By sunset, one side of Merritt Repair had become a temporary engineering cell.
Encrypted satellite link.
Three monitors.
Secure workstation.
Printers.
A hardware interface unit.
Isaac hated almost all of it.
Especially the chairs.
“They cost twelve hundred dollars each.”
Adrian Cole told him.
Adrian was twenty-six and had been assigned as the on-site systems analyst.
Isaac stared at the chair.
“It still hurts my back.”
“That may be a you problem.”
Isaac looked at him.
Adrian instantly wondered whether he had spoken too casually.
Then Isaac smiled faintly.
“Good.”
“You have a spine.”
Adrian relaxed.
Barely.
He had read Isaac’s 2017 report on the flight.
Three times.
Technically, it was extraordinary.
Personally, Adrian had expected something else.
Maybe an embittered genius.
Someone theatrical.
Instead, Isaac spent the first twenty minutes asking Adrian whether Raymond Foster’s repaired F-150 sounded normal when leaving the lot.
Then he turned toward classified telemetry and seemed to become a different person.
Not smarter.
Focused.
There was a distinction.
Adrian pulled up sixty days of orbital data.
Isaac did not start with the anomaly.
“Go back six months.”
“Why?”
“I want baseline.”
“The obvious problem begins sixty days ago.”
“The obvious problem is the part already shouting.”
“I want to know when it started whispering.”
Adrian scrolled.
Isaac pointed.
“There.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Pressure recovery time.”
“It’s inside tolerance.”
“I didn’t ask whether it passed.”
“Plot it.”
Adrian did.
A slight trend appeared.
Tiny.
But persistent.
“Eleven months.”
Adrian said.
Isaac nodded.
“Damage started far earlier than anyone noticed.”
For the next fourteen hours, they worked.
Eleanor forced everyone to stop at midnight.
Isaac ignored her until she physically unplugged one monitor.
“You cannot solve a fatigue problem while creating one in yourself.”
She said.
“I’ve worked longer.”
“You were thirty-eight then.”
“That was unnecessary.”
“Go home.”
Isaac slept four hours.
Returned before anyone else.
On day two, Grace Chen joined remotely from Houston.
Grace specialized in structural dynamics.
Within twenty minutes, she and Isaac were arguing.
“That mode shouldn’t be accessible at operational amplitude.”
She said.
“It isn’t.”
Isaac replied.
“Then why are we discussing it?”
“Because the valve doesn’t care about amplitude in isolation.”
“The pressure pulse re-excites it before full decay.”
Grace went silent.
Then:
“Show me.”
Isaac did.
Two hours later, Grace said:
“Damn.”
It was the highest compliment he had received from another aerospace engineer in six years.
The immediate problem was clear.
The satellite could not be repaired physically.
They needed to alter how the existing valve was commanded.
Not simply slower.
Not merely less frequently.
They had to move the excitation pattern away from the resonant coupling while preserving enough pressure control to conduct maneuvers.
It was a controls problem built on a structural problem built on a thermal problem.
Exactly the sort of cross-disciplinary failure that large organizations handled poorly.
Nexora already had a solution.
Software patch.
Reduce valve actuation frequency.
Increase deadband.
Accept pressure drift.
Isaac studied it for fifteen minutes.
“No.”
Eleanor looked up.
“No what?”
“No.”
“Technical explanation would help.”
“It saves the valve and kills the mission differently.”
Adrian leaned closer.
“How?”