“Yes,” Ted said.  If a Puller Drive was badly damaged, it wasn't unknown for a starship to arrive at her destination star system in pieces.  Ark Royal was nowhere near that badly damaged, but it was unlikely the aliens knew that.  And, if the explosion seemed big enough, it might well have swallowed the other ships too.  “Let them think us gone.”

“We don’t have enough debris to pull it off,” Anderson said.  “But we could probably create the illusion on this side of the tramline, if you don't mind losing the ECM drones.”

Ted smirked.  Each ECM drone cost upwards of a billion pounds apiece and he was sure to face some hard questions from the beancounters when they returned to Earth, but the alternative was losing Ark Royal herself.  No, he decided, shaking his head.  The bureaucrats could go hang.  If they wanted to complain, they could do it afterwards, when at least he would have brought his ship home.

“See to it,” he ordered.

The alien attack grew more savage as the human ships crawled closer and closer to Tramline Five.  Thankfully, the alien capital ships seemed to be keeping their distance, but the starfighters pressed the attack time and time again.  Ted watched, grimly, as two of his starfighters were lost because the pilots were too tired to focus properly on what they were doing.  Between tiredness and the aliens, he might lose a third of his starfighters before they even managed to make it out of the cursed system.

Finally, Anderson called him.  “Everything is in order, sir,” he said.  “I recommend having the starfighters docked to our hull when we make the jump.  And that we fire missiles and mass drivers at the aliens to keep them occupied.”

Ted nodded.  “Do it,” he ordered Farley.  Ahead of them, Tramline Five blinked on the display.  “Launch the drones as soon as we reach the outer edge of the tramline.”

The alien starfighters pulled back as the missiles were launched, leaving the carrier alone as they engaged the missiles.  Oddly, they didn't seem to care about the mass driver-launched projectiles, although they might simply have calculated that there was little chance of the projectiles hitting anything important.  Ted gripped the side of his command chair as the drones went to work, skilfully creating a false image that should confuse the aliens long enough for them to jump ...

“Jumping ... now,” Lightbridge said.

Space seemed to twist around the massive carrier as she jumped through the tramline.  Behind them, the drones created the illusion of the carrier’s sudden destruction, caught in a gravimetric fold that smashed her and her comrades into rubble.  The aliens would want to believe it, Ted knew.  But would they?

“Jump completed,” Lightbridge said.  “No enemy contacts detected.”