Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

The Intrepid blasted its way through the surrounding Zatis Consortium ships.

Fortunately, they had been distracted by the arrival of reinforcements from the Alliance Police and several powerful mercenary groups.

It also helped that none of them were willing to suffer what would amount to a catastrophic collision.

Avery had given the order to fly full speed ahead and to not stop for anything. He was counting on the survival instincts of the captains of the Consortium vessels. Obviously, none of them were so zealous as to throw themselves in front of a ship the size of the Intrepid.

It they wanted to live, which they did, the captains made sure to get their vessels out of the way.

Of course, Avery's tactics did not stop them from shotting at the Intrepid.

Lasers and multicannons rounds impacted against their weakening shields and the remaining capacity drained at an alarming rate.

Avery's crew did their best to fire back, but they had ships blasting them from all sides.

Truthfully, if it were not for Avery's efforts using his psionic abilities, they likely would have been destroyed.

He made sure to disable every missile and torpedo that he could, keeping his carrier ship from being hit by any high yield explosives.

It was exhausting work, but it paid off.

Soon they had gotten close enough for the Alliance Police and Mercenary fleet to provide cover fire.

"Our shields are down! Armor's holding for now!" The bridge officer in charge of the Intrepid's defense yelled.

Some especially powerful lasers hit the ship just a moment later and the entire thing started shaking.

Damage reports were coming in by the droves, but Avery ignored them for now.

His focus was on getting them through this. Everything else would have to wait until they were safe.

The next couple of minutes were very tense, as Avery and his crew fought for every kilometer of space, until members of Cerise's fleet punched through the Zatis Consortium's formation and took up positions to protect the Intrepid by blocking incoming attacks with their own ships.

They were not quite out of danger yet, but they had escaped the worst of it.

'I'm glad that I paid for the high-quality armor and increased structural integrity support structures. Otherwise, we really might now have made it through that.' Avery thought, letting himself resale just a bit of tension and lean back into his chair.

Regrettably, he already knew that they had not escaped without incurring some casualties.

Fourteen of the company's smaller ships had been destroyed in the battle before their reinforcements had arrived, and several others had been killed once their shields had gone down.

Still, for every one of their losses, Avery's team had hit back a hundred times as hard.

Despite having been vastly outnumbered and surrounded, the Zatis Consortium vessels had not been ready for just how powerful the Intrepid was.

They had managed to take out twenty-seven enemy craft during their final stand and then subsequent escape to join their allies.

Half of those had been corvettes whose captains had not been cautious enough and gotten too close to the Intrepid, but the others were a mix of frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers.

And those were just the ones that they had fully destroyed. There were plenty of other Zatis Consortium ships that had suffered heavy damage from the Intrepid's bombardment.

With their Alliance Police escorts, the Intrepid was drawn deeper into the allied fleet where they would be safest against enemy attacks.

However, the admiral in charge of the Zatis Consortium forces was not about to let them get away so easily.

The man recognized a soft target when he saw one, and for all the trouble that the Asteria Mercenary company had given them, they could not be allowed to survive.

Leading with his own flagship, the admiral bullied his way through to line up a shot on the Intrepid with his vessel's main cannons.

He had the biggest and strongest ship in the entire battle, and nothing was able to stop him from doing what he wanted to. Though, it did open the ship up to attacks from the Alliance Police and mercenaries.

Still, a vessel of that size did not go down quickly, and it soaked up the blasts aimed at it.

'F*ckign vindictive bastards just don't know when to quit!'

Alarms rang through the bridge as the Intrepid's sensors warned them of the weapons targeting them.

Avery did not need to look at the damage projections to know that they did not want to take this hit.

If it did not fully destroy the Intrepid, then it certainly would cause massive damage and cost a lot of lives.

He did not know if he could pull it off, but he prepared to intercept the ultra-heavy laser cannon blasts with psionic powers.

It was a desperate maneuver at best, but there was nothing else he could think to do.

The Intrepid was already tapped. Every defensive measure the vessel had at its disposal had already been used.

Yet, Avery never needed to act.

At the last moment before the enemy flagship fired, a craft close to the same size as the Intrepid flew in front of it and took the hits for them.

Surprisingly, it was not one of the Alliance Police vessels but the lead ship of the Kaizer Mercenary Fleet.

It was still fresh, so its shields held, but anyone could tell that they had just taken a big hit.

The enemy admiral clearly was not happy about this and likely held at least some form of grudge against the Kaizer Mercenaries.

They had been a nuisance for the Zatis Consortium for centuries, and their flagship still remained the experimental vessel the first leader of the Kaizer Mercenaries had stollen from the Zatis Consortium hundreds of years ago.

Obviously, it had been upgraded many times since then, but its frame and general shape still remained the same.

No doubt it served as a constant reminding of the Consortium's past failures and defeats.

To that end, the enemy's flagship focused its fire on the Kaizer Vessel.

It was not only blocking any attacks against the Intrepid but also served as a more enticing target.

The admiral would almost certainly receive acclaim and a promotion for destroying such a stain on his nation's history.

Of course, the flagship of the largest and possibly strongest mercenary group operating in the Dramid Alliance was not going to go down easily.

The Kaizer Fleet's flagship held up well and fired back.

Along with all of the other vessels targeting it, the enemy soon realized that they had overstayed their welcome and were in trouble.

Probably begrudgingly, the enemy admiral ordered his craft to return to the main defensive line the armada he was in charge of had established.

This was a battle on a massive scale totaling more than a thousand warships.

The outcome would not be decided by just a couple of mercenary vessels, but if the Zatis Consortium lost their strongest ship and their leader, it would crush morale and throw the command structure into disarray.

Avery almost wanted to give the order to pursue and use what might have been the Intrepid's most powerful weapon.

It took up far too much energy to be used in a protracted battle so it had not been deployed yet, but a direct hit would undoubtably cause major damage to the retreating enemy flagship.

'No, it will put us at risk. Right now, we need to head to the back of the fleet and start recycling our shields and begin emergency repairs. This battle is not going to be a quick one, and I'm sure that our side will need all of the firepower they can get.'

Avery relayed his orders to the crew and then connected Cerise with her trusted adjutants.

Currently an android was filling in for her, but now that she was back, she could return to her post.

Though, the switch needed to be done without anyone not already in the loop finding out. Cerise knew that she would be in for a reprimand if it got out to the wrong people that she and a few hundred of her most trusted and loyal subordinates had joined Avery in assaulting the Odium Syndicate's main base deep within Zatis Consortium space.

"We'll have one of my fleet's ship's dock with the intrepid under the guise of providing aid through supplies and repair crews. I'll slip onboard when the repair crews return and then hop from vessel to vessel until I reach my command ship. Before I go though, I want to thank you for everything you've done, and for accommodating the men and women under me for a bit longer." Cerise said.

She might have been able to take the place of the android filling in for her, but the rest of troops she had brought with her were officially on extended leave. There was no way that they could return to duty without raising some eyebrows.

Fortunately, Cerise's plan did help the Intrepid to get back into working order again, and once the most pressing repairs to damage systems had been taken care of and the shields were recharged and back to full strength, Avery gave the order to rejoin the battle.

They might have barely gotten away the first time, but he was not going to allow something like that to stop his team from participating.

Luckily, more members of the crew were out for blood than afraid of being killed by the enemy.

Avery noticed an infectious zeal behind his people that was even greater than when they were fighting for their survival. They wanted to pay the Zatis Consortium back for what they had just been put through.

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