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V2 Chapter 17: Homeward
🕑 Added 2023-01-31 21:59:09 +0000 UTCIdly Soshal started swapping through the different feeds on the screen, seeing if they could get a good view of the borders. A view from the outer hall filled the screen as attack ships similar to that of the Tarlaki landed at a few points on the hull of their new ship. Sevs winced as they cut holes into the side of the ship. Still, he understood why it was necessary.
The enemy will likely be waiting for them at the hangars. He also didn't have time to take the ship slowly; the longer they waited, the more of a chance that sabotage could be committed to the point where even safety measures might not have run into the ship from being destroyed entirely. Capturing the ship intact, even if non-functional, was the way to go. The important part was the data and the technology, not so much just having an extra ship.
They followed a few of the different groups through the ship as they cleared the way. Did his best to analyze the team's movements and was quite impressed by their efficiency. They moved with a practice that his team had a long way to go before they could match the familiarity of the movements. The way that they cleared Halls was not textbook per se but played to the composition of their team. With enough practice, you could see his team becoming like this.
Each team they watched had a diverse skill set. They were not as diverse as their team was, though. Sevs considered the niche skill sets that each one of them had picked up. He wasn't sure how much of that were their individual personalities playing to the extreme and how much of it was that they'd spend enough time working together that they naturally moved to feel each other's gaps.
If they were an adventuring team in one of the more standard worlds, they might have been a little bit lacking in melee or heavy fighters, but in this sci-fi space war with main guns, it didn't hinder them. It was a little unfortunate that Sevs's chosen skill set had quite lovely lean to close-quarters combat, but he wasn't too upset.
The skill list for the first time in what was probably months.
Skills: Leadership 40, Physical Fitness 28, Persuasion 20, Engineering 6, Marketing 8, Physical Combat 14, Programming 2, Public Speaking 14, Delegation 18, Recruiting 3, Promotion 1, Diplomacy 1, Hand to Hand Combat 4, FireArms 12, Team Tactics 6
He was amazed that he had already had a tier 3 skill, even if it wasn't something incredibly useful. And he felt if he continued on it, he could actually get to tier 4 skill pretty quickly. A grappling skill would be relatively useless, though.
But Sergeant Zim was right. Skills here we're not very important. The most useful skills he found were either primary weapon skills, which you only had one of and, with his stat allocation, wasn't going to likely ever be spectacular at. The other kind of useful skill was social skills. His leadership skill had taken huge jumps along with anything that allowed him to work together with others. His charisma was paying dividends.
He gets his team getting bored around him. He swapped a few of them out and joined them all, and watched the lifts, but it was pretty certain that they didn't have to worry about that. Judging most of the progress the boarding teams were making, it wouldn't be long before the ship was entirely in their hands. They did their best to not relax yet, but it was hard to stay alert after being on edge for so long. It had only been a half dozen hours since their ship had been destroyed, but it was hours of constant action, and they were all ready for a nap.
***
When Captain Walters walked into the room, only Sevs was still awake. Clearing of the ship had ended a little while ago, and he let his team take some cat naps in the chairs. Didn't take a little while to repair the lifts from the damage that Bexy's charge had apparently done. And he had deemed it calm enough to let them all rest for a bit.
Sevs greeted the man. After they exchanged salutes, Walters offered a hand to shake while waving Sevs to a chair. Plopping down next to him, the man started talking. "I damn well can't believe what you all did here. My teams have been reporting on the wreckage you left in your wake."
Sevs wasn't sure how best to respond to that, so he only nodded. Walters didn't seem to need his encouragement to continue on. "It's really something. How did you manage the destruction on the lowest level and wiping out all the elevator cars? Must have been brilliant."
"Well, Private Bexy over there," Sevs indicated where Bexy was leaning back with her eyes closed in one of the more comfortable chairs. "She's been messing around with explosives since we finished basic. After we got up here, we needed to take some attention off the doors as they knew we were in the shaft, so we…."
Sevs gave a quick run-through of his thought process and the plan. "Honestly, there wasn't any one part of this that was too difficult. At least not any more difficult than any other part of it."
Walters looked at him. "That might just be because you are all certifiably crazy. I don't think I know that many people who would try that. It looks like you have a full squad still. I can't even begin to explain how long the odds were from you all coming out of this in one piece."
"We can't have been the first to take a ship." Sevs didn't believe there was no one else who had done what they had. Sure, it wasn't easy, but he was pretty sure that he had done harder things many times.
"No, not the first to capture a ship. But the first with a single squad with minimal training. At least since I have been here. And I have been here a while." Walters responded. "The only time I have seen a ship taken was when it was isolated and outnumbered. Storming the ship took a lot of men, half of which had to respawn at least once in the battle."
"Well, we did hit a skeleton crew and moved fast. There was only a little resistance." Sevs hedged. He wasn't sure why he was downplaying it. He was damn proud of his team's achievement. "The system must have been having a nice day."
Leaning back in his chair, Walters laughed. "A good day… Yeah maybe. Well, we are going to call a few engineers over. And I imagine the admirals will want to talk to you too."
"What's going to happen with the ship?"
"Well, we will see what information we can extract from it, then try and retrofit it. If the Navy can use it, then they will. Otherwise, we will auction it off. There are some privately owned ships but not too many around here." Walters said. "Between you and me, it's too bad you are still signed up. If you were a private squad, you would get a pretty penny for selling this off to us."
Sevs shrugged. It wasn't something he was too concerned about. Being a rich player in a game was overrated in many worlds. It really came down to how you wanted to play the game. "Eh, what's to say we can't just do it again?"
Walters clapped him on the shoulder. "I like that attitude. We'll see if we can't at least get you a promotion for all of this."
Standing up, Walters clapped his hands, waking up the Sevs's squad. "Y'all, come on, let's get you back to our ship, and we'll send you back with the report."
They all filled over to the working lift and made their way to the hangers. On the way, they saw the clean-up that the boarding parties had done. If Walters said they had left a trail of destruction, it didn't hold a candle to the genocide that was below.
Walters caught them looking. "The space elves aren't known for their tendency to surrender. They always fight to the last."
It was only a short ride in the shuttle back to the ship that was heading back to report to the command.
