Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary-Chapter 439 Working a Little Too Well

"I wasn’t expecting anything since the route we’re taking is supposed to be fairly safe, but I guess that our bait is too tempting for them."

Pirates had begun swarming Avery’s carrier ship while they were on route from the Kalvis System where Storren Corp.’s shipyards were located to the Granvard System where the majority of Avery’s new crew was gathering.

He had wanted to test out its capabilities, so all of the weapons were currently hidden and a very sophisticated piece of technology was transmitting false cargo data whenever the craft was scanned.

Any vessels with really good sensors would be able to tell that the information was false, but most pirates were not going to have such high-level equipment.

"There’s seventy-one of them. Most of their ships are small and fast, with only a handful of medium vessels equipped with missile pods." Jasmine said, relaying the detailed information the carrier’s sensors had picked up.

Among the priates approaching them, most of them had pretty high bounties. With a couple even exceeding twenty thousand Krenin.

Judging from the past reports downloaded from the Mercenary Association and what information their Carrier ship’s sensors had picked up, this group was rather competent and dangerous.

Basically, all of their systems were a few tiers higher than the average pirates, and this gang seemed to specialize in shakedowns rather than simple killing, pillaging, and kidnapping that a lot of priates favored.

"We just received a request from them. They’re asking that we drop seventy percent of our cargo and that they’ll let us go if we do."

Just as Avery was reading the information about these priates, Kasandra informed him that they had sent over their demands.

It was a bit surprising that they did not just ask for complete surrender considering that from their perspective, Avery’s carrier must have just appeared to be a more armored but otherwise completely average Ontembaar model cargo ship from Storren Corp. One without a single guard ship to protect them as well.

’No, I suppose that they’ve managed to survive in this area and become so notorious because they operate like this. This is a fairly active route with plenty of Alliance Police patrols. The longer that they take, the more risk of someone else coming by and stopping them.’

Unfortunately, these priates had decided to mess with the wrong opponent today.

What they might have thought was one of the easiest marks of their lifetime was about to turn into a nightmare scenario.

Avery gave orders to lock on to each of the pirates and prepare to fire.

When he was piloting the Dauntless, he would have needed to take the enemies on one or two at a time, but with how many high-powered weapons his carrier ship had, it could target seventy-one pirates without any difficulties.

While these pirates had not opened up wideband communication to try and jeer at and frighten their marks, the frequency that they were using was easy enough to tap into, so Avery and the bridge crew were able to here what they were saying as what they thought was a cargo vessel revealed that it was actually a full-blown warship.

"What the hell?!"

"Where did all of those turrets spring up from!"

"Shawareith! Didn’t you assure us that this was an unarmed cargo ship!"

"It’s not my fault! That’s what the scan came back with!"

"We need to get the f*ck out of here!"

There was both panic and blame flying among the pirates as they all hastily began scattering and trying to retreat once Avery’s carrier vessel had bared its teeth.

Before they could get away though, Avery gave the word to fire.

Over a hundred streaks of light burst from the ship’s turrets as it fired a full volley of laser cannons and pulse lasers.

Over two-thirds of the pirates were wiped out by this first attack. Having exploded in a dazzling display that almost resembled a fireworks show.

Another round of blasts reduced all but the three most skilled pirates to space debris. Leaving the once formidable gang on its last legs.

"They’re preparing to jump to light speed." Kasandra said, having been monitoring the situation from her console.

"Well, that won’t work against us. Activate one our secret weapons."

Avery could not help but grin as he watched what looked like a giant cannon rise up from the outer section of the ship in front of the bridge.

At his command, the cannon roared to life and fired a wide range light blue beam of a truly enormous area.

Obviously, with how spread out the beam was, it lacked the necessary energy to cause any damage even to a smaller vessel that did not have any shields.

However, what Avery had called one of his carrier ship’s "secret weapons", was not actually a weapon at all.

"What’s going on?! Why can’t I go to light speed?!"

"It just keeps giving me the same error message! What do you mean ’field won’t generate’?!"

"Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t!"

The three remaining pirates began to panic as their plan to escape by using jumping to light speed utterly failed.

"Vi’ivando really outdid himself with this one. First that hydra siphon equipped on Olivia’s corvette, and now this field disruption projector. He really does come up with the most interesting devices." Avery said, very satisfied by the performance of the piece of equipment that Vi’ivando had designed.

He had wanted a means to stop pirates from escaping through either light speed or hyperspace and asked Vi’ivando if he had any ideas beyond what was already out on the market.

There were interdictors that created gravity wells that could stop vessels from going to light speed or hyperspace, and higher-end ones could even forcibly pull ships back into normal space.

And while Avery had considered this as an option, any interdictor that would have fit with his desires would have taken up far too much space and meant that other systems would have had to be shrunk or cut entirely.

Thankfully, Vi’ivando had come through with a solution.

While it still required a fairly sizable apparatus to be used, the field disruption projector he had come up with worked like a charm.

There was a lot that went into it that Avery did not fully understand, but it essentially fired supercharged particles that created a far-reaching beam that prevented the formation of the fields generated by light speed and hyperspace drives necessary for traveling at speeds beyond the limits of thrusters.

Without any hope of escaping at light speed, the three remaining priates scattered in different directions in hopes that at least one of them might get away.

Sadly for them, Avery was not going to just let them go when they had decent bounties on their heads.

A constant barrage of lasers cut off any retreat, and the pirates’ skills and ships proved to not be nearly enough to keep them alive.

After the first one was hit by a shot from a heavy laser canon, the other two were soon to follow.

"How are our spoils looking?"

"Not particularly great. The carrier’s weapons are plenty powerful. We reduced most of the priates’ vessels to scrap. There’s not much to salvage." Jasmine replied.

Avery merely shrugged at this. He had somewhat expected it.

They were using heavy military-grade weaponry. It was only natural that small and medium pirate ships were practically entirely annihilated when hit.

Still, there were a few objects worth collecting, and viewing it as another test, Avery instructed the crew to dispatch the recover drones and bring anything of valuable into the cargo holds.

’We made almost one million two hundred thousand Krenin just off of bounties alone. That’s not bad for a group of pirates we ran into when we weren’t even actively hunting them. Once we start going after larger bases, it should be easy enough to recoup my investments in the carrier ship.’

Right now, Avery was dangerously low on funds and just paying salaries and buying supplies was draining what money he had left at an alarming rate.

He did have the highly lucrative job that Cerise had offered him coming up at some point in the future, but that would still be several months away at the earliest.

In the meantime, as soon as he picked up the reaming crew members for his carrier ship, Avery planned on getting right back into work and shoring up his dwindling bank account

Except, before they could even leave the system they were currently in, another group of pirates tried to attack them when they had reached the next hyperlane entrance they would be taking.

This band was larger, but honestly weaker than the previous one.

They all went down within just two full volleys of lasers, and despite there being over a hundred of them, the total bounty amount barely got above seven hundred thousand.

When they exited hyperspace for another transfer in the next system over more priates attacked them again.

There was not supposed to be too much pirate activity in this sector, but it seemed that the few groups that did operate in the area were drawn to Avery’s carrier ship loke moths to a flame.

The allure of an undefended cargo ship filled with valuable loot was just too much for most pirates to resist. But perhaps that they should have realized that it was too good to be true.

Even a rank armature merchant would not go around with a full cargo hold unprotected.

Eventually, Avery asked Kaiden to take his new corvette and serve as an escort vessel despite their current lack of personnel on the carrier ship.

That would hopefully cut down on the pirate attacks, and any that still wanted to try their luck would serve as practice for Kaiden and his crew.