Evan tapped his fingers on the armrest of the newly installed Council Member chair at the back of the bridge by the Admiral's seat. Now that they had enough ships in service to technically be a fleet it was decided that Jeffrey would take that rank and sit in that chair while another former navy veteran, Janet something, would be captain of the Raziel. "You know, I've been thinking."

"Uh-oh." Jeffrey deadpanned.

"Oh shut up. I was just going to say that I know they're genocidal bug-monkeys and all, but don't you think what we're setting up is a bit overkill?"

Jeffrey shrugged. "There's no such thing in my opinion. If you're in a fair fight you're fighting wrong. Your best shot at surviving a battle is to outnumber and outgun your opponent by as much as possible."

"I get that but we're just sitting at this point with over half a fleet waiting for an attack that, by all accounts, won't be more than a ship or two. Ships that probably won't match the Raziel in mass even combined."

Jeffrey turned to look at him, but they were interrupted by Lisa, who was faster than the person monitoring the sensors. "Transition! Two gnarlath heavy cruisers!"

"Battle stations!" Janet roared.

Jeffrey tapped the control pad attached to his armrest. "All ships, we have a transition, repeat, we have a transition, battle stations."

"I want to talk to them." Evan said, his expression serious for once.

"We can try opening a channel, but they might not answer." Janet told him, then gestured at the comm officer. "Hail 'em, try every channel we got."

The comm officer started punching in commands, then stopped suddenly. "Oh, they answered. Putting it through."

A large window opened in the holo-tank. An exceptionally ugly gnarlath face filled it, chittering and growling. Lisa started translating almost in real time. "Interesting. I didn't expect to find prey that wanted to talk to us. I shall enjoy feasting on you and your kin, beast. The talkative ones always taste the best."

Evan did his best to remain stoic. "I'm afraid you didn't find prey at all. We have no intention of letting you through, I simply wanted to see if you were truly the monsters we were told you were. Get both sides of the story and all that."

"Foolish prey, always talking, always wanting peace, always fighting for the weak. We are strong because we feed on the weak."

"You certainly are talkative for one calling us foolish for talking. It's almost as if you were trying to stall long enough for your transition drives to cool down enough to escape. Well, you aren't wrong about one thing at least. We do want peace. The thing is, we understand that in order to have peace you have to be strong enough to deter or defeat those that threaten your peace. Hopefully your deaths will be enough to secure that peace, but I doubt it. Perhaps there will eventually be someone among your people willing to try another way."

He waved the screen away and the channel was cut. "Destroy one, capture the other. I'll leave the decision on captives to the marines. I prefer they be careful and safe, I'm sure we will have other opportunities to capture a few gnarlath if we need to." He stood as the ship shuddered slightly, the railguns having fired on one of the cruisers, turning it into an expanding cloud of debris in an instant. His hands were shaking as he left the bridge. He was determined to hide how much ordering the deaths of who-knows-how-many other sentient beings effected him. They were monsters, sure, but they were still sentient.

*****

Franklin was certain that everyone on the Spike could hear his heart pounding as their pilot counted down. "Three, two, one! Wahhooo! It's a good day to die, right boys!" He crowed over the loudspeaker. Franklin found himself wondering why every pilot he ever met was completely insane as the Spike accelerated fast enough to overwhelm their inertial dampeners and press them into the gel padding in their acceleration pods.

Roars of approval, acknowledgement, and just plain terror answered the pilot as they blazed through the black. The Spike shuddered a few times as something, or a lot of somethings, struck the hull. Their path and destination was simple, as was their objective. They were going to capture an alien spaceship. By crashing into it. At a recklessly high speed. Which was actually the real reason for the pods they were nestled in. If everything went as planned, a powerful dampener built into the pod would activate just as they hit the enemy ship's hull to protect them from the sudden deceleration.

Franklin didn't particularly know or care how it worked, he was just concerned with the possibility that it wouldn't work at all. It wasn't like they had a chance to test these suicide rockets ahead of time. At least this time they were shooting for overkill. The powers that be had, in their great wisdom, decided that since they had no idea if they could match the gnarlath in a toe-to-toe fight they would send three Spikes despite every intelligence report putting the typical crew complement of a gnarlath heavy cruiser at around twenty. Which is precisely the number of men and women crammed into the flying coffin he was riding.

