Secondary Computer Core (Decks 13, 15-16)

The secondary computer core occupies a narrow vertical shaft running through the center of the ship's engineering hull, its uppermost access level opening onto Deck 13 and descending through two further levels to a base on Deck 16. Unlike the ship's primary core forward, this installation is considerably more compact, built around a tight cluster of six processing towers rather than a wide processing gallery, each tower a slender column of dark composite panel reaching from deck to overhead and threaded with a fine lattice of isolinear circuit traces that pulse in slow, shifting patterns of pale green and blue light visible faintly through the towers' translucent outer casing. A spiral catwalk, considerably narrower than the primary core's main gallery, winds around the tower cluster from the upper access level down to the base, with small landing platforms at each intervening deck allowing technicians to reach maintenance panels set into the towers at that level. The towers themselves grow perceptibly warmer toward the shaft's base, where the bulk of active processing load is concentrated, and a soft, continuous whirring hum rises correspondingly in volume the further down the catwalk one descends. At the top level on Deck 13, a single operator alcove holds a modest LCARS interface console facing the tower cluster, used for local diagnostics and manual core resets; its display shows a simplified schematic of processing load distribution across all three levels in a vertical bar readout. The shaft's walls are a plain, unadorned grey composite, broken only by the recessed maintenance panels and the catwalk's supporting brackets. The air is cool and carries a faint ozone smell, growing very slightly warmer with each level descended, and the ambient light throughout the shaft comes almost entirely from the towers' own internal glow, giving the whole space a dim, blue-green cast interrupted only by the catwalk's small landing lights.