- This page is about the
TV ship. For the books incarnation, see Rocinante (Books).
 Books spaceship
|
 TV spaceship
|
|---|
The Rocinante ("Roci") is a Corvette-class light frigate with multiple roles, such as torpedo bomber and boarding party insertion.
Originally commissioned as the MCRN Tachi (ECF 270), the ship was stationed onboard the MCRN Battleship Donnager. She was rechristened by James Holden after he and his crew used her to escape from the Donnager. This is a literary reference to "Rocinante," Don Quixote's horse. For the sake of clarification, "rocín" means "work horse" and "ante" means "before" or "previously". Thus, "Rocinante" means "previously a work horse".
The ship's construction is like a narrow building, layered floor by floor from the drive cone and reactor up to the engineering deck, to the machine shop, then the galley and crew cabins and medical bays, storage deck containing the crew airlock, then on up to the command deck and pilot's farthest forward. Under thrust, g-forces then provide a "down" amenable to human orientation.
Her normal crew complement was over a dozen navy personnel and officers, and on many missions she'd also carry six marines.
Crew
Ordinary
The crew of the Rocinante
- Captain James Holden
- Executive Officer Naomi Nagata
- Pilot Alex Kamal
- Chief Engineer Amos Burton
Temporary
- Star Helix Security Detective Josephus Miller - Temporary during both the Assault on Thoth Station and the Eros Incident.
- Marine Bobbie Draper - Temporary during Io Campaign, and later after the Slow Zone Incident.
- Botanist Praxideke Meng - Temporary crew member until his daughter's rescue.
- UN Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala - Temporary during the Io Campaign.
- Pastor Anna Volovodov - Temporary during the Slow Zone Incident.
- Espionage Agent Kenzo Gabriel - Temporary during the Eros Incident.
History
“We've gone too far” — CQB
Originally commissioned as the MCRN Tachi, the Corvette was one of Donnager''s original assigned escorts when the McCabe and Valenza were replaced with 4 of the new Morrigan-class to improve the battleship's area of control. By the time Donnager picked up the Canterbury survivors, the Tachi was the only escort docked in the battleship's hangar bay.
Once Donnager was boarded in a CQB scenario, Captain Yao ordered Lt. Lopez and some MCR Marines to escort Holden and the other survivors to the Tachi, hoping they would escape and testify that the Martians had nothing to do with the Canterbury's destruction. The bay, however, was swarming with enemy boarders. Amos Burton and Lopez were wounded and the Marines were killed, but Alex Kamal, previously an MCRN pilot, took control of the gunship. Using her PDCs, the Tachi blasted her way out of the hangar and made a getaway at full burn before the Donnager was scuttled.
Back to the Butcher
Once away, the Canterbury survivors received a message from the OPA spokesperson Fred Johnson offering a safe harbor, something that would be hard to find elsewhere as anyone flying a stolen Martian warship would be highly suspect. He also instructed them on how to change the Tachi's transponder codes to avoid long range detection. Alex enthusiastically suggested naming their new ship "Flamin' Alamo" or "Screamin' Firehawk" to which Holden refused, suggesting the name "Rocinante" instead. Amos agreed, saying a woman named Rocinante had once been good to him. With its new name, Rocinante made for Tycho Station.
Rock Bottom
Upon arrival, a brief hostility ensued as it turned out that Johnson planned to commandeer Rocinante for a mission, as he wanted a capable warship in case whatever happened to the Scopuli happened again, but Holden convinced him to hire them to undertake it. Johnson then had the ship disguised (somewhat) as a gas hauler to help them avoid detection and gave the Rocinante's crew their mission: to find Lionel Polanski, one of Fred's operatives from the Scopuli.
Windmills
Not long after getting underway, Rocinante got spotted by a Martian patrol boat, the Yangste. Despite Alex's best efforts the Martians approached to board, which would have meant grave consequences once they recognized the stolen warship. Fortunately, Kenzo Gabriel (who had just been caught sending out a rogue signal) informed the Roci's crew that, being a Martian gunship, there would be secret codewords for when they were working covert ops and needed to be left alone, which Alex confirmed with an incident he witnessed involving communications including the words "donkey balls." Managing to locate the codewords in time, the MCRN ship was satisfied and left the Rocinante alone.
Salvage
Arriving at a lone asteroid, the Rocinante encountered a seemingly inactive stealth ship, found to be the Anubis and the Cant's killer, bound for Eros from Phoebe but never arrived. Docking with an umbilical, Holden, James, Amos, Kenzo, and one of the Roci's drones searched the ship and discovered the Protomolecule at work throughout the ship. Finding that Lionel had escaped in a shuttle, Holden ordered Alex to destroy the Anubis with a torpedo, which Alex did gladly as Rocinante now made its way to Eros.
Fight or Flight
Following the attack by the hybrid, Holden, Alex and Amos are outside the ship burning off traces of the protomolecule from the hull. Naomi tells him that the reactor shielding is intact and nothing critical was damaged. Prax is working on the cargo bay shield. After Holden learns that Earth and Mars are at war, Holden wipes the name Rocinante, as well as the lady, off the hull. Naomi asks Prax for a new name for the ship's transponder, renaming the ship Pinus Contorta.
Media
Trivia
- Rocinante is Spanish for a work horse or low-quality horse, but can also mean an illiterate or rough man. Pronounced: 'Rah-sih-nahntay' (or 'Rahsee' for Roci). It is also the name of the horse of Don Quixote in the famous and influential Spanish novel of the same name by Miguel de Cervantes.
- Tachi is a Japanese word and may have the following meaning in a military context. (1) Tachi (太刀): A type of sword predating the Katana. A Tachi is slender, narrow and light. (2) Tachi (立ち) literally "to rise", "rising up to face battle". In the TV show the crews uniforms show a Chinese "motto" or alternative name for the ships. For the Tachi it is 首次作战 - "first (time) into battle". The Chinese motto aligns best with meaning (2).
- Tough SF estimates that the Rocinante has a dry mass of around 250 mtric tons, and a total Delta-V of around 4000 km/s.[1]
See also
References
External Links
- syfy.com: The Expanse Concept Art
- steamcommunity.com: 70k scale replica of the Rocinante corvette
- projectrho.com: Rockets Are Not Hotels
- 360° Video Inside the Rocinante on YouTube
syfy.com: 
Warning: Display title "<i>Rocinante (TV)</i>" overrides earlier display title "<i>Rocinante</i> <span style="font-size: 55%;">(Books)</span>".