Meanwhile, Bobbie Draper, the only member of her marine company to survive, is recuperating from her injuries. She makes her report, detailing what happened and telling of the figure she saw moving around on the surface of Ganymede without a space suit. She is told by her superior officer that, in an effort to prevent full scale war with Earth, a Mars contingent is travelling to earth for peace talks. Bobbie is ordered to accompany them to testify as to what happened. On Earth for the first time in her life, she struggles to adjust to the higher gravity and bright sunlight found on the planet. Worse, she is shocked when her superiors order her to lie in her testimony before the UN and say that her team panicked and fired first on the UN troops. The reason given is that Mars is not yet prepared to be in open conflict with Earth, and by accepting blame for the incident, they can quell hostilities for the time being. This sounds pretty sketchy to Bobbie but she obeys, appearing before a UN committee led by- of course- Avasarala. Bobbie, innately honest, is an unconvincing liar and Avasarala realizes that they are being fed a line. Her piercing questions- and Bobbie's guilt- cause the young marine to get rattled and blurt out what she actually saw on Ganymede. This causes the Martian contingent to shut down the hearing, saying that Bobbie is still traumatized and injured and doesn't know what she's saying. She's hustled back to the Mars consulate and told that she's being sent back to Mars on the next transport. Locked in her room, confused and angry, Bobbie determines to see the ocean before she leaves Earth; she escapes out her window, climbs down the side of the building, and heads in the direction of the coast.
In the wake of the Ganymede disaster, a lot of refugees from the failing moon base start arriving at Tycho Station, where resources are stretched in trying to help them. Fred Johnson is still in control of the OPA there although his leadership is rather shaky in the wake of the failure of his big plan to destroy Eros. Not to mention the fact that he's got a whole lot of irate Mormons on his hands, understandably furious that he stole their "ark" to use as a weapon, and it's now lost, drifting in deep space. At this inopportune moment, Anderson Dawes- a hero to many in the OPA- shows up on the station, ostensibly to help with the refugees but really to challenge Johnson's leadership. The crew of the Roci is also at Tycho, still in their uneasy alliance with Johnson. They have the last surviving scientist who was a part of the terrible experiment which killed everyone on Eros in lockup on the station and Holden, obsessed with finding a way to destroy all of the protomolecule, interrogates him repeatedly, without much success. When Dawes finds out about the scientist Cortezar, he and a group of Belters who have switched their allegiance to him break him out of his cell and escape off of the station, Dawes hoping to gain access and control of the protomolecule to give the OPA and advantage over Earth and Mars. What Dawes- and Johnson- don't know is that, following Eros, Holden and his crew had a sample of the protomolecule. Holden wanted to destroy it, and Alex and Amos agreed with him. Naomi argued against doing so, saying that having it would put the Belters on equal footing with Earth and Mars. Outvoted, she agrees to load it in a missile and fire it into the sun but, unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, she merely sets the missile adrift in space so that the sample is not destroyed. Holden and Naomi pick up traces of protomolecule in the ruins of Ganymede Station, and find out that a Doctor Strickland stationed there might have been involved in research involving it. One of the refugees- Prax, a botanist- tells them that Strickland was his daughter's physician, because she had a rare genetic defect only found in some children born on Ganymede. She was at an appointment with the doctor when the dome was destroyed, and Prax couldn't find her before he was shipped off with other wounded survivors. When he finds out that the Roci is heading for Ganymede, he begs Holden to let him come, hoping to find his daughter Mei. Holden agrees, figuring Prax may be of some help in finding Strickland. They leave for Ganymede. Meanwhile, Bobbie Draper, the only member of her marine company to survive, is recuperating from her injuries. She makes her report, detailing what happened and telling of the figure she saw moving around on the surface of Ganymede without a space suit. She is told by her superior officer that, in an effort to prevent full scale war with Earth, a Mars contingent is travelling to earth for peace talks. Bobbie is ordered to accompany them to testify as to what happened. On Earth for the first time in her life, she struggles to adjust to the higher gravity and bright sunlight found on the planet. Worse, she is shocked when her superiors order her to lie in her testimony before the UN and say that her team panicked and fired first on the UN troops. The reason given is that Mars is not yet prepared to be in open conflict with Earth, and by accepting blame for the incident, they can quell hostilities for the time being. This sounds pretty sketchy to Bobbie but she obeys, appearing before a UN committee led by- of course- Avasarala. Bobbie, innately honest, is an unconvincing liar and Avasarala realizes that they are being fed a line. Her piercing questions- and Bobbie's guilt- cause the young marine to get rattled and blurt out what she actually saw on Ganymede. This causes the Martian contingent to shut down the hearing, saying that Bobbie is still traumatized and injured and doesn't know what she's saying. She's hustled back to the Mars consulate and told that she's being sent back to Mars on the next transport. Locked in her room, confused and angry, Bobbie determines to see the ocean before she leaves Earth; she escapes out her window, climbs down the side of the building, and heads in the direction of the coast. (To Be Continued...)
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