Jason managed to speak jovially despite his situation. Sevs took in the four members of the squad as he dove for cover. The room was a wide semicircle with arcs of desks facing the windows at the front of the ship. Each ring was lower than the inner one before it. Sevs and his team had come out in the middle of the flat section. There were a few lone pillars blocking the captain's chair from being directly visible from the entrance.

It seemed to be a good security feature as it stopped Jason from immediately toppling their chain of command, but it was also working against them. It gave them cover as well as allowed their direct lines to where the extra weapons were stored. It seemed that after taking down the guards, all the other officers normally staffing the ship had tried to go for the extra weapons storage. Judging by the bodies lying by the cases, they hadn't been very successful so far.

Overall it seemed that there were a couple dozen enemies. Sevs was having trouble getting an exact count, but it appeared that there were maybe spots for 20 staff, plus the command crew, that was directly behind the pillars. That looked to be a captain and pilot. His team certainly had their work cut out for them.

The only blessing seemed to be that the Tarlaki were only armed with sidearms. That would change if any of them managed to get to the lockers at either end of the back wall. Carl and Robert watched one, and Soshal watched the other. Jason was taking potshots around the room, trying his best to keep the mass of Tarlaki from moving.

Jason was moderately successful. Sevs would guess that many of them were crawling around behind the desks, trying to get in a better position. While these were not combat personnel, there were still Tarlaki. From everything he had heard, it would be unlikely that they would give up. Quickly he looked up, searching for vents above them. It would be just like them to drop from above via the air ducts or something equally cliche.

Looking up, Sevs didn't react for a second. There were no vents, but it was still a good thing he had looked. A Tarlaki hung from the ceiling. As far as Sevs could see, there were no handholds of any kind for it to be grabbed. It wasn't quite over them just yet. Snapping out of his amazement, Sevs quickly aimed and fired a couple shots into the climber's back. The unsuspecting target fell onto one of the inner rings of desks.

The rest of his squad jumped but had enough discipline to not lose focus on their targets. It seemed the rest of the enemies were well aware of the strategy. And its failure, they were maybe surprised but reacted immediately. Clearly, they hadn't been as pinned down as Sevs's team had assumed. Two on each side rush to their lockers. Robert and Carl had no issues with theirs. Sevs looked to Soshal, but Bexy had already taken up position, and they were shooting theirs as well.

Jason shouted a warning. Sevs spun around. It seemed that the ones running for the lockers were a distraction as several surged around the pillars. Either the command staff was far more numerous than they had assumed, or the enemy had spent time sneaking members up onto the desk, taking advantage of the blocked site to do so.

This left Sevs and Jason facing a half dozen charging enemies. Sure their sidearms were not nearly as effective against the humans' heavier armor, but they still couldn't take in the series of shots. Also, once they got up close and were overwhelmed, things wouldn't go so well. Jason and Sevs slowly retreated, firing as they went. However, there wasn't much more they could go backward. Soon they would be pressed against the walls with the elevators.

When they hit that wall, they started to move sideways, Jason going one way, Sevs going the other. This forced the enemy to split their focus. Right about when they thought they were done, as they only managed to take down half the attackers, they got helped.

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The pairs on the sides had finished with their opponents and swiveled inwards, quickly taking down the advancing Tarlaki. However, this seems to be all anticipated by the enemy. Because right as Carl and Robert took their eyes off of the containers to help their friends, it felt like all of the remaining enemies piled out to the retrieve heavier weapons.

Sevs was amazed at the Tarlaki's persistence. It sacrificed more than half of its bridge staff to just get at some extra weapons. He was pretty sure humans wouldn't have done that; they probably would have accepted the stalemate and tried to drag it out long enough for reinforcements to make it up the elevators. But now he and his team were facing a fully armed enemy. Sure they had lost most of their numerical superiority, but arguably they were in a better position.

Even though Sevs wasn't quite sure they were in that much of a better position. They just sacrificed half their skilled officers, who presumably were crucial to running the ship effectively. Though, to be fair, he didn't know about the training time it would take to replace them or maybe backups. Most spaceships had lots of redundancies, even the ones the Tarlaki made. Redundant personnel was just one of those features.

They're at another impasse. However, their enemy was not as passive as they were previously. No longer was it just Jason firing shots to keep people from moving. The enemy took advantage of their wider angles to force the humans to stay undercover. And made it very difficult to advance the situation.

"How are we doing on grenades?" Sevs asked his team. The response wasn't encouraging. They're pretty much all out. That might have been a blessing in disguise, though, as they really needed to keep the bridge intact if they were going to be able to pilot this thing anywhere. But that wouldn't matter if they were all dead.

Doing his best to think of a solution under fire, Sevs called out to Bexy, "What do you got? Anything interesting left?"

The wannabe demolition specialist patted her bag of tricks. "Mostly empty, but I got one more boom."

Sevs quickly ran through the rest of their skills. Jason was a good shot. Soshal, intel, and computers. Robert was likely to be heavy. Carl was more like Sevs, honestly. Didn't excel at anything but could do pretty much everything well. Sevs, of course, had his hand-to-hand ability, but he didn't see how that would help here.

He gave himself another five seconds To think. Unfortunately, he came up empty. There really wasn't a clever way out of this. At least not one that he could see right now. Perhaps if he had a day or more to prepare, he could have thought of something interesting, but as it was, they would have to take a risk.

"Jason, Bexy, you're with me. Carl, take Soshal and Robert and go left." Sevs ordered. "Try to take them for angles. Go for the end of each arch for cover and watch each other's backs."

They all got in position, lining up and ready to dive for the end of each row. It should make it harder for them to be pinned down and help them take one-on-one fights. This wasn't a position Sevs would have put his team in if he had an any better choice. And if it was a couple months ago, this would have been tantamount to suicide. However, he had faith in these people.

"On my mark."

When he signaled, they all exploded at once, laying down fire as they charged randomly. It was enough to make the most of the enemy's duck back for a second, which allowed the first to get into place. But as the next two ran out of their positions, the enemy started to return fire. But it wasn't without a cost. Jason was the first to stop at the cover, and as the enemy popped up to return fire, he had perfect chances to return it. Coming from an unexpected position, his aim was deadly.

Robert did the same for the other side, it seemed. Between the two of them, they managed to knock down four of the enemy. Sevs was pretty certain that they now had the numbers advantage. That riskiest part of their plan was over now that they had cover.

In an attempt to stop the humans' desperate bid, the Tarlaki had given away all their position. Moving down the aisles, Sevs and his team took advantage of their numbers and better armor and pincered the remaining enemy. Quickly dispatching the rest of them.

Having finished, Sevs sent Carl and Robert to hold the elevators. Then he looked at Soshal. "Do your magic."