Naomi Nagata (Books)

This page is about the  books character. For the TV incarnation, see Naomi Nagata (TV).

Books character	TV character

Naomi Nagata
Alias(es)	"Knuckles" (courtesy Sam)
Appearance and affiliations
Gender	Female
Hair	Black
Affiliation	Outer Planets Alliance (former) Pur'n'Kleen Water Company (former) Rocicorp Underground
Novels and stories
Status	💓 Alive
Appeared	Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls
Referenced	The Sins of Our Fathers
Relationships	James Holden (captain / lover) Alex Kamal (crewmate) Amos Burton (crewmate) Filip Inaros (son) Marco Inaros (former lover)
TV series
Debut	"Dulcinea"
Season(s)	One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
Portrayed by	Dominique Tipper

Naomi Nagata is a spaceship engineer and the Executive Officer of the Rocinante. She is also in a relationship with the Captain of the Roci, James Holden.

Appearance

She has the thin look of a Belter, standing at almost a full two meters tall. She has dark skin and black curly hair. Her features are a mix of African, Asian, and South American.

History

Background

She has degrees from two universities, and completed her three-year flight officer training in just two years. She served as the Chief Engineer of the Canterbury.

Eros Incident

Main article: Eros incident (Books)

When the Cant receives a distress signal from the Scopuli on the asteroid CA-2216862, Naomi is part of the crew of the Knight, consisting of James Holden, Amos Burton, Alex Kamal and Shed Garvey, that is sent to investigate. While Holden and Amos search the Scopuli, Naomi stays in a salvage mech in case they need to return to the Knight quickly. Shortly after Holden and Amos find the transmitter in the Scopuli, a stealth ship appears and fires six torpedoes at the Canterbury. Naomi, Holden, and Ade Tukunbo discuss ways to stop the torpedoes, but to no avail. The Canterbury is destroyed.

After the Canterbury's destruction, Holden states that they are going to follow the ship that destroyed it, to which she disagrees and says that the best plan is to call for help and keep their crew safe. The Knight is contacted by Wallace Fritz of the Pur'n'Kleen Water Company, who orders them to be picked up by the MCRN Donnager and to assist them in their investigation of the destruction of the Canterbury. The Knight is also followed by six Belter ships.

When the Knight docks on the Donnager, the crew is escorted to their quarters while Holden is debriefed. The Donnager is then attacked by the six ships that followed the Knight. Upon Holden's return to the crew, their room is punctured and Shed is killed. While the Donnager is being attacked and boarded, Holden and his crew are escorted to the hangar bay by Lieutenant Kelly and three marines. After a gunfight in the hanger bay, the crew escapes on a Corvette-class light frigate, the Tachi.

The crew claims the Tachi as salvage and renames it to Rocinante, making Naomi the Executive Officer. After Holden is contacted by Fred Johnson, she installs the new transponder code on the Roci on their way to Tycho Station. Upon arrival, she refuses a handgun from Holden just prior to their meeting with Fred. Fred escorts them to their rooms and explains his situation. An all out war between the Belt and Mars would bring about a horrible amount of deaths. However, there is one way to save all the bloodshed; view the destruction of the Canterbury and Donnager as a criminal act instead of an act of war allowing for a trial incriminating a group that both the Outer Planets Alliance and the Martian Congressional Republic can agree on. In the event of a trial, Holden and his crew would be the star witnesses having experienced both ship's destruction first hand and give Fred and the OPA credibility in the process. Fred leaves, giving them freedom on Tycho, and puts all their expenses on his tab. Later, Naomi and Holden have drinks at a karaoke bar with Naomi getting up on stage to sing tunes by the Moldy Filters. After Holden tells her maybe she should take a breather she retaliates stating that she's seen two ships be blown up in a month and getting drunk is exactly what she needs.

Three days after arriving on Tycho, the crew has dinner together. During dinner Holden discusses his boredom. After the discussion, the crew decides to become private contractors delivering cargo during the war with their ship. After dinner, Naomi apologizes for being such a pain in the ass XO and tells Holden, how great of a job he's done keeping the crew safe. Holden later agrees to the crew of the Roci become private contractors for the OPA, with their first job being to pick up a crew member from the Scopuli on Eros.

