In the Cradle of Vexilon

The Cerritos visits Corazonia, a vast artificial ring world whose climate is controlled by Vexilon, an ancient computer long overdue for an update. Freeman insists on doing the work herself, and the update crashes Vexilon, which begins to reset the whole world with lava and primordial ooze. Boimler, newly a lieutenant, leads his first away team to pull power cylinders from the core, but he cannot bring himself to send his former fellow ensigns into danger and tries to do every risky job alone. When a power station explodes, he is killed, then revived by Dr T'Ana, and learns to trust his team. Back on the ship, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford are stuck sorting endless isolinear chips for Lt Dirk and decide they are being hazed. They take revenge with a dangerous game from the anomaly storage room, only to discover that Dirk was playing them all along.