settled-reach/wiki/star-systems/GJ-445/index.md

Jinghu

GJ 445 | M4 · east_reach

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System Profile

Star	M4 · 17.5 ly
Bodies	0 habitable · 2 inhabited
Gates	3 aperture · junction
Settlement	wave_2
Industries	fusion_fuel, metallic_ore, financial_services, insurance, legal_services, rare_minerals, chemical_feedstock
Exports	financial_services, legal_services, rare_minerals
Imports	processed_food, electronics, consumer_goods, medical_goods, refined_metals, chemicals
Population	—

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Supply Dependency

Jinghu's three gates connect Haodu (GJ 566A) to two deeper corridor branches, making it one of the east_reach's quiet multipliers: a system that adds more commercial throughput than it produces, because its junction value redistributes economic activity from the hub to systems that would otherwise be less accessible. The name — Chinese for "mirror lake," chosen by the founding community for a still-water feature of the habitable moon's largest basin — has become somewhat ironic over time. Jinghu does not reflect Haodu so much as route around it, giving traders and freight operators an alternative path when Haodu's congested gate schedule creates delays.

The primary economic base is service infrastructure for transit: bonded warehousing, gate ferry maintenance, crew rotation facilities, and short-term cargo insurance adjudication. None of these activities require large populations, but all of them require competent ones, and Jinghu has developed a mid-reach reputation for technical reliability that the Yongli Combine's logistics analysts reference by name when calculating corridor routing efficiency.

Faction Notes

The founding community was Chinese-heritage — a wave_2 cooperative that came to the M4 dwarf because the gate survey showed junction potential that a larger corporate entity had not yet claimed. They got there before the Yongli Combine's predecessor entities consolidated the inner corridor, and they negotiated their integration terms from a position of established occupancy rather than corporate dependency. The distinction matters: Jinghu is Combine-adjacent, not Combine-owned. The founding cooperative's descendants hold the primary commercial and residential seats on the Administrative Council, and the Combine's transit affiliate operates here under a service contract rather than a governance arrangement.

The Lattice Commission has a standard junction office. Gate Corporation runs a full maintenance team. Neither has significant influence on local governance — the administrative council is competent and the Commission's compliance requirements are met without friction, which means there is nothing for the Commission to push on.

The Assembly's authority at Jinghu is institutional and intermittent: a delegate visits on the standard circuit, assessments are paid, and the council participates in Assembly procedural processes when they have a direct commercial interest. The founding cooperative's persistent governance structure means Jinghu has never had the governance instability that invites more intensive Assembly engagement.

Silence Topic

What the Administrative Council does not discuss publicly: the terms of the gate scheduling agreement with Haodu.

When Haodu's congestion problems became commercially significant — approximately eighty years ago — Jinghu negotiated a gate scheduling coordination agreement that gave Jinghu's transit operators preferential slot access on two of Haodu's gate sequences in exchange for guaranteed throughput commitments. The agreement is commercially valid. What it effectively does is allow Jinghu's transit operators to route around Haodu's public queue, which increases Jinghu's commercial throughput at the cost of making Haodu's public-access slot allocation marginally less predictable. The residents of systems that route through Haodu and encounter unexplained slot delays would not immediately identify Jinghu's preferential access as a contributing factor. The Combine's logistics analysts have identified it. They have not raised it with the Commission, because the Combine's own transit affiliate also benefits from the agreement.

Narrative Hook

Jinghu's transit operators have had preferential gate scheduling access at Haodu for eighty years under an agreement that both parties treat as commercially confidential, and the unexplained queue delays that smaller corridor operators encounter at Haodu can be traced, with sufficient documentation, back to that arrangement.

Calibration Note

wave_2 at hop 5 as a junction is consistent with an early-claimed corridor position where the gate survey value was recognized before corporate consolidation could foreclose independent settlement. M4 star classification matches the stub. Chinese heritage founding community and aspirational natural-feature naming (mirror lake) fits Section 6.3 conventions and east_reach corridor norms. The Combine-adjacent-but-not-owned governance dynamic is a meaningful distinction from Haodu's fully Combine-integrated structure — realistic for a system founded just before the Combine's wave_3 consolidation reached this corridor branch.

Celestial Bodies

Orbit	ID	Name	Type	Inhabited	Pop	Mass	Gravity	Year (d)	Day (h)	Atmo	Biome	Hydro	Economy	Settlement	Industrial
1	GJ445b	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.30g	4	100.8	none	barren	—	—	—	—
2	GJ445c	—	gas_giant	no	—	—	—	14	9.8	gas_giant	—	—	—	—	—
↳ 2.1	GJ445c-m1	Jinghu	moon	yes	380K	terrestrial	0.76g	4	91.2	standard	temperate	liquid_water	transit	urban_concentrated	logistics
↳ 2.2	GJ445c-m2	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.09g	7	177.6	—	frozen	—	—	—	—
3	GJ445-belt	—	asteroid_belt	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
4	GJ445d	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.42g	85	22.6	thin	frozen	—	—	—	—
5	GJ445e	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.34g	360	31.8	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
6	GJ445f	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.25g	1100	39.4	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
7	GJ445g	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.18g	2800	46.2	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
8	GJ445h	—	planet	no	—	dwarf	0.11g	6400	24.8	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
9	GJ445-oort	—	oort_cloud	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—

Stations & Facilities

ID	Name	Type	Orbits	Population	Economy	Governance	Docking	Gate	Districts
GJ445-oort-S1	Jinghu Horizon	horizon	GJ445-oort	1K	transit	—	major	yes	1

Topology

• Hop Distance from Gateway: 5
• Adjacent Systems: GJ 625, GJ 105A, GJ 566A