Vigdis was glad to hear that at least the commander shared her views on oversharing with the locals and cataloging and putting the civilians to work. Occupying their minds with something would leave them less time to be worried, Vigdis thought. The irony of the thought, as she’d been doing nothing but burying her head in work so she wouldn’t have to think about the very real possibility of something important being busted beyond repair and thus stranding them forever ever since the crash, lost on her in the moment. What job would Darnell be given? A mop and bucket? She just hoped the civvies wouldn’t see being quartered in the shuttle bay as some form of imprisonment - being moved aside while the ‘social elite’ of the actual crew controlled the entrance to the ship and hoarded the comfortable living space and supplies for themselves. She took the news of training the civvies with actual joy, welcoming the option to leave mundane tasks to them and focus on the big things.

Over the course of the fourth day, Chief Zhao finished checking the main distribution conduits and all of the systems they needed to keep running, fixing some issues found. Until they started turning on new equipment, they had minimized any power losses and could breathe a little easier. There were still kilometers of wiring and circuit boards to check, but most of those were useless in their given situation and could therefore be safely ignored until much later. During the same day, Varen and Vigdis went over the three still-attached engines, both cackling about having ‘an office with a view’ while some poor bastards were digging a moat. Although the cowlings were battered, the engines filled with soil and debris, more than half of the compressor fan blades needing replacement and the port side aft gimbal mechanism mounting was bent out of shape, nothing was deemed beyond repair, though neither of the two felt confident giving any sort of time estimate on how long repairs would take.

On day Crash+5, Vigdis had spent no small amount of time huddled over data sheets and the power control console, at times joined by some of the other engineers when dealing with systems they were more familiar with, trying to figure out how to squeeze the most time out of the backups. After hours of deliberations and a few decisions she needed to run by the other engineers as a sanity check, she made her draconian recommendations to the command crew. Dimming lights and switching them off in empty rooms, no heating, rationing hot water, turning off everything that didn’t directly contribute to day-to-day activities, repairs or restarting reactors, not using the galley’s cookers and organizing people to form logging parties for open-flame cooking… Still, just saving power was only putting off the inevitable. Vigdis did attach a note to her recommendations advising that parts of the ship could be dismantled to build wind or man powered generators, but they’d need a miracle or fucking magic to get enough power to keep up the minimum requirements and start the reactors in their lifetime.

Fucking magic…

They had magic now, or rather some frien- not-enemies who did.

Vigdis spent every free moment of the rest of day Crash+5 and day Crash+6 using the ship’s onboard database to research lightning and running through various calculations that might’ve made a non-mathematically inclined soul nauseous. A few times someone walked in on her rubberducking at Fritjof, who probably knew the answer but chose not to share to amuse himself, but she’d been making steady progress. Still, there was no guarantee that it would work. Measurements were one thing, practical implementation would be a different beast to tackle.

And on the seventh day, they rested. Not quite, but with Wodan’s new technical development, Vigdis and maybe some others clocked out early. Armed with the translation program linked to her headset, a grounding stake, a sledgehammer, some man-portable lab equipment she’d borrowed with the permission of whoever she found in the lab at the time - more of a courtesy rather than actually intending to heed their potential refusal, survival came first - the largest tablet she could find loaded with some materials on harmless subjects like astronomy and grade school physics and chemistry, an EVA dry erase board, a rag, some markers and the weapon present every time she went outside, Vigdis set out toward the camp of the locals she somewhat knew, though hoping Silbermine - or preferably someone less pig headed and scientifically literate from his camp - would also join, intending to leave them free range of questions initially before asking her own. Standing some distance away from the camp in plain view, she radioed Ezra - prick as he could be, he was still made responsible for their security - to let him know what she was doing and briefly lifted up her breathing mask to be able to whistle unimpeded to draw their attention before approaching. Friendly or not, they still had swords and a living flamethrower. Time to play teacher and CIA officer in one.

[color=00AEFF]”Hello again.”[/color] She started, the wristpad’s speaker spitting her words out in S’toric. [color=00AEFF]”I hope this thing works as advertised. On a scale from one to… eight,“[/color] She remembered their math exchange, [color=00AEFF]”eight being good and one being bad, how well can you understand me?”[/color]