I'm looking for a series that I read years ago (around 10 years ago, but it's really hard to recall, so many books, so many years) and all I remember is that at the conclusion of the series, humanity is trying to finish the last escape pods from Earth as a deadly force bears down on Earth.
An engineer with brain implants who has through the years accumulated fixes and solutions in his brain implant works past exhaustion to finish the final ship that will carry the last remains of humanity from Earth to safety.
(This is by no means a main character, it is a side character in the books that gets precious little time as I recall it.)
The process was described as him pulling fixes and algorithms from his library and in the final effort to fix the ship he was pulling and applying them on pure instinct, not having the energy to determine if the solution would actually work because if time ran out they would all be dead anyway. As he concludes his efforts he passes out and just floats there, inside the engine room / in the ship somewhere and gets pulled away by his "handler".
Earlier in the books this engineer had been identified as exceptionally good at his job - fixing machines that weren't doing their jobs properly - and put in the top secret team creating the ships that will save humanity from extinction.
I don't remember there being any AIs in this book/series, but then again I remember very little of it :/
I think I remember that this was all done is secrecy by someone rich / the government as they didn't want to freak people out, but that is a very untrustworthy memory.
I was reading Roboteer by Alex Lamb a couple of years ago and this story popped into by head as another that had given me great hope for programming - that got dashed with time though ;)
This has been really bugging me again for weeks, can't find it in my library or in the local science fiction store.
