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Chapter 2: Visitors
Thompson quickly led them past the reinforced squads of guards protecting the rebuilt dry-dock 4, and onto the viewing area. They gazed over the form beneath them, being carefully and fastidiously put together by the skilful hands of the dockyard crews. Dauntless, the first of a new class of Warships to be built by Tau'ri hands, she lay there tall and proud, her streamlined hull screaming speed and power, from the sharp pointed prow, tapering back to the rectangular main hull, almost perfect, marred by only a few antennae, the weapons themselves recessed until needed, to the tightly packed cylinders of the engine room and the sharp downward rudder of the decoy launcher.
Her hull was complete now, and with only two weeks to go until the official launch, a constant stream of stores could be seen moving through the clear plastic of the access walkways, as well as the occasional baggage laden crewmember, moving into his new home at last.
"She's an impressive looking ship, Admiral." Hammond said.
"That she is, HMS Dauntless, Dauntless class Light Cruiser, She will outpace, out accelerate and outmanoeuvre the Prometheus Class." Thompson said, justifiably proud of the RSS's latest achievement.
"Dauntless is indeed a fine achievement."
"Yeah, but in a straight up fight, we would still kick your asses."
Snorts filled the room, most notably coming from Captain Harris of the Prometheus class Iwo Jima.
"You don't know anything about ship to ship engagements, do you O'Neill?"
Thompson interrupted before O'Neill could reply, "What he means is that while the Prometheus class is better armed, they have to be able to hit the Dauntless, and hitting a fast moving highly manoeuvrable target is not the easiest of tasks, you yourself have experienced that yourself I believe, when you have tried to use guns on an enemy fighter?"
"Oh, yeah, not fun."
"Plus Dauntless mounts a decoy launcher, underneath the hull, an innovation we will be testing before proposing is added to the Prometheus class designs, let's go aboard now people."
The group moved swiftly through the corridors to the Dauntless' access tube, and onto Dauntless.
"As you can see" Thompson spoke, pointing things out as they went, "Dauntless is not quite finished yet, while all the systems are onboard and for the most part connected, a lot of systems still need to be calibrated, these include the weapons arrays, shields, sensors and the like. At this point in time, Dauntless could launch if needed, but would be combat ineffective."
"You have a most impressive vessel here, Admiral Thompson, however I have a question."
"Go ahead."
"Your missile bays do not appear to be complete, nor do launchers appear to be under construction, why is that?"
"At this point in time we still do not have reliable access to Naquada. The Asteroid is, surprise surprise, in a high density region of the belt, no doubt the asteroids were attracted by the high density and sheer mass of the naquada, this makes it exceedingly difficult to mine safely, as yet we are working on ways around this but it means that our naquada supply is limited to chunks broken off the main mass which we have grabbed and moved to RSS Coalmine. A permanent mining station for the asteroid is being designed, but construction will be resource intensive, this thing will need serious shielding. This means the design of the missiles and launch systems has been delayed, now if you will follow me, the Bridge is this way…."