He shook his head, then smiled at them, humourlessly. “You can return to Earth if you like,” he said. “The shuttle will still be in the bay for another hour or two. If you don't like the quarters, you can return to Earth. However, there is no guarantee of receiving another embedded post.”
It was interesting, he decided, as the complaints faded away, just to see who was doing the complaining. None of the prior embeds had complained, even slightly. James made a mental note to glance at their files. The newcomers were the ones who complained loudest at the prospect of sharing quarters. James could understand a desire for privacy, but anyone who wanted privacy shouldn't bother to join the navy. He'd seen his first crewmates naked more times than he cared to remember.
“You are welcome to join the senior crew in the mess for dinner,” James lied, smoothly. “If, of course, you do not wish to join the junior crew instead.”
He smiled at their reactions. Had they expected room service? The Captain was the only person on the ship who was allowed to eat meals in his cabin — even Admirals had to eat in the wardroom with their staff. But the reporters seemed to think they should be allowed to eat apart from the crew.
His smile grew wider. Just wait until they encountered naval food.
Ted looked up at the holographic display, silently cursing the First Space Lord under his breath. Being granted an international rank — a honour held by only a handful of officers, only one other of them British — came with an additional salary, but it also came with new and unpleasant responsibilities. The twenty-seven starships currently assembled around Ark Royal represented eight different navies, only three of them solid British allies. The remainder were deeply suspicious of the combined defence command’s decision to assign them to the deep-space raiding mission.
They had reason to be suspicious, Ted decided, as he surveyed the ships. Most of them were younger than Ark Royal, but hadn't been updated as thoroughly as the massive carrier. Their heavy armour would give them an advantage against alien starfighters — although probably not the giant plasma weapon the aliens had used in the previous battle — but their drives and weapons were heavily outdated. Ark Royal was a lumbering brute of a ship, yet a handful of the smaller ships weren't even capable of keeping pace with her. If it had been up to him, Ted knew, most of them would have been broken down into spare parts and replaced with more modern ships.
The only real advantage, he knew, was the older weapons they carried. Unlike the newer designs, they had the fittings for mass drivers and adding them onto their hulls hadn't taken more than a few days. Ted hadn't been too surprised to discover that several governments had stockpiled mass drivers, despite the unspoken agreement against deploying them. The older ships also carried additional missile racks, all of which might come in handy when they faced the aliens for the second time. But they were still critically low in starfighters.
Ted sighed, then looked down at the latest update from the Admiralty. No one seemed disposed to cut loose a modern carrier, not even one of the freighters that had been hastily reconfigured into a makeshift starfighter platform. Not that that was entirely unwelcome, he decided; the makeshift platforms had been constructed so rapidly, with so much improvising, that they could barely launch a single squadron of fighters and then only at a terrifyingly slow rate. But with modern carriers suddenly very vulnerable, it was hard to blame the Admiralty — and its foreign counterparts — for clutching at straws.
He needed a drink. Desperately.
The door chimed. “Come.”
Commander Fitzwilliam strode into the cabin, looking like a man in desperate need of a drink. Ted knew precisely how he felt. Passing the reporters over to Commander Fitzwilliam had been a mean trick, but Ted was damned if he was wasting any of his own time on the reporters. Besides, he had to speak with his new subordinates, reassure them as much as possible that he had no intention of wasting their lives, then plan their deployment to New Russia. The direct route, he’d already decided, was out.
“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.
“I see you’ve met our new friend,” he said, softly. “However, I’m going to have to tell you to put her out of your minds. We have a great deal to cover and not much time.”
He scowled from face to face until he had their attention, then continued. “First, a warm welcome to the newcomers, who have finally arrived. Not their fault, I hasten to add, but we’re having to reorganise the squadrons while en route to our target and that’s going to be a pain in the butt. The new squadron rosters are posted on the datanet; I've appointed brevet squadron leaders from the more experienced pilots to take command.”