He was still in a grumpy mood when he walked down to his cabin for the first interview. All of the reporters had wanted to interview him — and the Captain and everyone else on the ship — but he’d managed to insist on choosing his own interviewer. He’d picked one of the experienced reporters, a man who’d actually been a carrier tech before retraining as a journalist. His reports held a genuine flavour of someone who had actually been on a carrier as more than just a visitor, although there were hints that he thought he could do better. At least, James considered, he had some reason for thinking so. Most of the others would get themselves killed if they were allowed to roam the carrier unescorted.
“Commander,” the reporter said. Marcus Yang was tall, a his face a mixture of Chinese and English features, but there was a reassuring competence in his attitude that James appreciated more than he cared to admit. “Thank you for the interview.”
James snorted as he sat down and waved the reporter to the other chair. If it had been up to him, there would be no interviews at all… particularly not with the reporters who'd gained their places on account of their looks, rather than general competence. He reminded himself, sharply, that they might not be fools. Good looks didn't always equal stupidity. One of the female reporters might prefer to be underestimated by her prey.
“You’re welcome,” he said. It was a lie and he knew Yang knew it was a lie. “But I’m afraid time is at a premium.”
“I won't take too much of your time,” Yang said. “How did you wind up on Ark Royal?”
“The navy assigned me,” James said. It was true enough, if certain details were excluded from consideration. He’d worked hard to insert himself into the carrier’s chain of command, prior to discovering her true condition. “I went willingly.”
“So it would seem,” Yang mused. He changed the subject with suspicious haste. “What do you believe the aliens actually want?”
“I believe that it would be a mistake to speculate without data,” James said, firmly. He wasn't sure just how much data the reporters had access to, although he would have been surprised if none of the reports had leaked. “We simply know nothing about their culture, their society or what they actually want from us.”
Yang smiled. “You don’t have a theory?”
“No,” James said, not altogether truthfully. He had his theories, but none of them had any real weight. “Maybe they just think we’re ugly as sin.”
Yang’s smile grew wider. “What would you say to the suggestion that top brass in the various spacefaring nations knew that the aliens existed a long time before they actually revealed themselves?”
James hesitated, remembering his private theories. It was certainly odd to realise just how much time and effort — to say nothing of money — had been poured into the various space navies over the last century. But if the Admiralty — and the politicians - had known about the aliens for so long, the secret would almost certainly have leaked. Keeping it a secret would have required paying off or co-opting so many people that it would have made a significant dent in the navy’s budget.
“I would say that it seems unlikely,” he said. He made a mental note to record a message for Uncle Winchester. None of the briefing notes had covered this eventuality. If there was any truth to the suggestion at all, he wanted to know about it. “The governments of this world are not good at keeping secrets.”
Yang smiled, rather ruthlessly. “That happens to be true,” he agreed. “Do you happen to think the Captain is suitable for command?”
James sat upright, sharply. “What?”
“Captain Smith was hitting the bottle pretty hard,” Yang observed. “It’s right there on his service record. No one made any attempt to hide it. Do you think the Captain is suitable for command?”
“Get out,” James ordered. It was a poor reaction, as he admitted to himself a moment later, but he was damned if he was allowing this line of questioning to continue. And to think he'd thought that Yang was one of the reasonable reporters!
Yang rose to his feet, but didn't leave the room. “Off the record,” he said. “What do you think?”
It had been bad enough, James knew, when the First Space Lord had been asking him to watch the Captain. At least the First Space Lord was a superior officer, not a damned reporter. How had Yang even gained access to the Captain’s service record? Had it been allowed to slip into his hands deliberately? If someone felt that Captain Smith was a poor Captain, they might have hoped the media would bring pressure to bear against him.
But Captain Smith was a hero…
James shook his head. If there was one lesson the aristocracy had learned and learned well, it was that the media could turn on their previous darling and savage him ruthlessly.
“I think that Captain Smith has won the first and only victory against the aliens,” he snapped, finally. “And I think you should bear that in mind.”
He watched Yang leave his quarters, then reached for his terminal. There was an hour to go before they crossed the tramline and started their cruise, more than long enough for him to contact Uncle Winchester and explain what had happened. There would be no time for a reply, but it didn’t matter. If Yang decided to express his doubts… if he did have doubts. It struck James that Yang hadn't really expressed any feelings of his own.
Idiot, he thought, recalling other pieces of advice from the past. When you tangle with the press, you never come out ahead in the long run.
Kurt wiped sweat from his brow as he clambered out of his starfighter and half-walked, half-staggered towards the wardroom. Behind him, he heard the sound of the launch bay crew moving the starfighter back into the launch tubes, replacing the power cells as they moved. The sound faded away as he stepped through the airlock, then into the wardroom. Luckily, the wardroom was one of the places barred to reporters by prior arrangement.
He stripped off his flight suit and dropped it in the basket, then strode into the shower to wash away the sweat. Water ran down, cleansing his body; he closed his eyes and allowed it to run over his face. He heard the door opening again behind him, but ignored it. Moments later, several other bodies joined him in the shower.
Opening his eyes, he smiled to see that none of the younger pilots looked any better than he felt. It had been a hard exercise, with everyone pushed to the limit. Rose had designed it, partly to make it clear to her subordinates that she was more experienced than them, but Kurt suspected that he would have to have a few words with her about overdoing it. A pair of experienced pilots had come alarmingly close to disaster.
“Get some rest,” he advised, as he stepped out of the shower and towelled himself off. “We will be going back to the simulators in the morning.”
Walking back into the wardroom, he pulled on his shipsuit and headed towards the door. It opened a moment before he reached it, revealing Rose and a handful of her new subordinates, chatting together with surprising enthusiasm. The exercise must have comprehensively broken the ice, he decided. It helped that she’d been a squadron flyer until her sudden promotion after the first battle.
“I need a word with you after you’ve showered,” he said, catching Rose’s arm. “Meet me in my office.”
He let her go and walked past her, into the small office. A quick check of the terminal revealed messages from both Percy and Penny, but nothing from Molly. Feeling an odd spurt of confusion and alarm, he opened the first message from Percy and discovered, to his surprise, that Molly had hired an older girl to take care of the kids. Percy seemed enthused about this development, which puzzled Kurt until he placed the caretaker’s name and remembered just how pretty she was. Penny, on the other hand, complained long and loudly about having an older girl watching her at all times. Apparently, the older girl had made the mistake of believing Molly’s instructions. Kurt’s daughter had found herself going through her homework again and again until the babysitter — Penny seemed to believe that the older girl was her babysitter, which she found very insulting — was satisfied.