One by one, critical ship systems stuttered to life. On the bridge, more or less half the consoles started themselves – mine was down and out, so I sat back and watched people trying to retrieve the previous order from the new chaos.

Furlough took two bridge officers (Fulp and Trappy?) and got themselves through the bridge airlock presumably to check on the crew; other people busied themselves trying to fix bridge equipment. Harrigan’s expression could hardly have been more grim if he had been told he was about to lose a family member – in a way, I realised with a pang, he had. The poor man loved this ship like the family he’d never had.

I leaned across to Furlough’s abandoned console, loading my own configs onto it and set about rebooting the navigation and coaxing the overseer out of damage-control hibernation. When I felt Harrigan’s presence behind me, I waited two beats and said, “You okay there, cap’n?”

I could have sworn he had been about to say (perhaps shout) something, but he moved on wordlessly.