High-orbit traffic, node and climate-lattice control installation with a recoverable inhabited core

Hart Traffic and Climate Station

The station that kept the colony's sky. Thirty-eight years in high orbit above Fifteen, she ran traffic control, the junction node's orbital equipment and the forty-eight-frame climate lattice — and when terminal black took the lattice from under her, she kept eighteen people alive inside their own air for two months. Then her crew cut her in half on purpose: everything that only worked in orbit was vented and released, and Okonjo flew the pressure core down onto a building site at the edge of a dark town. This sheet draws both shapes, because the book does.

Operator: Hart colony — military route command and civil climate operations, jointly
Series: The Chosen Dark
Drawn as: As she stood whole in high orbit on the morning of 17 May 2349, an hour before the first release — and as her pressure core stood on Lot Fourteen, North Flats, the following evening.

Sheet 1 Ring plan — looking down, throat side to the top 1 rings · 8 sealable sectors

1 The top of the ring The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2
“One handful at a time, at the top of the ring where the sound goes both ways, and it took him a good while, and two people came out to see what the noise was and went away again without asking.” Where a man puts four kilos of apricots back, loudly.
2 The board The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:105; Terminal Black, chapter 29
“a rule Okonjo wrote on the board in four words and refused to soften” (ch02:49). The day count is at the top of it — “I've read the date at the top of my own board this morning, so give me yours” (Terminal Black, chapter 29). Placed by the bench; the position is the drawing's.
3 The galley plate and the pan The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:131, ch02:159, ch02:249
Four hundred grams, on the list under stores in Okonjo's hand (ch02:53). Nasser brings it to Solano after the sortie “and she drank out of it without comment” (ch02:131); Vidal holds it in both hands while the instrument suite goes (ch02:159); it is where Okonjo's shift round gets to before she starts again (ch02:249).
4 Nowak's paper tag The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:179
On the recovery package's lying valve position sensor — “hung a paper tag on it in her own writing”. Beside it the change-over valve set “that had never been cycled outside a factory”. Drawn off the environmental panel; the position is the drawing's.
5 The taped-over port The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2
Beside the servicing bay hatch. Stores-wrap since the second week of April; Vidal put it up without asking anybody. “once or twice a week somebody lifted a corner of it and looked at Hart and put the corner back.”
6 Ground service point (landed) The ring published One Road Out, chapter 7–113
Outside, at the base of the gear: “a cable coming off the ground service point at the base of the gear, running nowhere. Kalb had left it there against the day somebody found something to plug in.” Landed configuration only; excluded from the print.
7 The hatch and the step (landed) The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2–311; ch03:13; ch07:115–121, ch07:149
“The hatch took two goes, and it was Nowak who got it, with the bracket. Okonjo went out first, because that was the order she had given, and stood on the step with a hand on the frame” (ch02:297–299). Kim's people take them “at the bottom of the steps” (ch03:13). A week later Menon “went to find whoever had left a boot in the hatchway” (ch07:121). Drawn as the servicing-bay airlock's outer door; the ruling is the drawing's.
8 Twelve suits on the servicing racks The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2; ch03:65
Never in question on the list (ch02:7). Counted on the ground: “a service rail on a floor in the old works with twelve suits hanging off it, a drying rack that ran on a supply Hart could actually give it” (ch03:65). Twelve suits for eighteen people.
9 The back of the ring The ring fixed spec ruling 2026-09-21 on One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:291
Where the climate people stand to watch their instruments go, “the way people stand at a bus stop” (ch02:159); where “Somebody towards the back said, ‘Christ,’ once, with nothing much in it” after the engines stopped (ch02:291). Opposite the top; the drawing's.
10 Descent locker The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2
“Nasser was up out of his straps before Ferro had cleared anybody to be, going down the seats with the bars out of the descent locker, putting one into each hand whether the hand wanted it or not.” At the head of the seat run; the position is the drawing's.
11 Descent seats and drill-rig straps The ring published One Road Out, chapter 2–195, ch02:223–261, ch02:291
Eighteen seats in a run along the ring, not in one bay: Okonjo at the head (“Behind her, on the loop, Solano said”, ch02:251), “Vidal, from the third seat” (ch02:227), a remark “back down the ring, and it went round” (ch02:245), laughter that “went along the ring and stopped somewhere near the middle” (ch02:261), and somebody “towards the back” (ch02:291). Eleven of the eighteen have never flown anything (ch02:223). The run is published; where it starts is the drawing's.
12 The rear wall of the module and its conditioning inlet The ring published One Road Out, chapter 7, ch07:153, ch07:195; ch10:63
“Okonjo came in through all of it, put her back against the wall at the rear of the module, and let Bae talk” (ch07:151) — the way she later stands over a case on a bench, “the way she had stayed at the back of the traffic module out at the Flats” (ch10:63). The reference is brought up “cold and slow off the module's own conditioning” (ch07:153); Boateng “put his hand flat on the module's conditioning inlet on the way past” (ch07:195).
13 The console rail and the partition The ring published One Road Out, chapter 7–147
Between the module and the bunks. “Roos put the lid on the console rail to get a hand to the door, and the lid came off the rail and went down the ring, and it went a long way, because a ring goes a long way” (ch07:141). “Somebody on the other side of the partition said, with no particular anger in it, that this was the third morning” (ch07:145).
14 The seal stock The ring published One Road Out, chapter 3–111
“four flat cases of it, every size and pressure class a spacecraft has, all of it labelled in a hand nobody at Hart recognised”. Okonta measures a School Ring pump gland against it twice and puts the lid down: “Close. Not the same.”

