she's paying attention to the details in a way that an experienced person doesn't cause they're used to the same ole same ole and skipping what they consider to be unimportant steps.
They're at the ring and there's a lot of growing fear. Melba is super psyched about taking down James Holden. If she can take him down, she can go back to her old life as Clarissa Mao. There's fun talk about Eros. They all got people that were on Eros when it happened. Are the souls of their loved ones that were on Eros still in the ring?
Melba gets a call from Ren. They look at some air filter logs. Ren has found what looks like explosive residue. Melba's real worried that Ren has found her bomb and she's gonna have to kill him. She uses her super powers to kill him and hide the body.
ch 12 Anna
Anna is bored by the prayer meeting. She's talking to her friend Tilly about how big her daughter is getting and how things are rough for her adjusting to earth. She's on growth hormone drugs. Tilly hasn't heard from her rich and powerful husband for a week. Anna's a little annoyed that nobody on the ship is talking about what the ring means about God. Do the creators of the promolecule believe in God?
ALARM: All hands to action stations. Probably doesn't apply to Anna, she doesn't know what an action station is.
The opulance of this place is disgusting. They have real milk. There's an annoying guy from Minnesota who's a methodist and wants all the world's questions answered by a priest. He calls Martian's dusters. We go on alert whenever we're near dusters. I gotta get some decorative wood on the trim of my skylights. Sunday at 10 am she's gonna hold a methodist service. There's a pretty girl across the room pretty much sleeping on the table, I'm pretty sure it's Melba. We got coliding viewpoints YO!!1!!
ch 13 Bull
the dusters have been sending probes into the ring. The main thing they've discovered is that if you send something in too fast it basically stops suddenly. The definition of too fast is more than 600 meters per second. Slower than that and there's no perceivable difference when it gets to the ring. They're getting this brief from a guy named Chan. Interesting stuff.
Then some bullshit goes down. Someone has figured out that Sam has been reinforcing the ship's weak points near guns and Pa wants to confine Sam to quarters. Bull is like "no, that's me, I requested those tech support items." But Pa's being a dick about it. Ashford and Pa suck. Granted, the reason they suck is that Bull killed someone without talking to them about it and they're being real dicks about it. Bull takes Sam to the security office.
Bull and JoJo talk about Sam's sitution. They're taking her to quarters and revoking her access. They both know it's bullshit and they hate it, but it's an order so they're doing it. Politically there seems to be a lot of this sort of thing in this series. You don't go after the person that wronged you, you go after someone they care about to punish them.
Bull buys a four pack of beer and brings it to Sam as a peace offering. It kinda works. Bull gets a call telling him the earth destroyer suba just got blowed up.
ch 14 Melba
She's real surprised nobody's pissed off about Ren's disappearance and blamingit on the ring. He's just disappeared and everyone's just sorta "it happens" and the ring makes things wierd and they move on with their lives. Seems like she feels real bad about it. It's like she's sad that no one else is gonna punish her so maybe she'll just punish herself. She's sort of reliving the whole sorted affair again.
The navy crew likes it when we're thrusting. Good hot food gets cooked good when you got thrust gravity. A little more talk about Ren. Melba's all in her head with killing Ren. Anna (remember her from chapter 12?) comes and talks to her. Melba's kinda freaking out for a minute cause she think's Anna knows she killed Ren. Then she's like, nah, she don't know nothin. She's just trying to be helpful.
she's psyched about her plan to blow up a ship and blame it on holden
ch 15 bull
Bull is watching the video of the ship blow up. They were able to dump the core. There are survivors. Bull asks Serge how much space they've got for survivors. Serge says, all of it. They've got enough supplies for a city. They watch the video Melba planted to make it look like Holden blew up that ship. Some OPA people are saying "it's about time"
Bull runs to captain Ashford and demands that they fire on the Roci. Pa agrees. Eventually they talk Ashford into it. They fire, it doesn't go well. They go get Sam to fix it.
ch 16 holden
They see the message that everyone else is seeing. They can't stop it. They don't have control of their communications. They have control of everything else. They turn off the comms to stop the message. They don't appear to have control of their weapons either. They don't shut those down, though they probably should.
