By Richard Woodcock
Scene: Cordra Fleet Yards
Cordra Fleet Yards did not sleep.
It dimmed the lights occasionally, lowered the volume of its alarms and permitted certain members of the administrative staff to pretend they had gone home, but it never truly slept. Ships arrived wounded, departed reborn, or remained suspended within its construction frames while thousands of engineers argued over precisely how much ship ought to exist in any given place.
Dockmaster Pieter van Zyl stood before the vast observation window of Control Gallery Seven with his hands clasped behind his back.
Beyond the transparent aluminium, the USS Astraeus hung within Docking Cradle Twelve.
She was almost complete.
Her long, powerful hull caught the blue-white glare of the yard’s work lamps. Broad phaser arrays lay flush against newly sealed armour. The raised mission structure along her dorsal spine gave her a purposeful silhouette, while the forward sections of her saucer possessed the clean, predatory sweep of a ship designed to discover secrets and survive the consequences.
Her registry had been freshly applied beneath the saucer.
NCC-970137.
Noble-class intelligence battlecruiser.
Pieter regarded her with the solemn expression of a man watching his daughter walk down the aisle while privately considering whether the prospective spouse could be removed through an airlock.
“Dockmaster,” said a nervous voice behind him, “we have completed the primary EPS synchronisation.”
Pieter did not turn.
“And?”
“And the system is stable.”
“How stable?”
The young Bolian systems technician hesitated.
“Very stable.”
Pieter slowly looked over his shoulder.
There were few phrases he trusted less than very stable. They belonged in the same category as minor plasma leak, routine intelligence mission and the admiral only wants a quick word.
“How stable, Ensign?”
The Bolian swallowed. “It has not exploded.”
“Today?”
“Today.”
Pieter nodded. “Then we are making progress.”
The ensign relaxed.
“Have the team run the synchronisation again.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
“But the computer reported….”
“The computer has never attended the funeral of someone killed by an incorrectly seated power coupling.”
The ensign’s face tightened.
Pieter softened his voice.
“Your work was good. That is why you will check it again. Bad engineers assume they made a mistake. Good engineers know they might have.”
“Yes, Dockmaster.”
“And Ensign?”
“Yes?”
“Tell your team I am proud of them.”
The Bolian smiled. “I will.”
“Then tell them if they scratch my ship, I will personally assign them to waste-reclamation calibration until their grandchildren complain of the smell.”
The smile vanished.
“Yes, Dockmaster.”
As the doors closed behind the ensign, a voice drifted from the entrance to the gallery.
“You know, Pieter, most people use encouragement without the threat of intergenerational punishment.”
Pieter closed his eyes.
Dockmaster Hana Raukawa entered carrying two steaming metal cups. Her dark hair was tied behind her head, although several rebellious strands had escaped during what appeared to have been a prolonged argument with an impulse manifold. A streak of grey sealant marked one cheek.
She wore the same yard-grey uniform as Pieter, except hers had acquired burns, grease stains and a handwritten label reading TEMPORARY MIRACLE WORKER.
Pieter had been tempted to add very temporary beneath it.
Hana offered him one of the cups.
“Coffee.”
Pieter accepted it and sniffed suspiciously.
“What have you done to it?”
“Nothing.”
“You are smiling.”
“I’m from New Zealand. We’re friendly.”
“You put something in it.”
“Only coffee.”
Pieter took a cautious sip.
It was excellent, which made him even more suspicious.
Hana stepped beside him and looked towards the Astraeus.
“Well,” she said, “she’s certainly large.”
Pieter’s expression hardened.
“She is magnificent.”
“She looks angry.”
“She is a battlecruiser.”
“She looks as if someone showed a Sovereign-class a confidential report and then refused to explain it.”
Pieter turned to her.
“Should you not be attending to your antique?”
“My antique has a name.”
“Yes. Tempest. A weather condition commonly associated with property damage and insurance claims.”
Across the central yard, the USS Tempest, NCC-71416, rested within a repair frame.
