It was nice to see Yuki again. She’d been working on the shuttles when the enemy invaded the ship, so she had been in the hangar from the very beginning. From what the others in the hangar told me, she’d been very resourceful in jury-rigging equipment to hold the enemy at bay as well.

“Yuki, why don’t you rest a bit. You were in the middle of your shift when the enemy attacked, right?” Yuki was already cutting up the gun trolleys they’d built to fend off the enemy with.

“I will, after this is done.” She then looked up at me, removed her welding goggles and squinted her eyes before she fell backwards out of surprise. I just managed to catch her welding torch before it fell on the floor. “Ah! Commander! I didn’t know it was you.”

I turned off the torch and smiled at her. Now that she had removed her goggles, I could see the bags beneath her eyes. “That was close.”

“S-sorry! B-but I’m glad you are safe! How are the others?”

“Likewise. The others are fine too.” I smiled again and put down the torch on the steel working table next to us. “I heard you did a great job here?”

“I have been working together with the Dokazuuk from the moment they arrived in the hangar. We’ve been welding things pretty much non-stop.” As she said that, a couple of Dokazuuk also started to dismantle some other trolleys to put back the components where they came from.

“How long have you been awake for?”

“Uh… I don’t know what time it is right now. But most people here have been up since it started…” I guess the same could be said about a lot of my marines as well… I could already see a couple of them who’d found a bench and had started to nod off while the others were keeping watch.

“Mhmm… why don’t you take their example and get a bit of rest too? It’ll definitely do you some good.”

“I don’t know, Commander, there’s still so much work to do.”

“Yuki…” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You can consider that to be an order.”

“Ah… alright, ma’am.”

“And you can consider that to be everyone’s order!” I raised my voice, loud enough to be heard, sadly also loud enough to wake up the couple of marines that had shut their eyes.

A light that started blinking in the top right corner of my interface told me that Ellie was broadcasting this message to everyone, except for over the ship’s intercom system. “The ship is mostly secure at this moment. The majority of enemy forces have been dealt with. For those of you that had their shifts prolonged by this incursion, I order you to take some rest. Rest assured that the rest of us will do what is necessary to remove the last traces of this vile incursion from our ship. So please, get some rest, for when the final enemy has been purged from this vehicle, we will pay the enemy back in kind. And I want everyone to be well-rested and ready for that.” With that I ended my message.

A lot of people looked relieved that their Commander had finally permitted them to get some rest. And those who had been restless and were still panicked by the recent events got a bit of confidence back as everything appeared to settle down.

“What do you want us to do, Commander?” Gunny asked. “Are we just going to sweep through the ship?”

“That’s the plan. Let’s start at the bottom of the ship and work ourselves up. We have plenty of people, so we can divide ourselves into four groups to make sure no one slips through the gaps.”

“I hope that you won’t be leading one of those. Not to be disrespectful, of course, your leadership is great… Uh… This is coming out wrong… but… ” The more Gunny tried, the worse it got.

I laughed at his fumbling words. “Gunny, don’t worry, I won’t. I got a bunch of people to interrogate anyway. So I’ll be taking just a couple of marines with me and some Dokazuuk to keep them guarded.”

“Alright.” Gunna smiled. “I’ll start forming the first group then.”

“Go ahead. I’ll lay out a general plan of action and send you on your way.” I patted him on the shoulder and sent him off to form his squad.

In the meantime, Yuki had already fallen asleep against the shuttle she’d been resting against. “Oh Goddess.” I looked around to find something that somewhat resembled a blanket. One of the Dokazuuk interpreted what I was looking for and handed me some soft liner that was used to insulate the shuttles. “Thanks a lot.” I smiled at our Dokazuuk friend, who just waved at me in return. -I don’t think I’ll ever regret helping those guys.-

As I had said to Gunny, I first laid out a general battle plan to my squad leaders so they could act freely within the set guidelines. With a green lit operation, they all went off to the different corners of the ship to go and squash out the last pieces of enemy resistance. I’d also made sure to send at least two combat engineers with every team so they could keep an eye out for those booby traps.

As for our interrogations, after I had taken off my armor, I claimed one of the hangar’s storage rooms. One that was relatively empty and held mainly scrap metal. It wasn’t a clean room, but for our purposes that wouldn’t be necessary. When I asked around for some Dokazuuk to join me, Jacky proposed to interrogate the prisoners as well. Since his people had been endangered by them, I thought it was more than fair to let him join in as well. And now that I think about it, this would be the first kind of diplomatic interaction with a third species while being, quote-unquote, allied. That is, if you don’t count blowing bugs to pieces to be a diplomatic interaction.

“Ellie, how are you doing on those translation algorithms?”

“Should be done within fifteen minutes, Commander.”

“Still?”

“It’s a lot easier when you don’t have to go through layers of encryption, Commander. These soldiers also haven’t proven to be very talkative, so setting up a baseline isn’t as easy as one would assume.”

“Okay, thanks for the sass, Ellie, I deserved that.”

“No problem, Commander.”

I made my guards pick up one of the enemy soldiers and let him be put in the room by himself. The manuals said that interrogation was a lot easier when you broke up groups, so now I was putting this to the test.

“Do you have experience with this, Commander Lauren?” Jacky asked as the soldier was guided in.

“Not really.” I shook my head. “We do have a lot of experience with war on my planet, but it wasn’t my task to do it back then.”

“You are more of a fighter.” Jacky stated.

I chuckled. “That’s exactly right. And what about you?”

Jacky shook his head as well. “Our species is… was… very peaceful. So there was no need.”

“And what about police forces?”

“Police?” He looked at me strangely.

“Uh, a force that fights against criminality… fights against people who steal and do violent things.”

“We did not have such a thing, Commander Lauren.” He shook his head once more.

“Damn, I suppose us humans have a lot to learn from you. But you do know about fighting?”

“Only recently, we’ve learned about this, yes…”

“Oh…” I decided to not dig any deeper than that.

“Translation programs have been completed, Commander.” Ellie notified me ten minutes later. “Translation systems have also been added to the Dokazuuk systems.

“Thank you, Ellie.” I replied and then looked at my fellow interrogator. “Are you ready, Jacky?”

“Yes. I am.” He then proceeded to walk into the room.

“Okay… I guess we’re just going for it then.” I walked in behind him.

The enemy soldier was sat down on his knees in the middle of the room. Once we entered, one of the guards came over to me. “Would you like a chair, ma’am?”

“I’ll just use that crate over there if I need one, thanks for the offer.” I nodded towards a steel storage crate that was shoved against one of the walls. “You three can leave us now.”

“Are you serious, Commander?” One of the other guards asked.

“Yeah, I am. Don’t you think I can’t handle him myself if he was stupid enough to try something?” I tapped my holster, which made my sidearm sway a little.

“But…”

“Really, guys, it’s going to be fine. If you don’t trust it, you can just stand by the door and keep it unlocked.”

“Yes ma’am.” The three marines saluted me and quickly got out of the room.

“So…” I walked up to the enemy soldier, but still kept my distance. “Let’s get this started, shall we?”

The enemy soldier looked up, startled, probably because of the fact that I was now speaking to him in his own language. “Surprise.” I smirked and crossed my arms.