Sevs and his team burst out of the restraints. It was a flurry of controlled chaos as they undid their harnesses and got into the line, ready to charge through the doors as they opened. Then, with a final screech, the metal pulled away, and the ship sealed a passage. One of the men from the experience squads in the front tossed a few grenades out in the corridor and sprinted low with his people behind him providing covering fire.

Those running in had riot shields that they ducked behind that took many shots before they had to be thrown away. As soon as they got in position, they threw some things down that inflated, mostly filling the hallways, which provided some cover.

These are some standard tactics Sevs, and the other recruits began to learn to use in the past month. The inflatable stuff was some sort of hardening foam that could be used to put up temporary gun embankment and quick cover. Sevs couldn't help but think that if they had these pieces of equipment when they were first attacked at the end of basic, things might have gone very differently.

After the cover was laid down, the initial breachers put their shield in such a way as to provide further cover as a few with heavy guns ran out. Within a few seconds, they had their tripods mounted to places designed in the inflatable cover, and we were unloading down the hallway. They couldn't use much heavier guns than the people already carried without risking damaging the ship and potentially harming themselves by doing so. However, these more specialized guns that were heavier had a few other advantages besides more powerful blasts. They had much more ammunition and could fire at a much higher rate. Because of that, these two gunners filled the hallway in each direction with blanketing fire.

Sevs squad began to move up. Unfortunately, they were the last out as they were the least experienced and least likely to be useful in something that's complicated as an entry. This is a little disappointing to Sevs. He wasn't able to see exactly what was going on, so he had to fill in the blanks with what his training told him would be happening. The captain and the lieutenants had orchestrated a textbook-perfect breach. They had held their bulkhead and started to send squads out to take more of the station.

By the time Sevs team had made it to the station, half of the other squads had already gone about their given missions. Sevs and his squad's mission was to simply sweep through the outer corridors and radio back in any issues to the command. When the last person was off the ship, the pilot took off and retreated. Their ship was too expensive to risk, and they were not. If they were killed, they would just respawn, but the ship took a lot of effort to replace.

This meant that when it came for extraction, they had to hold the spot for a couple minutes while the ship docked. This made it harder, but they were also able to transmit any information they had out directly, so it kind of balanced out with succeeding the mission and surviving the mission.

***

A few minutes later, Sevs found himself charging through the halls with a squad on the heels of Doomslayer. They were already out of position, of course. Doomslayer wasn't exactly following the plan. He was more just charging for wherever he encountered resistance. Sevs had to respect his combat abilities; he really didn't need a squad to back him up as he just tore through any defenses. However, they were no longer in any position to let the command know what was going on.

They just kept getting deeper and deeper into the station. So skip the mirror on his radio though there wasn't much in the general chat. Most things were kept to squad-level communications or relayed directly to the command. Occasionally there will be a call out for a heavier group of Tarlaki, but with them out of position, they weren't really able to act on it. Sevs and his people didn’t have to do much, either. Mostly they just tried to watch their back and flanks and follow along. This is actually better than they had hoped for, though. Doomslayer seemed to have forgotten about them, and this was able to decide their own tactics and not get killed as they did in all the war games.

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Jason whispered over to Sevs. "Should we just leave him? I feel like we should get back into position."

Before Sevs could respond, Robert jumped in. "I say we just miss a few times and hit him in the back, then we can go back into position."

"No, Robert, we are not shooting him," Sevs replied. "I think they gave us an unimportant role for a reason. Not just because we aren't trusted or fully trained, but you can't believe Dan isn't aware of what Doomslayer would do. No, I think the best thing you can do is follow along and try to stay alive."

"What if it's a test? What if we're supposed to disobey orders and follow the plan?" Jason asked.

"That's not what they've been teaching us. If this is a test, it's more of a test of if we will follow what our direct superior says rather than mutiny at the slightest bit of creativity from him." Sevs really had no idea if he was right. He had never been in the military and honestly hadn't had much interest in it. So he wasn't sure how similar this whole situation was towards a military in history. However, it didn't seem to matter very much. They treated it as serious, where the stakes were higher in real lives and were in danger. He supposed that what Doomslayer was was going awol. But it didn't seem like that was the same here. So really, he wasn't sure. He wished that his charisma stat would help him try to figure out how the social dynamics were at play here, but it had only managed to do so much.

The rest of his squad seemed to accept his words, though. They continued following Doomslayer a bit behind him, trying to give him cover fire whenever they could. This went on for several more minutes. From the occasional chatter they heard over the radio, the rest of the raid seemed to be going as planned.

And then things went wrong. Very wrong, very quickly. The tarlaki were ambush predators. And you can tell by the way they fought. They came to you from the sides, waited for you to pass, and gave up slightly optimal firing positions to take the unexpected one. This was a tactic Sevs had never seen before. Their Sergeant was still charging ahead, making them jog to keep up, when he encountered some fire from both sides of the crossway.

Doomslayer slid down low and returned fire down to the right as he slid across the intersection, taking a few hits but nothing major. As he popped back up to his feet, ready to try to take out the people on the left side, he was surprised. Several enemies fell from the ceiling. They let go and suddenly flashed into view. Instead of trying to shoot him, they just landed with knives. As they fell, they drove points of knives into him. At least three came from above. One managed to slide it in the gap between the helmet and the neck brace. Two more just powered into the shoulders, knocking him flat. One punched from where he was hidden in the wall and slashed at Doomslayer's ankles.

Sevs and his people were shocked. They had seen Doomslayer fight for a while and never expected him to go down that easy. But there wasn't much to do with a severed spinal cord. He went limp; his body and equipment vanished a few seconds later. There were a couple seconds of hesitation from the shock of what they saw. Still, quickly they fired down the hallway, downing the few assailants that didn't even have ranged weapons. Next, they approached the intersection and started to work on taking down the ones on either side of it. Doomslayer had done a number on the ones on the right; there was a group of three over there, but only one was still standing.

Still, the squad of 10 that had attacked Doomslayer didn't go down easy, but they did go down. None of Sevs team took casualties or even injuries, but it did take them minutes to clean up.

Now without their Superior officer, Sevs radioed in for orders. "Private Sevs, sir, the sergeant is down."

Only a few seconds later, Dan's voice came over the coms. "Tell me your situation, Private."