Ted cursed under his breath.  They were still too close to the tramline for him to be sanguine about stripping half of the starfighters from the launch roster.  But, at the same time, he knew his pilots were exhausted.

“Hold for ten minutes,” he said, studying the tramline as it fell behind them.  “I want to see what the aliens do.”

“Understood,” Fitzwilliam said.

He didn't say anything else, for which Ted was grateful.  Maybe he had wanted to steal command for himself, once upon a time.  Ted couldn't really blame him for wanting to promote himself by any means possible.  But he was smart enough to know that they couldn't afford internal bickering, not now.  The minutes ticked away with no sign of the alien battlecruiser.

“Launch another drone,” Ted ordered.  The further they moved from the tramline, the harder it would be to pick up a transit signature when the alien ship finally made its appearance.  “I want to know when it arrives.”

“Yes, sir,” Farley said.  He hesitated, noticeably.  “We only have three drones left.”

Ted sighed.  “Launch it anyway,” he ordered.  The beancounters would make a terrible fuss, but without that information they might well be caught by surprise when the battlecruiser made its return appearance.  He keyed his console.  “James, send half the pilots for their rest now.”

“Aye, sir,” the XO said.  “And you should get some rest too, sir.”

Ted rubbed his eyes.  The XO was right, he knew.  But he was unwilling to leave the bridge until the battle was over.

“You get some rest,” he ordered, instead.  “I need to stay here.”

Oddly, Fitzwilliam didn't argue.

Ted leaned back in his chair and watched the reports from the drones plunging into the inner system.  The second tramline was on the other side of the source of alien signals, a Mars-like world that seemed to have nothing going for it apart from a surprisingly large number of small moons orbiting it.  Ted found himself wondering if the aliens had actually captured hundreds of asteroids and steered them into planetary orbit, producing a vast network of habitats and industrial nodes.  But the world seemed surprisingly undefended for an industrial complex ... and besides, it was far too close to the front lines.

But the Russians wanted to turn New Russia into a centre of industry, he thought.  They didn't know that the aliens might come on the offensive at any moment.

He puzzled over the issue as the data continued to flood into the computers.  The analyst section identified a handful of small mining complexes, all disappointingly comparable to human systems.  It seemed the aliens didn't bother to waste ultra-advanced technology on mining camps, any more than the human industrial complexes.  Most of the technology used to mine the asteroids and the lunar surface predated the general advance into space itself.

“Curious,” he muttered, out loud.  “All that industry and hardly any defences.”