Cuffs lock into place with metallic clacks and electronic confirmation beeps. Helmets glide frictionlessly as they slide into place to catch the maglocks. A little rush of air as oxygen enters the void. Two men check each others suits then exchange a bump of gloves.
"Computer, cycle the airlock."
Lights turn deadly red. The sound of outrushing air fades and disappears faster than the air itself as it becomes too thin to support sound waves. The red lights dim as the airlock latches snap open silently. As the duranium doors settle into their recesses they are off, launching across the vacuum. A great slate grey curved form is ahead and after a minute of silent travel they land on the lip of the rim. Speakers in their helmets convey the beep as their boot maglocks connect them to the deck.
"That is some view," whispers one man with a Commodore's cluster on the front of his suit.
Before them lay a great expanse of red, pockmarked with the habitation domes and outcroppings of buildings. Behind them lay the black of deep space. Above their heads was the grand metallic womb of a Utopia Planitia large berth. And at their feet was three million ton of majesty in starship form.
"Last tour, Rob."
"After you, Ed."
Soon they began to walk across the duranium alloy skin, towards where bright lights illuminated a serious of characters: NCC-1701-C.
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Short wave sensor emitters, nav sensor domes, passive receivers. communications arrays, phaser banks, heat sink packs, external connector ports, the future-proofed phaser array grooves, integrity field waveguides, shield emitters, all the various and sundry disruptions built discretely into the graceful hull of the Ambassador-class starship. It was long, exhausting work, work already done a multitude of times by crews from the shipyard's QA team, safety teams, from a visit by the San Fran yard crews, by teams from the Federation auditor, Starfleet's Inspector General, just to name a few.
But at the end of the day, the names that sign the final paperwork given to the Council of the United Federation of Planets was not some commander from the quality teams. It was theirs. The director of the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yard andthe head of the Ambassador Project, Rear Admiral Leslie and Commodore Henderson. If something went wrong, it was their names on the first bit of paperwork the board of inquiry would read. But it was more than that. A thousand Starfleet officers and crew would take ship aboard her, their lives held proof against the vacuum and radiation of space by her hull and shields.
So they walked the line of the ship's hull one last time, to see every danger point on the three million ton ship themselves.