They head toward the ring to get away from the missle fired by the Behemoth. They almost crash into a martian ship. They try to run around the martian ship to put it between them and the missle. All the martian ships have targetted them, but none of them have fired. The missle from the behemouth is still after them. Holden has a plan, head toward the ring as fast as possible. Then flip and decelerate so they're going slower than the rate the Martian probe had discover was safe. The ship tells Holden there's a 30% chance someone dies during this. But the missle would be 100% so it's worth the risk. Miller shows up. Holden can see inside the ring, they were only 10 meters away from the missle. It's being dragged away by whatever is in charge here.
ch 17 Bull
It's been 30 hours since they shot the missle and it turned off all their stuff. All the lights are on now. Sam calls Bull to come down to the machine shops and bring a gun. Being tired in 0 G is a little wierd. On earth, if you're tired, you feel it in your joints. Not out in space though. Gives you the false feeling that you're not as tired as you really are. A young belter named Gareth has decided this work is beneath him. So he's not gonna do any more conduit work. Bull says fine, go to bed, I'll do it. We'll get an earth or marsh ship to take you back to Ceres. This shames Gareth into doing it.
The captian tells the whole ship they're going after holden. bull tries tto talk the captain ouit of this idea, it does not go well. He tries to have teh same conversation with Pa and it also doesn't go well. Bull suggests to Pa that she should be in charge. Pa specifically tells bull not to take any action against the captain.
ch 18 anna
she's giving her church service to 18 relatively oung miliatry folks. They seem to want something from her that they're not saying and she's not good at guessing. Eventually she says that she's scared. And everyone agrees and the flood gates open a bit with how scared everyone is. Anna specifically stops Matt to ask about Melba. Anna's scared for her and she's gonna seek her out to see what the deal is.
Anna goes to talk to her rich friendin the bar. Fun joke about vile liquids being sucked out of tubes. The guy who's kinda in charge of allt he religious folks asks Anna to sign a petition requesting that the ship go into the ring with all of them and also Mars should come to. Anna's hopeful that if this works it will take what's suddenly turned into a military situation and turn it back into a united exploration.
ch 19 Melba
Melba's bummed that HOlden isn't dead. Her dad always liked to say, if the other man is dead, yours is the only story to be told. If Holden is alive and they dig through the evidence, they're gonna figure out that the bomb and the message weren't holden and they're gonna keep loooking and figure out that it was Melba.
A girl comes to Melba's room in a panic cause they want her to go to the Thomas Prince, one of the ships that's going through the ring. Melba's like, chill, you dont' have to, I'll take your place. She does the paper work and in 3 hours she'll be expected on the Thomas Prince. So she's gotta do something about Ren's body. She gets a ton of tools and opens the locker Ren's body is in. It takes her a couple hours to get him out. She puts him into a combination locked vacumme sealed tool case. She sobs while she finishes cleaing up and geting ready to go. She brings the lock box with Ren inside with her. Thirty people going over to the Thomas Prince. She's looking around at them suspiciously and wondering what horrible secrets they have that made them want to do this.
No matter what happens over there, she has to destroy Holden. Maybe she can get a card that would get her on a shuttle. In case of emergency, just get back to your quarters and get belted in. Now on the ship, Melba feels all alone. She sees Tilly and the reminder of her old rich person's life makes her feel a little scared cause she's Clarissa Mao. Some of these rich civilians might recognize her. Is she gonna have to kill them too? Well, she came to improvize, start improvizing.
ch 20 Holden
The documentary team is calling the inside of the ring the slow zone. Naomi says that's a dumb name. She like's Alex's name. The dandelon. They're sticking with the slow zone. They're calling the place that fast things get sucked toward, the station. They assume something is inside controlling the ring. Silvery blue glowing ball. In the TV show, the protomolecule is always glowing blue. In the book, it's always described as brown sludge until now. I wonder if they had at least read this far and were like "That's more like it. We're always gonna have the protomolecule glowing blue." Their plan now is to try to get full control of the ship again. It's not going well. Every time they try, they lose control again.
Amos barges in and hells out "MOTHER FUCKER!!!" He found the thing that's been controlling the ship in the head. So they know it was one of the documentary people. Monica's like "hey" all scared cause it's a scary situation. She's in charge and "they" definitely placed this thing. Holden's like "who did it" and then he's like "or, I can just space all four of you." Cohen, the blind sound guy says "shit, I got paid to put that on the ship. I had no idea what it would do." Amos says "you fucker" and it's in that way that Holden knows he's not angry anymore, he's coldly decided to kill someone. Some young woman paid Cohen to put the thing on the ship. This is before any of this documentary stuff came to be. So whoever it is set this whole thing up. Cohen makes a model of the girl that paid him allthe money. Holden says Julie Mao. He's pretty close. It's fun to know what's going on from other viewpoints when Holden is a little clueless.
