Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Although Clarien had worked up his crew into a frenzy to search for and kill Avery, Kasandra, and Liesel, he honestly did not care about the outcome.

The only reason that he had done so was to restrict the intruders' movements and hopefully prevent them from causing any more issues.

While Clarien often came off as a flippant individual, he was quite pragmatic.

His ship was unlikely to be able to get away before the Alliance Police arrived, so he was going to abandon it.

Initially he wanted his crew to escape as well, since replacing everyone would take a great deal of time and money, but his own survival took precedence over everything else.

With all internal means of escape impossible, he had ordered one of the other ships under his command to come and pick him up.

It was unfortunate how the mission was a failure, but so long as they escaped with some of the advanced small ships, it would not be a total loss.

"Follow me. We're headed to the nearest airlock." Clarien said to the two trusted subordinates he was bringing with him.

They would be the only ones to survive with him. Since he planned on blowing up his command vessel once he was clear of it.

Some of the people onboard knew too much about him, and the craft's computers contained information he would rather now allow into the hands of the Alliance Police.

"Ah, sir, some more good news just came in. It seems that Cerise's vessel has been disabled. One of our corvettes is currently loading it into its hangar."

Clarien paused for a moment upon hearing this and briefly smiled for a moment.

Though the situation on his own ship was dire, what was going on outside was in his favor.

Not having to deal with Avery or Liesel had allowed his forces to focus on the others, and they had now captured three of the four competition vessels.

There was only one that remained, but Clarien had already ordered a retreat, so they did not have time to worry about it.

Clarien had been most interested in Ravasz Dynamic's craft anyway, since its impeccable speed coupled with its firepower made it incredibly formidable.

It had not only been Cerise's skill that had kept her in the top position, but also the power of her ship.

"I suppose getting five out of eight is not too bad. I'll have the engineers take them apart and figure out the best parts of them. Ah and we'll be getting rid of several problems at one time." Clarien said now that things were looking up a bit.

Avery and Cerise had been bigger obstacles than anticipated, but after today, they would no longer be problems.

He would kill Avery by blowing up his own vessel, and as for Cerise, there were many options open to him now that he had captured the Dramid Alliance's greatest hero.

It was only after another two minutes that Clarien and his two subordinates reached the designated air lock.

The ship that had come to pick them up was just right outside and waiting for the docking procedures to be initiated.

"You really are predictable. You're like a rat, always looking for the quickest way to escape at the slightest hint of trouble."

Suddenly hearing a voice behind him, Clarien whipped around to see a solitary young man standing there.

With only a single look, he knew that this was Avery Asteria.

The mercenary captain that had given him more trouble than anyone else had in the last decade.

"Kill him." Clarien said without any interest in entertaining any conversation.

His two subordinates thrusted their arms forwards and the imitation skin peeled away as they turned into laser cannons.

These two were not only completely loyal to Clarien but also had been given the strongest cybernetic enhancements available.

They were both more machine than man, and each comparable to a fighter using heavy power armor.

However, Avery had already begun moving before the two mechanized guards had finished their transformations.

Even now, he was still able to read the flow of energy and could tell that they were not normal people.

Like a pinball, he bounced around the corridor at a truly unfathomable speed for a human.

Not only was he fast, but he was executing maneuvers that were nearly impossible. One misstep and he would have exposed himself to a harsh counterattack.

Yet, his movements made it difficult to aim at him even for Clarien's cybernetically augmented goons.

By the time they had locked onto him and moved their weapons to fire, he was already somewhere else.

Soon Avery had reached right in front of the two of them and they attempted to slice through him as their arms shifted again and turned into blades.

Before they could reach him though, Avery pushed off with his legs and jumped towards the ceiling.

He twisted his body around in midair so that his feet landed on the ceiling above.

For just a moment, he remained there, and it looked like gravity had twisted somehow as Avery looked down at Clarien and his subordinates.

Both of the goons raised their weapons to shoot Avery, but he had already pushed off of the ceiling. Leaving heavy dents in the material from the force.

Like a cannonball, Avery smashed into the two men at the same time.

Using his gauntlet hands, he punched both of their heads and slammed them into the floor below.

There was a heavy booming sound as he activated the impact generator within his exosuit.

Clarien's two enforcers had their heads crushed by the force, and more oil and mechanical parts erupted from them rather than flesh and blood.

The power behind Avery attack was so great that it actually managed to collapse a small part of the floor, and the bodies of the goons along with some rubble fell down onto the deck below.

"Okay, going to need to have Grito recalibrate the shock absorbers and impact generator when I see him next." Avery grumbled as he shook his arms.

Both of them were numb, and he was certain that some of the bones in his hands were broken now.

Still, to kill two people that had metal skeletons and who knew what other types of augmentations, it had been necessary to deliver as powerful as a blow as possible. Anything less and they might have survived.

"I suppose that the reports that you are human are false. No human could do what you just did."

"You know, I've been wondering about that myself lately." Avery responded with a shrug of his shoulders.

Despite what he had just witnessed, Clarien still remained calm and pointed his laser pistol at Avery.

After saying what was on his mind, he pulled the trigger. All of his thoughts consumed by trying to find a way out of this predicament.

Moving his head to the side at the last second, Avery avoided the blast aimed at his head.

He then ran forward and deliver a heavy kick directly at Clarien's stomach.

Unlike the other two, he wanted to take this man alive in order to question him.

Of course, since he had augmented his trusted subordinates, Clarien had obviously done so to himself as well.

His were more focused on bionic enhancements since he had not wanted to replace any parts of his body. However, he did possess a few implants that allowed him to both think and move faster for short periods of time.

Cross his arms in front of him, he leaned back and absorbed Avery's blow. Allowing himself to go flying to lessen the impact.

"There are hundreds of members of my crew heading here right now to kill you. As strong as you are, you won't be able to fight through all of them. I'd recommend you flee. I won't go down so quickly that you can defeat me an escape."

While Clarien did believe what he was saying, he had decided to initiate conversation merely to buy time.

He had just contacted the ship waiting to pick him up and ordered them to breach the air lock.

A squad of soldiers was already being prepared, and they would rush in and subdue Avery for him.

"True I don't think I'll be able to incapacitate you easily. At least with normal means."

Avery held out both of his hands and opened them to expose his palms.

An overwhelming amount of energy focused into the laser emitters embedded his exosuit.

They began to glow brightly before discharging all of the power at once.

This consumed the entirety of the energy powering the suit and destroyed the laser emitters, but it allowed Avery to fire a blast more powerful than he could otherwise.

His hands ended up badly burned by the backlash, but he came out far better than Clarien.

The man's personal shield generator had protected him as best as it could. Nevertheless, it had ultimately been unable to withstand the full force of Avery's attack.

"Looks like I was right that you would be able to survive that."

Thanks to his shield generator and high-quality laser resistant clothing, Clarien had abrobed the brunt of the blast.

Still, his arms, legs, and torso were badly burned in several places.

He had focused on protecting his head by crossing his arms in front of his face, but the damage he had taken made it so that he could hardly move.

Except, Clarien had still not given up yet.

The sound of the air lock door opening just a bit down the corridor could be heard. His reinforcements were here now.

They would kill Avery for him and then bring him off of this doomed ship. He was certain that he had won.