The Expanse 4: Cibola Burn [1] Quiz

Answer: Ilus

In Greek mythology, Ilus was the brother of Ganymede. The original colonists on Ilus were refugees from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. By the end of "Cibola Burn", Ilus would be the name that stuck, and New Terra would fall out of use.

Krypton was Superman's home planet from "Superman" media. Gallifrey was the Doctor's home planet in the "Doctor Who" series. Dune was the planet on which most of the plot of Frank Herbert's "Dune" took place.

Answer: Lithium ore

Ilus did not have many interesting features, but it was rich in lithium, which was rare, galactically speaking. The Ring Builders added Ilus to their network just to harvest and process lithium.

Fayez, the geologist who arrived with Royal Charter Energy, was bored on Ilus because there was no geology. The planet had been manufactured (or heavily modified) so there were no tectonics. The lithium ore that the colonists were mining was also too pure to have formed naturally.

Answer: Basia Merton blew up the landing pad.

In order to land larger gear on the planet, RCE needed to use heavy shuttles, which in turn required a landing pad. Despite not acknowledging the claim of the settlers, RCE hired them to build the landing pad before the RCE ship arrived.

The resistance group decided to destroy the landing pad to prevent RCE from landing their shuttle; to slow them down. When Basia had agreed to help, he thought the RCE ship had been days or weeks away. It wasn't until they had already set the explosives that he found out that the shuttle was arriving right then. Coop, a violent former OPA member, had been responsible for watching the incoming ship, but had conveniently forgotten. If the shuttle landed on the pad it would set off the explosives. Basia first tried to disarm the bombs he had made, but there was not enough time. Instead, he tried to blow up the landing pad early to give the shuttle time to change course and go back into orbit. There wasn't enough time, and the shuttle crashed, killing a large number of the RCE employees on board.

Answer: Go to university

Felcia was a smart young woman who wanted nothing more than to go to university. Basia was distrustful of all the governments back in the Sol system, especially after his son, Katoa, had died during the Ganymede incident. He did not want to lose any more of his children to their pointless wars.

Lucia was supportive of Felcia. Lucia told Basia that they had made the decision for themselves to be colonists, but that once their children wanted to make their own choices, the parents had to step out of the way. Basia eventually came around.

The RCE shuttle had been stuffed full of scientists and engineers. Felcia was able to get a letter of recommendation from Elvi and Fayez.

Answer: Murtry shot and killed Coop.

First the resistance members blew up the landing pad, killing RCE employees, and then they killed the security team that found their illegal explosives. At this point, Murtry was done losing team members. He gave not only authorization for lethal responses, but for preemptive lethal responses if anyone felt threatened.

Coop was a former violent OPA member. He had reveled in blowing up the landing pad and killing the security personnel (often putting Basia in situations he'd rather not be in). Coop was also good at riling up the crowd against RCE. Coop talked a big game, and slyly hinted that Murtry might disappear. Unfortunately for Coop, Murtry did not feel compelled to wait for Coop to actually do something violent. He casually called out Coop's threat and shot him in the head.

Answer: James Holden

Like everyone in the solar system, Evli knew who James Holden was, but when she first met him, she immediately felt an attraction. Fayez noticed, and warned her not to fall in love.

Her infatuation would grow until Fayez explained her own feelings and biology to her. Elvi ended up with Fayez, someone who actually did care about her, and came to realize that she hadn't actually been in love with Holden.

Elvi's crush on Holden was one of the most common criticisms of "Cibola Burn". It was left out of the TV adaptation.

Answer: Holden had found the body of Basia's dead son.

In "Caliban's War" Holden helped Prax Meng find his daughter Mei. Mei had been one of Dr. Strickland's patients, all of whom had a rare immune disorder. When the fighting on Ganymede started, all the patients disappeared. When Holden had found the secret lab on Ganymede, Katoa's body was on a table.

