“Captain, you asked to be told when we were coming up on the dockyard,” the shuttle cabin attendent said.

Spacefleet Captian Branda Celine looked up from the workpad she had been reading. “Yes, thank you. Which side?”

The attendent replied, “Port, Ma'am.”

Celine nodded and unbuckled her safety restraint as the attendent went back to his station. Carefully, she crossed the center isle of the shuttle, making sure to keep her grip shoes properly attached to the deck and one hand on a seatback. Not until she was safely across and into the row of seats on the other side of the isle did she allow both feet to come off the deck as she swung herself into position to look out the window.

A quick check of the safety indicator to make sure she would not get hit with a faceful of direct sunlight, and she opened the window's armored shade to look out into the darkness outside. At the moment, the orbital dockyard was on the night-side of the planet,so most of the light came from the distant stars, or the city lights below. The rest of it came from floodlights scattered all over the skeleton of metal frames that surrounded the various ships either under construction, or in for maintenance overhauls.

Those lights allowed her to see several freighters, an ore-hauler, and a pair of starliners in the immediate vicinity. That wasn't what she was looking for, however. The object of her search was just starting to come into view from ahead.

The way the work lights bounced testified to the pristineness of the ship's newly refurbished hull. No pockmarks from micrometeorite impacts or dark scars of energy weapons damage marred the silver-white panels that skinned the vessel. She was fresh and new and ready to fly.

Well, she will be when her Captain gets on board anyways, Branda told herself with a smile. She had worked so hard, risked so much to get the opportunity to command the UPF's first true deep-space exploration vessel, and here she was, looking at it.

An enormous, multi-function antenna at the very bow of the ship led the way for a spherical command section, followed by two enormous clusters of cylindrical modules surrounding a long central cylinder that continued beyond them to where six of the Federation's newest experimental ion engines were affixed on long pylons to limit the crew's exposure to the radiations they would emit while in operation.

The ship grew larger as they approached. Now she could see various structures scattered across the entirety of the nearly five hundred meter long ship: cameras, skin sensors, screen emitters and other instruments and fixtures. The weapons systems themselves were not visible at the moment, secure in their recessed niches and closed off by protective and concealing panels.

The shuttle's pilot announced they were in final approach, and Celine closed the shutter on the window and went back to her seat and strapped in. She was looking forward to this assignment. It was the beginning of a whole new era for the Frontier...

Uses Jaguar451's alternate construction rules.