“Hand. Interesting.” Repeated Frosty, holding hers out.

Lyra immediately began examining it with precision tools in her magic grip.

“Yeah, I’m the Lead Design Engineer for the hand system! Are you telling me you haven’t heard the word ‘hand’ used to describe them?!” She asked.

“No, we just called them fingers. So did management.” Frosty shrugged.

“Ah! No-no-no.” Lyra tutted as she was fished through her saddlebag. “Bucking management, I tell you. Classifying everything including the very name of your subsystems!”

Lyra growled, pulled out a poster and unfolded it so quickly it even terrified the Night-Mares.

“This… is your hand!” She announced boldly, pointing to a diagram of the unit. “This item here is a finger! These together are fingers! They do not, however, include your palm! Which is this!” She pointed to several items in succession. “Or this! The J-box!” She said, spinning around. “All of these together… make the hand!”

“It’s amazing that some creature could come up with an idea of something so intricate!” PW exclaimed, examining the poster.

Frosty found Lyra working on her hand again, all while the unicorn held the poster up in her magic.

“Actually, not an idea! There’s a unicorn, who is not actually from our world! She is a transformed member of a creature called a human! Humans have hands as natural parts of their bodies! As natural as Windy’s wings! Two of them each have. Both sporting five fingers. By the way, do not tell any-creature that top secret information. Or I’ll have to kill you!” Joked Lyra.

“I’d like to see you try.” Frosty smirked.

“Ok!” Lyra cheered, dropping the components she was holding and opening the squeaky window with her magic. Then she faced out the window, inhaled deeply, conjuring up a storm of magic around her horn. She reeled it back, and unleashed a thunderous torrent of magic off into the sky that echoed like thunder. All their manes were blown back. Lyra, still as giddy as before closed the window and turned back to them. “Unicorns of that caliber are rare, but we do exist!” Laughed the master engineer, resuming her work inspecting Frosty’s hands.

“Hmm… your joints look worn. You could use some graphite powder.” Lyra brought a bottle over to the hand, squirting it, and returning it to her toolkit in one smooth, rapid motion. “This unit looks like it was replaced two weeks ago. May I ask why?”

“I recommended it, on account of the joints locking up.” Volunteered PW.

"Can I see that unit?” Lyra asked.

The N.C. walked to the exit of the room and cracked it. “Quarter, get the discarded finger unit. The design engineer wants to see it.”

“HAND!” Baa’d Lyra. “There’s hardly anything I can think of to cause that sort of issue. I designed this unit to serve you in battle! Not to break on you!” She pushed her hoof into Frosty’s bosom in a display of support. The door swung open and Quarter walked in, carrying the unit in his magic.

“Ah, let's see what we have here!” Lyra took the unit, opened up the J-box in a split second and tipped it to her face. “Oh, that’s interesting… the dimensions are off for the second and third digit at the metacarpal struts.” She narrowed her gaze, pulled out a caliper in her magic and began placing it over the parts.

“Yeah, there should be 2 more millimeters in the dimension on both of these. See how the middle two fingers have thinner struts then the outside two?” Lyra asked, tipping the junction box towards them.

“Now that you mention it, yeah.” Replied PW.

“You’re Polaris Wind, aren’t you? Bon-Bon mentioned you were like me with your fascination but with the Night-Mare as a whole.” Added Lyra, examining the unit for more defects.

“Yes, though you can call me PW, Mrs. Heartstrings!” The pegasus answered. Frosty leaned down.

“And I can attest to that. That little brain of his has my stats memorized already.” Added Frosty.

“Call me Lyra. No need for all that formality.” She said, setting it down.

“So there’s definitely a defect in there, eh?” Asked the N.C.

Lyra lifted her cheeks and cracked a small sappy smile. “Not quite. The manufacturing process calls for the part to be machined to 10 millimeters. These have dimensions of 8.” Stated Lyra.

“You think maybe a part may have been switched out?” Asked the N.C.

“I do not. Mainly, because, if you look closely, the part is machined correctly on both the ends. It features a little something in the middle. See?” She asked, tipping the hand unit towards the N.C.

“I do see. Quarter, what do you make of this?” He asked, calling the tinkerer over who had been suppressing his inventive spirit for the past few minutes.

The stallion’s eyes flew open.

“Blimey! It looks like somepony has milled out the middle!” Quarter exclaimed.

“Exactly.” Answered Lyra. “And what’s more, there’s two additional safeguards in the manufacturing process.” She finished, quickly searching through her saddlebag for the manufacturing control document, which she floated in front of them. “First, nowhere in the process does it call for any milling of the metacarpal struts. Second, part 12 of the procedure, here, specifically instructs the QA to verify the dimensions of the part are 10 millimeters in the V&V process. So this should have been checked for compliance!” Shot Lyra as the air left the room.

