The OPA construction station survives a coordinated internal assault but loses its drive cone and Fred's protomolecule safe to the attackers.
Tycho Station is attacked as Earth suffers asteroid strikes. Insurgents infiltrate its security force, attempt to murder Fred Johnson, seize engineering, sabotage the defense grid, and fire torpedoes at its drive cone and habitation ring. The construction sphere's scale, berths, spin rings, drives, and exposed transit corridors become a battlefield.
Fred, James Holden, and Camina Drummer restore the grid and contain the coup, but the damage is costly. The drive cone is too cracked to trust and will need replacement. Worse, a disguised salvage-mech weapon slices away the wall containing Fred's safe and escapes with the protomolecule sample, leaving Tycho intact but strategically violated.
A half-kilometer construction sphere with equatorial spin rings, vast ship berths, bright industrial corridors, fusion drives, a habitation ring, and exposed vacuum infrastructure scarred by torpedo damage.
Tycho is the OPA's industrial heart, now a damaged front in the systemwide assault and the scene of a theft with existential consequences.
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