Season 1

Complete listed story — includes the ending

S1E1 · Dulcinea

The series opens with Juliette Mao breaking out of a storage locker on an unidentified spaceship. Seemingly the only survivor, she breaks into the engineering room of the vessel to find its nuclear reactor fused with human remains. On the dwarf planet Ceres, Star Helix Detective Joe Miller is assigned to find Mao and return her to her rich parents on Luna. In New York, UN executive Chrisjen Avasarala interrogates a captured operative of the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA), a militant Belter group, about contraband stealth technology. On its way to Ceres, the ice hauler Canterbury receives a distress signal from the freighter Scopuli. The distress signal is erased from the Canterbury logs, presumed to be pirate bait, but acting Executive Officer Jim Holden secretly reports the signal to company headquarters, forcing the captain to send a rescue mission aboard the shuttle Knight. Holden, joined on the Knight by ship's engineer Naomi Nagata, mechanic Amos Burton, pilot Alex Kamal, and medic Shed Garvey, find the Scopuli empty and recover the distress signal transponder. As the shuttle heads back, a mysterious stealth ship destroys the ship Canterbury with nuclear torpedoes, leaving the Knight crew as the only survivors.

S1E2 · The Big Empty

On Ceres, Miller investigates water theft from a wealthy area of the station, now severely rationed due to the Canterbury ' s failure to return. In Mao's apartment, he finds clues placing her aboard the Scopuli. On Earth, Avasarala sends the suspected OPA captive to Luna for further interrogation after her superior, Undersecretary Sadavir Errinwright, disapproves of "gravity torture", but the captive dies by suicide en route. Stranded in the Belt, the Knight is damaged by debris from the ice hauler's destruction. Using the last of their air, the survivors build an improvised antenna to place a distress call, which is responded to by the Martian Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN) flagship Donnager. After Nagata identifies the distress transponder from the Scopuli as Martian military technology, Holden broadcasts a message across the Solar System implicating Mars in the destruction of the Canterbury as insurance against being killed as witnesses.

S1E3 · Remember the Cant

Holden's broadcast triggers protests on Ceres, with the OPA quickly blaming Mars for the destruction of the Canterbury. While responding to the riots, Miller's partner Havelock is brutally attacked and a man with the handle "Nightbandit31", with whom Mao was in contact, is killed. On Earth, Avasarala leaks information to the Martian ambassador about the suspected trade of stealth technology between Mars and the OPA. She deduces from the panicked Martian reaction that Mars was not responsible – but that somebody else wants to start a war. Aboard the Donnager, the Canterbury ' s survivors are detained and questioned, with Nagata in particular being suspected as an OPA sleeper agent. Complicating matters further, an unidentified ship flies towards the Donnager, ignoring all requests to divert or identify itself.

S1E4 · CQB

On Ceres, Miller identifies the dead "Nightbandit31" as Bizi Betiko, only to later discover the real Betiko is alive. Miller then learns that the deceased man was a data broker with multiple spoofed electronic IDs and recovers an implanted, encrypted memory storage device. Meanwhile, the Donnager ' s pursuers initiate an attack and reveal themselves as six stealth ships, which Holden identifies as the same ones that attacked the Canterbury. Unexpectedly at a technological disadvantage, the Donnager is soon severely damaged and Shed Garvey is decapitated by a railgun shot. As the Donnager is being boarded, Holden is evacuated on the Martian captain's orders to secure him as a witness to the attacks. He bargains for his crew’s release and they all narrowly escape aboard a frigate, right before the Donnager self-destructs. Far from the battle, at Tycho Station, a massive generation ship, the Nauvoo, is being built at the behest of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Station manager Fred Johnson, who has ties to the OPA, turns the Nauvoo ' s sensors towards the battle.

S1E5 · Back to the Butcher

For lack of options, the Canterbury ' s survivors accept a proposal by Fred Johnson to dock at Tycho Station. With his help, they modify the ship's transponder, renaming the ship the Rocinante to hide its connection to the Donnager. A flashback shows how Johnson became "The Butcher of Anderson Station" eleven years ago; as a UN Marine colonel, he led an assault on a station occupied by protesting miners, killing all aboard (including many children) despite their attempts at surrender. On Ceres, Miller finds evidence linking Julie Mao to the OPA, which tries to recruit him through its local agent Anderson Dawes. While leaving Julie's apartment with the data chip, Miller is abducted by unknown people.

S1E6 · Rock Bottom

On Ceres, Miller is interrogated by Dawes, demanding to know what he has learned about Julie. Dawes' operatives attempt to kill Miller but he is saved by fellow Star Helix officer Octavia Muss. Miller and Muss investigate the data cube recovered from Mao's apartment. Miller brings the data cube to his boss at Star Helix and confides his suspicions about the Mao case. She promptly fires him and removes all his clearances. Avasarala wants a spy on Tycho Station to keep an eye on Fred Johnson and resorts to extortion to get her way. Holden and crew arrive at Tycho Station, and Fred Johnson reveals his plan to exploit Holden and crew's testimony for legitimacy with the UN Security Council. Holden makes an uneasy alliance, sharing everything he knows about the destruction of the Canterbury and the MCRN Donnager. Johnson seems fairly convinced neither Earth nor Mars was behind the attacks. After disguising the Rocinante as a simple gas hauler, Holden and crew set out for Eros to pick up the potential sole survivor of the Scopuli, codenamed "Lionel Polanski", at Johnson's request.