The Rocinante lands on Eros and the crew make their way to the flophouse where the Scopuli crew member is registered. Amos notices someone following them who appears to be a cop. Upon their arrival, they get into a gunfight, where she spends the fight laying on the floor due to her refusing a gun from Holden, and are helped by Josephus Miller, who had been following the crew. With the help of Miller's old friend, Sematimba, the crew avoids going to jail. Together they find the mutated body of Julie Mao, who had written down the location of the asteroid, where the ship that attacked the Scopuli was hidden. While the crew discusses their next move with Miller, they receive a message from Fred saying that a mole was found on Tycho leaking their location. Meanwhile, a nuclear explosion on Eros puts the station in lockdown. The new security force who had taken over Eros from Protogen not long before, CPM Security, started ushering the population to radiation shelters. Miller recognized one of the security officers as a former criminal from Ceres, and deduced that they were carrying the riot gear that had been stolen from Star Helix Security.

While Holden and Miller investigate, Naomi and the rest of the crew hide in a maintenance hatch. Before Holden leaves, he orders Naomi to leave with the ship if he and Miller are not back in three hours. When Holden and Miller do not return in time, Naomi has the crew return to the Roci. Upon arriving, they wait just a little while longer when a severely injured Holden and Miller arrive, and they leave Eros and travel to the location of the asteroid Julie had written down. With Holden and Miller still in the sickbay, Holden expresses his feelings for her. Naomi instead explains that she had been in love with him for seven weeks into their first run together on the Cant. Holden had treated another shipmate with respect when he found out that she had feelings for him and Holden did not. Holden would later be revealed to be somewhat of a womanizer aboard the Cant and never noticed Naomi until she was the only woman around. Naomi would refuse to sleep with Holden unless they were in a serious relationship. En route, the crew discovered that data they brought from the Donnager implicated Earth ships in its destruction. Holden immediately broadcast the data to the public, as he had done with the information about the Canterbury's destruction. This led to a disagreement between Holden and Miller, the former believing that information should be free so the public could draw its own conclusions, while the latter believed that the public is bound to reach incorrect conclusions and that detective work is needed in order to not broadcast potentially false and disastrous accusations.

Arriving at asteroid BA-834024112, the crew of the Roci finds the Anubis, the Protogen ship that had boarded the Scopuli. Aboard the ship they find the bodies of the crew in a late stage of protomolecule-infection. Miller finds a video of Antony Dresden explaning Protogen's plans, and Naomi recovers the communication logs. She then works on removing the safe from the captain's quarters. On their trip back to Tycho, during dinner, Naomi theorizes that the Protomolecule wasn't "smart" enough and needed more biomass.

Upon arriving at Tycho, Miller calls another meeting with Holden, Fred, and Naomi. Miller hands over the coordinates of Thoth Station he received from his former partner, Dimitri Havelock, to Fred.

During the battle at Thoth Station, with Naomi managing the Roci's weapon targeting, the Rocinante is able to take out the comm array and the two ships defending the station. Once Fred and the crew of the Rocinante arrive at ops, where Miller and the rest of the OPA have secured it and captured Dresden, Dresden begins to explain the Protomolecule and Protogen's involvement. Miller eventually hears enough of Dresden and shoots him in the head, much to everyone's surprise. Holden begins yelling at Miller, telling him to find his own way home.

Once back on Tycho Naomi and Amos are greeted by Miller in a bar. The two are visibly uncomfortable by Miller with Naomi lying to leave. While waiting on the Roci's repairs, she becomes good friends the repair project's leader, Sam Rosenberg. After Miller shows up at Holden's cabin, Naomi invites Holden to have drinks with her at the bar. Once there, Naomi asks Holden if he'd like to come home with her which he accepts.

The next morning Fred calls Naomi and Holden to his office where Miller briefs them on their plan to destroy Eros. The Roci will defend Eros while engineers will attach five freighters to explode on the surface to deter anyone from landing, while the Nauvoo makes its way to crash it into the sun.

On their way to Eros, Holden and Naomi break the news of their relationship over breakfast to Alex and Amos, who were quite amused and happy. Later, Naomi and Holden discuss Miller shooting Dresden. Naomi compares the Belt to one big ship and Miller did what he did to save the Belt. Not long after, they pick up a large number of U.N.N. ships heading toward Eros.

