Several cadets glanced toward Jason, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"First," Lorna continued, "the crew was not killed by an attack. There's no sign of weapons damage anywhere inside the ship, and no sign that anyone ever boarded it before we did. It wasn't disease, either, and the life support systems were functioning normally right up until the end."
She brought up an image on the display behind her. It showed a long, jagged graph that climbed almost vertically from the bottom of the screen to the very top in a single sharp line.
"This is from the ship's engine logs," she said. "It shows the engines' output during the last moments the crew was alive. The ship was almost completely still at the beginning of this record, barely moving at all, and then within a few seconds, the engines went to full output."
She traced the near-vertical line with one finger.
"No gradual build-up. No slow acceleration. Straight from almost nothing to everything the engines could produce."
