At the start of Chapter 14 when you exit the ambulance/shuttle, the first thing you have to do is fight your way through the Seegon's security forces. You know, at the same area you first get to talk to a Working Joe and find your motion tracker.
Instead go against the objective and take the elevator up back to one of the very first levels and take a transit car to the Engineering Decks.
You already have your Ion Torch upgrade so you can easily cut through the panel and viola! you can now walk through that giant nuclear 'boom' 'boom' room, and this time there are no Working Joe's with orange suits so you don't need to take them all out.
Then you can take the elevator down the Reactor Core and Amanda will have her "Ricardo, coms are going dark" moment
You also still have your Flamethrower so you don't need to take the spare one lying around.
Unfortunately you can only explore parts of the Hive, you cannot interact with the Alpha Core or redirect power to the Central Core. You can encounter two Facehuggers that you can smash and 3 eggs that will open for you ( but 2 without Facehuggers oddly ) and one scripted Alien encounter that will automatically slip into a vent.
I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else on the Internet. Anyone else tried this before?