The Storm Protocol

The Storm Protocol (2460). After the Mercury Storm of about 2457 the signatories added a protocol on solar storms. A ring of sentinel probes inside Mercury's orbit gives hours of warning; on warning, mirrors turn edge-on and Elevator climbers park in shielded bays; every habitat keeps a storm cellar; and Earth's grids hold spare transformers by treaty. Nobody knows the Sun's worst case, and the fear of a superflare larger than anything in the record is one of the few dangers every bloc takes equally seriously. A storm warning is also the one time every array may legally turn edge-on, which is how arrays hide their capacity, so inspectors dread the drills as much as the storms.