A spaceship called the Canterbury is traveling peacefully through space, en route from Saturn to Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. It encounters a distress signal along the way and sends out five members of its crew to investigate, including Jim Holden, the ship's first officer. Aboard the ship, which they discover is called Scopuli, there discover no crew members on board. They realize that the distress signal must have been a trap set by pirates to capture or destroy the Canterbury. As a result, they quickly leave the ship in distress, but the Canterbury is destroyed by a warship before they are given to chance to leave. Holden determines that the warship is from the Martians, who will be the antagonists of Leviathan Wakes.
The ship that Holden and his crew are in is dead in the water. But the communication systems on the ship works. He then sends out a signal of his own out to everyone in the solar system saying that the Martians had destroyed Canterbury. A ship has been dispatched to take care of the stranded crew, who is offered support for their loss.
Meanwhile, on Ceres Station, which is in the asteroid belt, a detective named Joe Miller is contracted by a wealthy magnate to find the magnate's daughter named Julie Mao and send her back to the Earth's moon. But Julie doesn't want to go, making Joe's job astronomically harder.
After the message from Holden reaches Ceres station, the station erupts. And Joe, who is also responsible for the station's security, quickly discovers that the riot gear is missing. He tries hard to quell the rebellion and make the citizens of the station feel safer about the threat of the Martians, who don't accept responsibility for the destruction of the Canterbury. Slowly, criminals start to leave Ceres station, something which alarms Joe. Joe, in fact, was previously warned by Julie Mao's father that the station and the asteroid belt more broadly will be attacked.
Joe continues to work on finding Julie, who someone that Joe comes in contact with says has joined a terrorist organization called the OPA. He isn't successful in finding Julie and his boss tells him to stop looking. But Joe grows obsessed with finding Julie and doesn't stop looking for her, leading to his firing.
Meanwhile, the Eros station (also called Ceres station) on which Joe is serving has gained a consciousness of its own. It no longer accepts direction from humans and has decided to start doing things on its own. In fact, Eros has decided to destroy all life in the galaxy—most significantly on Earth. Joe is the only one who can stop it. And he does, planting a bomb on Eros and causing it to crash into Venus.
