“But we’re not crewmen,” another reporter objected.  “And there isn't much to do onboard ship.”

Ted grinned, openly.  Nothing to do?  There was never any shortage of work to be done, even on a modern carrier.  There were exercises and drills, spare parts to be inventoried ... the crewmen could work from dawn till dusk and never get anywhere near finished.  And then there was the ever-present rounds of basic maintenance.  God alone knew what would happen if they skipped a few sections, but Ted had a very good idea.  It would come back to haunt them at the worst possible time.

But he supposed that wasn't entirely true of the reporters.  Only a handful of crewmen would speak to them openly, while the senior officers had been carefully briefed on what they could and couldn't say.  The reporters were denied access to all of the interesting parts of the ship, leaving them wandering the corridors, chatting to crewmen in the mess or lurking in their cabins, accessing and viewing entertainment programs the Admiralty deemed appropriate for its crewmen.  It was a shame they couldn't be put to work, Ted knew, but he wouldn't have trusted them to replace even the simplest plug-and-play component.

“That’s the nature of wartime,” he said, instead of pointing out that the crewmen had a great deal to do.  “Long days, weeks and even months of boredom, broken only by moments of terror.  When we reach New Russia, I assure you that you won’t be bored.”

The reporters didn't seem too happy at the reminder.  They’d started out with the assumption that Ark Royal was effectively invincible, an assumption Fitzwilliam had dispelled when he’d shown them the damage inflicted by the aliens during the first battle.  The next time, Ted knew, the aliens would be ready for them.  Ark Royal was tough as nails, but a handful of nukes would crack her armour or – if they detonated inside her hull – vaporise her outright.

“True, Captain,” Yang said.  “Will we be permitted to observe the battle from the bridge?”

“Perhaps not,” Ted said.  “We have a secondary bridge that you can use as an observation point.”

He had to smile at their puzzlement.  Ark Royal had been deliberately over-engineered, with almost every department provided with its own backup.  The secondary bridge had never been reactivated completely – the CIC provided a secondary nexus of control and if it were to be taken out the entire ship would be lost with it – but it would let the reporters feel important as they watched the holographic displays.  And it would keep them out of his and his XO’s hair.

“It seems that you have too many bridges on this ship,” Yang observed.  “Did the designers overdo it?”

Ted smirked.  “This isn't a civilian ship,” he reminded him.  As if the reporter could be in any doubt!  “We don't have time to wait for help if we run into trouble.”