The Constitution III-class cruiser was an elegant contradiction: modern systems wrapped in lines that deliberately echoed Starfleet’s past. Her saucer was broad, her engineering hull compact, and her nacelles swept back with the poise of a runner waiting for the starting signal.
Several sections of her outer hull had been removed. Work pods clustered around her damaged port quarter, where fresh structural members gleamed beneath temporary field emitters.
Hana gazed at the ship with undisguised affection.
“She has history.”
“She has damage.”
“She earned it.”
“She flew backwards through an ion storm.”
“It was tactically necessary.”
“The captain’s report used the words ‘unexpected navigational inversion’.”
“That is officer language for tactically necessary.”
“It is officer language for ‘we do not want the dockyard to know what we did’.”
Hana raised her cup towards the Tempest.
“She brought everyone home.”
Pieter’s gaze moved from the damaged cruiser to the new battlecruiser.
“That,” he said quietly, “is the important part.”
For a moment, the habitual competition between them fell silent.
Then Hana glanced at the Astraeus again.
“Still looks angry.”
Pieter sighed. “Go away, Hana.”
Scene: Cordra Fleet Yards, Cradle Twelve
At 0700 yard time, the senior engineering teams assembled in Cradle Twelve.
Technicians stood in neat groups beneath the immense shadow of the Astraeus. Some wore Starfleet uniforms. Others wore the coloured work gear of the civilian construction guilds. Humans stood beside Tellarites, Andorians, Bolians, Saurians and species Pieter had learned not to identify until after breakfast.
They had spent three years building the vessel.
Some had designed sections of her hull. Others had installed conduits, tested sensors, aligned warp coils, fitted torpedo handling systems or crawled through maintenance spaces that Starfleet architects continued to insist were accessible to an average-sized humanoid.
Pieter knew many of them by name.
He also knew which ones took too many risks, which ones skipped meals, which marriages were in difficulty and which apprentices still believed their supervisors had never made mistakes.
He climbed onto a cargo pallet to address them.
“Today we begin final integrated trials.”
A cheer rose from the assembled teams.
Pieter allowed it to continue for precisely four seconds.
“Do not become excited.”
The cheer died.
“Excited people forget tools inside machinery. Excited people sign inspection sheets without reading them. Excited people announce launch dates before asking the dockmaster.”
Several workers looked towards the yard’s public-relations officer, who developed a sudden interest in the ceiling.
“This ship is not finished because she looks finished,” Pieter continued. “She is finished when every system performs correctly, every seal holds and every person aboard her can trust the work we have done.”
His gaze travelled across the faces before him.
“When she leaves this yard, she may go somewhere no ship has gone. She may face things we cannot imagine. Her crew will not know our names. They will not know who fitted the plasma regulators on Deck Twenty-One or who rejected a batch of defective optical relays.”
He paused.
“They will simply expect the lights to come on.”
A few smiles appeared.
“They will expect the shields to rise. They will expect the engines to answer. They will expect the hull to remain between them and vacuum. That expectation is our duty.”
Pieter looked up at the Astraeus.
“She carries weapons powerful enough to ruin someone’s entire afternoon. She possesses intelligence systems that officially do not exist, operated by officers who will officially deny having met one another. But none of that matters if a five-credit isolinear connector fails because someone was too tired to inspect it.”
He stepped down from the pallet.
“Take care of her now, and she will take care of them later.”
The teams dispersed to their stations.
Hana emerged from behind a support column, slowly applauding.
“Very moving.”
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to hear you tell an intelligence battlecruiser to take care of people.”
“She will.”
“She’s an inanimate collection of duranium, tritanium and classified bad decisions.”
Pieter looked up at the ship.
“They listen.”
“No, they don’t.”
“That is why your vessel flew backwards into an ion storm.”
Hana pointed at him.
“She was pushed.”
“By what?”
“Circumstances.”
“Was Circumstances at the helm?”
“Circumstances was the first officer.”
Pieter’s combadge chirped.
“Control to Dockmaster van Zyl.”
