Chapter Thirty-Five: Alex
Cara isnt happy about not communing with the big diamond anymore and she punches Amos. It's a little scary how hard it is. Might have killed a normal person. But Amos is a big zombie. Teresa talks to Alex about her existential dread. She's scared to see her dad. Alex tries to convince her it'll be good cause he's her dad and he loves her. Teresa has some baller child abuse statistics. Also everything is scary. Alex should have sent a message to Kit by now but hasn't cause he's scared he'll say the wrong thing.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Jim
They're all in the slow zone thinking of what to try to say to get Duarte to come out of his egg ship thing
“It’s me, Dad. It’s Teresa."
He doesn't respond.
Now we're just waiting and trying out different sensors.
Then Tanaka shows up.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Tanaka
As much as Tanaka wants to kill everyone, she's duty bound to her mission. The plan ends up being her and Teresa trying to go into the station, with the theory that Duarte is inside.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Elvi
Sao Paulo, isn't that where Rico from stormship troopers is from?
This hive mind thing is happening all over the place.
Amos is try8ng to "talk" to Duarte. It goes badly. He starts screaming and they can't seem to bring him out. Elvi leaves to try something with Cara and Xan.
Interlude: The Dreamers
Amos tries to get into the station and finds only pain. Ut he doesn't die.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Jim
MILLER IS BACK!!!!
Chapter Forty: Naomi
Good news, with Miller back Jim can get Tanaka and Teresa into the station. Bad news is Duarte has pretty much taken over the rest of the world 🌎 by which I mean humanity and that includes the one remaining ship with the super weapon.
Chapter Forty-One: Jim
They go into the station. There's a lot of angst and they don't get much done.
Chapter Forty-Two: Alex
They're fighting what I'm now calling the zombie space fleet. Some of it.goes ok, most of it goes bad.
Chapter Forty-Three: Jim
They find daddy
Chapter Forty-Four: Teresa
Duarte is kinda attached to the station via a bunch of wierd cables and what not. I'm imagining it as him floating in the middle of a hige chamber. It would probaly look all borgey plus blue glow if it were on the show. Holden says its kinda like how Julie Mao had been overcome woth the protomolecule goop. Teresa tries to talk to.him and when that doesn't work she flies up to him. She starts ripp9ng cables out and it doesn't help. A bunch of protomolecule insect guards start coming for them. Man, this whole thing feels kinda hopeless.
Chapter Forty-Five: Naomi
The hopelessness is just as bad outside the station. The zombie ships are coming in from every gate and she just keeps sending people on suicide missions to give Holden, Teresa and Miller more time. Additionally, duarte's hive mind invasion is super bad. Fun bit from the book...
She had the impression that engaging with the other thoughts and memories, even to fight against them, made them stronger. The best she could manage was to let them rise up in her and fall away,
This is the instruction one gets for random thoughts that pop up in meditation 🧘♂️ 🙏
I've heard the same thing said of people trying to deal with suicidal ideation, but I can't speak to the usefulness of that.
The magnetar class ship has come through. All hope is.lost. Naomi sends out the order to shoot out all your guns at it and run away. Then the strangest thing happens. The hive mind thing kinda stops. Elvi sends out a broadcast message telling everyone to chill. It seems like things might be good for like one second. But then the Goths start doing things again cause Duarte and the hive aren't stopping them from doing so.
Chapter Forty-Six: Tanaka
Tanaka kills Duarte and I think dies for her efforts.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Jim
Jim reconnects to the station like Duarte was connected. He gets the urge to create the hive mind, finish what Duarte started. He resists the temptation. But he figures out how to keep the goths at bay.
He learns that the station is a torn hole into the Goth universe and its powered by sucking their power. It's akin to a leech sucking on a person except there's no natural numbing agent so it hurts the goths real bad. That's why they're so desperate to destroy the source of their pain, in this case all of humanity. Holden realizes the solution is to shut down the station, which will stop hurting the goths. The downside to this is all the ring gates will close. So Holden tells Amos to “Tell Naomi to evacuate the ring space. Get everybody out. And wherever you go, be ready to stay there."
He opens up a passage for Teresa to go back to the Roci.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Alex
They're all doing repairs to get ship shape before leaving the ring space. Thyre gonna go back to sol space. Alex can't, he's gotta go to where his kid is.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Naomi and Jim
Jim shuts it down after every ship has left the ring space. Naomi's sad. They're all sad. Teresa is traumatized. But life goes on.
Epilogue: The Linguist
In the future they've figured out a way to do something that seems like ring gate travel without the ring gates and a guy named Martell has made his way back to earth. It's relatively sparsely populated these days. I guess it's a thousand years or so in the future because the earth man Martell talks to says it’s been a rough millennium. Then he introduces himself as Amos Burton. So I guess being reconstructed by the repair bot on Laconia made him practically immortal.