S1E7 · Windmills

During a visit to Holden's co-op parents' house in Montana, Avasarala learns of Holden's troubled childhood and gains some insight into his decision to affiliate with Fred Johnson. On their way to Lionel Polanski's coordinates, an asteroid near Eros, the crew of the Rocinante realize too late that Kenzo, a UN-affiliated spy from Tycho Station, is on board and has inadvertently atttracted the attention of a Martian patrol. Amos and Holden have a tense standoff when Amos prepares to kill the Martian patrol if they board. Holden denounces Amos' penchant for needless violence and prepares to shoot Amos should he try to fire on the Martians. Kenzo helps obtain the MCRN codebook from the ship's safe and the patrol backs off, believing the Rocinante to be a Martian black ops ship. Miller departs Ceres for Eros on his continued search for Julie Mao.

S1E8 · Salvage

Rocinante arrives at the asteroid and the crew discover the Anubis, the stealth ship that had destroyed the Canterbury. It is empty and completely vented except for a mysterious organic substance that covers the ship's reactor and seems to respond to radiation. After taking the ship's safe, the crew blasts the Anubis with nuclear missiles, then head to Eros to find "Lionel Polanski", who escaped the Anubis on its shuttle. Errinwright informs Avasarala of his plan to have Holden and crew covertly assassinated on Eros. Avasarala receives word that her friend and colleague, Franklin DeGraaf, the former Ambassador to Mars that she used to gain information on Martian stealth tech, took his own life. Miller, who recognizes "Lionel Polanski" as Julie's code name, the Rocinante crew, and Kenzo converge on a hotel on Eros where Lionel/Julie are staying. Holden and his team are ambushed at the hotel by a UN black ops team (signaled by Kenzo and authorized by Errinwright) but are saved by Miller. Finally breaking into Julie's hotel room, they find her dead body in the bathroom covered in the same organic substance as the reactor on the Anubis.

S1E9 · Critical Mass

A flashback from seven weeks prior shows the lead-up to Julie Mao's gruesome death; the Scopuli, with Julie as part of the crew, are on an intercept course with the Anubis, which they believe to be transporting a weapon from Phoebe Research Station to Eros on behalf of Julie's father, Jules-Pierre Mao. The Anubis ambushes the Scopuli, killing the crew and imprisoning Julie while revealing their intent to destroy the Canterbury and antagonize Earth and Mars into a war. After discovering the organic reactor substance - the protomolecule - has killed everyone aboard, Julie vents the Anubis, leaves it on an asteroid with an OPA beacon, and takes the ship's shuttle to Eros. An increasingly infected Julie tries in vain to contact Anderson Dawes for rescue on Eros before dying alone in her hotel room. In the present, Fred Johnson broadcasts evidence that the stealth ships were built on Earth. After Miller and the Rocinante crew flee the hotel, Julie's body is tracked down by Dresden, a scientist working for Mao. Dresden harvests her infected blood and informs Mao of his daughter's death, to which Mao responds, "proceed as planned". Under the guise of a ship explosion and radiation leak, Eros mercenaries working for Dresden and Mao place Eros into lockdown and seal the poverty-stricken citizens into radiation shelters after infecting them with Julie's blood. Most of the Rocinante crew head back to the ship, while Miller and Holden go to investigate the shelters. Discovering their true purpose as incubators for the infection, with everyone inside dead or dying, they also receive a lethal dose of radiation. Avasarala visits Frank DeGraaf's widowed husband, Craig, and steals data drives related to an Advanced Fusion Prototype which looks like the reactor on board the Anubis.

S1E10 · Leviathan Wakes

Miller and Holden (who are suffering from radiation sickness) and the Rocinante crew make their separate ways through the increasingly dire situation on Eros towards the ship. They think that the conspirators behind the stealth ships are using the population as food for the "protomolecule" infection. Miller begins to see hallucinations of Julie Mao. Amos kills Miller's friend, Inspector Sematimba, after he holds Nagata at gunpoint when she refuses to launch the Rocinante without Holden. Miller and Holden make it to the ship, which escapes, and are treated for radiation sickness. UN spy Kenzo is left to be consumed by the rapidly advancing protomolecule infesting the colony. On Earth, Avasarala realizes that Errinwright (and potentially a whole faction of the UN) is lying about tracking the stolen drives from the stealth ships, making him a likely co-conspirator with Mao. She relocates her husband and grandchildren to Luna, anticipating the war to come.