Midshipwomen Lopez departed, then returned with another trolley two minutes later.  This one held small bowls of rice pudding, flavoured with spices and fruits the galley staff had scrounged up during the celebrations on Earth.  Ted waited until each of the reporters had a bowl in front of them, then motioned for them to start eating.  This time, it tasted better than he recalled.  Clearly, having a famous starship making the requests helped ensure they got the very best of foods.

Smiling to himself, he finished his bowl and then nodded to Farley, the junior crewman present.  Farley tapped his knife against his glass for attention, then stood.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said.  “I give you God, the King and the United Kingdom.”

The reporters drank, some more enthusiastically than others.  Fruit juice was common on earth, but rare on interstellar starships.  Ted wondered, absently, just which of the reporters considered themselves neutral observers, then dismissed the thought.  In his experience, there was no such thing as a neutral reporter.  There were those who kidded themselves that they were being unbiased and those who were so prejudiced against the military that they swallowed the enemy’s story, hook, line and stinker.

Good thing the aliens don’t seem to care about our reporters, he thought.  If they did, they could probably split the defensive alliance in half, just by telling us what we wanted to hear.

He rose to his feet.  “Thank you for coming,” he said.  The toast marked the end of the formal dinner.  “As you will appreciate, my staff and I have work to do.  But you are welcome to remain here as long as you like.”

Fitzwilliam followed him as he strode out of the private mess.  “Captain,” he said, once the airlock was closed.  “I didn't realise that they would be so awful as a group.”

“They wanted to outnumber us,” Ted snapped.  He didn't really blame his XO for the dinner; hell, he’d heard stories of far less pleasant dinners with reporters and other unwelcome guests.  “And they wanted to do something other than sit in their cabins.”

He shook his head, then jerked a hand towards the bulkhead.  “Don't you just wish you could put them all down there?”

Fitzwilliam nodded in understanding.  The star system they were travelling through had a barely-habitable world that was coming out of an ice age.  Judging the world useless for conventional settlement, humanity had turned it into a penal colony.  Criminals deemed utterly unredeemable were loaded into one-shot transport capsules, given a small quantity of food and supplies, then shot down into the planet's atmosphere.  If they lived or died ... no one on Earth gave a damn.  The sociologists claimed that they would form a united society within two to three hundred years, but Ted had his doubts.  A society built on criminals who should have been executed would be very far from stable.

“Yes, sir,” he said.  “It would be pleasant, wouldn't it?”