Babylon's Ashes characters

First appears in chapter 3

Captain of the salvaged Martian corvette Rocinante. After a decade of being pushed into the middle of every crisis in the solar system, he is working out of Tycho Station with Fred Johnson's faction of the Outer Planets Alliance while the inner planets try to organize a response to the Free Navy. He is stubbornly attached to telling the truth in public, uncomfortable with the symbol other people have made of him, and increasingly aware that his instincts are better suited to a ship than to a war.

First appears in chapter 3

The Rocinante's engineer and Holden's partner, a Belter of extraordinary technical skill. She is recovering from a captivity aboard her former partner Marco Inaros's ship and from the discovery that her son Filip, raised by Marco, took part in the asteroid attacks on Earth. She carries the guilt of having once helped build the network Marco turned into the Free Navy, and she has not given up on reaching Filip.

First appears in chapter 3

The Rocinante's mechanic, an Earther of enormous physical strength and flat, uncomplicated candor. He survived the fall of the rocks on Earth on foot and came back into space with Clarissa Mao in tow. He is loyal to the crew in a way he does not bother to explain and generally leaves the politics to other people.

Also known as Peaches

First appears in chapter 7

Daughter of the disgraced industrialist Jules-Pierre Mao, once convicted for a campaign of sabotage and murder aimed at destroying Holden. Released from prison during the collapse of Earth's institutions and taken under Amos's protection, she now works aboard the Rocinante as a technician. Illegal combat implants left her body permanently damaged, and she is trying to build a life out of being useful rather than being forgiven.

First appears in chapter 16

The Rocinante's pilot, a Martian with decades in the cockpit and a habit of avoiding difficult conversations. He is flying the racing pinnace Razorback with Bobbie Draper, running errands for the war effort while the Roci is otherwise occupied, and is uneasily reckoning with the state of the Mars he grew up on.

First appears in chapter 27

A former Martian Marine gunnery sergeant, powerfully built and trained in powered armor, who has spent years working as an intelligence asset rather than a soldier. Partnered with Alex aboard the Razorback, she chases down the black-market pipelines that armed the Free Navy and finds them rooted in the corruption of her own planet's military.

First appears in chapter 2

Founder and self-appointed leader of the Free Navy, a charismatic Belter revolutionary who orchestrated the asteroid strikes that killed billions on Earth. He commands from the ship Pella, treats the loyalty of his captains as his due, and understands publicity better than logistics. Naomi's former partner and Filip's father, he is used to being the most persuasive person in any room.

First appears in chapter 2

Marco and Naomi's teenage son, raised inside his father's movement and celebrated by it for his part in the attack on Earth. He serves aboard the Pella surrounded by men who treat him as the heir to a revolution, and he is beginning to notice the distance between the war his father describes and the one being fought.

Appears from the start

A senior Free Navy captain commanding a squadron from the ship Connaught, and one of the few officers with the standing to question Marco directly. A veteran Belter officer with a large polyamorous family among her crew, she took the job of seizing shipping for the movement and is keeping careful account of where the seized cargo actually goes.

First appears in chapter 3

The former United Nations colonel known in the Belt as the Butcher of Anderson Station, who changed sides decades ago and became the most effective political operator in the Outer Planets Alliance. He runs Tycho Station, keeps the shipyards working, and is the one figure both the inner planets and the moderate Belt factions will still negotiate through.

First appears in chapter 10

The most formidable political operator on Earth, a veteran United Nations official who has spent her career keeping wars from starting and is now managing one she could not prevent. With the planet's climate wrecked and its food supply collapsing, she is trying to hold together an alliance of Earth, Mars, and whichever Belt factions can be bought, coaxed, or shamed into it.

Also known as Prax

First appears in chapter 13

A botanist on Ganymede whose daughter was abducted years earlier during the collapse of that moon's agricultural domes. He has rebuilt his research on engineered crops and yeast strains, and the work has become suddenly and dangerously valuable now that Earth cannot feed itself.

First appears in chapter 8

A veteran leader of the Outer Planets Alliance on Ceres Station, patient, calculating, and committed to the idea of the Belt as a nation rather than a labor pool. He threw in with the Free Navy and now administers Ceres under its flag, discovering how little of what he was promised is arriving.

First appears in chapter 10

A Belter officer who came up through the Outer Planets Alliance and has commanded ships and stations for Fred Johnson's faction. Blunt, disciplined, and openly contemptuous of Marco Inaros, she is one of the few people in the movement with the practical authority to organize traffic, supply, and defense across the whole Belt.

First appears in chapter 4

A Belter welder working on Medina Station, brought in with a crew of specialists to install the Free Navy's heavy weapon emplacements in the ring space. He believes in the cause that recruited him and is finding the reality of life under the new administration harder to square with it than he expected.

First appears in chapter 32

An aging Belter laborer on the Medina work crews who has spent a long life on the losing side of other people's politics. Tired, fatalistic, and inclined to keep his head down, he finds that the Free Navy's demand for loyalty does not leave much room for keeping out of things.