Julie is on a ship called the Scopuli. It was taken 8 days ago and she's been stuck in a locker ever since. Armored men put her there. Eventually she gets out of the locker and it's empty. She thinks she might be the only survivor of the taking until in the engineering deck she finds the captains disembodied head and it says "help me"
Chapter 1 Holden:
Holden works as an XO on a ship called the Canterbury. It's mostly empty space because it's am ice hauler. Someone named Paj lost an arm and they are talking about what kind of replacement arm their insurance will pay for. He has a FWB type situation with a girl named Ade. He wants their relationship to bloom, she doesn't. Holden goes to the bridge to talk to the captain. There is a distress signal. They are the only ship close and space tradition states you gotta help out your fellow man. This is going to be inconvenient.
Chapter 2 Miller
Miller is a detective in Ceres the biggest city in the asteroid belt. He is interviewing a witness, a known gang member got in a fight and hasn't been seen since. What bothers Miller is there hasn't been any gang retribution. Something is just off with the whole city and it has Miller worried. It's like July 2019 at Orchestra. Fun quote "Ceres doesn't have laws, it has police." Miller has been assigned to track down a rich girl and return her to her family. He is not enthused to be doing such a side show.
Chapter 3 Holden:
The ship makes it to the distress signal. It's an empty ship that's been parked at a large asteroid. They take a shuttle in and Holden and a half dozen others look around the interesting thing they find is a portable distress beacon. This is a bad sign. The crew of the ship didn't start the distress signal. Someone else took this ship, put it here and started this fake distress signal.
Chapter 4 Miller
Miller gets a call from a bar man he's friendly with. Miller's partner (an earther) is at the bar looking to case trouble. Miller says he can be there in 20. He is tempted to take a cop car but decides to take the subway instead cause he doesn't wanna look like a cop when he shows up at the bar. He finds his partner and they leave the bar. They make their way to a cop bar. They have a good time. Then every cop in the bar gets an alert from the chief. News coming in fro. Saturn and it's bad. There is a video and its from Holden.
Chapter 5 Holden page 46
I forgot to mention the empty ship is the ship from the proligue ths Scopuli. The bad feeling becomes a legitimately bad situation when a ship unclokes and fires torpedoes at the Canturbery.
The captain orders Holden (first name Jim) to tale his shuttle and hide behind the asteroid. Good thing cause the Cant is completely nuked. Nothing but bright light and vapor left. Holden is the captain now. He is going to prepare a broadcast as they are now murder witnesses. He beams an angry message over to the destroyer ship and for a second that seems like it was a bad idea because the ship focuses on the shuttle and an aiming laser is pointed at the shuttle. Holden wants yo chase the ship. His number two Naomi says that's dumb. To they just hang out and semd out a distress signal saying their ship was just destroyed by the Martian Navy.
Chapter six Miller page 60
Miller refers to Holden as "that asshole" a few times. It amuses me. The earth partner doesn't understand why this is a big deal. Ice ship got blown up far away. There are lots of other ice ships. We got plenty of water. At the station the chief gives a speech about maintaining stability and keeping rioting to a minimum. Miller is running a riot squad without his partner. "Saw that coming" they go to put on riot gear and it's all gone. They are getting SWAT gear. So we might not be controlling, but doing more killing.
They find a mob with a big guy at the center and they see him do a murder, they shoot him in the knee and after a bit of talking the crowd dispersed.
Here is a good spot to talk about the OPA. They're basically a terrorist organization that wants the belt and out to be free from earth and Mars. They're a big scary deal.
Chapter 7 Holden page 71
Holden is sad, but at least he's got coffee. The company lawyer calls them and tells them the solution to the problem they've created is that they're going to be picked up by a Martian battleship and they're going to help investigate what happened to the Canterbury. So they're heading to Saturn to do so. They see some ships heading their way from the belt. Interesting.
Chapter 8 Miller page 80
Things are a bummer and Miller's partner has requested a transfer. Its no fun being an earther in the belt. Miller takes the file for the BS Julie case and goes to her place to do some investigation. He finds an email from her mom from two weeks ago saying she needs to get home ASAP cause the belt is about to become a very unsafe place.
Chapter 9 Holden page 90
Everyone on the shuttle is sad. The doctor is the saddest. They get a message from Fred Johnson, yes THE, saying they've got friends in the OPA. So I guess the OPA ain't a terrorism group. They get drunk and cry and they wonder why the ships heading toward them from the belt are doing so.
Chapter 10 Miller page 101
Miller goes to the chief with his suspision that Julie Mao's mom knew about the setup with the Scopuli and Canterbury and the Martians a month before it happened. The chief doesn't believe it or care or whatever.
Miller and his earth partner go investigate a protection racket complaint. From talking with the store manager that put in the complaint Miller gets the idea that the OPA has taken over the criminal enterprises like protection and that's why all the other gangs have seemingly disappeared. So Miller tells his partner to get lost and goes to a known OPA bar to sniff around for information. He talks to a guy and basically comes to the conclusion that the OPA isn't responsible for at least this one protection complaint. It was just some guy with an OPA arm band trying to make some cash. Next morning the suspect in the protection complaint is found dead. "The OPA isn't moving in on the criminals, they're moving in on the cops."
