7: Alpha Centauri

Author: Chaoseternus

Chapter 2: Liberty

O'Neill sat back at his desk with a sigh. That flight had been very relaxing, just what he needed to relieve the stress of commanding the primarily RSS presence in the Alpha Centauri system, and now that the instructor had cleared him he would be able to relax that way more often, which was perfect.

A knock at the door distracted O'Neill from his thoughts, "Come In!"
"Signal from Thundersdawn sir, Liberty lost her hyperdrive whilst on-route here with the foundry supplies we've been screaming for, they want us to send all three of our hypercapable tugs and retrieve the Liberty's supply pods, whilst they will retrieve the Liberty herself"
"Where are the tugs now?"
"They can do it sir, two are due to return to Thundersdawn for maintenance anyway, so we don't have much scheduled for those, number three is involved in basic insystem work which any of the Alpha tugs could cover" the burly Marine corp. Major replied.
"Fine, cut the orders"
"Yes, sir" the marine replied, snapping a salute. O'Neill turned to face the large window to his rear as the Marine left, his thoughts on the Liberty and Persephone. That was two ships which had suffered hyperdrive failures now… well three actually. Prometheus had had quite a few of them in the first two years she was active, though they dropped off after that. Carter had thought they had caught all the major bugs. It was starting to look like she might have missed at least one. Which would be a problem, because if that was so then as soon as the exact nature of the fault was discovered every single major hull in the combined RSS/SGC fleet would probably have to have their drives refitted to remove the fault, and as yet they didn't have enough available drydocks to do that in hurry. Not with every available dock being stuffed with new hulls under construction. O'Neill frowned, he would have to recommend to Peters at their next meeting that she tried to keep a dock empty at all time for emergencies. She probably had thought of that already but with so much pressure for new construction it would have been easy for her to dismiss the thought. With recent events, she might be amenable to a change of heart, he hoped so anyway. If the fleet was caught with a major engineering issue and no capability to deal with it… The scene from Admiral Thompson's office almost three years ago now filled O'Neill's mind, Thompson had told him all this but at the time O'Neill could honestly say it hadn't sunk in. They had just two operational Prometheus class vessels at the time, and he just hadn't seen the need for all the infrastructure the Admiral was advocating, not with just two ships. But the Admiral had been right, and he had proven it with the rate at which the damaged ships had been repaired in the past, and the increased rate of construction. He would have to send the Admiral an apology, some day. But for now… For now he had paperwork to deal with, an entire solar system didn't run by itself after all.