The reactor module is in as good a shape as could be expected. They tidied everything up. They triple and quadruple checked. They did ultrasounds on the core to see if anything inside was broken. The structure goes up, prefab panels for a fully sealed, negative pressure system that drops air outflow into some intense filters, the cooling tower is hooked up, the giant turbines in their pre-built enclosures are lifted into place with cranes before the prefab panels are assembled around them, the airlocks and decontamination showers and changing rooms for the lead-lined radiation suits all get set up one by one...

And then, they they turn it on. This is actually a 12-hour process, with much of the last of their battery power going into feeding the pumps as the reactor comes up to temperature. 

The cooling tower is a vital part of the overall loop. Everything is a closed system and heat, once added, has to go somewhere. It takes relatively cool steam after it passed through the turbines, and condenses it back down to room temperature water to go into the reactor again. The system was designed to work in a wide variety of atmospheres, but this one is actually denser and colder than what they expected. They have to heat up the feed pipes of the cooling tower manually, so the first relatively lukewarm and slow water flows won't freeze in the pipes wrecking them. This drains more of their starkly limited power. 

Thousands of gallons of pure water go in, slowly charging the system's closed loop to its full capacity... The cooling tower begins its work, with the air intake carefully regulated and slowly increased as the display of temperature sensors every five feet in the system slowly change colors...

Everyone but Nina, among the senior officers, is in a control room watching anxiously. If everything goes well, all the immediate crises will be solved. There will still be plenty of challenges and work to do, but there won't be an imminent looming specter of freezing doom.

"Engaging feed to turbine one," Nina says over the intercom.

The little fan icon begins turning. There are yellow warning signs; Pressure too low, temperature too low. But both of those are slowly increasing thanks to the carefully controlled storm of radioactive decay controlled by a sophisticated understanding of atomic sciences and tens of thousands of hours of engineering, all to... Boil water.

"...Ten kilowatts. Twenty. Thirty- Fifty kilowatts."

"Woo! We've got power, boys and girls. I want to hold the core's power level here for an hour to make sure the grid interlinks and power storage is all working fine."

"Go right ahead, Nina. We'll stand by up here. The emergency response teams are still ready."

The systems of the Exodus are well-designed and robust, of course- Well, aside from whatever failure or sabotage caused the whole crash thing, Bass guesses, so maybe some caution is warranted after all. Hrm.

Either way, nothing seems to go wrong after an hour, so Nina turns up the reactor power level, and then raises it further, and further. The generators turned on. The lights all came back up. The air filters started working faster. The heating system came on! And there are hot showers now, in the admittedly still really cramped teeny little apartments! The reactor module itself included a wicked cool superconducting magnetic energy storage loop, which is something like a magnetic flywheel or maybe an enourmous capacitor? 

Man, magnets are weirder than any amount of fantasy story magic sometimes. He just knows vehicles. And his vehicles are coming out to play again! Four rovers, two transporters, all with freshly topped off batteries, ready to roll.

Where to, boss?

Mary doesn't have much to say here that hasn't already been said. It might be a good idea to look for the Exodus's bridge, whatever is left of it, to find the logs and hopefully get some answers. But it can wait one day.

Oh, the seismometers measured an ice quake early this morning. Magnitude 1.6- Too weak to feel, but evidence of at least some active geological activity. It might just be from something falling over at the crash site, though.

Can they tell where that 'ice quake' came from?

Nope. Not without a bunch of monitoring stations spread out over a wide area.

Like many things, that's a project for later.

They can relax a bit for the day- She's just off from enjoying a hot shower herself. It's cleansing. She even orders double food rations for the day to give everyone else more to celebrate. There's still considerable worry about food and nutrition in the medium term, but they have 30 days of food, the hydroponics module is currently sufficient for about 1/3 of daily needs, and more modules built in the coming days will help a lot with both those problems.

