The days started to blur together as Ark Royal made her elliptic journey towards New Russia. Ted ran endless drills, testing the new starships along with Ark Royal’s new crewmen, while keeping a wary eye out for trouble.  The handful of human colony worlds they passed signalled briefly, but received no reply.  Ted had strict orders to maintain radio silence, even if they weren't trying to hide completely.  Privately, he suspected that someone at the Admiralty was trying to have their cake and eat it too.  They wanted to reassure the defenceless worlds that there was still a human space navy, but avoid revealing any compromising details, just in case.

Two weeks into the passage, he finally hosted a dinner for the reporters and a handful of senior officers.  None of the reporters seemed particularly impressed by the food, although the more experienced ones kept their complaints down to a minimum.  The Royal Navy certainly could have produced tastier food for its crewmen, but senior officers – it was commonly joked – preferred the standard rations in order to keep their crews hopping mad, ready to take it out on the enemy.  Ted knew there were some stored rations intended for Admirals; he’d briefly considered sharing them with the reporters before dismissing the idea and insisting they ate the standard fare.  Let them get a taste of the real naval experience.

As always, most of their questions were either absurd or unanswerable.  Ted had no intention of discussing his non-existent love life with anyone, particularly reporters, and he had great difficulty in believing that anyone would be actually interested.  Nor did he have any real idea what awaited them at New Russia.  The aliens might have started to build the system up into a springboard for attacking Earth ... or they might have started to settle the world with their own colonists ... or they might simply have reduced the surface of the planet to radioactive ash.  Ted had no way of knowing and no intention of allowing himself to develop preconceptions that could easily blind him to the truth.

“I'm surprised that you’re not serving wine,” one of the reporters observed.  “Or is this a dry ship?”

“We’re going into combat,” Ted reminded him, keeping his expression blank.  Was that question a jab at him or was it a wild coincidence?  “I do not feel that drunken crewmen would help our chances.”

He exchanged glances with Fitzwilliam, who scowled.  There was no way to know the motives behind the question.  It was quite possible, he admitted to himself, that the reporter wanted something alcoholic himself.  They had brought a bottle or two each, according to the crewmen who had helped them unpack, but hardly enough for them to even get a pleasant buzz after the first few days.  But Ted had no intention of serving anything alcoholic anywhere he was in command.  He didn’t need the temptation himself.