"Get ready ladies and gents!" A loud thrumming sound clawed its way into his brain, along with a sudden sensation of no longer moving when he was supposed to be, or vice versa. He honestly didn't know how to describe it. At least until he heard retching through the comms and realized that was the perfect description for what he was feeling. Fortunately it passed quickly and he didn't join those that he could hear… redecorating the inside of their pods.

The lid to his pod slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and when someone started shouting, "Go, go, go!" he grabbed his rifle, which had been clamped into a slot directly adjacent to his pod, and went. Several holes opened up in the Spike's armor, and Franklin joined the wave of armored figures pouring out into the gnarlath ship. Their mission was just as simple as the flight over. Eliminate the enemy, capture the ship. Lethal force both authorized and recommended, and only a half-hearted suggestion that they could take captives if they felt it could be done with out undue risk.

Franklin almost laughed during the briefing when they said it, he had been on enough combat missions to know that phrasing things the way they did was just so the powers that be didn't look like monsters for ordering them to leave no survivors. He most certainly wasn't going to try and capture a big angry bug-ape.

Bursts of gunfire went off in the distance, mixed with a crackling tzaap sound that could only be the gnarlath firing back at them. "Watch for ambushes! Their doors look like just another wall! Damn!" More gunfire.

Franklin focused his attention on the walls after getting the warning, and was just in time to see a section of wall next to the man in front of him silently slide open. A massive three-fingered claw-fist covered in spiky black chitin was the first he saw of the gnarlath as it smashed into the shoulder of the unfortunate bastard in front of him. The blow crushed the joint in the armor and caused serious damage to the man's shoulder.

"Down!" Franklin shouted, and the man hit the deck with an agonized groan. The moment his shot was clear he fired a three round burst to center mass. The specially designed rounds punched neat little holes through the gnarlath's natural armor, then detonated shortly afterward, blowing large messy holes in the monster's squishy insides. He fully expected the brute to drop after the three explosive rounds blended its internal organs, but instead of dying like any reasonable creature would after such trauma, it turned and roared at him, spittle flying from its bisected lower jaw.

It lunged at him, and he might have panicked slightly. Fifteen rounds and half a second later, the monster fell to the deck and Franklin heaved a sigh of relief. He went to check on the downed man, keeping his rifle trained on the open door the gnarlath came from. His shoulder had been crushed along with the armor, but the built in trauma response systems were doing their job and he would live. It was fortunate for the man that he would survive his injury, but not nearly as fortunate for Franklin, who was now the lead man.

"Delta team, down that hall!" A gruff voice ordered through the squad comms. "Charlie will continue this way!"

Franklin groaned, grateful that their sealed suits hid the noise so long as the mic wasn't keyed. Still, he obeyed the order, shouldering his rifle and stepping into the new corridor with considerably more caution than he had previously. With… Richard injured, or at least he thought that was the man's name, he was now the point man headed into the newly opened tunnel. He felt bad about only just now remembering his name, but that was an unfortunate result of the mad scramble they made getting ready for this suicide mission. They simply had no time to do any team building with all the medical procedures and equipment training.

Halfway to the end of the corridor he saw a slight movement out of the corner of his eye and immediately dove to the floor, rolling onto his side to point his rifle at the new door. Gnarlath began pouring out of it, and Franklin's entire squad opened up on them. "Weapons free! Don't stop shooting till they go down!" Someone roared over the comms. "These bastards can take a hit!"

This new set of monsters was actually armed though, and instead of just shooting bug-apes in a barrel they were taking hits in return. A sizzling tzaapp sound filled the air, and Franklin was horrified to see a large hole appear in the gut of the man that was behind him before he dove. The gnarlath charged through the door faster than they could kill them, with some of the ones in the rear even snatching up their comrades bodies to use as a makeshift shield.

Luckily the men and women sent on this mission were highly trained in the use of their weapons and possessed plenty of combat experience. They held off the onslaught with only the one casualty all the way up to the end. The last gnarlath through the door turned on Franklin instead of the rest of the squad, and got close enough to grab him. He winced at the screech of tearing metal as its claws shredded the armored arm he threw up to defend himself, but didn't hesitate in sticking the barrel of his rifle against its chest and emptying the rest of his mag into it.

Not long after they confirmed the deaths of all the gnarlath, they got word from command. "We have secured engineering and the bridge, the ship is ours. We're forcing all the doors open, all teams conduct a room by room sweep and clear out any remaining hostiles."

Franklin just looked at his mangled arm and sighed. He was out of the fight for now. When he saw the looks on his team's faces he shrugged. "Pretty sure this arm is cursed, second time I've lost it now."