So, crash site salvage. They already know where another housing and hydroponics module, a recycling module, and an entertainment module are. She wants all of them. Housing and hydroponics first, to alleviate the grumbling from crowding and help with food security. Finding a path to the light side of the planet, exploring the surroundings for any notable features or possible resources, and continuing to survey the crash site are all important- Bass should devote one one and two rovers to each task. Does any of that sound like she's making a mistake?

"With all due respect, I'm sure the twenty one patients- One of them expired overnight, a miss Hailey Cuthbert- Suffering from acute radiation poisoning would appreciate all available measures to find a hospital module being taken."

-That is an excellent point. Bass, all four rovers are to scour the debris field. Look for the hospital module above all else.

Shen, quietly, sets up and announces the colony name submission board. It's a good thing for people to argue about and submit dozens of names to when they're enjoying a doubled dinner.

Come on boys and girls, the people need us! Rovers 1 and 2, get to high points and scan around with binos. Rovers 3 and 4, we're going to go along THESE routes. No stopping for salvage, it's not going anywhere, medicine above all else...

Green_Pinkie: The first harvest from hydroponics will be ready in another 2 days! Delicious lettuce, spinach, kale, and bamboo. Fruits like strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries will be most delayed, and potatoes are coming in bulk soon enough. These are all specially genetically modified crops, optimized to grow fast off CO2 rich air and bright redlights. Hydroponics team represent!

Reddekeer: Nice!

Potato_Clock: Ah, kale, the Toyota Hilux of vegetables. You can't even use it as a clock.

Orangeanade: Leafy greens are delicious! I don't know where all the vitamins and minerals are going to come from without them!

Green_Pinkie: We might actually run out of chemical fertilizer eventually. There's plenty for now, though. I looked through a whole cargo pod full of plastic barrels full of our special mix on the first day.

Potato_Clock: Speaking of which- HOT SHOWERS. God it's cold out there. The EVA suits weren't designed for this kind of wind, people have been making improvised extra cloaks to wear over them. Wish I had that idea sooner.

Reddeker: Things are looking up. We have a stable foundation now and can start investigating what went wrong, maybe get some answers.

7384: They'll investigate themselves and find no evidence of wrongdoing.

Reddeker: And I agree, actually being warm for once in the last week is really nice.

7384: They're using luxury to distract us from the real issues. Lucy Carver is up to something, mark my words.

Potato_Clock: If God himself gave you a magic wand, you'd complain that it didn't come with steak and fries.

7384: Fuck off.

7384 started a kickvote. Kick Potato_Clock y/n?

7384: wtf I can't kick 

Reddeker: Yeah, no more of that from you. I'm half tempted to permaban you if you're gonna keep this up.

Kickvote failed 1/11

Green_Pinkie: Let's all be civil here!

Orangeanade: I found a chess set in some of the personal luggage that was dragged here in the confusion. Anyone want to play with me? I'm at table 9 in dining room 3.

Paro isn't a doctor. On the thankfully-rare occasions when someone gets hurt badly enough to need a gnomunk, he grabs them, pops them out when told, and keeps his eyes shut and one hand on his nose.

The crushed catfolk was almost beyond his magic, presumably because - aaaahhh - the crushing increased his surface area to almost match Paro's own surface area. (He's overall a bit smaller than a catfolk but his tail is longer.) Now it's time to pop him out again, just for a second.

out - Doctor Shor looks the guy over while one of his assistants stuffs a mashed anesthetic leaf into his mouth and the liefling grabs the uncrushed arm to target him for - Doctor Shor yells out a medical term that Paro doesn't know and doesn't want to know - in

Paro throws up. He doesn't have free space to catch it, not that he's in a frame of mind to be able to catch a liquid right now, and his vomit mixes with the blood on the floor.

"'The vampire didn't know how to interpret stress in ice' - that's a relevant part of this incident's failure analysis, which is not your failure analysis and I don't think one is warranted."

"You did great, Chime." pat pat "All of us are alive because of you."

"You can't compare with an imaginary alternative!

I should have known to be doing something more cautious. There are different kinds of rock. I know that, I've been trained on that. I should have called the alarm before the first cracking sound, even, and then watched for a while by myself."