New location - ECLSS
The ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support System) is now available, bringing the number of locations to 8 out of 12.
When the Mutiny broke out, the Chief Technical Officer promptly sealed the ECLSS, declaring that neither side will use it in their war. Those who wished to leave were allowed to do so; the rest remained with CTO Miller, committed to supporting life on the Ship.
Miller knew that the warring factions would be coming for the ECLSS. They would want control, power over life and death on the Ship, something their enemies could never permit. The fight for ECLSS would make the fight for Mission Control look like a border skirmish, and Miller knew how it would end: with destruction of the Ship's essential systems, the failure of the mission, the death of every man, woman, and child aboard the Ship. That, he could not permit.
The only hope lay in true independence. But how? They would need strength of body, to resist force. They would need strength of will, to live apart from all society. And they would need all the intelligence they could get, not only to maintain Ship systems put under terrible pressure by both the civil war and the mere passage of time, but also to navigate the Ship's shifting politics. Outsiders would need to believe the inhabitants of ECLSS to be above petty human concerns; and inside, they would need to be above petty human limitations.
The answer lay buried in the Ship's databanks: augmentations meant only for the most extreme circumstances, for small or even individual deep-space maintenance missions, augmentations that would make a man more than a man, and less - able to survive alone, smart enough and strong enough to deal with any challenges that might arise on years-long expeditions.
These augmentations went beyond the artificial eyes and reinforced bones common to the Ship, and amounted to a fundamental reworking of the human body. Functions inessential for long space missions would be removed altogether, freeing the body's resources for more practical needs.
With this transformation, the ECLSS crew would become what they needed to be: just as the God of Ecclesiastes was above human struggles for power, for fame, for wealth, so too would the superhumans of the ECLSS be above the Ship's passing struggles, devoted solely to its survival. Outsiders would be able to see them as something other than a foe or friend; and they would have the strength to carry out the heavy task before them.