He tapped it. “Van Zyl.”
“Sir, the main computer has rejected the command-pathway verification.”
Pieter frowned. “Reason?”
“It says the command authorisation profile is incomplete.”
“Whose profile?”
There was a pause.
“The prospective commanding officer’s.”
Pieter’s eyes narrowed.
Hana’s eyebrows rose.
“I am on my way,” Pieter said.
The channel closed.
Hana followed him towards the turbolift.
“You have a captain?”
“The Astraeus will eventually require one.”
“That is generally how Starfleet operates.”
“The assignment is classified.”
“Classified from the dockmaster?”
“Apparently.”
Hana grinned. “Someone doesn’t trust you.”
“Someone has excellent judgement.”
Scene: USS Astraeus
The Astraeus’s main computer core occupied a chamber whose clean white surfaces and restrained blue lighting were intended to inspire confidence.
At present, it inspired profanity.
Lieutenant Commander Shral, the Andorian systems integration chief, stood before a holographic display with both antennae angled aggressively forward.
“The computer will not certify the command interface without a complete biometric profile,” he explained. “Starfleet Personnel has supplied one, but seventy-three per cent of the identifying data is sealed.”
Pieter examined the screen.
Most of the future captain’s name had been replaced by black security fields.
The only visible portions were an initial, a rank clearance code and a set of command-compatibility requirements.
“Can we bypass it?” Pieter asked.
Shral looked offended.
“Of course.”
“Can we bypass it safely?”
Shral looked considerably less certain.
“Probably.”
Hana leaned over the display.
“Welsh language support?”
Pieter looked at her.
“What?”
She pointed to a line within the command configuration.
“Supplementary linguistic package. Welsh.”
Pieter read further.
The profile requested specific environmental presets, strategic display preferences and interface compatibility with several command systems previously installed aboard Exeter-class vessels.
One line referred to personalised admiralty authentication.
Admiralty.
Pieter’s face gave nothing away.
Hana studied him.
“You know something.”
“I know many things.”
“Most of them are threats involving waste reclamation.”
“It is a versatile department.”
She tapped the display. “This ship isn’t going to an ordinary captain.”
Pieter noticed another fragment among the security fields.
Previous command platform: NCC-121—
The remainder was hidden.
He silently closed the file.
“Commander Shral,” he said, “perform the certification using the provisional command matrix.”
Shral’s antennae twitched. “That will require dockmaster authorisation.”
“You have it.”
“And the missing biometric validation?”
“We will install it when Starfleet decides the person responsible for keeping this ship from exploding is allowed to know who will sit in her centre chair.”
Hana followed Pieter from the chamber.
In the corridor she lowered her voice.
“NCC-121?”
“A partial registry.”
“Exeter lineage.”
“There are several Exeter-class vessels.”
“But only one whose command systems would be tied to an admiralty authentication profile.”
Pieter stopped walking.
Hana stopped with him.
For once, there was no smile on her face.
“You saw nothing,” he said.
“I saw a computer fault.”
“You heard nothing.”
“I heard an Andorian say ‘probably’ in a way that shortened my life.”
Pieter studied her.
“The assignment has not been announced.”
“So the captain may not know?”
“I did not say there was a captain.”
“No,” Hana said softly. “You said there would eventually be one.”
They resumed walking.
After several steps, Hana added, “Outpost Lazarus?”
Pieter turned his head sharply.
She shrugged.
“A heavily armed intelligence battlecruiser with sealed command credentials, long-range independent deployment capability and admiralty-level systems. There aren’t many places Starfleet would send her.”
“You speculate too much.”
“I supervise engineers. Speculation is what happens while waiting for replacement parts.”
Pieter stopped at the turbolift.
“Not a word.”
Hana drew a cross over her heart.
“On my honour.”
“You once replaced my office chair with an emergency flotation device.”
“It passed all relevant safety tests.”
“We are in space.”
“You can never be too careful.”
The turbolift doors closed between them.
Scene: Cordra Fleet Yards, Cradle Twelve
The accident occurred at 1423.
