Ted winced as he peered down at the display.  The alien starfighters had converged to the rear of the frigate and were pouring fire into her, shattering her armour piece by piece.  There was no escape, he saw; even as his starfighters raced desperately towards the frigate the aliens finally succeeded.  A series of explosions blew the frigate into a ball of radioactive plasma.  Her tormentors slipped away and vanished into the distance, then turned and zoomed back towards another frigate.  The human starfighters moved to block them.

“Beta Squadron needs to reload,” Fitzwilliam said.  “Alpha Squadron is running dry too.”

“Call them back,” Ted ordered.

Gritting his teeth, he mentally cursed the aliens for having such effective weapons – and for not needing to reload in the middle of an engagement.  If Ark Royal had been a modern carrier, recalling her fighters to reload would have been disastrous.  Even with her heavy armour and heavier weapons, it still wasn't particularly safe for Ark Royal to have a quarter of her remaining starfighters out of the battle.  But there was no alternative ...

“Hit,” Farley exulted, suddenly.  “We got one of the bastards!”

Ted felt a desperate flash of hope as he saw one of the alien carriers staggering out of formation, having taken a bomb-pumped laser to her main hull.  He found himself torn in two as the aliens struggled to save their ship, torn between praying for them to succeed and praying for them to fail.  There was a brotherhood between human spacers, no matter what interstellar power they served, but did that brotherhood include the aliens?  For all he knew, they didn't even have the concept of brotherhood.  But he couldn't help feeling torn in two ...

The display blinked, then replaced the icon representing the alien carrier with an expanding sphere marking a cloud of debris.  “Target destroyed,” Farley reported.  “I say again, target destroyed.”

“Good,” Ted said.  The aliens had to feel the loss of a carrier ... although God knew they’d killed almost ten alien carriers since they’d gone to war.  But would it be enough to force them to take a step backwards and let Ark Royal escape?  “Target the other carrier and continue firing.”

On the display, the alien craft converged, then flashed back towards Ark Royal with murderous intent.

***

Kurt was finding it hard to keep track of everything that was going on in the combat zone, despite his best efforts.  His carefully-planned formations had fallen apart as soon as the battle had begun, forcing pilots to fly with whatever wingmen they could find.  The aliens seemed to have definitely learnt from experience, filling space with thousands upon thousands of plasma bolts that threatened to wipe the human starfighters from existence.  At least one of his pilots, he’d noted savagely, had died because he’d flown right into the path of one of the plasma bolts, his craft exploding before he'd even recognised his mistake.