A Shrell had emerged from within the barrier and was berating a B-3000 as John blipped the team over to intercede.

“You are in the architecture! This is not acceptable and you must leave now!” the Shrell was screeching. “Savages cannot be allowed to access the wider internal workings of the vessel!”

“Easy mate!” The B-3000 had both hands raised to placate the irate little squid creature. “We’ve been deployed here to help take back the ship! We can’t do that if we can’t breathe!”

“Nonsense!” scoffed the Shrell. “You have your suits. Get out of the architecture!”

“Our abilities work best if we have a functional environment to work in,” said Flash.

“Be silent, savage! I am talking to your commander!” snapped the Shrell.

Name: Kedur

Level: 29

Ability: System Administrator

Like all the Shrell this one had an ability that made them sound like an engineer or a tech worker. John sighed within his armoured helm. This was a member of the crew and hostile actions against it would probably be frowned upon by the system.

“Let’s drop the ‘savage’ stuff. If you were able to deal with these mutineers we wouldn’t be here. Just hide in the engineering section and let us do our job, Squidward,” said Evie, stepping forward to tower over the four foot tall creature. It barely reached her waist.

“Animals! Perhaps it’s better to send animals to deal with animals,” muttered Kedur. “I must insist you leave the architecture! How sava- uh newly integrated species could even access them is beyond me! This will all be in my report!” It farted in a way that the team understood to mean frustration based on their time with the Shrell on Kipragtsek. The difference between this Shrell and the ones they’d met on the Kipragtsek was stark.

“What’s up with you, ye wee boggit?” demanded Reg, stepping forward and gently pushing Evie to one side. He crouched down and cleared the visor of his helmet so it could see his face. He tried to smile reassuringly but to a human it would have looked like a man trying to fart without following through. “Your lot aren’t usually this twattish.”

The Shrell bristled, multiple limbs flicking back and forth, and emitted a series of bubbling noises.

“You have to retake the ship. Everything depends on retaking the ship. Do what you need to, but your intrusions into the ship systems will be logged,” it blurbled before undulating quickly back through the barrier shielding the engine room.

“Charming little bastard!” said Flash as he stepped forward and poked at the barrier. It repelled his hand, his fist bouncing backwards. “I got a system warning not to test the barrier again!”

“The Shrell are terrible warriors. That is why we’ve been deployed?” asked Felix.

“Deployed. Despite their higher levels they are unable to maintain control,” Felicity finished.

“I’m breaking into the monitoring systems. I’ll have all the logs and videos of what happened soon. We need to go secure the Captain, then either kill or collar the escapees,” said a Bob-bot.

“We’re going to collar them, right? They’re stupidly weak, it would be like murdering children!” barked Sam angrily.

“If they’ll let us,” muttered Vic. “How are the ones we’ve captured so far?”

“Submissive. They don’t have the translation thing the Shrell seem to have so I’ve no idea what they’re saying but they’ve accepted food and water and haven’t tried anything with the bots guarding them,” said Bob.

“So we’re going non lethal, except in personal defence, from here on out? There’s no bloody Essence to be had anyway.” Evie complained.

“John, does Identify work through the walls with your funky new eyes?” asked Raoul. John’s scowl was hidden by his helmet.

“No. I’ll have to go see. Be right back,” he said softly.

He appeared to the rear of the ongoing melee outside the bridge. Shrell were fighting hard and failing miserably against much weaker enemies. The little squid things could hold their own physically against the much lower levelled enemies. The tentacle monsters, Yovgrips, according to Identify, were all less than level twenty and were still going toe to toe with the ship’s crew. The Grelps were metallic looking humanoids with four arms whose levels were in the twenties who for some reason died almost immediately as soon as a Shrell waved a tentacle at them.

The battle made no sense to John and he stood dumbstruck as creatures that should have just died in the face of the higher levelled crew held on while at the same time others who should have put up more of a fight were just demolished. He blipped in the rest of the team just as the Shrell holding the entrance to the bridge noticed him. His power armour caused the Shrell to turn a paler shade of grey and recoil once its black eyes locked on the titanic form looming behind the fray.

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The Shrell backed away and the low levelled assailants bounced off the barrier and began flailing at it. The rest of the Carnival swarmed forwards and began collaring the rebels. The mutineers' attacks were largely ignored. The members of the team in armour simply brushed them aside whereas anything that raised a limb at the twins was bound to the wall in black and gold beams of light.

“What the fuck are we even doing here?” demanded Evie as she moved to collar the creatures pinned to the walls by the twins. “Let ‘em go, guys,” she called over her shoulder to the pair. The black and gold bands vanished as the insectile legs of the collars closed around the back of the creature's necks.

“I’ll escort our new friends back to the holding area,” said a drone as B-3000s marched forward and began hauling away their captives. “This is looking messy, guys. The logs are showing it was the humans that led the revolt. Ah shit. Look, the Shrells are a bunch of pussies. They freaked out, turned off the life support and then all the other fucking aliens went on a rampage. The reason we’ve only had to deal with a few hundred rebels is that they killed thousands when they switched off the air.”