Prax had been friends with Basia. After weeks of not finding their children, Basia decided to move his remaining family off Ganymede. When Prax did find Katoa, he sent a message telling Basia. Basia was wracked with guilt knowing he had left Ganymede when his son had still been alive.

Answer: No Belters

The members of the RCE expedition were made up of people from Earth, Mars, and the Belt. The colonists were all Belters, though, and Murtry did not want any conflicts of interest if things became violent.

Belters would start facing harassment on the Edward Israel, too. Havelock remembered what it was like to be singled out for being different, and empathized with the Belters. He called out the racist acts, and did what he could to maintain the peace (while training a militia).

Answer: They wanted to kill James Holden.

Holden figured he must have done something right because the colonists and the RCE people were all angry with him. The resistance group came up with a plan to kill the RCE security team and Holden in an effort to buy more time. Basia pointed out that the only warship in the system was in orbit, and would not take kindly to having their captain killed.

The resistance said having a few dead colonists would be good for a PR campaign towards legitimacy. Basia was done losing his children to conflict, so he left the group that was willing to get them killed. Lucia, Basia's wife, told him that staying silent was still being complicit, so Basia told Holden about the attack, who in turn told Murtry.

Answer: Murtry had bugged the town.

Murtry had bugged the town to find the resistance members, but was still happy that Holden told him about the plot. He said it spoke well of Holden's character. What Holden did not know was that Murtry had already put together an operation of his own, which he launched while Holden was in his office.

Murtry's team surrounded the house the resistance was meeting in and demanded they surrender. The resistance members fired in response. The RCE security team shot up the house and burned it to the ground. Murtry had technically done everything by-the-book but had engineered events to maximize the damage his team could inflict.

Answer: Vacuum welding

Basia was trained as a vacuum welder on Ganymede, which turned out to be useless on Ilus, which had both gravity and an atmosphere. His wife, Lucia, was a doctor, and useful wherever she was. Basia worked in the lithium mines before he was arrested by Holden.

On the Rocinante, Naomi and Alex made good use of Basia's training. They always had a list of repairs, and some required special skills that Amos didn't have (like vacuum welding).

Answer: The militia was playing wargames outside the ship.

Havelock and Koenen were outside the Edward Israel teaching their militia how to attack an airlock. Koenen noticed sparks from someone working on the shuttle that was parked nearby. Havelock felt dread when he realized that no one was supposed to be working on the shuttle at that time. Even though his militia was armed with only paint guns, he had them move as a group towards the shuttle to scare away the saboteur.

He was glad when Naomi tried to run from the militia so he wouldn't have to deal with a prisoner, but his militia was too smart, and used grapnel lines to catch her.

Answer: To shoot Holden

Elvi saw Jacek walking with determination and a gun-shaped bulge in his jacket pocket. Jacek said that he'd never be able to speak to his father again. Elvi asked if that was why he was going to see Holden, to ask to speak to his father. Jacek obviously had not even considered that might be an option, and gave it a try. Holden readily offered to put Jacek's hand terminal to the Rocinante's network so he could speak to Basia any time they had a clear line-of-sight, which appeased Jacek. Amos told Holden that Jacek had been carrying a gun, but Holden had bigger concerns to worry about than one youth who might try to shoot him.

Answer: The Investigator

Sometimes between regular chapters in "Cibola Burn" were Interludes from the perspective of the system controlling the Investigator. At first, the text was a simple explanation of the mechanical process, but as the novel continued, the Interludes' text started to match Detective Miller's speech and thought patterns more closely.

Answer: Travel to a void in the network

The Investigator would reach out through the protomolecule network. It slowly built a map of the planet's network, to try to figure out what had happened to it. There was one spot in the network that, whenever touched, would kill the Investigator, or any other protomolecule system (the Investigator could be rebuilt).

It was this one dark spot that had shut down the planet, so Miller wanted to go see it with Holden, who was built differently from the protomolecule machines.