Inside, the atmosphere was misty. Visibility was poor, something that puzzled him. Surely the aliens would have wanted to see clearly onboard a starship? But he recalled the sheer size of their eyes — and the speculation that they normally lived in water — and guessed that the aliens probably had far better eyesight than humans. Besides, their helmet sensors could peer through the muck, although the IR sensors kept sounding false alarms. The environment was hot enough to confuse them.
He took a glance at the updating map, then issued orders. One team would advance towards where they thought the alien bridge was, another would head down to engineering. The remaining Marines would expand through the ship, capturing or killing any aliens they encountered. Charles had given serious thought to declining to take prisoners at all, but he’d eventually dismissed that thought. No matter the dangers, he wasn't about to start committing atrocities against an alien race. Particularly, as he’d pointed out to his subordinates, one that might still win the war.
The interior of the alien ship looked faintly distorted, oddly disconcerting to the eye. Some of the passageways seemed normal, as if they could easily have been found on a human ship, others were oddly proportioned. It took him a long moment to realise that the aliens didn't seem to have designed their interior to resemble something on the ground, with a definite floor and ceiling. Indeed, were it not for the gravity field holding them down, he would have thought the aliens didn't bother to maintain an artificial gravity field at all. He puzzled over it for a long moment, then realised that the aliens were born in water. They would have an instinctive understanding of zero-gravity environments that only asteroid-born humans would be able to match.
“Curious wall decorations,” Sergeant Patterson noted. He sounded faintly jumpy, clearly worried about what might spring up ahead of them. “Do you think they can see at all?”
Charles followed his gaze. The aliens had decorated their passageways with artworks, but there was no recognisable pattern at all. It looked as though a child had taken a paint box and splashed its contents randomly over the bulkheads. Charles suspected his five-year-old nephew could have done a better job, then he touched the bulkhead and realised that the texture changed from colour to colour. Could the aliens be colour-blind? It might explain their choice of artwork… and, for that matter, the apparent shifts in their own skin colours.
Or maybe they just have a different set of aesthetics, he told himself. If humans can’t agree on what makes a good painting and what doesn't, why should they?
The explosion caught them by surprise, despite the drones. An entire bulkhead blasted out at them, forcing the Marines to duck and dive for cover, despite their armour. Behind it, a squad of aliens lunged forward, firing plasma bolts towards the human intruders. The Marines returned fire, blasting the aliens to the ground. Their tactics made no sense, Charles noted absently, part of his mind analysing the brief engagement. Or perhaps they did make sense, he realised, as the second group of aliens appeared. This group seemed far more professional, sniping at the humans from cover rather than merely charging at the intruders and being gunned down.
There was no time to pick out an alternate path through the rabbit warren. Instead, Charles barked orders, commanding his men to launch grenades into the alien position. The deck shook violently as the grenades detonated, followed rapidly by a sudden reduction in enemy fire. A small group of Marines ran forward, crouching low, and finished off the remaining aliens before they could escape or recover from the blasts. But a second set of aliens had taken up position behind the first…
Charles sighed, resigning himself to heavy fighting. The HUD kept updating rapidly, showing more and more concentrations of alien crewmen. It was impossible to tell which of them were trained soldiers — alien Marines, he guessed — and which ones were merely crewmen who barely knew which end of a weapon to point at the enemy. The Royal Navy was often careless about ensuring that its starship crewmen kept up with their personal weapons; he couldn't help feeling a flicker of amusement at the thought of the aliens hadn't the same problem. Making a mental note to suggest to the Captain that weapons practice should be made mandatory — the aliens might be the next ones to board a crippled starship — he barked orders, leading his Marines further and further into the alien ship.
His HUD bleeped as it signalled an alert. Charles puzzled over the sudden detection of poison gas, then realised that one of their shots — or an alien plasma burst — had burned into a coolant conduit. The Marines ignored it, even though the aliens retreated hastily. Most of them had no armour. Charles briefly rethought his decision not to blow the ship’s integrity and release its atmosphere, allowing the aliens to suffocate, then reminded himself that all the arguments against it were still valid. But the aliens weren't even trying to surrender…
Get real, he told himself, as he snapped off a burst at an alien soldier. The alien tactics seemed haphazard, even random… but with their weapons, they made a great deal of sense. They didn't have to worry about reloading their weapons, so why not spray at random like a primitive machine gun? The worst that could happen was that they forced the advancing enemy to keep their heads down. We don’t even know how to ask them to surrender.
The thought nagged at him as he saw his target fall to the deck and lie still. If they’d been facing humans, they would have been shouting demands for surrender in every language they thought their opponents faced. Not that it would have been enough, for some humans; insurgents and terrorists knew what to expect if they fell into military hands. They rarely surrendered — and, unless there were hostages or human shields, they were rarely given a chance to fight back. But the aliens… how could they tell them to put their hands up when they couldn’t speak to them?
We have to fix this problem, he thought. Another series of explosions shook the deck as the Marines blasted their way through an alien strongpoint. It looked as though the aliens were organising their defence on the fly, which was fortunate. Given time, they could have stalled the Marines long enough to blow the ship. Somehow, we have to get them to surrender.
“I’ve found a tube, sir,” one of the Marines called. “That’s how they’re evading us.”
“Snaky little bastards,” another Marine observed. “We couldn't fit in that tube.”
“Not unless we start recruiting children,” Charles agreed, as he saw the alien tube. It looked like a Jefferies Tube from a human starship, but it was alarmingly thin, too thin for the Marines to use even without armour. The tubes on Ark Royal were wide enough for human adults to use; the alien tubes were simply too thin. But, given their biology, it probably wouldn't be a problem for the aliens. “Send drones up it, then seal the hatch and hope they can't break out again.”
He scowled. It was easy enough to imagine the aliens using the tubes to sneak past human strongpoints and take them in the rear. Hell, humans planned to do the same thing if their ships were boarded. But these tubes couldn't be sealed so easily, nor could the aliens be flushed out. They’d have to start cutting through the bulkheads just to get at the aliens hiding within the tubes, doing untold damage to the alien command and control system. Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem. But now, when they needed the alien ship largely intact…
“Keep moving,” he ordered. Somehow, they had to take the fight out of the aliens, but how? “Don't give them a moment to relax.”