There was a long pause.  “I seem to recall,” Rose said, sweetly, “that both of your last two girlfriends ended up together.”

“Hey,” the pilot protested.

“They must have bonded over the trauma of dating you,” Rose added.  “I think they were planning to get married, the last I heard.”

Kurt smiled, although he knew there was little true humour in the situation.  They knew, they all knew, that death was likely to claim them soon enough.  Joking around was their way of dealing with it.  But, at the end of the day, it wasn't likely to matter.  He spared a thought for his children – and Molly, no matter how much they argued – and gripped his stick as the starfighter was hurled back into space.  The aliens were resuming the attack.

***

“They took out the powered missiles, sir,” Farley reported.  “But the unpowered warheads are in position.”

Ted nodded.  “Activate them as soon as the enemy come within range, keyed to detonate at the first possible moment,” he ordered.  On the display, the aliens had reorganised their squadrons, their starfighters zooming ahead, coming in for the kill.  The brief pause in combat hadn't been anything like enough for the damage control parties to perform anything other than brief repairs.  “And then move our starfighters to cover our hull.”

He held his breath as the alien starfighters roared past the missiles, ignoring them completely.  Instead, they rocketed down towards Ark Royal ... he muttered orders, sending his starfighters out to engage them before they could slip into one of the new blind spots, then watched as the enemy carriers closed in on the hidden missiles.

“Detonation,” Farley snapped.

Ted allowed himself a smirk as the first warhead detonated, channelling all of its power into a laser beam that slashed into the alien hull.  Ark Royal would have taken most of the blow on her armour, but the aliens hadn't seen fit to wrap their carriers in layers of protective shielding.  The blast tore into one of the carriers, sending it rolling out of formation.  Behind it, the alien frigates and battlecruisers spread out, searching for new threats.  Now, Ted knew, they could no longer rely on their point defence to take out human missiles before they became dangerous.

He looked back at the in-system display, hastily weighing their chances.  If they could last another thirty minutes, they could reach Tramline Five ... but the aliens would follow them through the jump.  He briefly considered attempting to mine the exit point, yet he knew that it would be a chancy operation.  The aliens might not run into one of the contact nukes as they exited the tramline.  Instead ...

“Engineering,” he said, “I want you to prepare to eject as much debris as possible, as soon as we hop through the tramline.”

“Understood,” Anderson said.  “You propose to trick them into believing that we destroyed ourselves?”