“The reporters are settled in their cabins,” Commander Fitzwilliam said, taking the chair Ted indicated.  “They're already grumbling about the arrangements.”

Ted shrugged.  It was hard to care, not when most of his pre-Ark Royal career had been spent in shared cabins and wardrooms.

“Some of them might have had prior relationships,” he said, after a moment.  “They can change their sleeping places, if they wish.”

“They’re reporters,” James agreed.  There were stories about how reporters sometimes behaved while on deployment.  Most of them were probably nonsense, but Ted was old enough to know the more outrageous the story, the greater the chance there was a kernel of truth in it somewhere.  “If they want to have foursomes and tell themselves they’re being daring to have them on a military ship ...”

Ted snorted.  “I’ve spoken to our new allies,” he said.  “We’re going to be going the long way around.”

He tapped the control, bringing up the planned route.  It would take them by a couple of human settlements, but otherwise the star systems in question were largely useless.  No commercial pilot would sign off on such a course – it would burn up too much of their power cells – yet Ted didn't have to worry about that, not during wartime.  If they were lucky, it would allow them to evade enemy pickets until they actually reached New Russia.

And if we’re not lucky, he told himself darkly, we could find ourselves in some real trouble.

He looked up at the tramlines.  Human-accessible tramlines were marked in green, but prospective alien tramlines, marked in red, ran through them like an infestation.  Given a struck of luck, the aliens could see them coming and set up an ambush ... or simply prepare the defences of New Russia.  So far, they hadn't shown much interest in other human worlds in the same direction, but that was probably because the worlds were effectively worthless from a military point of view.  Whatever they had in mind for humanity could wait until after the end of the war.

“Understandable,” Commander Fitzwilliam agreed.  “But I wish we knew more about what was happening at New Russia itself.”

Ted nodded.  So far, according to the Admiralty, the Russians had tried to slip a handful of ships into the system.  But none of them had reported back.  The aliens were clearly very good at locating intruders and picking them off before they could get back to the tramlines.

“Me too,” he said.  “Me too.”

***

Kurt strode into the briefing room ... and stopped, in surprise, when he saw some of his pilots gathered around a blonde girl who looked too thin to be real.  One of the reporters, he realised, remembering that some of them had requested permission to attend the briefings.  Sighing, Kurt walked to the podium and whistled, loudly.  A little shamefaced, his pilots turned back to face him.