Dakota and Corso entered and immediately saw that the diagnostic equipment had been badly vandalized. Every unit above the examination table was blackened and burnt with scorch marks.

Lamoureaux came in behind them. ‘I got here about twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fried except for the medboxes.’

Dakota surveyed the damage, feeling suddenly numb. The labyrinth of bays and corridors that contained the med-bay was one part of the ship they had not searched during their hunt for Olivarri earlier.

Lamoureaux pushed past them, bringing himself to a halt by grabbing the edge of the examination table and pulling himself close to it. He reached up and levered open a panel on the side of one of the diagnostic units, revealing the scorched and blackened circuitry.

It occurred to Dakota that the easiest way to go around destroying the diagnostic gear would have been by using a handheld plasma cutter, just the kind of thing you would expect to find lying around a ship like the Mjollnir.

‘The Commander told me to get here as fast as I . . . shit.’

Dakota turned to see Nancy Schiller appear in the doorway. She stared at the ruined scanner, then turned to look at Dakota, her knuckles turning white where they gripped the plasma-rifle that had barely left her hands since the start of the outage.

‘We can manufacture new units, can’t we?’ asked Corso.

Lamoureaux pushed himself away from the table. ‘I don’t know if we can. It’s going to take time to get the rest of the fabricators back online and up to full capacity, and we’re pushing them to the limit as it is in manufacturing the new drive-spines. Full-body imaging gear like this is pretty advanced even for the fabricators we’ve got on board. It’s not like knocking out gun-drones or spider-mechs.’

Corso gestured to Nancy to follow him out into the corridor, where they began conversing together in quiet tones.

Lamoureaux touched Dakota’s elbow and she moved closer.

‘This is going to make things harder for us both,’ he said, keeping his voice low enough not to be overheard. ‘It’s going to seem like one of us did this so we couldn’t be scanned.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Ted, but you were in charge of the ship when everything shut down. And you were also the first one here.’

‘I’ve been up on the bridge the whole time until now, and I’d also say this damage was done during the outage.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Does it feel to you like someone’s trying to set us up?’

‘If they are, they’re doing a very good job – not that we were winning any popularity contests before this.’ As he said it, he glanced towards Nancy.