“But not only that, if we look at these two metacarpals, you can see that the machining is identical in mirrored symmetry. And why do we check to make sure the metacarpals are 10 millimeters? Because the interior of the second and third metacarpals are a critical spot which, if weak, allows lateral shearing forces to tear the whole hand apart, starting with pulling the J-box wires out strand by strand, resulting in finger lockups! Quarter!” The energetic mare called as he stormed off to his room.

“I see where you are headed Lyra Heartstrings, I am retrieving the other one we have now.” The stallion said as he trotted off.

In only a few seconds he trotted back in. Lyra immediately looked wide eyed and held the unit up. “See how this one’s second and third fingers are already fully contracted?” Asked Lyra, turning the J-box around to her audience and popping the door open. “Two popped wires, completely out. And look.” She added, holding the other unit beside it. “Exactly the same machining technique done to these metacarpals. And, the breakup has already begun.” Lyra observed, focusing magic light on the metal palmplate.

The part, also functioning as the bottom of the J-box, sure enough had a small crack in the aluminum.

“My word!” Exclaimed Quarter.

“I do not like this.” The N.C. said, backing up and shaking his head. “What does this mean?” He added.

“Bon-Bon, my wife, told me that she suspected an insider threat was present. And I love her, but independent of that, we have identified two similar defects that require two discreet modifications, both done to exploit a weakness with this modification present. This is not quality escape, N.C. You have an insider threat.” Declared Lyra, popping open Frosty’s J-boxes.

Frosty held them out for every-creature to see. “Quarter, these were the ones you replaced? Were they recently manufactured?” Lyra asked.

“Yes, they were manufactured just a few days before installation.” He answered.

“They are good.” She concluded, closing Frosty’s and opening Echo’s. “How about yours? These look like they’ve seen some action.”

“I killed Racoon-san!” Cried Echo.

“You did not kill him, Echo. He killed himself.” PW insisted.

“These are good also.”

“At this point N.C. Stablecolt and Quarter I can report the following. I strongly believe you had a malicious actor present during the manufacturing of Frosty’s old unit and that other unit you showed me. It appears that they did not do their unauthorized work on the units on Echo and the new ones on Frosty. I am going to bet they were here early on in the project and left later on. But I can tell you this – they are very crafty and very smart. It takes a lot of mechanical knowledge and familiarity with the systems to identify this as a potential weakness. And I would investigate very carefully, very quickly, and immediately have all units inspected for this modification. And, PW?”

“Yes?”

“Great work picking it up on the fly.”

“Thanks, but I was I&T. Shouldn’t I have caught this during testing? I feel a little awkward now being in the middle of all of this.” Lyra looked PW in the eye.

“No, don't feel that way. The installation onto the Night-Mare is not the subsystem level acceptance V&V. They handed you a unit that they claimed was good and you believed them. As you should have.” Lyra reassured.

Frosty made eye contact with Windy.

“And not only that PW, you did your tests correctly and discovered problems early on. And you reported the nonconformances as you should have, and these were not acted upon. You did nothing wrong.” Frosty insisted.

“Bon-Bon also said she believes there may have been an insider in management blocking and intercepting his discrepancy reporting. This would make sense and should also be investigated.” Added Lyra.

“Thank you Lyra. For everything.” Said PW with a smile.

“Sure thing, kiddo! And keep at your passion! You’ll be running the whole project before you know it at this rate!” She finished.

The rest of them said their farewells and proceeded into the briefing room. Lyra hung back for further discussion later with Quarter at his request.

“Operation Lost-at-Sea. If either of you have needed to get your fix of ozone, this is your chance. Though, for Windy, being a flier, he’s already got it.” Quarter explained as he slid a world map onto the projector glass. "This operation is a big one. There will be three Night-Mares on it. Frosty, Echo, and Recce.”

“I’ve heard that name before…” PW said. “Yeah… oh.” PW muttered, remembering his "dream" with Frosty.

Frosty’s face turned white and she looked away as the little stallion realized what this meant.

Author's Note

A few engineering terms for those who aren't familiar:
QA = Quality Assurance (they make sure what's produced is what was ordered)
V&V = Verification and Validation (that's how QA ensures the items are produced correctly)
I&T = Integration and Testing (building up systems of components and testing them as unified systems)

There was a craze in the early 20th century for 'ozone', which was at the time believed to originate from the sea, and was synonymous with fresh air. That's how we got Ozone Park in New York. It was later realized that real ozone is actually a very deadly gas!