The landing was a rough one. Their ship clunked into place, and it felt like a claw had grabbed them. The ship swiveled around quickly, and the door slid open without warning. It led to a small, empty room that looked like a staging room. Sevs was thankful for small mercies, but they had to work under the assumption that they were being watched by some sort of camera system and they would need to move fast.

Robert and Carl led the charge out. They checked the corners as they exited the ship. It seemed that they were clear. Soon the rest of the squad joined them at the entrance to the hallway. When they got there, they signaled that the coast was clear. It seemed that no alarm had been triggered yet.

That wouldn't last long. They moved out. The hall was clear somehow. Not trusting stealth to keep them safe, they opted for speed.

The whole way up here is the exciting point for the pods. It was empty on the far wall where the wall that came out was lined with doors every 40 to 50 ft. At the moment, it was empty, but they could see it to the right. There were only two doors before, just a blank wall. The left stretched on for quite a bit longer, but it looked like there was an exit down there. So they turned left and ran down the hallway. Someone was always checking their back.

They didn't make it the entire way before a squad popped out of a door like they did. Presumably, they came from one of the returning tax ships. They were not prepared for enemies in their own ship. Sevs team had already taken up positions the six laid into the squad as they came out. They didn't get every single one in the first barrage, but they saw at most two or three that managed to duck back into the doorway. The advanced.

With their training, various types of grenades were added to their kit. However, they still didn't have access to real heavy weaponry. Still, as they approached the door, Carl and Jason lobbed some fragmentation grenades into the place the enemy had retreated to. There are a couple of short screens, and Robert stuck his head in to check. When you reported they were all down, they continued running down the hallway.

They weren't already picked up by some monitoring system. They would like to have been just given away by the noise. Sure enough, an entire security squad filed into the hallway as they needed the entrance. They were in trouble. This was something that they were waiting for, though. They started shooting as they kept running closer, needing to get out of this death tube.

Staying in one spot was practically suicide here. It didn't really matter how defensible their position was; they would eventually be worn down by numbers. The only chance to keep moving. That meant they had to take more risks than they normally would have. One of those risks was the liberal use of grenades. As they fired, a few squad members launched grenades up and behind the screen troopers. This was not some of the humans' normal tactics, so they caught them off guard.

Obviously, not everything was taken care of by grenades. They only had a limited number, and they couldn't kill everything in a certain radius that many people would believe. Nevertheless, I managed to injure and disrupt the ranks enough for the other five team members to fill them with fire. They were lucky that the security squad had eight members. It was likely that it was investigating the noise they had heard. Otherwise, they would have sent more. Reinforcements would still be on the way, though.

Sevs looked at Carl. "Which way to the lifts?"

They were on the wrong floor and still needed to get up at least six levels. That was probably the most dangerous part of their travel besides breaking into the bridge. "Straight shot for now. One turns a quarter mile down. Then we will pass it."

Sevs thought this was really something they should have gone over before they landed, but it's too late to fix that now. They took off running following Carl's instructions. It seemed that they could reach the elevators without any more instruction, but afterward, they might be in trouble if they lost Carl. There was something to do about that now. "Carl, teach Robert the route."

This way, they would at least have some redundancy.

***

Things didn't go nearly as smoothly as they would have liked. Apparently, their route was either one of the only ones that could be taken or monitored. But halfway to their goal, they encountered a blockade. Not one that they could easily pitch their way through, either. There were several Tarlaki with riot shields, and they looked like portable fortifications blocking things.

Jason tried throwing a grenade, but it was batted out of the air by some invisible force. It exploded in front of the barrier, not harming any of the tarlaki. The squad was lucky that they were far away. Jason had a strong enough arm that they'd only got peppered by slow-moving fragments with no penetrative power left.

Force them to go right. They aimed to just take a quick detour around, but things weren't that easy. While Carl remembered the map fairly well, they didn't have perfect details of every corridor of every individual ship. It seemed that while each ship was similar, none of them had the exact same internal workings. Having ships, the same seemed to be a bit of a security flaw.

As they ran through the quarters, one thing became clearly apparent. The Tarlaki had significantly different design opinions than the humans. The humans had squash hexagon hallways where the Tarlaki design laid out their halls in more curving patterns. These curves gave everyone a measure of security as cover was almost always available of some kind. Also, there were no long straight hallways that could turn into death traps. It also made it so there were fewer blind corners.

The space elves designed the ships almost exactly the opposite; everything was a precise grid. This was playing to their strength as they liked setting up ambushes and attacking from the sides. With corners, it always gives us something to hide from. But it also meant that they could be a long way down a hallway and still have a clean shot.

Typical of monsters, or non-human characters in the system's many worlds, they didn't seem to care too much about their own lives. I'll just say that they wouldn't retreat or run or even help comrades, but they seem to prioritize the death of their enemies over their own survival. Definitely, their leaders prioritized that over the survival of their troops.

The squad had gone around. They tried to go along the same corridor parallel to the route that they had been following, but they found it blocked off before they were able to get much further than the blockade that had forced them off the main path in the first place. While stopped again, they could double back a little and get behind that first blockade. The poor communication skills of the enemy were the only reason they had made it this far. Clearly, these troops were not trained well for invaders making it onto their ship as they were much more comfortable doing the boarding.

Sevs thought that they could have easily taken this whole ship over if they had a backup. But as it was, they were outnumbered by the thousands. Still, they had no choice but to keep moving. They were halfway to the lifts, but no longer could they keep going in a straight line. Every few passages, they took a turn. This made their pattern less predictable. They likely started running into patrols instead due to them catching several blockades from behind.

Their new chaotic route made it harder for them to be predicted, but it also made their path more than three times as long. It took them almost 6 minutes of running to make it to the lifts. Perhaps their odd path did not clue the enemy into their destination, but Sevs doubted that. However, the lifts were unprotected.

Sevs had to remind himself that just because he knew what he was doing didn't mean that the enemy also did. They had to consider all the other possibilities. Perhaps this was an advanced team or something. To that extent, he was glad to have Bexy along. She had taken his advice about the demolition path to the heart and was always carrying some extra explosives. So along the way, they destroyed easy targets to further sow confusion. Sevs reminded himself to have Bexy start carrying some computer spikes. Some cyberwarfare would be key right now.

Despite the long journey, they eventually were able to call a lift.