Hearing the alarm sent a flurry of action around the ship as Sevs stood with the new recruit. Looking around, no good option came to mind of a good place to pawn her off. Of course, he could take her to the mess hall or someplace and tell her to wait for him, but that just felt wrong. She hadn't even got her basic equipment yet.

Sighing, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her after him as he ran to meet up with his squad. "Sorry, you are going to get a bit of a crash course today."

Panting after only a few dozen steps, the girl grinned up at him, "Sounds exciting!"

"I can't promise you anything less here. Sometimes it gets slow, but it always pays off in this world." Sevs assured. Honestly, that wasn't really true for most people, but it had been nonstop for him and his team.

When they reached battle stations, he was the last to show up. Jason didn't let him forget it. "Who is the baggage, Sir?"

Looking at Jason, Sevs had a perfect idea. "Your ball and chain, Private. Give Susan your sidearm and teach her how to use it. I expect you to respawn before she gets a scratch."

Jason groaned good naturally and pulled out his pistol, and started showing the newbie how it worked. Jason was the youngest by several years. Only a year or two older than Susan. Because of that, he got some slack but only so much. Sevs received their orders and read them out to the team.

It seemed that some unrecognized ships had dropped into the system. They weren't going to use their normal strategy and turtle up to run. That wasn't going to work with their current situation. No, this time, they were going to go on the offensive.

"We are to report to the third bay and get ready to launch. Looks like we picked up boarding duty." Sevs said and flipped the details of the new ships to Soshal to see if she had anything more about them than he did.

As Jason was going over how to adjust the sights on his pistol with Susan, Sevs heard him mutter. "Nice, you will get an extra counter to your min deaths, it looks like."

"Jason!" Bexy said, smacking him on the arm. "Don't scare the kid."

"Hey, none of us are really kids." Susan protested.

"Until you spend a little time in this world, you are a kid," Bexy said. Susan scanned the rest of the squad's faces to only find agreement.

"I heard that it was rough, but is it really that bad here?" A bit of fear was starting to enter her voice. Sevs moved to reassure her.

"Nah, it's not that bad. Besides, we just had a major change to the way the game is played with the planet." Sevs insisted. Susan didn't look too convinced. There wasn't much he could do about it.

"All ready?" Receiving no objections, he started to move to their initiation point at a jog.

***

When they got there, the small ship was waiting for them. Unlike the Tarlaki ships, the humans favored smaller ones that would fit only a squad or two. They all piled in.

"Uh, Sevs?" Soshal said. "I think I got something on the ships we spotted. Well, actually, I don't have anything. I'm pretty certain that these aren't Tarlaki."

"As in?" Sevs asked for clarification. "Are they other humans?"

"Impossible to say."

"Well, people, our normal tactics might not work, so we take things slow and forget the book; it was made for different enemies. I want every corner checked, and our backs watched until we know what we are dealing with." Sevs insisted, receiving excited looks in return.

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He couldn't blame his team as a smile broke on his face as well. This was what everyone lived for, to find the new hidden parts of the game. A new enemy unlocking was one of the most exciting events in the game.

Once they were all strapped in, the ship took off and shot them into the void. The ship was expelled with a huge amount of flack to avoid being shot out of space.

This meant the first little while was just silent, floating in zero-G, watching shots fly past them left and right in the vacuum of space. That only lasted so long before all the ships expelled fired to life. The eerie smooth floating gave way to a teeth-rattling roar as their engines shot them to their target at max speed.

Everyone had bit down except for Susan. Sevs shot a glare at Jason, who shrugged apologetically but helped her bite down on a strap to keep her tongue in one piece. It was just as time as the rattling shook them like maracas.

There was nothing to do on the trip besides bear the ride. At least until they hit max speed. The engines shut off for a bit until they would need to slow down so the impact didn't kill them. Jason went over more tips with Susan. Sevs had serious doubts about how much that would help, but hopefully, it would keep her calm.

As they shot through the void, Sevs struck up a conversation with Soshal. "So, what do you think of the target's design?"

She took a second to think. "Hmm, I noticed the same thing. The ship isn't like ours or the space elves at all. I'm not sure what to make of the blocky design at all."

"There are a bunch of assumptions we could make about their home world, but I don't think any of them are concrete enough to really base anything off of," Sevs said.

"True, though design can tell us a bit about the general disposition of the operators. These things usually get decided by a committee rather than some quirky individual, at least by the time they get to making a fleet out of them. The more off they are from the optimal design, the more strongly it speaks about the motivations." Soshal said. "For example, I would expect larger-bodied creatures. Maybe one standard deviation above average would be 2.6 meters."

"That's a really specific number. Where did you pull that from?" Sevs asked.

"Well, the airlock sizes for maintenance are much larger than they would need to be for a human. You can see the same for the Tarlaki, but you probably didn't notice them as we were not fully grown yet, but they are smaller." She explained.

Sevs thought for a second, "That makes sense. Why the standard deviation, though, and not the average?"

"Well, because if you have a high variation, you can't have half your population as warriors. I mean, you can, but that seems unlikely. On the other hand, it's not like size and weight aren't real concerns in space." Soshal said.

"So with that, I think we can say they either have a lower density atmosphere or they built these in space." Sevs surmised.

"Oh, they definitely built them in space. Anything that size would be really hard to get off the ground regardless of shape." Bexy butted into their talk.

"Did we get any info on their fighters?" Soshal asked while she was flipping through her information.

"I didn't get anything that I haven't shared with you," Sevs told her. That was one of the biggest things he had learned, how to let people do the things they are best at. Keeping information from Soshal would only bite him in the end. For the same reason, he didn't give all the information to Jason.

"Hmmm, did you get why we are attacking?" Soshal asked.

"What do you mean? New mobs spawned, and we attack?" Bexy said. Of course, it was that simple. Soshal didn't answer and kept looking at Sevs for a real answer.

"No, I don't think we got any real reading before we launched. I bet they wanted us in the air as soon as possible. It would be easier to call us off than to launch us too late." Sevs said as he checked his comms, looking for anything new. "I would hope to get more detailed objectives at least. Right now, all we have is to capture the ships. Nothing about working with other teams to land on the same target. Nothing about lethal force either."

That last bit wasn't too surprising. Unless they were told otherwise, they would put down anything in their way. Anything else was just asking for trouble.

The ship gave a warning that they would impact in 2 minutes. Sevs got everyone's attention. "Standard op. We come in and clear everything. Take the bridge and flush the ship. We don't know about other teams, so we assume we are going alone. Bexy, I want to set up a few demo packages to cripple their ship if we have to respawn. Just like the first time, but now we can respawn."

"As long as our ship is intact," Robert muttered.

"Wait, I just got something new," Sevs said, holding up his hand as he scanned the message.