Asterion is run by a mixed crew of Directorate staff, contractors and seconded scientists. After the blackout most of them were evacuated to the outer ring. A skeleton crew of about sixty remains on the inner ring around the rim.
# Departments
- Relay Control: keeps the buffered relay chain alive. Since the blackout it works only the upper relay. Night chief: Sana Okafor.
- Cradle Operations: launches and recovers vehicles from the launch cradle. Chief mechanic of the C-9 project: Yara Demir.
- Observation: records every measurement taken from the rim and keeps the archive this wiki is drawn from.
- Shard laboratories: study recovered Rift Shards, including the sealed shard known as the passenger.
- Stores: prepares and stages the Directorate’s supply drops for caches.
# Life at the rim
Asterion’s staff work long rotations in a station that is never quiet. The rim hums at a frequency just below hearing, and the guide channel’s cyan light leaks into the observation ring all night. New staff are warned not to sleep in rooms facing the shaft. Most do it anyway after the first month.
Crew traditions include leaving a light on in the cradle for any vehicle that is still below, and writing the names of lost probes on the inside of the rim lock housing. K-1 is the first name on it. The last one written before 2217 is not a probe’s name. It is Ilyan’s.
Related articles
ARCHIVE RECORDAsterion StationThe ring-shaped research station built around the Rift rim. It holds the launch cradle, the relay chain and the rim lock.
ARCHIVE RECORDSana OkaforNight chief of Asterion Relay Control and Marek’s only voice from the surface. She saw his launch request ninety seconds early.
ARCHIVE RECORDYara DemirIlyan Venn’s assistant and the mechanic who rebuilt his coupler into the C-9. She witnessed his disappearance.
RECOVERED DOCUMENTUpper relay transcriptsFragments of conversation between Asterion and the C-9, as caught by the rebuilt upper relay. Most packets arrive late. Some arrive early.