Later, every formal report agreed that a defective gravitic relay had caused a momentary overload within the Astraeus’s dorsal sensor assembly.
Every informal account agreed that the universe had grown bored.
Pieter was in Cradle Twelve when the warning klaxons began.
A pulse of blue light travelled along the battlecruiser’s spine. Work pods scattered as the localised gravity field twisted. A maintenance platform broke from its moorings and began tumbling towards the exposed sensor array.
“Emergency transport!” Pieter shouted.
“No lock!” someone replied. “Field distortion!”
The platform carried six technicians.
Its emergency thrusters fired, but only one answered. The platform spun harder, throwing sparks and loose equipment into space.
Pieter struck his combadge.
“Van Zyl to Tempest. We need tractor support in Cradle Twelve.”
Hana’s voice answered immediately.
“Her main tractor emitters are offline.”
“Then use the auxiliaries.”
“They’re not calibrated.”
“Today seems a good day to calibrate them.”
Through the cradle opening, the Tempest’s running lights came alive.
The ship remained locked within her repair frame, hull panels missing and half her primary systems disconnected, but deep inside her engineering hull, power surged through temporary conduits.
Hana’s voice came over the yard channel.
“Tempest control to repair teams. Stand clear of auxiliary power junctions. If anything begins glowing that was not glowing before, leave.”
A nervous technician replied, “How quickly?”
“Before you finish asking.”
Two pale tractor beams extended from the Tempest.
The first missed the tumbling platform.
The second caught its edge, worsening the spin.
Pieter watched in horror.
“Hana!”
“I said they weren’t calibrated!”
The platform swept closer to the Astraeus. One impact against the open sensor bay would kill the technicians and destroy months of work.
Pieter ran to the cradle operations console.
“Can we energise the Astraeus’s tractor grid?”
“Primary power is unstable,” Shral reported.
“Use secondary.”
“Secondary is coupled to the intelligence suite.”
“Then intelligence can do something useful.”
Shral’s fingers flew over the controls.
The Astraeus’s hull came alive in sections, light spreading across her like dawn breaking over a steel continent.
Pieter entered his dockmaster authorisation.
The computer rejected it.
COMMAND-LEVEL APPROVAL REQUIRED.
“Override,” he ordered.
OVERRIDE DENIED.
Pieter stared at the display.
“I built you.”
The computer remained unmoved.
“You ungrateful bliksem.”
“Pieter,” Hana called, “we are losing them.”
The platform was less than two hundred metres from the hull.
Pieter opened the sealed command matrix. The hidden officer’s profile remained inaccessible, but the provisional authentication package was present.
He activated it.
COMMAND IDENTITY UNCONFIRMED.
“Dockyard emergency authority Van Zyl Seven-One-Seven.”
AUTHORITY INSUFFICIENT.
Pieter looked through the observation ports at the tumbling workers.
Then he looked towards the incomplete name field.
“Computer,” he said, “accept provisional authorisation under future flag command protocols.”
There was a pause.
FLAG COMMAND PROTOCOLS REQUIRE ASSIGNED OFFICER VALIDATION.
“Use the archived command-response model.”
Shral stared at him. “Dockmaster, that model is theoretical.”
“Then today it gets practical.”
The computer processed the request.
STATE COMMAND INTENT.
Pieter leaned towards the console.
“Bring them home.”
For one dreadful second, nothing happened.
Then the Astraeus answered.
A tractor beam snapped into existence, locking around the platform with surgical precision. The tumbling stopped so abruptly that Pieter imagined six technicians making a lifelong commitment to anti-nausea medication.
The Tempest’s auxiliary beams stabilised around it.
Old ship and new held the platform between them.
Slowly, carefully, they guided it towards the emergency reception deck.
When the platform crossed the force field, the control gallery erupted in cheers.
Pieter did not join them.
He placed both hands on the console and lowered his head.
Hana’s voice came softly through the channel.
“Cradle Twelve, this is Tempest control.”
Pieter tapped the reply control.
“Go ahead.”
