Decades after the ring gates opened thirteen hundred worlds and war gave way to a Belter-run Transport Union, the vanished Martian fleet returned as the Laconian Empire under High Consul Winston Duarte and, with an unstoppable alien-grown battleship, conquered Medina Station and then Sol system, forcing President Drummer's surrender. On Medina the Rocinante crew escaped—Clarissa died blinding the sensors, Bobbie captured the destroyer Gathering Storm, and Holden, taken prisoner, was shipped to Laconia; the survivors now hide on Freehold, waiting for the empire to show a weakness. Governor Singh, having ordered a massacre out of wounded pride, was executed by his own Marine commander as the empire's chosen example. Now, on Laconia, Duarte watches his ten-year-old daughter Teresa at play, his protomolecule modifications letting him quite literally see thought as patterns around people's heads. Honoring his tradition of granting the bereaved an audience, he receives Singh's widow Natalia and daughter Elsa, gives them the inquiry into Singh's death and the government's full support, calling Singh a good man who overreacted. Then he goes to meet Prisoner 17—James Holden—in his cell. Holden repeats his warning: the anomaly that struck the Tempest is the same force that annihilated the protomolecule's makers, and using these technologies will only escalate the fight. Duarte answers that he already knew, that the vanished ships prove the killers in the abyss never truly left, and that this is precisely why he built his disciplined empire and remade his own body. He doesn't want a warning; he wants Holden as an ally to reforge the protomolecule's broken sword, unite humanity, and prepare. When Holden scoffs about poking gods with a sharp stick, Duarte answers: when you fight gods, you storm heaven.