[i]9.75N/kg[/i]

A bird's eye view, so to speak, of the power core of the [i]Vitae[/i] was eerily similar to that of the inner chamber of an ant hill. The flows of fuel, electrical power, coolant and information were all neatly stacked in concentric loops around the core by collective years of brilliant engineering, and on top of it all was the flow of people. Tiny dots, clad in the colors of their respective duty or training, busied themselves around epicenters of manual control or moved from one to another, in and out of the huge hangar. Like blood cells in a very complex heart, to use the chief engineer's favorite metaphor, but in a broader sense. Even with the core and the rest of the ship's systems having double and triple contingency mechanisms, humans were the last failsafe. Or perhaps the first?

But unlike blood cells, not all of the engineering corps were the same. Some would stare at a gauge for hours and call out at any deviation, unsure of their next action but absolutely positive of the time it should be taken at. Some teams worked like an organism by itself, while some were only the arms and legs of their team leader. It was all a vast, dynamic dance of clashing rhythms, man versus machine or man with machine together.

It was all a perfect time to have a nervous breakdown. 

[i]9.751N/kg[/i]

There was a simpler time, before. A time when all objectives were clear, when the main challenge had a name and a proverbial face. Before the [i]farce[/i] that was Project Genesis. Before humanity has collectively given up, like a pitiful kind of sea cucumber that sacrifices 90% of its body to avoid a predator, while completely missing the irony of it all. Before that, there were people who actually wanted to win, to use whatever percent of their body and booby-trap it to make the predator choke on their own innards.

The reactor's power diversion mechanisms were prepped for quick transfers and abrupt rebalancing. It was a strenuous, delicate process that took over half of the on-duty engineering team to supervise and manage. Despite the ship AI's ever-watchful eye, no engineer in their right mind would let a machine decide for itself whether it is healthy. And rightfully so - some of the automated coupling relays were slightly damaged from the liftoff, which was only slightly more violent than planned, and of course there was no time for maintenance before the excrement collided with the ventilator and the Vitae entered high alert. No rest for the wicked and all. This was a great chance to thank whoever thought it was a good idea to put actual [i]people[/i] in engineering.

[i][h3]9.788N/kg[/h3][/i]

A lone technician was leaning against the wall near an out-of-the-way terminal of one of the coolant conductor channels. They were clad in a standard-issue full body hazmat suit meant to dealt with the dangers of handling coolant. Even under the suit, they were visibly shivering, a wrench clenched in their gloved hands like a drowning man's lifeline. A colorful chart from an adjacent monitor flashed at their full-face mask, the readings indicating a gradual increase in pressure that would require manual handling to prevent damage to the conductor pipes. That section of the power core bay was largely empty since one of the more talented technicians managed to tap into the security feed and get a picture of the battle outside the ship, and of course most of the staff huddled around him. They knew it was a matter of seconds before Noah detects this and cuts them off, so every moment counted. Various slurs along the lines of '[i]Fuck[/i]' were dominating verbal communication.

"You!" a bark made the helmeted technician turn. "What the hell are you doing? Can't you see the gauges?!" An officer rushed towards the monitor, half a second before the gauge spiked into the red zone. There was a painful creak and a high-pitched hiss that followed, known as the "devil's song" by the coolant section. But the barking officer found herself on her back, behind an adjacent pipe. The hiss died down a moment later, and she raised her head to find an apprehensive technician from a different section pushing a button on the monitor with a long tool from a safe spot, while the hazmat seemed to... cover the coolant leak with their body?

"Who - Who the hell are you?" acting chief engineer, Lt. Rorq, couldn't decide what she was seeing. The protective hazmat suit had a gaping hole in the middle, where the coolant steam hit the technician that blocked it with their body. Steaming fluid leaked down a metallic armor that wasn't in any standard issue package she knew of. The still helmeted figure stumbled backwards and sat against the slightly fractured pipe. 

"The gravity here is wrong."

"What?"

A black clawed hand with the remains of a glove attached reached up and removed the cyllindrical helmet. The most heavily augmented face in the entirety of the Vitae's staff looked back at the officer. "Specialist Mai Irons, Coolant Section, Ma'am." On top of her heavy accent, the woman's voice sounded as if coming from a long metal pipe. "Sorry, still getting used to being in space."

A wrench was laying near the specialist's feet. It was crooked and indented with finger marks.