“She listens.”
Pieter looked towards the Astraeus.
“Yes,” he said. “They both do.”
Scene: USS Astraeus
The defective relay had passed four inspections.
That fact made Pieter angrier than if it had passed none.
He spent the night reviewing manufacturing records with a team of exhausted engineers. The relay had contained a microscopic flaw introduced during fabrication, invisible to standard scans and revealed only when exposed to the combined frequencies of the new sensor grid.
No one had been negligent.
Pieter almost wished they had been. Negligence could be disciplined. Chance merely sat in the corner and smiled.
At 0310, Hana found him beneath the Astraeus’s saucer.
The cradle’s night lighting cast long shadows across the deck. Above them, repair crews replaced the damaged relay and inspected every related component.
Hana carried a paper-wrapped parcel.
“What is that?” Pieter asked.
“A pie.”
“At three in the morning?”
“It is steak and cheese. Time has no authority over it.”
She handed it to him.
Pieter unwrapped the pie and took a bite.
“This is good.”
“Of course it is.”
“It is not a proper meat pie.”
Hana stared at him. “You put chutney on boerewors.”
“Because I am civilised.”
“You people cook meat over fire and call it a national identity.”
“It is called a braai.”
“It is called standing around while one man burns dinner and everyone else gives advice.”
“That is engineering.”
Hana smiled and sat on a tool case.
For a while, they watched the workers move along the hull.
“Six people nearly died,” Pieter said.
“But they didn’t.”
“The relay passed my inspections.”
“It passed everyone’s inspections.”
“My name is on the certification.”
“And when the platform broke loose, your voice was the first one on the channel.”
“That does not excuse the failure.”
“No,” Hana said. “It explains why you’re here.”
Pieter glanced at her.
She nodded towards the Astraeus.
“You think your job is to make her perfect.”
“She must be.”
“She can’t be.”
“She must be as close as we can make her.”
“That is different.”
Hana folded her arms.
“Ships come back damaged, Pieter. Sometimes because someone made a mistake. Sometimes because the enemy was better. Sometimes because space is full of things waiting to punch holes in people who thought they understood physics.”
“A reassuring description of Starfleet service.”
“I give excellent recruitment speeches.”
She looked across the yard towards the Tempest.
“When she came in, the port hull was open across six decks. One nacelle was misaligned. The environmental system had filled the captain’s ready room with coolant foam.”
Pieter raised an eyebrow. “I did not know that.”
“The captain’s report called it an automated containment response.”
“Officer language.”
“Exactly.”
Her smile faded.
“We found blood behind one of the tactical consoles.”
Pieter said nothing.
“The chair had been replaced before arrival, but they missed some of it beneath the deck plate. A security officer died there.”
Hana watched the repair lights move across her ship.
“I spent two hours cleaning it myself. Not because there weren’t people assigned to do it. Because it felt wrong to ask them.”
Pieter lowered the pie.
“When they come back damaged, we don’t judge them,” she continued. “We don’t ask why they weren’t perfect. We patch the holes. Replace what was lost. Straighten what was bent.”
“And send them out again.”
“Yes.”
“That is the part I dislike.”
“So do I.”
Hana looked up at the Astraeus.
“But a ship in a museum never loses anyone.”
Pieter frowned.
“It never saves anyone either,” she said.
Above them, an engineer called for a diagnostic restart. The replacement relay came online, its status indicators glowing green.
Pieter finished the pie.
“Thank you.”
“For the wisdom?”
“For the food.”
“The wisdom costs extra.”
Two weeks later, the USS Tempest left Cordra Fleet Yards.
The repair crews lined the observation galleries as the Constitution III-class cruiser eased free of her docking frame.
Her hull was whole again. Fresh plating blended almost seamlessly with the old, although Hana had refused permission to remove one small scorch mark near the port impulse assembly.
“She earned that one,” she had said.
The Tempest sounded her departure signal.
Three clear notes passed through the yard.
Hana stood before the window with her hands in her pockets.
Pieter joined her.