Once Eros dodged the Nauvoo, the crew of the Roci begin to panic. Holden opens up a channel to the Ravi asking if they would like to follow Eros, as it has now somehow become invisible to radar. Holden then opens a channel with Fred. They conclude that Eros is heading towards Earth and decide to detonate the bombs on the station in hopes of slowing it down. Later, she apologizes and sends a dead man's switch to Miller as he descends into the stations with his bombs to shut off whatever is coordinating the station.

With the Roci traveling at high G, Fred contacts him with a plan to paint Eros with a targeting laser while Earth fires their nukes at it. Holden points out that there is no way for the Roci to maintain contact with the station without killing his crew in the process, with Fred responding to put the ship on autopilot if he needs to. Holden replies that he'll think about it. After discussing it with Naomi, they realize that they can use the radio waves from the OPA ships on Eros to target Earth's nukes without endangering their crew, which receives approval from both Fred and the UN Naval Command. While waiting on Miller to contact Julie, the Ravi begins threatening the Roci. However, before any damage can be done, Eros stops jamming radar sensors and heads toward Venus.

On the Rocinante's way back to Tycho, the crew watches Eros's decent on Venus, wondering what will happen next.

Ganymede Incident

Main article: Ganymede incident (Books)

In the eighteen months since the Eros incident, Naomi and the crew of the Rocinante have been working as pirate hunters for the OPA.

Holden, Naomi and Amos are sent under the guise of the crew of the Weeping Somnambulist to investigate, while Alex keeps the Roci hidden in case they needed to escape or were captured. Upon their arrival, much to their surprise due to the ship being a regular, they were boarded and inspected by UN Navy, but were able to hold their cover. To make matters worse, once the ship landed, they were greeted by the customs official who attempted to con part of their supplies to sell on the black market. Holden and Amos manage to scare them off.

Later, Holden and Naomi begin to explore the station when they begin to hear a large group of people shouting. When they investigate, they discover it's a food riot. Ganymede is one of the largest food exports in the system and continues to export food while most of the people on the station are starving. After they examine the situation, they go up to the port supervisory and Holden tells him that he is Walter Philips, OPA rep out of Tycho Station. When he fails to resolve the situation Naomi steps in. She calls Amos and tells him that if the freighter carrying food leaves to take everything and scuttle it. She then tells the port supervisor to either give the crowd the food or the OPA will just take the whole ship. Afterward, Naomi accuses Holden of acting like Detective Miller but before their argument could escalate they are approached by Praxidike Meng, asking for their help.

The three make their way back to the ship where Prax tells them his story. While Amos does recon and gathers supplies, Holden forces Prax to eat a meal and take a shower and Naomi attempts to hack into the stations crippled security system. Amos returns with a can of "chicken food products", which Holden hopes the hacker that Prax hired will take as a token of payment. Then, Holden, Amos, and Prax make their way to the hacker while Naomi monitors them from the ship. They arrive at the hacker's hole for the exchange, but the hacker believes they have more chicken and raises the price. Instead, Amos begins to beat the hacker, eventually being called if by Holden when the hacker agrees to help them. While Naomi rides the hackers tail through security, the hacker shows them the footage of Mei Meng being taken by her doctor, Strickland, and another woman, who Prax doesn't recognize but the school's security registered as Mei's mother. The footage follows them up to an old utility storage from before the station was finished, that the security feeds do not follow. With their information, they pay the hacker and head back to the ship and discuss a plan: Naomi will monitor them and take care of any electronic threats, Prax will be there for Mei to recognize and to give any details on her illness that affects the rescue, leaving Holden and Amos to do the violence. Holden and his team make it to the door and after fighting a security force, find remains of the Protomolecule. On their way back to the ship, Holden comes to the conclusion that because he gave Fred the only remaining Protomolecule sample that he must be behind this. He then orders Naomi, that if they do not make it back to the ship in thirty minutes, to leave with Alex but to not return to Tycho.

Family

Prior to serving on the Canterbury, Naomi was in a relationship with Marco Inaros. They had one son, Filip.