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Thoth Station was a private spin station located in the Belt. It was used for research on the protomolecule by Protogen Corporation.

History

Thoth boasted a research staff larger and better qualified than the universities on Earth or Luna, and the equal of even the best on Mars.[1]

The corridors of Thoth Station were wide and roomy, with carpeted floors, long swaths of ivy grown in carefully tended spirals, and lit bonsai trees every few feet. The lighting was soft and white like sunlight.[2]

Thoth was a shadowy research and development lab owned by Protogen, and it was where they covertly carried out research on the protomolecule and where Antony Dresden orchestrated the Eros incident. Naomi Nagata recovered the Comm Logs from the Anubis (Books) which gave James Holden and Josephus Miller the name of the station.[3] Miller's ex-partner on Ceres, Dimitri Havelock who now worked for Protogen, was able to provide Miller with the location of the station.[4] Fred Johnson, head of the OPA, then ordered an assault on the station to get to the bottom of whatever was happening to Eros.

The station was designed to evade detection, but there was a habitat ring, which implied, that there were people living there. The corridors and rooms were dark, with light coming from the scientists' terminals.

Battle of Thoth Station

The OPA's Guy Molinari, a repurposed cargo ship converted to an assault ship, and the Rocinante approached the station with a careful plan of attack. Rocinante had been attached to the Molinari's tail end to hide it in the larger ship's radar signature, just in case the station had any surprises. As the Molinari came closer, Rocinante was detached and left to drift to the side, appearing as only a simple piece of jettisoned cargo.

As it turned out, the precaution was not in vain; the station was being guarded by the Osiris, Protogen's last functional Amun-ra-class stealth frigate. Emerging from behind the station, Osiris fired two torpedos at the Guy Molinari. However, it had not seen Rocinante, and Holden's frigate jumped into action. Shooting down both torpedoes, Rocinante moved to engage the stealth ship with PDCs. While the two other ships battled, Molinari launched two breaching pods full of OPA mercenaries, along with Miller, towards the station.

At first, the larger and more advanced Osiris got the upper hand, disabling one of Rocinante's port-side thrusters and driving her into cover behind the station. When the station's "dumb gun," a cannon designed to protect the facility from debris and moving asteroids, threatened the breaching pods, Rocinante came out to try and take out the cannon. Osiris put a rail gun round into the frigate at close range, doing little damage but driving her back. The station's cannon destroyed one of the breaching pods and set its sights on the other, but Amos Burton repaired Roci's damaged thruster and the frigate swung up and over the station's habitat ring, destroying the cannon and bringing her behind the stealth frigate. The Rocinante then proceeded to dance circles around the Osiris, riddling it end to end with PDC fire until it lost power and was left adrift. The remaining breaching pod attached and Miller's group assaulted the station.


Media

Notes

  • In the TV show, the station is much different than described in the books. It is almost unfurnished and looks largely stripped and abandoned. There are no plants and hardly any lighting.
  • In the book, Leviathan Wakes, there's no mention of recovering Paolo Cortázar from this station. He was retroactively inserted into the storyline via The Vital Abyss
  • Thoth is an Egyptian God and scribe of the Underworld.

References

  1. The Expanse Novella The Vital Abyss
  2. The Expanse Novel Leviathan Wakes - Chapter 40: Miller
  3. The Expanse Novel Leviathan Wakes - Chapter 35: Holden
  4. The Expanse Novel Leviathan Wakes - Chapter 38: Miller
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