Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Liesel remained silent for around ten seconds as she contemplated going along with what she considered to be a nearly mad scheme.

There were some merits to it if it worked, but there would be extreme danger at every turn and the possibility of something going horribly wrong was likely.

Still, the current situation was far from great.

Though everyone was putting up as much resistance as they could, it was only a matter of time before one of them was caught.

After that, there would be a snowball effect, with more of the enemy vessels being free to come after those that remained.

"Fine, I'll do it!" Liesel shouted reluctantly as she came to terms with Avery's plan.

"But first you going to have to get some of the guy's chasing me off my tail. I can't do what you want with this many on me. It's all I can do just to keep ahead of them right now."

"Sure, I was already on the way over there. I'll try to make it look natural so that they don't think I'm trying to help you out and just want to strike a blow against them." Avery replied.

With his own group of pursuers chasing after him, Avery sped towards where Liesel was.

Currently she was weaving through a large mountain range to keep the ships chasing after her from catching up.

Although, it seemed that they had decided to bombard the area and level the place rather than attempt the dangerous maneuvers necessary to keep up with Liesel.

"Looks like they're not even worrying about me. They're too assured of their numbers and large vessels to think that they might end up being the ones hunted instead." Avery said with his lips turned upwards into a sinister smile.

By the time that the ships attacking Liesel noticed Avery approach, it was already too late.

They had been focused on their own target and had not anticipated that a different competitor would come by and attack them.

Able to still somehow see the flow of energy, Avery was capable of perfectly reading their moves and positioned the Dauntless in the most advantageous path for his approach.

Some lasers, multi-cannon fire, and EMP blasts came his way, but not a single one was able to connect with the Dauntless.

As he passed by, Avery unleashed a barrage of attacks from all of his weapons and managed to destroy one of the vessels and cause some decent damage to the others.

This certainly got their attention, and Liesel used this moment to shoot out of the mountain range she had been using for cover and head directly towards the objective of Avery's plan.

"Now we'll just have to lead these guys around for a little bit." Avery muttered as he gained four new pursuers.

Since he had proven himself to be a very dangerous nuisance, more enemy vessels were targeting Avery.

It seemed that they wanted to neutralize him quickly before he caused any more damage.

Initially, they were not supposed to have incurred any losses and escaped with all of the high-end vessels created for the competition by now.

Yet, it was Avery's first strike that had sparked so much resistance.

"We've got trouble. It looks like both Atlas and Jack Huxley are head towards us." Kasandra said, having picked up their approach with the Dauntless' sensors.

The two traitors had been out of the actions for a bit too recognize themselves and go after a priority target, and it appeared that Avery had won out.

Initially they were supposed to have assisted with surpassing Cerise since she had been identified as the greatest obstacle, but that position had now changed to Avery thanks to all of the chaos he had caused.

"I knew that entering this competition would make me more popular, but I was not anticipating it would be to this degree." Avery said sarcastically to cut through some of the tension.

"I don't think that these are the type of people we were hoping to appeal to. Now enough jokes, focus on making sure we don't get captured or destroyed."

Avery flashed Kasandra a reassuring smile and twisted the Dauntless out of the way of a missile flying towards them.

Usually, he would have been having a very difficult time.

However, thanks to the miraculous extrasensory perception ability he was currently able to use, avoiding attacks had become far easier, and he was capable of understanding all of his adversaries' movements in advance. Allowing him to avoid being caught in another encirclement.

Nevertheless, with so many vessels on him now, the pressure was really starting to mount.

There was a limit to what Avery could do, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid every hit, especially now that Atlas and Jack had joined in.

"It looks like Liesel has made it. I'll keep an eye out to see how things go."

"Got it. I'll start making my way over. Let's hope this works." Avery said, suddenly pulling up on the Dauntless' controls and flying at a sharp angle to exit the planet's atmosphere.

Up to this point he had been staying practically dangerously close to Ventri's surface.

This made it so that no one could get below him, and he was able to use the terrain to his advantage.

Fortunately, there were plenty of large rock formations to serve as cover, and Avery had used them well to avoid hundreds of attacks so far.

Except for the strategy he had in mind, it was going to be necessary to head up into orbit.

"Avery' our shields are not looking good. I just had to use another shield cell." Kasandra said, a hint of panic in her voice.,

"I know, but if we want to make it, we can't slow down even a bit. There's no room for any big evasive maneuvers. Just keep using the chaffs, flares, and decoy beacons without restraint. If we succeed, we won't need them."

Going at max speed in nearly a straight line, Avery's target came into view quickly.

The attacker's lead craft had been staying orbit around the planet with a dozen other ships to keep anyone from escaping.

Right now, that vessel had just opened its hangar to let Liesel inside.

She had pretended to offer up her surrender to them in exchange for being safely returned to her family once all of this was over.

Since she was the granddaughter of the current leader of the Kaizer Mercenary Company, she had quite a bit of value as a hostage.

Using her status as a chip in negotiations, she had come to an agreement with the people trying to steal all of the representative ships in the competition.

If they killed Liesel or sold her off to pirates or other illegal enterprises, then her family would no doubt seek retribution.

Instead, if they ransomed her off without causing her any harm, there would be a lot less animosity to deal with.

Of course, this had all just been a ploy devised by Avery.

Liesel was not really surrendering; he just needed the enemy's lead vessel to lower its defenses and open up its hangar.

"We're coming in a bit fast Avery!" Kasandra yelled as they got closer.

Naturally, their charge had been noticed and the light cruiser class ship they were headed for had started to open fire on them.

Also, while Liesel had gone in as slowly as she could, the hangar was now starting the process of closing.

If Avery wanted to successfully infiltrate the place as intended, he was not going to be able to slow down.

When it seemed that they were certain to crash, Kasandra let out an uncharacteristic scream.

For just a moment, Avery thought about trying to record her so that he could tease her a bit in the future, but he needed to stay fully focused on what he was doing, or they really would end up in a collision.

'Now.'

Hastily, Avery turned the Dauntless around so that he was going into the hangar rear first.

He managed to slip in just as the doors were closing, but his momentum was still carrying him.

'Come on, stop already!' Avery thought as he pushed the thrusters to their maximum output.

Just before the Dauntless smashed into the hangar walls, the Dauntless' momentum began to shift.

He was less than a meter away from causing a catastrophic accident, but all the damage that he did was scorching the wall behind him.

"Looks like we've got some company."

Displayed on the Dauntless' viewscreen were dozens of heavily armed guards wearing flabbergasted expressions.

They had been dispatched to secure Liesel and her copilot and had not expected another ship to daringly fly into the hangar.

Taking this opportunity since they were stunned for the moment, Avery set his laser cannons to low output to avoid damaging the hangar too much and began attacking.

Even with his weapons' intensity vastly lowered, each shot still vaporized the people he was aiming at. The difference between personnel and ship-based weapons could hardly be compared.

A few dozen people with laser rifles were not going to stand a chance against a warship.

Of course, in case of this situation, the hangar was equipped with weapons to suppress hostile vessels, but Avery was not the only one here.

Liesel opened fire on the turrets as they appeared out of their secure compartments. Preventing them from being able to attack Avery.

Soon the two of them had eliminated all of the threats in the hangar. Now they owned the place and could stage their own assault.