“You have inspected the port tractor emitter?” he asked.
“Four times.”
“The EPS bypass?”
“Five.”
“The hull seal around Frame Sixty-Two?”
“Seven, because someone kept asking.”
“Good.”
The Tempest turned towards the outer doors.
“She’ll be back,” Hana said.
“Of course.”
“Probably missing something expensive.”
“Your optimism is inspirational.”
“She always comes home.”
Pieter glanced at her.
There was pride in her face, but there was worry too. The familiar worry of every yard worker who watched a ship depart knowing that, somewhere beyond the protection of the docks, strangers would trust their lives to invisible welds, buried conduits and inspection signatures.
The Tempest crossed the yard perimeter.
Her nacelles flashed.
Then she was gone.
Hana took a breath.
“Right,” she said. “When does your angry daughter launch?”
“Three days.”
“And are you ready?”
“No.”
“Good. I’d be concerned if you were.”
The USS Astraeus launched without ceremony.
Officially, she remained engaged in classified systems trials. There were no admirals, no orchestra and no bottle broken against her hull. Pieter considered the absence of broken glass near a pressure vessel to be an improvement over tradition.
At 0600, the cradle clamps released.
The battlecruiser moved under her own power for the first time.
She was enormous, but she moved with exquisite control. Thrusters pulsed in precise sequence, carrying her away from the construction frame.
Pieter sat at the yard-control station.
“USS Astraeus, you are clear of Cradle Twelve.”
A temporary flight officer answered from the bridge.
“Confirmed, Cordra Control.”
Pieter watched the telemetry.
Every system remained within tolerance.
Warp core stable.
Structural integrity stable.
Sensor grid stable.
No explosions.
A successful morning.
“Cordra Control,” the flight officer said, “we have received revised navigation orders.”
Pieter’s console displayed a sealed Starfleet command packet.
Most of it remained classified.
One destination was visible.
OUTPOST LAZARUS.
Beside it was an authorisation code bearing the same concealed identity that had appeared during the command-system tests.
This time, one additional fragment had been left unmasked.
M. LLEW—
Pieter stared at it for several seconds.
Then he closed the packet.
Hana leaned against the rail behind him.
“Anything interesting?”
“No.”
“Classified nothing?”
“The most confidential kind.”
On the display, the Astraeus turned towards open space.
Hana studied her silhouette.
“She still looks angry.”
“She looks ready.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Pieter agreed. “It is better.”
The Astraeus reached the edge of the system.
For a moment she hung against the stars, her hull bright in the light of Cordra’s sun.
Then space folded around her.
She vanished.
The control room became strangely quiet.
Pieter remained at his station, looking at the place where the ship had been.
“You all right?” Hana asked.
He nodded.
“She will be back.”
Hana came to stand beside him.
“Damaged?”
“Probably.”
“Missing something expensive?”
“Certainly.”
“Captain claiming it was tactically necessary?”
“Without question.”
Pieter allowed himself a small smile.
“And when she returns,” he said, “we will make her right again.”
Hana placed a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s what we do.”
Behind them, alarms sounded from Cradle Nine.
A frantic voice came over the yard channel.
“Dock control, we have an uncontrolled plasma discharge!”
Pieter closed his eyes.
Hana sighed.
“Your people or mine?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
They turned from the window and hurried towards the exit.
Outside, beyond the shelter of Cordra Fleet Yards, starships carried explorers, soldiers, diplomats and fools into the unknown.
Inside, welders raised their masks. Engineers opened access panels. Technicians checked their work once, twice and then once more.
They would never stand on the bridge when first contact was made. They would never give the order to fire or hear an admiral praise their courage. Most of their names would exist only in construction records, maintenance logs and signatures buried beneath layers of technical certification.
Yet every ship that crossed the darkness carried something of them.
Their patience.
Their pride.
Their sleepless nights.
Their fingerprints hidden behind the stars.
NRPG:
Apologies, real life has kept me away but back now, wanted to get warmed up with a stand alone story setting the scene for much later stories.