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.”

Charles let the NCOs lead the advance while he fell back, thinking hard.  What did they actually know about the aliens?  They seemed to breathe the same atmosphere as humans, but they liked it hot and moist ... indeed, when the alien captives had been shown how to alter the temperature in their cell, they’d cranked it up as far as it would go.  Could they cool down the ship, making the aliens sluggish?  But how could they do that without cracking open the hull and releasing the atmosphere?  What about gas ...?

But they had no idea what gases designed to stun or kill humans would do to the aliens.

His HUD bleeped again as the final outline of the alien ship lay in front of him.  The analysts were adding their notes to the combat datanet, pointing out how similar – in many ways – the alien ship was to human starships.  Charles dismissed their work angrily, cursing the distraction under his breath, then issued orders to his Marines.  The alien engineering compartment lay dead ahead of them.

“They’re fighting like mad bastards to hold the bridge, sir,” Captain Jackson called.  “We may need to use grenades.”

Charles winced.  A human bridge had all of its vital components armoured under the deck, allowing attackers to lay waste to the command consoles without doing any real damage.  But what if that wasn't true for the alien ship?  They could smash up the bridge, only to discover that they’d accidentally crippled the whole ship.  And yet ... the longer they waited, the greater the chance the aliens would succeed in blowing up the ship.  Right now, Charles knew that he would be preparing the self-destruct.  Their position was hopeless.  All that remained was to take as many of the humans with them as they could.

“Do it,” he ordered.  He hesitated, then added an additional order.  “Use gas first, see what it does.  Then use HE if there’s no other alternative.”

“Understood, sir,” Jackson said.