Tschuho-!manxu dropped down to lower levels, swinging one-armed from a gleaming pipe. He fell very far, but as he neared the lower floor, he curled into a tight ball, and his armor seemed to slicken and form around him as he bounced and rolled to a crouching position in landing. The other Szchra soldiers followed shortly in a similarly-acrobatic manner. Several passageways spread outward from this point- one of these would lead downwards to the lower floor where the fugitive creatures had escaped too.
"We will form separate swarms." He indicated separate members of groups with his two center fingers, and counting off: "!un, hrunkh, tschekht."
The seperate groups split apart.
Group !un, led by Tschuho-!manxu plunged off expeditiously, with Group Hrunkh departing soon after. But Group Tschekht remained behind.
!ta-!ta was the leader of Group Tschekht, and unbeknownst to the other members of the battle-swarm, was not a Szchra, but a Pikhft. Perhaps the destinction is overly fine in human terms, but suffice to say, the Pikhft and the Szchra did not have precisely the same culture, and in the Szchra fleet, this was cause for extermination. Group cultural evolution, especially when limited to the size of a large fleet of starships, frequently is hostile to opposing cultures. The Pikhft had lived for centuries among the Szchra fleet, dwelling in secret, speaking their similar-yet-different language in secret, living in seclusion that Szchra found curious. So adept had they become that there was no longer but a hint of their presence, a hint easily overlooked by the Szchra.
!ta-!ta, who was also known by his Szchra name, Khfiva-Khfiva-Iszchuxum, turned to his warriors.
"We go not this way. I do not smell the dogs on the air." He mimicked the olfactory sense by twitching the muscular folds around the glands on the bottom of his jaw.
One of his warriors looked up, dared to speak, for "Khfiva-Khfiva-Iszchuxum" was known to be sometimes lenient of control and fvasz!onkh, which is a difficult Szchra concept that might translate something like: "honorable fist return", but which we might understand as "having absolute authority, absolute honor, absolute relentlessness, and absolute skill".
The warrior said: "This one does not agree, Honorable-Phrase-Stating One. This one believes that the Masterful-Fvasz!onkh-Ruling-Spirit One," that is to say, Tschuho-!manxu, "is correct in deduction- the demon-beings lie in the Direction of the Cogitative-Mastering-Aura."
!ta-!ta gave the equivalent of a sigh, a sort of low coughing noise. These Szchra and their endless reverent titles and endless honor-names.
!ta-!ta said: "We go."
Tersely, he turned, and stalked in the direction of what his master had told him, the chamber identified as the Masterful-Deep-Thinking-Entity-Capacitation, but what we might call the AI chamber.