Sheet 2 Section — looking in, showing the terrace Core height 22 m

Sheet 3 Sector schedule — capacity against occupancy 18 in 18 places

RING The ring built 2311 18 / 18

R-BENCH Ring bench and galley plate none published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:53, ch02:173, ch02:249
“Okonjo kept the list on a clipboard and the clipboard on the ring bench, and worked down it in the order the load had to go on, which put the heavy things first and the arguments last” (ch02:5). ⭐ “There had been no kettle aboard since 'forty-six. Somebody had boiled a pan on the galley plate twice a day since March, and the pan was four hundred grams, and Okonjo signed it onto the list herself under stores and told nobody” (ch02:53). Nasser leaves “a double handful of them on the ring bench beside the pan, with nobody's name against them” (ch02:173).
R-ENV Environmental panel none published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:139, ch02:179–185
“Menon caught Okonjo an hour later at the environmental panel, which was where Menon caught people” (ch02:133). The loop's console; Menon keeps the trend up — “weeks of it, flat and boring and beautiful” — and ⭐ “That's the best air any human being on this planet is breathing and it isn't close. Down there they're running a block at a number that would have me writing a report about myself” (ch02:139). Boateng watches the humidity number here through the descent, Menon beside him, because the change-over “ran through a valve set that had never been cycled outside a factory” (ch02:179).
R-OBS Observation bay bay hatch published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:155
The bay for looking at Hart — not the only window (the port beside the servicing bay hatch is the other, and it is taped). “Okonjo went down the ring to the observation bay, which she had stopped using in April, and stood in it a while, and came back” (ch02:125). On the seventeenth it is where “anybody standing in the observation bay” watches “a slow separation of two shapes that had been one shape for thirty-eight years” (ch02:155).
R-SVC Servicing bay and airlock airlock published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:41, ch02:123, ch02:131, ch02:297–311; ch03:65
The working bay: “The suits and the servicing racks had never been in question” (ch02:7) — twelve suits, by the count on the rail they come down on (ch03:65). The airlock the craft sorties go out through: “Solano came in through the airlock with her hair flat to her head and her hands still shaking from the gloves, and sat down on the floor of the ring” (ch02:131). Beside the bay hatch, the port with “a square of stores-wrap taped over it since the second week of April. Vidal put it up without asking anybody and nobody took it down again, and once or twice a week somebody lifted a corner of it and looked at Hart and put the corner back” (ch02:123). ⚠ “Two were, out of the wall locker in the servicing bay. It stopped in the first week of May and it stopped because I stopped it, not because the locker ran out” (ch02:41). On the ground this lock is the hatch with the step: “The hatch took two goes, and it was Nowak who got it, with the bracket” (ch02:297).
R-TFC Traffic and node console suite none published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:191–193, ch03:163, ch07:61, ch07:125–153, ch07:179
