[i]Edit: Pretend this is a flashback post as I didn't realize we jumped when I wrote it, and it doesn't directly affect anyone else's actions.[/i][hr]
[center][i][color=gray]SFC Calhound[/color][/i][/center]

There was an eerie and unerring calm about the Chief of Engineering as he stepped back into the locale of his title's namesake. Humanity had officially come to an end--save but for a few hundred thousand individual souls--everything about his race had been washed away in a baptism of fire. Despite this he seemed almost at peace in the midst of the ensuing chaos being well orchestrated by his co-chief. 

Humanity had been dying for a long time. Longer than the existence of the devastators was revealed, through one means or another, it had efficiently set itself upon a course of early extinction. Though gruesome, it brought with it a sense of finality to that which the singularity started. An end to the existential, and in all to many cases, very real suffering wrought by humanity's reaction to it. However it, being the devastator's destruction of Earth, also set the small remnants of humanity on the path of war and revenge. A restless path for any who walk it. And walk it they would.

Not wishing to interrupt his co-chief in the performance of her duties Xaith refrained at the door frame silently as he arrived. As the situation in engineering escalated, and the cyborg exploded out of engineering, dashing right past him with security hot on her trail, he could only look to Lt. Rorq for answers. The lieutenant whom was fuming when she shouted at the either over stressed, or under-intelligent civilian technician who had piped one of their co-workers. 

"YOU!" she shouted, and all of engineering trembled before the fury for which hell hath nothing like, "SECURITY. NOW." To which the civilian technician dropped the pipe and proceeded to perform the walk of shame to the civil detainment cubicle and await the security lockouts before presenting himself for adjudication. "Everyone else listen up! We're in the middle of a goddamn space battle and I expect some fucking professionalism!" 

The Chief watched the orchestration of the masses be excited with a level of precision--that he simply lacked the care to evolve--while the Lieutenant barked orders. "Push those shields to 120%. Compensate for the heat by re-routing coolant, and shunt power from the evacuated sectors of the Hub to boost the gain and confinement." Management and providing direction was what she was hired to do, and she did it well when there wasn't a [i]distractions[/i] impeding the order she maintained. For the Sargent First Class it was all very tiring to watch, and he instead busied himself with more interesting things.

[color=cyan][i]"Administrator..."[/i][/color] the word was not spoken, but came through the Xaith's EEGARD heads up display trough a priority channel. [color=cyan][i]"A development has occurred in the Ark's electro-spectral analysis of the ongoing combat."[/i][/color] Xaith acknowledged the call with merely a glance in the direction of S.A.S.H.A.'s hail, and pushed the thought to her to proceed through electroencephalographic detection matrix. After a report was produced he understood just what 'development' meant. He did note the complexity of the armoring and structural design as shadowed in the wake of the kinetic, eletromagnetic, and atomic castoff patterns that dispersed from the impact; but couldn't readily identify the primary material it was made of. He had an expert metallurgist on staff whose panties would get wet just thinking about it. 

When the Lieutenant finally reigned back in the chaos in her own house, did she notice the chief standing by, and did he take a moment of her time. "Rorq," Xaith called over in a surprisingly non-judgmental tone since the situation was hers to manage. "There's something you need to see." SFC Calhound said as he slid his glasses down his nose while Lt. Rorq leaned in for inspection. "That's impossible..." she said at the cross comparison to mineralogical and histologist examinations that Noah had run, at S.A.S.H.A.'s request, with Xaith's clearance codes.

"Obviously not," countered Xaith, who was in turn countered by Rorq, "We don't have time for this." The Sargent pulled rank as Chief Engineer. "You will make the time Lieutenant. Tensions are high, and even though we're in the middle of a battle, a majority of these systems run themselves, and now at peak efficiency thanks to your tireless dedication. I will take over engineering while you take this data to medical." To the lieutenant's exasperated protests Xaith realized what had just happened. "Your shift ended hours ago, and it's starting to show. Go home. This can wait 'till tomorrow."

In a huff, and with a puff, the big bad Rorq blew out of engineering. "Noah," Xaith said to the engineering's central imaging system, "Call up the errant signal detection grid in the corridors surrounding engineering and locate this [i]aura[/i]." The term wasn't a technical one, but it wasn't unknown in the profession either. With the specifications inserted into the computer it identified the electromagnetic resonance frequencies associated with the various levels of modification. Of interest was the one of that cyborg. 

While he was locked out of security systems for obvious reasons, he wouldn't be much of an engineer if he couldn't figure a way around such mechanical trivialities. Specialist's Iron's aura, the electrical inference pattern that indicated her presence, could be seen pacing in an electromagnetically sealed section of the corridor.

"Now..." he mumbled to himself as the large holoimage went largely ignored by the hard-working staff whom Lt. Rorq had set on a prescribed path of perfect productivity. He continued to mumble under his breath as he watched the aura pace the breadth of the equivalent of a shoe-box filled with regret, before it stopped and propped itself against the door. "Do we become what the Devastators made us," Xaith mumbled to himself while the whole of engineering continued whirring like a Swiss watch behind him, "or do we find our own path? Our first official act as a whole new people..."

[hr]
[center][color=gray][i]Lt. Rorq[/i][/color][/center]

If the body was a bio-chemical machine, as her only supervisor in the department once posited in his doctoral thesis, then it was one that she hoped all her parts served their function admirably. It was for this reason that Lieutenant Rorq came to be unnerved by the presence of doctors. That was for she knew all too well how machines could be cobbled together from bits of rust, and duct-tape, and be said to function 'perfectly normally'. Lieutenant Rorq liked her parts. She liked having them, and she did not like being in sent to the place where they were maintained. She hesitated for a moment before stepping into the transit system, and then sat humbly on the tram. 

She was not in engineering. There were no airs to maintain. No systems to analyse, no crewmen to mange, or cyborgs to chase. She clutched a datapad to her breast as she let out a long sigh of relief. It would never cease to surprise her just out of her league Sargent Calhound made her feel. And, for once, it was not in a bad way. Thanks to this report she had the briefest sensation of something she thought impossible. For a moment, she felt as if she were going home. 

Not the doctors office, of course, as that would be silly. But, home to her life before [i]Citadel[/i]. 

A life that humanity seems to have forgotten could even exist. 

As she embraced the mineralogy shadow-report she allowed a moment of carefree elation to wash through her vital insides, as weapon-fire washed over the deep black space outside the Vitae. [i]Tomorrow's another day,[/i] she thought before considering how best to unwind. "Officer's lounge," she ordered the computer, before thinking better of it. [i]No, she had been given a gift she intended to indulge in[/i] "Cancel that. Habitat level: section J," she instructed the computer once more as she began perusing the resonance analysis. "Huh," she muttered as the tram engaged. "Who is this 'Sasha'?"

[Hider=OOC: S.A.S.H.A.]S.A.S.H.A. is not yet available to other players for interaction. Even when she is (later), she will call no one other than Xaith "administrator" or any variation of the term. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)]There's a reason for that.[/url] Furthermore, as S.A.S.H.A. becomes more integrated into the Vitae's systems (of which she presently has no direct access, relying on interlink feeds from Noah) her personality will develop more and radically shift from time to time.[/hider]