Gruesome task finished, Jason and Sevs turned to rejoin the rest of their team. When they got back, Robert slid down the wall to the inside of the planning ship as Jason took a spot. Sevs was carrying both the arm and the cards and brought them to the two women working on the controls.

Bexy took the forms of identification from Sevs. "I think we have an idea of how this works. Granted, I have never heard of anyone ever flying an enemy ship. But the system wouldn't have put cards on these guys if it wasn't possible, right?"

Looking at the nearly half dozen cards subsided, she frowned. "Well, I hope one of these cards is right."

Sevs was pretty sure the best thing the rest of them could do was leave the two women to their thing. But as a leader, his job was to ensure they got the help they needed, so he had to ask. "Do you need anything else?"

"No, just time to figure this out," Soshal called from deeper in the ship.

"I'll see what I can do," Sevs replied before going to check on the entryway.

The whole thing was a tiny ship. Even with just the six of them in there, it felt full. Despite that, he could see how the Tarlaki managed it. The ship was very simple; it consisted of two rooms, a pilot's chamber, section off slightly from a passenger bay. Along the walls, there were two benches where conceivably 10 narrow beings could sit if packed tightly. Then there was the hatch that clamped onto the target vessel.

Robert had taken up a seat on the bench. He was leaning back with his eyes closed. It seemed the last bit of effort giving them cover fire had taken it out of them. Sevs let them rest as there wasn't room for more people to hold the entrance.

He checked to make sure that Carl and Jason were fine. Both seemed to have energy and weren't injured, so he didn't take their spots. Instead, Sevs returned to the pilot's cabin. One thing that occurred to him. "Have you figured out comms? We'll need a signal that we're friendly on approach anywhere else on our fleet, or else they will shoot us out of the air."

"There's no air in space, Sevs," Bexy quipped. He just looked at her, and she continued. "No, I don't see anything that could do it. I don't think we could even get into our fleet's network from this ship."

"Can't we send a transmission? That's what all the old sci-fi movies did."

"Apparently, the system hasn't seen those movies. Or it recognized them for the trash they are." Bexy said. Sevs gave her a dirty look, and she just shrugged. Right then, the ship shuddered. Jason and Carl hopped back right as the door slammed, cutting off the back of the ship from its docking place. They felt the ship shudder slightly as it detached from the hole and then felt it accelerate away.

"We might have a bigger problem than the comms," Soshal called from the front. She popped back into the main cabin a second later with the rest of them. The ship didn't stop moving. "I don't have control over this."

Her pronouncement was met with silence. Then, facing the accusatory stares, she began to defend herself. "What!? I tried the cards with the hand on the scanner. On the third card, the ship started moving on its own."

Sevs, let that sink in. To confirm his suspicions. "Where are we headed?"

Soshal just nodded. Sevs cursed. Jason looked up, confused. "Y'all know I didn't put a lot of points into intelligence, so you're gonna have to spell it out for me a bit more."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

No one said anything. Judging based on Carl and Robert's looks, they might need it explained as well. Bexy was doing her best to pretend that she knew, but Sevs had his doubts. He looked too Soshal, but she just looked back. Her eyes were saying, "you're the leader. You explain it to them."

He let out a frustrated breath. "If the ship is being controlled not by us, it means we're not picking the destination. I doubt whoever is picking a destination picked a friendly ship for us to go home on."

Sevs turned to Soshal. "Do you know how long until landing?"

"Not precisely, maybe 15 to 20 minutes."

"Well, rest up, people. We're going to be in the jaws of the lion in 15 to 20 minutes."

***

Very little rest was had during that trip. They all sat and breathed, trying to recover as much as possible. They checked their gear and the fitting of their armor. There wasn't much they could do. They had no exact blueprints of the enemy ship, so planning would be hard. They weren't fresh, so raw physicality was going to be rough.

The only thing they had going for them was that they had studied the blueprint of the Tarlaki vessel a few months ago. Luckily Carl had an excellent memory and sketched off its rough details on a wall. They hoped that they would land in the main hangar from which they could hop out and quickly take another ship. Ideally, one that could send a transmission. Hopefully, they could figure out how to do that, but at least one that they would be able to pilot.

The backup plan was to head for the bridge. They plotted a route for the main hangar there. It would be rough; they'd have to make it through half of the ship's length. They also had no idea what class ship they were going to. Luckily most of the ships were laid out similarly, but if they were going to one of the larger ships, it would be nearly a mile long, but some of the shorter ships wouldn't mean a much quicker route. Once they got to the bridge, they only had a loose plan. They needed to take the ship and then something. They kind of figured they would have to improvise once they got that far.

Eventually, Robert spoke up, "I know no one wants to talk about it but have any of you reached min deaths yet?"

Everyone but Jason shook their heads. Despite the harsh picture of this world, they actually hadn't been put into too much actual combat. Occasionally there were some live fire situations, but after that first raid, they hadn't died. After that, Jason was a bit more willing to take risks.

"It's surprisingly low. I've never been in a world with five before. But didn't you all listen to the warnings about torture and stuff? I figured you all would have made sure you hit it before risking losing your spawn points," Jason said. The rest looked at each other.

"How did Jason think of that when none of us did?" Carl asked no one in particular. They all just shook their heads. It was too late to do anything about it now. Sevs had thought about it, though; it was an intentional choice. It gave him no way out. Now he would have to succeed. No more excuses. He hoped the rest of them thought the same way as he did. Well, they would have to now. In an attempt to encourage them, "Well, we burned the bridges behind us. The only way out is through."

They sat in silence for the rest of the approach.

Soshal had been checking the progress every few minutes. Finally, when they started to get closer, she called Sevs up to the front with her. "I got some good news and bad news. I don't think we're heading toward the main hangar. It seems like there is a special docking port for these assault ships. The good news is it's about halfway to the bridge. Some more bad news is this is their largest class of carrier. So it's still a ways away."

Sevs nodded, processing information. This might be troublesome. "I guess it's plan b, then."

He turned to walk back to the rest of the group to deliver the news. Took it surprisingly well. Sure they were quiet and looked tense, but he couldn't expect anything more of them. "Okay, we're going to assume that there are no other ships there, and we're going to have to fight our way out. We're going to need to move fast. They are coming back from this assault, so we have a few advantages. One, hopefully, a lot of their combat personnel were on this run, and are either still out or not in position. So it should be a skeleton crew. Two, we're actually much closer to the bridge than the main hangar was. So we have a real chance of making it up there. Once we do, we're going to have to seal it."

"Isn't the bridge going to be one of the most protected parts of their ship? So how are we going to get in?" Jason asked.