Bae ran a traffic and node desk here for nine years “on something that stands still” (ch02:193). Four console suites; “Bae lost two of her four console suites and took it better than anybody expected, because she had spent the week proving to herself that one suite ran everything the node work needed” (ch02:7); “Two of my console suites are in the sea” (ch03:163). ⭐ THE STATION REFERENCE comes down here: “The station reference came down inside the core with the traffic module. It's the only piece of the old architecture on this planet we know had power on it in March” (ch07:61). The module has its own conditioning (ch07:153), a console rail (ch07:141) and a wall at the rear Okonjo puts her back against (ch07:151). What it was built to do with the bottom of the page: “Report it. Never interpret it … We held the reference, the arrays measured against it, the anchors looked at it from somewhere that wasn't us” (ch07:179). Its reference hardware was one pool with the town's: “Same class, same pool as the ones in the record. Up there since 'forty-six” (ch07:71).
R-BUNK Bunks none published One Road Out, chapter 7, ch07:117, ch07:145–147; ch03:217
“The traffic module ran off the ring and so did the bunks” (ch07:125) — behind a partition from the module, which is how a sleeper can say “with no particular anger in it, that this was the third morning” (ch07:145). On the ground: “Eight people sleep in here” (ch07:117); “The station crew who could stay in the core stayed in the core, because the core was warm and the walk to the Launch Spine bays was short and there was going to be work in those bays” (ch03:217).
R-MED Medical none published One Road Out, chapter 2–43; ch03:197–215
Ferro's station. “The imaging head and the analyser come down whole. The bench frame stays, because Kim has a bench. The consumables come down entire, because anything I leave behind stops existing” (ch02:21) — and the bulk alloy stock comes off the list to pay for it (ch02:45). ⚠ “It's my prescribing, it's in my book, and my book comes down with me” (ch02:33). On the ground the box and Kim's store use different words for the same consumables — “Say dressing again” — and the two of them relabel all of it together “on the Thursday evening, badly” (ch03:199–215).
R-STORE Ring stores none published One Road Out, chapter 2, ch02:55, ch02:165–173; ch03:103
“There were four cases of dried apricot in the ring stores, off a supply run in 'forty-four” (ch02:163), argued over twice — for their weight, and because Ferro wants them held for whoever is worst on the way down. Roos takes four kilos out on the Sunday night and puts them back one handful at a time (ch02:165–169). The emergency stores hold the candle for Kalb's fortieth that Ferro takes off him before he can light it; “Vidal put the candle back in the locker afterwards and wrote it back onto the inventory in the right column” (ch02:55). The seal stock: “four flat cases of it, every size and pressure class a spacecraft has, all of it labelled in a hand nobody at Hart recognised” (ch03:103).

What this drawing is not claiming

Both outrigger booms hang off the lattice interface truss — “The lattice interface truss took both outrigger booms with it” (One Road Out, chapter 2); “On the truss, out on the long boom … went the climate and lattice instrument suite” (ch02:157). They are drawn as two thin outriggers running the truss's flanks and projecting past its end; the 8° splay, the lengths and the second boom's payload are the drawing's. The radiator wings are plural and uncounted in the prose; two is the drawing's.

Seal class — what shuts around this volume

Grade of every figure on these sheets

published Stated in the books. If a drawing disagrees, the drawing is wrong.
derived Arithmetic on published facts; the working is given.
fixed Canon was silent here and the drawing decided.

