It took the pair of them a while to get into the airlock because of Cooper's injury. 

Watanabe kept apologizing the entire time they were moving from the ship's superstructure to the airlock proper. 

"Gomenasai Cooper-san," Watanabe said yet again in her native tongue. "Gomenasai."

"Please, just cycle the 'lock so that I can get something for the pain," Cooper asked as nicely as she could through clenched teeth. 'I don't know which is worse, the constant apologizing or the pain.'

"Of course," Watanabe said as she closed the door and pushed the proper buttons to activate the 'lock.

Once the interior of the lock was filled with atmosphere, the lights inside the airlock went from red to green and the inner door opened.

"There should be a medical kit in the emergency cabinet," Cooper explained as she pointed with her good arm at the small door in the airlock's side. Then she removed her helmet as best she could in the high gravity and with a single hand.

"Here it is!" Watanabe exclaimed as she pulled the bright red med kit from its storage. "Wait Cooper, I will help you remove your suit so I can inject the painkiller."

"Negative. Inject me in the neck. Once I get my suit off, I doubt I will be able to put the suit back on."

"Found it!" Watanabe said as she held up the autoinjector in question. Then she came over to un-suit Cooper. Then, once she had the syringe against Cooper's neck Watanabe pushed the button to activate it.

"Oh, dear God that feels better," Cooper said. "Now I can think through the pain again."

"That's good."

"Now take off your helmet. The atmosphere is breathable."

"Gladly," Watanabe said as she took off her helmet. "No-one should be forced to wear these helmets for a long period of time."

The duo then went into the small control room where she and Lieutenant Snyder had talked and drank coffee together. However, instead of being lit up like normal, both workstations were dark.

"Of course, things couldn't be that easy."

"What's wrong Cooper?"

"Someone has powered both workstations down, and I don't think that I will be able to get them back online."

"Thats not good," Watanabe said.

After a few minutes of tapping away at the controls Cooper said, "Looks like we are going to have to do things the hard way" Then she made her way towards the reactor's control workstation.

"Okay, this doesn't even make sense! This panel should be fully powered. They run this workstation off of power from the very reactor that it controls. As long as the reactor is functioning, it should be powered up. However, that reactor is still producing heat, or the thruster wouldn't be firing."

"So, what do we do?" Watanabe asked.

"We can go for another spacewalk fighting the thrust gravity and kill the reactor that way. The other option is that we could stop the water from flowing into the ship's thrustors and then shut off the reactor via a spacewalk. Under this option, we wouldn't be fighting high thrust gravity. Personally, I would prefer the latter over the former, even if it runs the risk of blowing the steam tank because of the pressure."

"How long do you think it will be before the tank blows?"

"About thirty minutes, perhaps a little more," Cooper responded. "Now let's see if the manual cutoff valves still work."

"Why don't you simply cut off the water valves between the main water tank and the one designed to hold the super-heated steam? Then you wouldn't have to worry about the steam tank rupturing?"

"Watanabe, you seem to have forgotten that the water from the main tank also cools the reactor. Suddenly stopping the water flow could cause a reactor breach."

After saying that, Cooper made her way to the manifold's manual controls. However, since she only had one working limb, she had to guide Watanabe through the process of closing the valves in the proper order.

Once the valves were closed, the thrust acceleration stopped in mere seconds. 

"Watanabe, please set up a thirty-minute countdown and keep me posted from time to time."

"Will do," Watanabe responded as she fiddled with the small portable built into her space suit's left arm. "Thirty minutes from my mark. Mark!"

"Thank you," Cooper said, before activating her suit's long-range com. "Cooper to Simmons."

"Simmons here."

"We have successfully cut off the steam flow to the thrusters in secondary engineering. We are now going on a little space walk to deactivate the reactor since the control panels in this section are all unresponsive."

"Roger that. Thanks for the information. Simmons out."

"Why didn't you report your injury to Simmons?" Watanabe asked.

"If I did, then he would try to come and help and we simply don't have that much time to spare," Cooper said as they reentered the airlock and put her helmet back on. This time she also made sure that both of them had an EVA backpack 'just in case.'

It only took them five minutes to put on their helmets and check all the seals on their suits, but that used up five minutes that they could have used to work on the reactor.

After a bit of maneuvering with their jet packs, the duo finally made it to the external reactor controls. However, this shaved off another ten minutes of their remaining time.

"Why did they use six manual screws to keep this plate secure?" Cooper groused as she slowly removed the face plate covering the controls. As she removed each screw, her respiration and heartbeat kept going up.

Finally, the last screw was removed. "Allright! Now I just need to shut down the reactor and then vent the steam," Cooper said with a smile.  "Good thing that I just installed this reactor two months ago so I shouldn't have any trouble with the shutdown."

With that, Cooper began entering the proper stoppage sequence. However, even these controls were unresponsive.

"Cooper, we only have three minutes before the estimated tank breech," Watanabe said.

"Damn it!" Cooper swore. "I hate to do this, but I am out of options and out of time. If it damages the reactor, then so be it."

Cooper began opening a panel that said 'Emergency use only' in big red letters.

"Ugh, six screws on this panel as well," she mumbled as she worked as quickly as she could. When she was down to the second to last screw, Watanabe reported, "Cooper, we are now down to twenty seconds."

"Shit!" Cooper exclaimed as sweat dripped down her brow and her heartbeat sped up once again. "Ive got to hurry!" she said as she removed the last screw. While it only took her a few seconds to remove each fastener, mentally it felt like an hour.

Once she was finally inside the compartment, she found a single big red lever. Cooper grabbed it with her good arm and yanked the lever back as far as it would go.

"Either that just killed the reactor, or we are going to have a tank rupture in the next few seconds."

---

Once they were back inside secondary engineering, Cooper had Watanabe open the valve which would slowly vent the steam pressure into space without producing appreciable thrust.

"Cooper to Simmons," she said over coms. "I had to use the external emergency shut off to bring the reactor offline. I have also begun bleeding off the excess steam pressure from the tank. Is there anything else you need for me to do?"

"No, that should do it."

"Good. Then are off to med bay to put my arm into a sling and to get some more painkillers."

"Roger that," Simmons replied. Then a moment later he said, "Wait, what's wrong with your arm?"

---