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By Root 726 0

acknowledged the XO’s orders as the bridge’s wide forward viewer displayed an aft view of the intricate latticework of metal trusses and beams that made up the largest shipbuilding and repair yard in the Centauri system. The sprawling orbiting shipyard was framed against the cool blue haze of Proxima Centauri’s glacial second planet and the dim ruddy glow of Proxima itself, the red dwarf that circled the gravitational fringes of the far friendlier inner stars Alpha Centauri A and B. Although the vast open-architecture facility steadily dwindled in size on the screen, signs of furious activity—tiny environmental-suited figures nudged massive yet weightless components into position amid the brilliant orange flashes from the beamjacks’ arc-welders while small workpods flittered about from worksite to worksite—remained manifestly in evidence. Ships of human manufacture, fully half of which were Daedalus-class vessels like Yorktown, filled each of the complex’s sixteen unpressurized but solar-flare-shielded repair bays—except for the two micrograv hangars that were conspicuously dark. One of these was the one in which Yorktown had just completed her repairs. The other had for nearly a year served as the cradle and incubator for one of Starfleet’s newest warp-five-capable ships of the line.

Atlantis NX-05 hung motionless in the shipyard’s skeletal embrace, neglected and dark except for work lights that illuminated the ship’s frame, revealing the many gaps in the vessel’s still-incomplete hull plating. It occurred to Mayweather then that for most of the ships here this place was a hospital, while for others it was a nursery, thanks to the war’s ever-growing demand for new ships.

But for Atlantis it looks like a tomb, he thought, feeling wistful about Enterprise, perhaps for the very first time since he had decided he could no longer serve under Jonathan Archer.

“She’s a fine ship,” Mendez said, suddenly at the helmsman’s elbow. Mayweather had gotten so lost in his ruminations that he hadn’t heard the XO’s approach. “I hope they finish with her soon and get her launched.”

“You must have read my mind, sir,” Mayweather said.

He didn’t add that he’d always thought that the Daedalus design suffered greatly when compared to the swift and speedy compound-curved lines—not to mention raw speed—of the NX-class. Or that Yorktown and her sister vessels looked about as elegant as three soup cans lashed to a soccer ball.

The Daedalus design was quicker to build than the sleeker NX ships. If the rumors he’d been hearing were true—and the sight of Atlantis lifeless in her cradle was pretty good confirmation—Starfleet was hoping to give the newest Daedalus vessels warp capabilities similar to those of the NX, while gradually retrofitting the existing fleet. Such were the war’s demands on the collective shipbuilding capacity of the Coalition’s human-inhabited worlds—a capacity that the governments of both Earth and Alpha Centauri had agreed was best decentralized as much as possible, thereby short-circuiting any Romulan plot to cripple humanity’s wartime industrial base via a single Pearl Harbor–style attack.

“There’s another one just like her being assembled in orbit over Utopia Planitia,” Mendez said quietly as cold, apparently dead Atlantis and the rest of the receding shipyard drifted out of view beyond the limb of the retreating planet. “The last one, the way I hear it.”

“Endeavour,” Mayweather said with a nod, though he hoped Mendez was wrong about Endeavour being the last of her line. “NX-06.”

“I hear you’re something of an expert on the NX-class,” Captain Shosetsu said. “Commander Mendez tells me you served aboard one.”

“Two, actually. The second one was Discovery.”

Silence fell across the bridge, and Mayweather made no effort to break it. He wasn’t sure whether to curse himself for having invoked the ghosts of the slain and stoking all-too-raw fears, or to curse his captain for not having bothered to read his personnel report.

When he took Yorktown to warp a few minutes later, Mayweather still couldn