“Yes, you did,” he said.  He couldn't help a sudden laugh.  Under the circumstances, a broken door was the least of their worries.  “A court-martial offense if I ever saw one.”

He hesitated, looking at the younger man's uncertain face.  “I’m sorry,” he said, quietly.  He found himself struggling for words, then realised he was trying to excuse the inexcusable.  It would be better to take his punishment like a man, except there was no one who could punish him.  “Thank you.”

Commander Fitzwilliam seemed to understand, thankfully.  Ted cursed himself under his breath, wondering just how much of the younger man’s respect he’d lost when he’d tried to crawl back into a bottle.  There was no point in deluding himself, he told himself savagely.  He’d probably lost all of it.  The belief that he’d led his crew into a trap didn't excuse abandoning them now ...

He took a sip of his coffee, weighing up the options.  Getting back through the tramline would mean confronting the alien battlecruiser ... and it would be a very close-run thing.  He didn't have the starfighter numbers to take her down without closing to engagement range, which would expose his carrier’s hull to her plasma cannons.  One shot, assuming the analysts were right, would be enough to melt the carrier’s armour and ravage her innards.  The second would blow them apart ...

No, he thought.  We cannot allow them to close to point-blank range.

Mass driver projectiles would work, he knew, if they succeeded in scoring a hit.  Maybe they could snipe at the battlecruiser.  But the alien battlecruiser was watching for incoming projectiles, he was sure.  They might just give away their position for nothing.  And, even if they did manage to sneak around the battlecruiser and enter the tramline, they’d still have to crawl past Alien-Two, then Alien-One.  They would encounter the alien reinforcements on their way.

And there was no hope of modifying their Puller Drive to work like an alien drive ...

A thought occurred to him.  For a moment, he dismissed it as the last vestiges of the alcohol, then he started to take it seriously.  It was insane, but it might just be workable.  And besides, they were trapped.  Thinking inside the box would only lead to a suicidal direct confrontation with the alien ship.  But thinking outside it ...

He swallowed the rest of his coffee, then jumped to his feet.  “Come on,” he said.  The XO stood up, looking confused.  “We have an operation to plan.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six