Systems

Recovery package

published

Thirty-eight years dormant, and it behaved, mostly

What it is“It's a designed recovery path. It's what the core was built to do at the end of its service. Somebody drew it in a room on Earth about forty years ago and it has sat in a manual ever since, because nobody has ever been in enough trouble to want it” (ch01:205)
Dormancy“The recovery package came up out of thirty-eight years of dormancy overnight and behaved, mostly” (ch02:177)
What misbehaved“everything that behaved badly was something a manual printed on Earth had said would behave badly. Most of it cleared with heat and time” (ch02:177)
The one that lied“A valve position sensor read closed with the valve open, and Nowak got a hand behind the actuator, proved which one was lying, and hung a paper tag on it in her own writing” (ch02:177)
⚠ Never cycled“the loop had to run in one configuration through the descent and a different one on the ground, and the change-over ran through a valve set that had never been cycled outside a factory” (ch02:179). Boateng watches the humidity number; Menon beside him

One Road Out, chapter 1–205; ch02:175–181

Environmental loop

published

Ninety days, and it was never oxygen

State on 18 March“Hull's tight, we're on the internal bus, scrubbers are fine. We're warm.” (Terminal Black, chapter 4)
Limiting clocksFood, consumables, maintenance redundancy, accumulating failures — “Four separate shapes, and never one number, because Okonjo had said in March, with some force, that anybody who added them into one was doing arithmetic on eighteen people” (One Road Out, chapter 1)
EnduranceAbout ninety days at reduced load from 18 March 2349: “I've got eighty-four days” on 24 March (Terminal Black, chapter 18); “seventy-six days” → “about the sixteenth of June” on 1 April (ch27:321–327); “seventy-five days” on 2 April (ch29:125)
Washing“Every one of us has washed every day since March because the loop wants the load taken off it” (One Road Out, chapter 2)
The air“That's the best air any human being on this planet is breathing and it isn't close” (ch02:139)

Terminal Black, chapter 4, ch18:245, ch27:321–327, ch29:125; One Road Out, chapter 2; The Chosen Dark orbital survival lock

Instruments and relay

published

Report it. Never interpret it

TrafficBefore terminal black she tracks orbital objects continuously — “the station's had eyes on that volume continuously since the twelfth” (The Surveyors, chapter 27); three weeks of a volume “at a resolution that made her sit very still” (The Surveyors, chapter 28); “The orbital station held the object all the way to the same position it had occupied before the descent” (The Surveyors, chapter 27)
Beacon relayEvery rover carries “a low-rate transponder that went up through the traffic and climate station rather than over the voice net, on its own power, in its own box, for exactly this reason” (The Surveyors, chapter 10)
Lattice housekeeping“forty-eight frames reporting position and attitude and control margin four times an hour, and the station's own voice underneath it” (Terminal Black, chapter 3), down to a ground array whose “directional head … tracked the high-orbit station across the sky and held it for as long as the geometry allowed” (Terminal Black, chapter 3)
⛔ After 18 March“I'm looking at a smear. I've got a wide-field instrument that was built to tell me whether a weather cell is warming, and the fine picture came off the lattice and the ground relays and those are gone. I can see that a patch of your surface is warmer than what's round it. I cannot tell you what's in it” (Terminal Black, chapter 11). Cloud and frame debris (Terminal Black, chapter 18). Not people inside buildings
The node“We held the reference, the arrays measured against it, the anchors looked at it from somewhere that wasn't us” (One Road Out, chapter 7). The junction is a relationship, never a visible gate
After 17 MayThe suite goes with the truss (ch02:157). “The camera I had for that isn't the kind you're thinking of” (ch03:147); “There was nothing up there to talk to now” (ch03:173)

The Surveyors, chapter 10, ch27:117–149, ch28:19–23; Terminal Black, chapter 3–97, ch04:185, ch11:21; One Road Out, chapter 7; The Chosen Dark orbital survival lock

