System Fault

Knight-Airman Fox looked on with quiet frustration from his station in the CIC as the other members of his department mounted a frantic - and, apparently, futile - bid to restore connection with the damage control systems in the ring and forward sphere districts. Something had struck the rostral extent of the sphere section and punched nearly all the way through to the other side before expending the rest of its energy in an explosive burst as the air in the sphere section flash-heated the debris fragments. None of his displays showed any physical damage with the shipboard microwave repeaters or data lines to the docking bay, where the drones were berthed that could help assess and repair the damage, but the ring might have been gone for all the good it did trying to reach systems or crew there. The multiple redundancy and modularity of Evermornan spacecraft was supposed to be preventing this sort of problem, but it was almost like signals couldn't propagate between the infrastructure nodes integrated into the ship's hull, turning that advantage into a liability. What good are back-ups you can't even use when the time comes? he asked himself. What could it be? Sabotage? A software glitch? Bits stuck together with gum and duct tape?
Director Lain was shouting, a panicked edge to the normally stoic woman's voice as she did her best to make sense of what the crew was seeing and formulate a rational response. Fox tried to shut her out as best she could, wrining his brain for some sort of solution. Time was of the essence, he knew. If the drones couldn't be raised soon...
Members of the Engineering Department reported no damage to the drive, reactor containment shielding, or power generation systems in the effected area, but the CIC crew could see through the windows that two of the pressure-tight membranes in the sphere were softening as air began to flow out through numerous breaches. Worse, part of the ship's protective magnetic field must have been malfunctioning; the sickly bluish light of Cherenkov radiation shone through the hole where the debris had first impacted the sphere, indicating that particles of the interstellar medium were colliding with the leaking air. Fox dreaded to think that anyone might have been out for an evening stroll when whatever had hid revelation came barreling through - if the concussive force of the blast or chunks of hull shrapnel spalled away in the impact hadn't injured them, then anyone close enough to see that light without barriers could be in for a slow death by radiation poisoning. Without access to the drones in the ring section docking bay, it would fall to suited people or HLAI platforms to patch the hole, vitually guaranteeing lethal doses even for the hardened systems of the androids.
Of course, the realized, that's it! "Director Lain!" Fox shouted. "We need to perform a system reset!"
Lain glared at Fox, but didn't rebuke him for interrupting her orders. "Fox, it can't be as simple as turning off and on again."
"No," Fox said, "not a simple reboot. Remember when we intercepted the High Shale?"
"Years ago?" Lain asked "I don't see how that's-"
"We performed a controlled system reset because they delived that cyber-warfare package. Performing a reset - basically a shutdown and firmware reinstallation from hard copies - erased it and prevented it from propagating. If a worm stowed away somewhere that wouldn't have been touched in the reset, say a little-used subsystem or a personal device left connected to the intranet when we entered combat, we could be seeing the effects of it resurfacing when preset conditions were reached. Alternatively, the ship's network connectivity could have had unforseen flaws that rendered it inaffective when disrupted like this, something that would have been patched out back at base. The last reset would might have deleted the patch. I'll know more when we try."
"We need the shipboard electronics active to effect repairs. Life support, communications, drones..."

Fox waived a hand at the vista through the window towards where the space debris had punched a jagged hole in the hull beyond. "They're intact, as far as we can see, but we need to control them. How?"
Lain nodded sharply. "Alright. Make it quick, Fox," she said, "We're running out of time." He didn't have to be told twice.