Xinglong

The Xinglong was small privately owned prospector ship.

History

The ship is owned by Mateo, who recently brought his nephew Diogo aboard as a crew member to assist in asteroid mining.

Several families put their savings together and invested in this spaceship. For the rest of the finances needed, they took a loan from Consolidated Holdings and Investments. The profits from the Xinglong weren't sufficient and its owners fell three payments behind with their loan. Their bank reacted by putting a lien on their ship. This action probably forced the owners to disable the transponder on the Xinglong, since enabling it would allow their ship to be easily traceable and they would lose it.

Events

“We've gone too far” — Spoilers for "Season 1" follow.

Mateo and Diogo are prospecting ore from an asteroid when they're boarded and inspected by a Martian Navy patrol from the MCRN Scipio Africanus. The inspection revealed the ship's license to be out of date and the Martian's proceeded to shut them down. As Diogo is sleeping, a drunken Mateo wakes him and throws him in an airlock with his suit. Then, Mateo vents Diogo into the vacuum of space and proceeds to fling his load of ore directly at the Martian vessel that had boarded them. In response to the violent act of civil protest, Mateo's ship was targeted by a torpedo and destroyed while Diogo watched helplessly.^[1]

“Welcome to the future” — Spoilers for Leviathan Wakes follow.

The MCRN Scipio Africanus, a Morrigan-class patrol destroyer encountered the Xinglong as a fast-moving ship running dark with no transponder signal. The MCRN destroyer fired its point defense cannons (PDC) at the unknown ship, destroying it and all aboard.

After the incident, the official Martian Congressional Republic Navy press release claimed that the Scipio Africanus had tried multiple times to hail the ship prior to attacking but received no response. The information channels run by Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) disagreed, pointing out that no one has caught any of said transmissions. In the days following the incident, the outer planet's citizens became even more anti-Martian and the radical parts of OPA had gained many more supporters. Mars reacted by sending over twenty additional warships to stabilize the situation.^[2]

On Ceres, Enrique Dos Santos, who was a Martian citizen, had been nailed to a wall with a prospector's spike after hours of torture.

Notes

For the television adaptation, the incident with Xinglong did not trigger Enrique Dos Santos to be impaled by a prospector's spike. Rather, in a similar act, Filat Kothari (A.K.A. "Pock Mark") committed this act against Detective Dimitri Havelock, Josephus Miller's partner and an Earther, as a response to the destruction of the Canterbury.
Also in the television adaptation, the destruction of the Xinglong became a formative component to the backstory of a television character who would've been introduced much later in the novels.

Trivia

Xīnglóng (興隆 or 兴隆) is a Chinese word meaning "prosperous." Its pronunciation is something like "shing-LUNG." It is a common name for ships and businesses.