He settled back in his command chair and watched as the range continued to open.  The alien ships were in full retreat, not even trying to send their own starfighters to engage Ark Royal and her escorts.  Ted allowed himself a moment of pleasure at their discomfort, then glanced down at the reports from engineering.  The damaged weapons and sensors wouldn’t take too long to repair, thankfully.  They could give chase if their FTL drive had been equal to the alien system.

“Captain,” Farley said, “they’re approaching the tramline.”

Ted sighed.  By any standards, they had won a naval victory ... but they still had no idea just how powerful the aliens actually were.  It was impossible to tell if they’d degraded the enemy fleet by ten percent, one percent or point one percent.  The only sign that the aliens might not be as strong as they had feared was that they’d sent only a handful of carriers through the back door.  But they might well have been attempting to secure their lines of communication before launching the main thrust towards Earth.

“Recall the fighters,” he ordered, softly.  “Let them go.”

Five minutes later, the aliens flickered out and vanished.

***

It was against regulations, but Kurt couldn’t help flipping his starfighter over in a loop-the-loop before guiding the tiny craft into the recovery bay.  Outside, the maintenance crews were going crazy, cheering the fighter pilots as they cracked open their cockpits and jumped out onto the deck.  Kurt found himself being kissed by several women and two men before he finally managed to disentangle himself and bellow for order.  Slowly, quiet fell over the recovery bay.

“We won,” he said.

The sound of cheering almost deafened him.  They’d all seen the images from New Russia, they’d all feared that their first engagement would be their last.  But they’d adapted, reacted and overcome.  The aliens would be back, he was sure, but they’d given them a bloody nose that would make them rethink their plans for overrunning human space.

“We will go over everything that happened tomorrow,” he continued.  There was a chorus of good-natured groans, entirely understandably, but no one objected out loud.  “For the moment, eat, drink and be merry ... and any of you who turn up drunk will regret it for the rest of a very short and miserable career.”

He smiled at their expressions.  It hadn't been uncommon for pilots to drink, sometimes heavily, despite regulations.  Clearly, that was something that hadn't changed since he’d transferred to the reserves.  But this was wartime and he was damned if he was going to be kind and sympathetic to any of his pilots who ended up drunk.  There were treatments to force someone to sober up within moments and he would use them, if necessary.

“Make sure you get some sleep too,” he added.  “We don’t know when the aliens will come back.”