Windows

published

Half a second behind itself

Passes“The station came over the rise at eleven and stayed up for as long as the geometry allowed, which was not long” (Terminal Black, chapter 4); “stayed up for nine minutes” (Terminal Black, chapter 11); “Next window's forty minutes” (Terminal Black, chapter 18)
Short and full“Lieutenant Commander Okonjo's asked for the full window this afternoon instead of the short” (Notice of Intent, chapter 1); “The full window came round on the fifteenth” (ch02:59)
Latency“Okonjo's voice came into the shed the way it always did, half a second behind itself” (One Road Out, chapter 1)
FormNumber first — “Eighteen aboard. All eighteen in the pressure hull. Nobody outside” (Terminal Black, chapter 4) — then the limitation, then what she saw; a read-back before anything else (Terminal Black, chapter 11)
What the sheet does not stateAltitude, period, inclination. ‘High orbit’ is the name; the windows are the ground array's tracking envelope and the rise, not a figure

Terminal Black, chapter 4, ch11:17, ch18:221–249; One Road Out, chapter 1, ch01:181; ch02:59

Deorbit and entry

published

Before the burn, abort is a word that means something

Personal allowance“Twenty kilos a person, under a rule Okonjo wrote on the board in four words and refused to soften” (ch02:49)
SeatsEighteen descent seats and drill-rig straps along the ring; “eleven of them had never flown anything” (ch02:223). Kalb “went round the seats and pulled her straps through and checked them himself and told nobody he had done it” (ch02:195)
BurnMorning of 18 May 2349: “The burn ran a fraction long and stopped where it was supposed to stop” (ch02:247)
The fall“nineteen minutes in which a competent person has no task” (ch02:249)
The column“Two months without a sun. The column's colder than the manual's and it's shorter … Thinner where I meet it. Denser where I stop. So the whole deceleration arrives late and arrives hard” (ch02:205); “the heat load arriving in a lump instead of a curve, and the shield took it” (ch02:271)
Engines and gear“Terminal descent started lower than the profile said it would” (ch02:273); “Engines.” (ch02:275); “stood on its gear on a surveyed building site at the edge of a town” (ch02:285)
Redesignation“There's a second point north of the first on the same graded ground and it's as good as the first … There's no third answer, Lieutenant. That's what the burn means” (ch02:215–219). Flown: “Redesignate north. Second point.” (ch02:279)
Aboard“Eighteen aboard … All eighteen. Nobody outside.” (ch02:289). Out four at a time, ten minutes between (ch02:309)

One Road Out, chapter 2–49, ch02:199–219, ch02:223–293

What was checked

The books state distances aboard this ship. The drawing has to produce the same ones or it is wrong — so it is made to, and the working is shown. These run again on every build; a compartment moved by a metre fails them.

“The station has stood for thirty-eight years by May 2349; commissioned 2311” One Road Out, chapter 2 (“two shapes that had been one shape for thirty-eight years”); ch02:177 (“out of thirty-eight years of dormancy”); ch07:179 (“every shift for thirty-eight years”); ch01:205 (“Somebody drew it in a room on Earth about forty years ago”)

Three figures agree and are the same thirty-eight: the truss has been joined to the core since commissioning, the recovery package has been dormant since the same day, and Okonjo's people have watched the reference page for the same span. 2349 − 38 = 2311, the ring's `built` year. The recovery path was drawn “about forty years ago”: 2349 − 40 = 2309, two years before commissioning, which is when a designed end-of-service path gets drawn. Sarah's “Forty years of the two of them going up and down past each other” (ch07:33) is a round number. Consistent.
“Eighteen aboard through terminal black, eighteen down, and the census closes” Terminal Black, chapter 4 (“Eighteen aboard. All eighteen in the pressure hull. Nobody outside.”); Terminal Black, chapter 29 (“A hundred and twenty-eight reachable on the ground. Eighteen aboard. A hundred and forty-six known living.”); One Road Out, chapter 2; ch03:47 (“It's a hundred and forty-six on the ground and nobody in orbit.”)

