The Builders.

The engineer was floating in the vacuum of space inside a skeletal form of the latest in a long line of Starfleet ships, the hull structure was finished and now the plating was being put in place, but this ship was different from ships of the last generation, oh no.

The ships in the dry dock facilities at the moment were the new warships of the Federation.

The engineer paused in his work, thinking. For over 2 centuries the Starfleet had been following a simple doctrine, exploration and armed their ships accordingly. Whilst the starships were capable of defending themselves they weren't designed for war, these new ships were.

The new ship he was working on, the Defiant class, was small, compact, powerful and armoured like a rhino. They lacked the essential criteria a ship like an Excelsior or Galaxy class had in abundance.

Science labs, holodecks, stellar cartography….

All absent.

Instead, they had ablative hull armour, regenerative shield grids, quantum torpedoes, pulse phaser cannons…..the lot. The engineer, deciding to stop his break and get back to work, decided that Starfleet was becoming more and more militant, ships were being retrofitted with new defence systems, more over since the Borg threat and the Dominion.

It was the times.

The inside builders of the starships were working on the warp core of one of the Defiant class ships. One stopped what he was going to the new dilithium matrix and stood back to admire his work. He felt he was an artist with technology, so this was a chance to admire it.

It was impressive, just like the others.

Impressive….

The engineer looked at the compact, squat form of the matter - antimatter reactor, for such a small thing it could pack one helluva wallop. Which is just what it was meant to do.

This was a warship.

The engineer remembered all the time, the effort, the work to make ships travel through space, to explore, as was their original mandate.

Now, more than 1 third of the ships from dry dock facilities were developed for both combat and for exploration, but the majority were being made to fight. They incorporated the latest technologies, newest weapons and shield configurations.

It wasn't the age he'd wanted.