The Mercury Storm

The Mercury Storm (c. 2457). Mercury takes the hardest blow from every solar storm aimed its way. A storm larger than the White Night kills crews on Mercury and in ships caught in transit, most of them Freehold's Raised crews, and fries the arrays' industrial controllers, the race's bottleneck, so every bloc's array loses years of growth while the inspected fabs make replacements. Freehold renegotiates its share of every array afterwards. For a few weeks the blocs share repair data; then they stop. The Accord's Storm Protocol follows in 2460 (see The Storm Protocol, in The Mirror Race).