They all waited as the lift came. There was a suspicious lack of enemies trying to attack them as they waited. So much so that Jason actually commented on it.

"Yeah, I know," Sevs responded. "They want us to go into these lifts. There is either going to be a trap in the lift or when we get to the top. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a choice."

Right as he finished speaking, the elevator dinged, and they all filed in. The first thing they did was shoot at the cameras in the corner of the elevator. No reason to let them know what was happening. They slapped a couple of the key cards they had taken on their way here and selected the level to bring them up to the bridge.

While Soshal was doing that, the rest of them were not idle. Carl and Robert boosted Bexy and then Jason up to the ceiling of the car. It didn't take them long to cut through. Soon the wannabe saboteur was sitting on the top of the car with her assistant. Everyone in the car could hear the sound of lasers cutting and then some grinding as the elevator doors closed.

They held their breath, urging Bexy to be ready in time. As the elevator started to move up, Sevs designated the order for them all to get on the roof of the car. Before he finished, the floor fell away from them as the car began to free fall. It only lasted for a brief couple of seconds before it slammed to a halt, sending them all collapsing to the floor.

Bexy's head popped through the hole she had cut in the ceiling. "Wow, that was close, but I caught you all."

In a few seconds, they were all out of the car. They saw the contraption that she had set up to prevent them all from falling further. It appeared the elevators had the ability to release the cables from the top of the shaft, dumping the car and anyone trying to climb them. It wasn't a bad security measure, but Bexy had thought of it and set up a tether to keep them moving more than a few feet. Sevs wasn't sure about the technology, but it seemed to be working.

The cable was piled around them as they followed Bexy up the shaft. She made handholds for them to use as she went. It wasn't much more difficult than climbing a ladder. Still, climbing a ladder was not the easiest thing after almost 100 meters. As they climbed, Carl kept track of the number of floors they passed. As they got closer, he signaled that they were there.

Now that they had reached their destination, they needed to figure out how to get out of the elevator shaft. They can probably force their way through the doors, but there would likely be guards. Sevs highly doubted that they would rely on the elevator stopping them. Trying to go around the problem, they climbed past the door looking for a way to get on the floor above and cut their way down. However, it seemed that the design of the spaceship had considered this. There was nothing above the bridge that was anywhere near close enough that they could cut their way into it with any sort of speed.

The floor below was also an entire story lower than it should be. Either there was something in between them that this shaft didn't access or the security was quite tight. The way the ship was designed sacrificed weight and practicality for the security of the bridge but did so in such a way that it made it insanely hard to get on it.

The team held on for a minute, trying to think of a way around it. And as they sat there, they rested, trying to recover their strength from their taxing trip. They whispered over their comms. "What are we going to do?"

"They won't just rely on the elevator taking us out, right? I mean, they will check the wreckage and find we aren't there, right?"

"There are only so many places we could be then. They would find us if we just stayed here."

Sevs listened to the team talk. Only half of his mind was on their conversation. The rest of his mind he let wander. Hoping he would find a solution, he let his mind wander as he couldn't consciously come to one himself. They were right. They couldn't just sit here. It was something he was tempted to try, though. It would be awesome if they waited long enough for the guard alert level to fall.

However, he couldn't really count on it. We made it through the first floor by never stopping by keeping the momentum moving and forcing the enemies to react to them. Now they had lost a lot of it stuck as they were, and the enemy knew exactly where they were coming from if they came at all. He tried to figure out some way to come to this problem from an odd angle. To do something that they wouldn't expect.

He kept drawing a blank, though. The only real solution, he figured, was to force open the elevator doors and try to fight their way out. In some ways, it would be better than arriving in the elevator. They wouldn't be in a kill box, but they also have a lot of trouble getting into a position where they could fight back. It just made him really wish that they had some more heavy weaponry. Perhaps with enough firepower, they could take out any defenders as they open the door.

Slowly a plan started to form in his head. It wasn't going to be easy, but he thought they could pull it off.

***

Traveling down the elevator shaft was both harder and easier than going up. It was less physically strenuous, except when it came to grip strength. However, not seeing where you were going was also challenging in its own right. When they reached the end of the handholds, a whole new challenge presented itself. Sevs couldn't figure out how they were going to put new holds in as they climbed down.

Luckily he didn't have to. Bexy attached a rope and repelled down, adding holds as she went. Unfortunately, the rope she had wasn't long enough to make it all the way down, but still, it allowed her to make it possible for them to descend. They just had to pass it up and down every once in a while. The worst part was they were in a time crunch. They were racing against an opponent they couldn't see.

They barely made it in time. Right as Bexy was only a few meters above the crashed wreckage of the car, they heard the squad that had been sent to check to confirm their deaths. Clearly, someone was talking on the radio even if they couldn't understand the language spoken. They waited.

A couple entered the shaft and poked around. They called out the ones outside. It sounded like they were calling the all-clear. That's when Sevs and his squad struck. They dropped quickly, killing the two in the shaft, and before the ones outside could react, they also laid into them.

The last one went down, yelling something on comms while running down the hall away from them. Bexy and Sevs stayed down while the rest started back up the shaft. They sprinted to the nearest set of doors that were closed off to them. Sevs covered her while Bexy got to work. He wasn't entirely sure what she was doing, but he knew the intended effect. She only needed cover for a handful of minutes. There was only a pair of Tarlaki that Sevs had to fire on during that time. What they were doing was anyone's guess, but it actually didn't take him long to take one down and send the other running.

"All done, let's go," At Bexy's words, Sevs ran back to the shaft and started climbing up after the other four. With Bexy close on his heels, they made it halfway up the shaft before an explosion shook the ship from below. Sevs wanted to stop and figure out where she had gotten such powerful explosives from but knew it would have to wait for later. They quickly caught up to the others.

While Bexy and Sevs were setting up the diversion, the others hadn't been idle. While none had Bexy's real flair for explosives, they were mildly competent and had flung the doors open. So as Sevs got to the bridge level, he could climb right out of the elevator shaft and into a firefight.

The bridge had been taken by surprise. The distraction had made them assume the intruders were going for a hanger on a lower level. That wrong assumption was enough for the squad to get through doors without being massacred. Now the four had made good progress. First, taking out the guards, but the sheer number of officers was pinning them down. Sure they were mostly armed with side arms and without armor, but there were a lot of them.

"'Bout time you got here, boss. Just about to miss the party!"