Ted was stunned.  It was rare, very rare, for one starship to try to deliberately ram another – and to succeed in ramming her target.  No matter what civilians might say, it was about as likely to happen as crashing into an asteroid while flying through an asteroid belt without bothering to keep a careful eye on the sensors.  But the frigates had sacrificed themselves to give the carrier – and the POWs – time to escape.

The aliens seemed equally stunned.  Their starfighters flipped backwards, away from Ark Royal, even though they had nowhere to go.  Could the one remaining alien craft, the giant battlecruiser, take them onboard?  Or could they return to the planet and land under their own power?  Intelligence’s best guess was that the alien starfighters were no more capable of landing on a planet than humanity’s starfighters, but what if they were wrong?  Ted shook his head, dismissing the thought.  As long as the starfighters stayed away from his ship, it didn't matter what happened to them.

“The ship-mounted plasma cannon must have a recharge period,” Anderson muttered, through the intercom.  “That would make sense, I think; they’d need to refill the containment chamber between shots ...”

Ted couldn't disagree.  If the aliens had been capable of firing multiple shots without pause, all three frigates would have been destroyed as soon as they entered firing range.  Instead, they’d taken out a carrier and damaged the alien chances of catching their target.

“Recall our starfighters, then keep us heading towards Tramline Two,” he ordered.  “Target the battlecruiser with the mass driver, then open fire if you believe you have a reasonable chance of scoring a hit.”

“Understood,” Farley said, although he sounded doubtful.  The alien battlecruiser was surrounded by a swarm of starfighters, buzzing around like angry bees.  It was unlikely that a projectile would get within kilometres of its target without being engaged and deflected or destroyed by the starfighters.  Or an unpowered missile, for that matter.  “I’ll watch for a suitable opportunity.”

Ted kept one eye on the alien ships as his starfighters reloaded, then repositioned themselves in the launch bay.  His pilots needed a chance to rest and recuperate, but they were unlikely to get it; silently, he made a mental note to insist on training up new starfighter pilots if the war threatened to go on for much longer.  There was no reason why a carrier the size of Ark Royal couldn't carry more than one starfighter pilot per starfighter, allowing the starfighters to be turned around and pushed back into combat quicker than before.