128 + 18 = 146 on 2 April. On 18 May the same 146 is on the ground and orbit is empty, so 18 left orbit and 18 arrived: population 18 in 18 places, no casualty overlay because there is no casualty to draw. Out of the hatch “four at a time, and ten minutes between” (ch02:309): 18 ÷ 4 = 4 full groups and a last two, five intervals, about fifty minutes.
“The endurance clock runs from 18 March to about 16 June 2349” Terminal Black, chapter 18 (“I've got eighty-four days”); ch27:321–327 (“seventy-six days” … “on about the sixteenth of June”); ch29:125 (“You've got seventy-five days”); The Chosen Dark orbital survival lock (~90 days)

18 March + 90 days: 13 (to 31 March) + 30 (April) + 31 (May) = 74 → 31 May; + 16 = 16 June. Back from 16 June: 84 days → 24 March (7 + 30 + 31 + 16 = 84), the day the four-day array outage ends (ch18:233); 76 days → 1 April (29 + 31 + 16 = 76); 75 days → 2 April, the day of Sarah's promotion and the Terminal Black close. Every figure Okonjo gives lands on the same date.
“Everything that only works in orbit was released; only the pressure core lands; the rest is in the sea” One Road Out, chapter 2 (truss, both outrigger booms, radiator wings folded, two annexes vented first and released last); ch02:157 (the instrument suite on the long boom); ch03:163 (“Two of my console suites are in the sea.”)

Every arm on this sheet carries a release fate in its seal field and none of them appears on the ground. Four console suites minus two in the sea = two came down, of which one runs (“Bae had the console suite up”, ch07:127; “one suite ran everything the node work needed”, ch02:7). The core's contents on the ground — the ring, the traffic module, the bunks, the galley plate, the station reference, the medical set, twelve suits, four seal cases — are exactly the sectors of the one ring.
“Both outrigger booms are on the truss, and the truss took them” One Road Out, chapter 2 (“The lattice interface truss took both outrigger booms with it.”); ch02:157 (“On the truss, out on the long boom”)

Two booms, bearings 356 and 4, on either flank of a truss at bearing 0 of width 10. Lateral offset at the truss tip (60 m): 60 × sin 4° = 4.2 m, within a metre of the truss's 5 m half-width, so both booms leave the truss's shoulders rather than the core. The long boom runs 50 m past the tip, the second 20 m. Nothing on the far side of the core is released with the truss.
“The two maintenance craft are still in orbit, safed, not scrapped” One Road Out, chapter 2 (“one of the two leaves something up here that still works”); ch02:127; ch02:131; One Road Out, chapter 1 (“there is no configuration of them that puts a person on the ground alive”)

The craft berth arm carries no capacity and no population (SCHEMA 4a) and its seal says dormancy, not release. Two craft, two flight crew (Solano outside, Abbott on the console), one day-long sortie on the sixteenth. A future book may reclaim them; this one leaves them where Solano put them.
“Nobody aboard walked more than forty metres in a straight line since March” One Road Out, chapter 3 (“We haven't walked more than forty metres in a straight line since March and it turns out that's a thing.”); ch07:141 (“a ring goes a long way”)

Ring radius 7 m: circumference 2π × 7 ≈ 44 m of corridor, and no straight run at all — the longest chord inside a 9 m-radius core is 18 m. A lid can roll “a long way” round 44 m of ring while nobody ever walks 40 m straight. The drawn core is inside the bound.
“On the ground the core sleeps eight of the eighteen” One Road Out, chapter 7 (“Eight people sleep in here.”); ch03:217 (the rest to the old works south arm and the School Ring east volume; Ferro to block three)

18 − 8 = 10 out of the core: Ferro to block three (1) and nine between the south arm and the School Ring east volume. Population on the sheet stays 18 because the sheet's date is 17 May, in orbit; the landed count is a history line.

