En route, they receive a message from Fred Johnson, chief of Tycho Station, an engineering outpost and construction platform, offering his support. In response, the shuttle is ordered to rendezvous with the MCRN battleship Donnager, flagship of Mars' Jupiter Fleet. With the shuttle damaged by the debris field, lacking the necessary fuel or supplies to reach a port, and fearful that should they put out a distress signal of their own, the attackers may return, Holden broadcasts a message out to the entire system implicating Mars in the destruction of the Cant, hoping to negate any attempt to kill them as part of a cover-up. Based on the highly advanced technology of the warship and the discovery that the beacon from the Scopuli is of Martian origin, the survivors suspect the MCRN of being behind the attack. Holden sends an angry message to the attacking ship, but it ignores him and departs. Before they can make it, an unknown stealth warship arrives and, without warning, destroys the Cant with nuclear weapons. Suspecting that the ship may be a trap set by pirates, they take the beacon and begin returning to the Cant. They find no trace of the ship's crew, but they do discover the beacon transmitting the distress signal. They discover an abandoned transport vessel called the Scopuli. Five members of the Cant's crew are dispatched in a shuttle to investigate: executive officer James 'Jim' Holden, a former officer in the UN Navy (UNN) chief engineer Naomi Nagata, a Belter pilot Alex Kamal, a veteran of the Martian navy (MCRN) engineer Amos Burton and medic Shed Garvey. The ice hauling ship Canterbury (nicknamed the Cant by Belters) is en route from Saturn's Rings to Ceres Station when it encounters a distress signal. The story is told from the point of view of Belter detective Joe Miller, and Earther Jim Holden.

The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA), a network of loosely-aligned militant groups, seeks to combat the Belt's exploitation at the hands of the 'Inners', who, in turn, have branded the OPA a terrorist organization. Belters, whose bodies tend to be thin and elongated owing to their low-gravity environment, carry out the gritty, blue-collar work that provides the system with essential natural resources, but they are largely marginalized by the rest of the Solar System. Earth, governed by the United Nations, and the Martian Congressional Republic act as competing superpowers, maintaining an uneasy military alliance in order to exert dual hegemony over the peoples of the Asteroid belt, known as 'Belters'. Leviathan Wakes is set in a future in which humanity has colonized much of the Solar System.

Expanse books written by a mormon