“It will,” Ted agreed.  It was the XO’s job to play devil’s advocate, no matter how annoying it could be.  “However, does anyone feel that we have a realistic chance of sneaking back into the New Russia system without being detected?”

There was a long pause.  No one spoke.

“Our orders are to return home and report in,” Ted continued.  “However, right now, taking the direct route home is a form of suicide.  Therefore, we will take the long route home – and, in addition, worry the aliens by probing the edge of their space.”

He smiled at their reactions, then explained his reasoning.  The attack on New Russia made sense, the attack on Vera Cruz and the other colonies did not.  Logically, the aliens should have saved their strength ... unless there was a strong reason to remove the human presence on those worlds.  The only answer that made sense to him was that the aliens had colony worlds within one or two jumps of Vera Cruz.

They might have encountered one of our survey ships, he thought.  Survey ships set out for years at a time, rarely heading home early unless they discovered something truly spectacular.  No one would notice if one of the ships was several years overdue, allowing the aliens plenty of time to dissect her and her crew.  And they would have no trouble pulling a complete astronomical chart of the human sphere from her computers.

The thought made him scowl.  Whatever the outcome of the war, procedures would have to be carefully revised in the face of First Contact.  The survey ships would have to be escorted, their computers would need to be rigged for immediate destruction if another alien contact went bad and their crews would have to be outfitted with suicide implants.  It would probably take years to devise the new protocols.  God knew the first set, as inadequate as they were, had taken almost a decade of scrabbling before there was a version all of the interstellar powers could accept.

“We might run into stronger alien forces,” Fitzwilliam pointed out, finally.  “They might well try to trap us.”

“They might,” Ted agreed.  “The alternative is staying here, in hiding.  Unless someone’s invented a much better FTL drive ...?”

He smiled, then looked around the compartment.  “Barring discovery, we will power up our drives two days from now and start inching towards the tramline,” he continued, bringing up the main display.  “Should the aliens catch wind of us, we will throw caution to the winds and flee for Vera Cruz.”

“If they do,” Anderson observed, “they will almost certainly run us down.”

Ted nodded.  No matter how hard Ark Royal and her escorts struggled, the faster alien ships and their starfighters definitely would overtake her if it came down to a straight chase.  Ideally, he wanted to get to the tramline without being detected at all.  But it might not be possible ...