Holden decides he has to go to the station. Everything from the last year with Miller talking to him has lead him here. Into the ring. Into the station. He's gotta go. Naomi tries to talk him out of it. Holden's like "you're the captain now"
ch 21 Bull
things kinda suck in the behemoth. They are mostly working on repairs and mars and earth are heading towards the rivalry getting ready to go all gun blazing. Captain Ashford is wondering what kind of !an to man combat capabilities they have. Almost none. Mars and earth have people in armored battle suits. The behemoth has plumbers with guns. Bull has an idea. He calls Naomi over on the rivalry and offers safe passage for the camera crew. She doesn't hate the idea.
Ch 22 Holden 226
Holden is slowly drifting toward the alien sphere they're calling stati on. Naomi calls to tell him she's giving the camera crew to the behemoth. Also, Martian marines are headed his way.
Holden makes it inside station and is talking to Miller and it's all very cryptic. He says he could stop the Martian marines but there would be consequences. the marines make it to Holden and shoot immediately. Holden isn't dead cause station stopped the bullets. It then creates some insect monsters to attack the marines. A marine fires a grenade and blows up one of them. The marines run away. Miller says this is bad. The speed of that grenade has just become the New limit. A lot of people are going to die when their ships instantly slow to that speed.
she 23 Melba
Melba having a bad drea m. She should have stayed asleep cause she wakes up and sees the nightmare that the ship had become. The sudden deceleration has had a very negative effect. Melba is lucky she was strapped in cause everything that wasn't is floating about in pieces because it hit whatever wall was in front of it at high speed. Most people are dead. They're sticking bodies. To walks with dealing foam. Melba ends up in charge of fixing their air thing. But halfway through doing that she wakes n the chaos she.might be able to get all sorts of useful stuff to kill holden. So.She bails to do that.
Ch 24 anna
Anna is also having a bad time of the sudden deceleration. She's worse of than Melba cause her arms got free of the crash couch and her shoulders got dislocated. She's wandering around witnessing the carnage. She finds Tilly, who shoots her.up.with.pain relievers. They're trying to help where they can. Somehow they get to talking about Julie Mao and Tilly is.like, no that's not Julie, its.her sister Clarrisa that's on this ship. Anna starts to freak out and is all "OMG WE GOTTA FIND HER AND STOP HER!!!!"
Ch 25 holden
Holden is trying to radio the ricante. It doesn't work. He's talking to Miller about it and Miller says the station is on lockdown and he needs Holden's help to unlock it. They go into a room with some of the insectoidal roboty things. There's a big hexagonal column and Miller tells Holden to touch it. He goes on a bit of a spiritual journey where he's floating through the cosmos and then he sees a bunch of stars explode and what not and then he ends up back in his body. It feels way too small after that. He talks to Miller who says he's better connected to the station now. He says that what Holden saw with the exploding stars is what happened to the "people" that last fought with whoever created the protomolecule. Holden is all "they can't still do that can they?" At which point Miller disappears because the Martian marines are there to arrest Holden .
Ch 26 bull
things are not as bad on the behemoth because they were already going kinda slow. You got a third in crash couches, they're fine. A third at their stations who are mostly ok. Then you got the third that was walking around or drinking coffee and they're in dire straights. Bull is one of those. He can't feel much below his nipples. The doctor suggests a medical coma. The problem with that is unless they can get up to 1/3 G everyone with internal bleeding is gonna die.from it. The hu man body was developed in gravity and that's where it works best. Things that are minor with gravity are a death sentence in zero G. Pa and captain Ashford and Sam are all alive.
Bull has one word for their next action. Unity. Everyone else is like, duh, but how? He's got an idea. All these injured people need gravity to heal. Spin up the drum to create the gravity they all need so desperately and they will all come to the behemoth.
Ch 27 melba
melba got that neck she was.talking about and is making her way toward the roci, ship by ship jumping between them with her mag boots. All the ships have been disabled and pulled to the station. So it only takes a few hours to make her way to the Roci. She gets inside easily and decides to make her way to the reactor to blow it.up. Minor problem, she runs into Naomi and they fight. At one point it seems.like Melbas gonna be able to explode the core, but then Naomi figures out a way to eject it. Now they're fighting for reelz and Melba is set on killing Naomi. This is an accomplishable goal, because Melba has a mech suit and Naomi does not. It looks like Melba is going to achieve that goal until she is shocked and her suit is disabled and Naomi gets away. Who is Naomi's savior? It's ANNA!!!!
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