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The Expanse After Show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mTpb_w6KlVk
The Expanse Comic Book: https://amzn.to/387MXHc
The Expanse Comic Book Paperback Anthology (Available Aug 2021): https://amzn.to/3pEmdUu
The Expanse Comic Book on Kindle or Comixology: https://amzn.to/3nf4EIV
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This week we discuss the tenth and final episode of season 4 of The Expanse titled “Cibola Burn”.
You can purchase The Expanse books via Amazon. USA or Canada or the UK
Or listen to the audiobook version through Audible
Episode Recap
Down And Out
The episode opens on board Drummer’s ship. The crew is watching the news reports on Earth.
Drummer is taking it hard. She feels guilty for having let Marco live. If she had killed him like was epxected, Ashford’s and Fred’s death and the destruction on Earth would have never happened.
However, Oksana reminds her that if Marco hand’t done it, someone else eventually would have.
Even through her grief, she’s worried about Naomi and how this will affect her.
Drummer’s crew is concerned for their future. Even though Marco is only one small faction, the innards will see all Belters as a threat. And with increased vigilance, it will make their role as pirates much more difficult.
Drummer informs them that she’s agreed to a meeting with Marco Inaros.
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On Earth, with all communications to the rest of the prison cut off, Amos convinces security guard Rona that their best option is to try and leave the place. She reluctantly agrees to allow Amos to bring Clarissa along.
With the elevators down and the stairway blocked, their only option of escape is to find the elevator’s maintenance ladder. However, with the doors jammed there’s no way to access the elevator shaft. Until security guard Sully comes up with a crazy plan.
At gunpoint, they release Konecheck, an inmate who’s mods give him superhuman strength, and get him to pry the doors open. But there’s no maintenance latter to be seen.
However, Clarissa spots a wall panel with a hinge. Amos get’s one of the guards to shoot two holes in the panel and then get’s Konecheck, who he’s calling Tiny, much to the big inmate’s distaste, to pry open the panel, revealing the much needed ladder.
The plan is to send up one guard to make holes in the subsequent panels for Tiny to pry open. It will be slow going, but it’s their only way out.
They draw lots, and Sullivan is chosen to go up with Konecheck.
A while later, the ones waiting below hear a scream as Sullivan’s body comes crashing down.
Konecheck claims the guard lost his grip and fell.
He’s almost at the top so Rona, refusing to split up again, goes up to complete the job with the others trailing behind on the ladder.
They start to get the feel for their situation when they see daylight at the top of the shaft where a whole building should be.
When they reach the top they see the devastation. The entire prison building has been destroyed.
While everyone is distracted, Konecheck kills the guard Morris and disarms Rona, tossing her gun down the elevator shaft.
Amos tries to fight the inmate, but the mans mods make him no match for Amos.
Clarissa tries to activate her mods to help but the blockers she’s on are still in effect.
As Konecheck walks Amos over to the shaft, Rona uses Morris’ gun, still clutched in his dead hand so the override the biolock and shoots the big inmate allowing Amos to throw Konecheck down the elevator shaft.
Rona, still in shock can only think of her daughter. Amos tells her to leave and go find her kid.
Left alone, Amos and Clarissa have nothing left to do but find their way out of there.
———————
On board the Razorback AKA the ScreamingFirehawk, Alex is torn between his loyalty to Mars and his loyalty to Holden. He wan’t to help Jim find the Protomolecule, but Bobbie reminds him that there’s nothing they can do from where they are. However, there is something they can do to help Mars.
When the Barkeith and her escorts kill their transponders and alter their direction, Alex and Bobbie try to covertly find out where they’re heading.
By their trajectory, it looks like they’re going to intersect with the Hungaria Group. The innermost large asteroid group in the Belt. It’s the perfect place to hide in space if you don’t want to be spotted by any scopes.
Alex alters course for a better look but tries to stay hidden by keeping the asteroids between them.
As they approach, spot more Martian ships. As they watch the Barkeith depart they realize it wasn’t transferring weapons, the Barkeith’s escort are the weapons.
That’s when they realize that Marco Inaros’ Free Navy is comprised of Belters on Martian ships.
As the martian ships split up and depart, Alex and Bobbie are spotted and fired upon.
They pump themselves full of juice and push their ship to the max.
Alex tries to outmanoeuvre the incoming missile but it’s no use, it’s catching up to them.
In one last ditch effort, he dumps the ships core to collide with the missile.
They survived, but without power and hustling through space at maximum velocity, how long can they last.
————
On board Marco’s ship, Marco tries to play nice with Naomi, inviting her to join he, Filip and their friends for a meal. Even though she’s being treated like a prisoner, He tells her she’s free to do whatever she wants, except leave. She walks out.
Even though Cyn is on Marco’s side, he does’t like the way his boss is treating Naomi. He seems to be the only one concerned for her.
When left alone, Marco tells Filip that he’s not angry with the boy, but he is disappointed with him for bringing Naomi.
He thinks that having his mother there will be a distractions for the boy. Marco needs his son clear of mind for what’s to come.
He tells the boy that it’s ok to feel sad or even angry for what Naomi did to them. But he can’t let those feelings rule him.
Elsewhere on the ship, Cyn asks Naomi if she would like to help him replace the air scrubbers.
She angrily tells him that things can’t go back to the way they used to be. She had hoped that when she left, he would be there for Filip. That he would install some of his goodness in her son and not let Marco poison the boy.
Cyn tries to justify what Marco is doing, how it’s for the future of all Belters. But all she sees is the river of blood he’s doing it on, and Cyn is helping him.
Later, in the mess hall, Karal tells Naomi she was happy when she left. The fact that she feels remorse for creating the code that destroyed the Gamarra means she was never one of them.
She says nobody is coming to save her and after what she did to Marco, the only way she’s ever leaving that ship is dead.
Naomi picks up a knife and makes her way to the bridge.
She approaches Marco with the intention of killing him but Filip intercedes telling his mom they are busy and she has no business there.
As he escorts her back to a lower deck, he tells her she should be grateful that he took her. By doing so he saved her life.
Naomi reads into his meaning and in a panic, realizes the code she wrote all those years ago that destroyed the Gamarra is now on the Rocinante.
She finds Cyn and pretends to play nice with him, offering her help with the scrubbers. When the Belter’s back is turned, she knocks him out, grabs his terminal and sends a message to Holden telling him the Roci has been sabotaged and to not start its reactor.
—————
On Tycho station, Jim is in a bad place. Fred is dead, Marco has the Protomolecule sample, he can’t reach his parents on Earth. nor can he get ahold of any of the Roci’s crew.
He and Bull interrogate Sakai, she doesn’t give them any useful information, she just keeps reminding them that they’re not Belters and they don’t belong there.
Luckily, Monica’s eye saw the Zmeya’s flight plan while it displayed on Sakai’s terminal. Jim plans on intercepting it with the Rocinante.
As Jim and his temporary flight crew prepare the ship for departure, he receives Naomi’s message. She warns him about the reactor and tells him she’s being held captive by Marco. The message is cut short as Cyn grabs her and the transmission cuts off.
He immediately shuts down the reactor.
Unfortunately, without any location data, there’s no way for him to know where Naomi is.
And that was the episode.
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