She'd hear the countdown preps move through the five minute mark, where the grav drive was spun up and checked out, and two minutes, where all the ground umbilicals robotically separated, putting the ship on internal power, cooling, and environment.  At one minute, the transmitters and transponders went live, and the tower gave the "all clear" for the ship to lift through the atmosphere.  The captain's voice came out of the speakers in the cabins and passageways to warn of the impending lift off<br/><br/>Goodness!  A lot of what was automated on her old ship was less automatically controlled on this ship.  Katie needed to tinker with the airflow several times as the ship went through the pre-launch paces, and then cooling got out of whack.  The grav plates seemed to shudder a bit as they came up to full power, just before the launch, too.<br/><br/>[You need to make three Engineering-Electronics rolls, all with +1 from your Int and I'll toss you another +1 for the amalgamation of your other skills related to running a ship.  Your target is 8 for all of them--it's not too hard, but there are three rolls.<br/><br/>The good news?  If you make all three, I'll let you go back and put a star by the "0" for E-E skill.  Then, when you get a chance (i.e. your character can think back and reflect on what happened), you can make an Int roll to see if she learned from her stressful little experience!  (homemade experience rule there, hope you don't mind?)<br/><br/>If you miss one, it will probably slip by, but you won't get the experience chance.  If you miss two, she'll get complaints from the crew and passengers.  If you miss all three, she might be walking home from orbit.  ;-)   ]<br/><br/>Exactly at zero, the grav drives pulsed, and the ship lifted off its struts, which folded up with a motorized whine.  Then, after making sure the ship was operating correctly, the captain nosed her up, and laid on the gees, headed for orbit.