“Shit. So this lot weren’t even rebels, they just wanted the heat and the air turned back on?” asked Flash.

“Pretty much. No wonder the squid bastards didn’t want me in the ‘architecture’. They freaked out when the humans turned traitor and essentially opted to liquidate everyone else to try to kill them. Our lot weren’t bothered by the lack of oxygen for some reason, it must have been an ability rather than tech as none of them have any kind of rebreather or face coverings,” Bob said glumly.

“We’ve been sent to kill our own kind because the crew shat the bed and tried to murder fecking everyone?” asked Reg in disbelief.

“If that’s the situation then we need to deal with it. We’re here to level up so we can protect humanity. Why can’t anything ever be simple?” aside John rhetorically.

“Why send us if it’s easy?” Vic replied. “So how do we deal with this? Bob, can you see what’s going on inside this barrier? Will it let us pass?”

“We can pass, I think. We’re coded differently to anything that was on the ship before we arrived. It wouldn’t let us into the engine rooms as there weren't any threats in those areas but the ship's systems are aware of the presence of ‘interlopers’ on the bridge. It’s not much of a threat. Half the humans are dead and the others are being whipped by the captain.”

“We need to help them!” said Flash. Sam shrugged.

“What can we do?” she asked. “We’re their executioners,” she finished bitterly.

“The system has sent us to bring order. If we can remove the threat we can honestly say we have achieved our goal,” said Felix.

“Goal. If we remove them from the ship our job is done. Death is not necessary for that to happen,” added Felicity.

After a brief conversation via teamchat the Carnival moved carefully through the barrier. Bob said it was clear and they wouldn’t be attacked but none of them felt terribly confident in the ship and its crew's ability to tell friend from foe.

Sam clones went first, followed by a handful of B-3000s. John was getting increasingly concerned about how many drones were now being used to hold prisoners. Prisoners they had only had to capture because the Shrell had panicked and tried to suffocate the entire ship.

As the rest of the team moved through they were taken aback by the scale of the bridge but their instincts honed over years of combat covered for the reaction. The Captain was twice the size of the regular crew but it seemed even larger when it was balanced up high on its ambulatory tentacles. It held two humans, both women, around the throat in a pair of limbs and was waving them around like ragdolls. Their armour, closer to classical mediaeval equipment than anything the Carnival would consider armour, creaked and began to crack along the joins across their throats. John blipped them down to the ground where they were quickly collared by Flash and pushed to the rear of the room under guard by a pair of B-3000s.

“What the fuck!” snarled a man wearing what at first glance appeared to be some kind of caveman costume. He swung a club at a tentacle that swept towards him then leapt to defend his team mates. Unfortunately this brought him within arms reach of the twins. He was immediately plucked from the air and slammed into the ground by arcs of black and gold.

“Gotcha mate. Just calm the fuck down and let us sort this out,” hissed Evie as she snapped a collar around his throat. He squirmed, somehow freeing a hand that clenched at the nightmare wrapped around his neck.

“Fuck… You…” he hissed. John blipped him back to the holding area next to Doris.

The other two survivors raised their hands, clearing having been sensible enough to use Identify before committing to fight the humans.

“We just didn’t want to kill anymore!” sobbed one as she fell to her knees. “They wanted us to exterminate a town!”

“Easy now. We’ll sort this out,” said Vic gently. She glanced up and despite the helmet sealing her face away John read her look correctly. He blipped the woman and the man back to the holding area where B-3000s took charge and began talking them down.

“Excellent. Execute the other savages and I will mark your mission complete,” burbled the Captain.

“What fecking savages?” muttered Reg.

“We have quashed the mutiny.” John tilted his head to the nearest B-3000 that nodded slightly. “All hostiles are dead or contained. Our mission is complete.”

“They broke the rules! I insist they are killed!” the Captain writhed around and drew itself up to loom over them. The blinking lights and smooth chrome surfaces behind it gave it the appearance of a terror in the dark. Grey skin caught the light as tentacles flashed back and forth but its face was cast in shadows, with it’s eyes forming two dark, uncaring pits.

“Why’d you turn the air off?” asked Evie as she moved slowly around the room, poking at the machinery. Her armour was carefully sampling all the surfaces and the data was being fed back to Bob.

“Standard protocol. If savage species rebel the ship is to be purged, all lives are forfeit bar surviving crew members.”

John used Identify. Huh. Level sixty. Not as bad as he’d been expecting. He briefly considered their odds against this Captain. The Shrell were shit fighters so he wasn’t as intimidated as he might have been.

As though reading his thoughts Sam stepped forwards and a dozen clones poured out to move around the room, encircling the enraged Shrell. It twitched and eyed them as they surrounded it but other than a slight narrowing of its eyes and a very faint farting noise it made no move.

“Our orders said to put down the rebellion and restore order. We’ve pretty much done that,” said Bob. “It also said all the Shrell were dead and we were to consider anything moving on the Hagrutship to be hostile.”

The squid recoiled and its flesh became a paler shade of grey. It began to burble and fart, rocking back and forth on suddenly limp limbs.

“I have been cast out. Kill me now, savages.”