Service history

2311 — commissioned
Commissioned in high orbit above Fifteen. The climate and lattice instrument suite is fitted to the long boom “in the same clamps it had been fitted into when the station was commissioned” (One Road Out, chapter 2). The recovery path already drawn on Earth, about two years before (ch01:205).
2344
A supply run leaves four cases of dried apricot in the ring stores (One Road Out, chapter 2). A station reference assembly is fitted at *civic spine, upper* on the ground, with a fitter's name against it (ch07:29).
2346
The last kettle aboard is gone; a pan on the galley plate does the job from here on (One Road Out, chapter 2). Same-pool reference hardware goes up on the old works roof (ch07:71).
2348
A man rotates home and leaves a jumper on a hook. Solano brings it down in her twenty kilos (One Road Out, chapter 2).
18 March 2349 — terminal black
“Hull's tight, we're on the internal bus, scrubbers are fine. We're warm … We've lost the lattice. Not control – I mean I have twenty-six frames I can't command and nine I can't find.” Eighteen aboard, all in the pressure hull. Thermal on the settlement: “We can see the districts going, and we can see them going in an order.”
March – April 2349
Ninety days on the board; weather and frame debris given at every window from 25 March (Terminal Black, chapter 18). Second week of April: stores-wrap over the port beside the servicing bay hatch (One Road Out, chapter 2). Okonjo stops using the observation bay (ch02:125). First week of May: the wall locker stops (ch02:41).
May 2349 — the core is offered
“Station engineering has closed enough work to say the recoverable inhabited core can be brought down … It's a controlled return for exactly as long as we've got healthy reserve to fly it on.”
15 May 2349 — authorised
“Receive. You're authorised to bring the core down onto the North Flats … This settlement has no warm volume for eighteen more people and will not have one by Wednesday. There is nowhere to put you. You come down inside your own air and you go on living inside it.” Okonjo to Redding: “The day the core's on the ground there is no station.”
16 May 2349 — Rev D
Both maintenance craft safed into dormancy on a day-long sortie, Solano outside, Abbott on the console; covers fitted, power trickled.
17 May 2349 — Rev E, the truss goes
A rehearsed sequence of releases that runs as one: the lattice interface truss with both outrigger booms and the instrument suite, the radiator wings folded, the two orbital-only annexes vented first and released last. Overnight the recovery package comes up out of dormancy; Nowak tags the lying sensor; Kalb pulls every strap through himself.
18 May 2349 — Rev F, landed
Burn in the morning; nineteen minutes of fall; deceleration late and hard through a column two months without a sun; redesignated to the second point north. “The core came down on the North Flats with less in hand than Okonjo would have liked to write in a report, and stood on its gear on a surveyed building site at the edge of a town.” Lot Fourteen — “There were going to be flats there.” Eighteen out, four at a time.
19–20 May 2349 — the inventory
Suits, rail and drying rack to the old works; the seal cases to Okonta's bench; the medical box relabelled in Kim's store; two console suites and procedure to the four traffic and node people. Eight sleep in the core, warm, near the Launch Spine bays. A cable off the ground service point runs nowhere.
26 May 2349 — Book Three
⚠ SPOILER. The station reference is brought up cold and slow off the traffic module's own conditioning, in the core on the Flats, in Okonjo's custody, and asked for a state print. The top of the sheet is empty. The bottom is not.
June 2349 — Rev G
⚠ SPOILER. The station's traffic gear moves out of the core to the second room at the old works, “on two benches pushed together, because the second room had a floor that could take it and a door that shut.”

Compiled from

One Road Out, chapter 1 (Thirty-Three Days), ch02 (Above Hart), ch03 (Eighteen More), ch07 (Orbital Half), ch10, ch14
Terminal Black, chapter 3 (Black), ch04 (The Drop), ch11, ch18, ch27, ch29 (Terminal Black)
The Surveyors, chapters 10, 27 and 28 (the station as traffic control before terminal black)