Released in 2013, Abaddon's Gate is the third of nine novels in The Expanse series.
Abaddon's Gate contains examples of:
- Apocalypse How: The Ring Station is capable of Stellar/Physical Annihilation.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The OPA dreadnought Behemoth - formerly the generation ship Nauvoo. The biggest spaceship ever built, turned into a giant battleship bristling with weapons ("the biggest, baddest weapons platform in the solar system"). Unfortunately, the frame of the ship is too fragile to support the rail guns, and firing one torpedo causes a shipwide blackout."Apart from painting teeth on her and welding on an apartment building–sized sharkfin, nothing could have been more clearly or effectively built to intimidate. Which was good, because she was a retrofitted piece of crap, and if they ever got in a real fight, they were boned."
- Bungled Suicide: A political activist en route to the Ring attempts to set himself on fire, only for the Navy ship's fire-suppression system to douse him in fire retardant before the flames can do much more than singe his hair and cloths. Navy security personnel had him cuffed and escorted out under guard within thirty seconds of the incident.
- Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Ren teaches Clarissa about how incorrectly installing a brownout buffer can bring down the whole power grid. This becomes a vital lesson for her in the ending.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Hector Cortez comes across as a slimy, cowardly celebrity televangelist using his fame to play politics, in stark contrast to Anna. However, when Clarissa intervenes to stop Ashford from firing the improvised laser, he knocks out Ashford with a taser and takes charge of the security team.
- Disability Superpower: The way Cohen perceives the world through his sonar glasses gives him an extraordinary ability to perceive and model 3D objects.
- Improvised Weapon: The Nauvoo was equipped with a communications laser large and powerful enough to communicate with the Sol system across a distance of light years. When the "Slow Zone" activates, the crew of the Behemoth realize they can reconfigure it into an impromptu Energy Weapon. Considering how projectile-dependent most human military tech is (whether magnetic or self-propelled) this makes it one of the only effective weapons in that environment, regardless of how impractical it would be outside that.
- Low-Speed Chase: The Ring Station limits the speed of any object in its vicinity ("The Slow Zone") to a hard limit. This leads to a number of painfully slow (for spaceships) chases, as as any object going above the speed limit is instantly decelerated (see Not the Fall That Kills You… below).
- Make an Example of Them: Bull's first big act aboard the Behemoth is to space an otherwise harmless drug dealer. Just to "frame the issue" for the Belters.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": When Ashford's loyalists commandeer four suits of Martian power armor, all the mutineers realize their situation just got a lot worse.
- The Mutiny: Happens on board the Behemoth. Several times, in fact."So this is a coup," Monica said."Counter-countercoup, technically," Bull said.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Averted. The effects of sudden deceleration are expanded upon in gruesome detail.
- Restraining Bolt: The leg cuff put on Clarissa to stop her from using her combat implants.
- Stealth Pun: After waking up on The Behemoth, Alex asks "Were we arrested?". Technically, that's exactly what happened when The Slow Zone lowered the speed limit again
- Too Awesome to Use: Alex' rationale for recommending that the Roci have a keel-mounted railgun installed is that, while their torpedo launchers are a lot more flexible and often more deadly, Martian-built military-grade torpedoes are understandably hard to come by outside of the Martian military. Hence it would be useful to have comparable anti-capital weapon that was easier to keep the magazine stocked for.
- Wham Line:Sam: Bull! Can you feel anything - I mean anything - lower than your tits?
- Writers Cannot Do Math: When the Slow Zone's speed limit changes, several ships undergo rapid deceleration which causes all sorts of death and horrific injury. This makes sense for the worst-off ships: 600m/s to 0 in 5 seconds is about 120m/s/s or 12G of acceleration. That could certainly do serious damage to a human body, though still highly unlikely to turn anyone into chunky salsa. However, it mentions that the Behemoth was doing about 10% of that at the time. A few seconds of 1.2G of acceleration is nowhere near enough to do any serious damage to anyone. It's highly unlikely that there'd be anything worse than a few minor fall injuries from people caught offguard and landing awkwardly.
- In a large open space (such as Behemoth's drum area), that acceleration still propels you forward at 60 m/s. Which is pretty much fatal unless you're lucky enough to be near the front bulkhead or can grab and hold to something.
