Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

"He says that he'll meet with you. Though, he won't train you unless he feels like you've got potential. I don't know how he'll judge you, but you've got two days until he's free. I'd use that time to brush up on what you can pertaining to mercenary work."

Avery's father forwarded him the message his acquaintance had sent, which had the time and location where they would meet in two days.

"Thanks pops. This means a lot to me. I promise I won't let you down. You'll be well again soon." Avery said, giving his father a reassuring smile before leaving.

When he came out into the main room, he found that his mother had already left for work. He had wanted to say goodbye to her as well, but he had spent too much time talking to his father.

With his business at his parents now completed, Avery left the building and headed to his own nearby apartment.

It was in a similar-looking building, albeit not quite as nice.

Once he made it back to his small single room apartment, he immediately headed over to his desk and booted up his computer. He had a lot of work to get done in the next couple days and had no intention of wasting a single moment.

…

"That's about all I can do. It's time to get going."

It was finally the day of his meeting with his father's older mercenary buddy.

Avery had spent the last two days online studying what he could about being a mercenary.

There was honestly a good deal of conflicting information out there since pretty much all mercenaries were free willed and stuck to their own ideas.

This made sense, of course. Any competent mercenary would have enough skill to join the Alliance Police or the military if they wanted.

But a lot of mercenaries were the type that hated to follow someone else's orders all the time, and generally liked to travel amongst the stars as they pleased.

Still, there was one major consensus among all the information Avery had found. And that was that mercenaries needed to be confident in a fight.

Luckily, Avery had a top-of-the-line spacecraft at his disposable, so experience was all he really lacked at this point. Something he was hoping the mercenary he was scheduled to meet could help with.

Wearing a grin on his face, Avery exited his apartment and the building it was in.

From there he found the nearest tram station and grabbed a ride on the colony's public transportation system.

His destination was within the fourth district. A bit of a rough area, but nothing too bad as long as one stuck to the main streets.

One of Avery's favorite bars happened to be around the meeting place that his father's acquaintance had set, so he was at least somewhat familiar with the surroundings.

"The road's been blocked off. I wonder what's going on?"

When he was getting close to his destination, Avery found the street leading in the direction he was heading covered in barricades.

He immediately pulled out his terminal to ascertain what had occurred, but there was not any information on the road closure.

"That's unusual. They normally update things like this pretty fast." Avery muttered, the map of the colony he had pulled up not showing the blockage.

All he could conclude was that whatever was causing the problem had happened recently.

Fortunately, with just a couple of inputs, he had his terminal plan a route around the road.

It would see him through some smaller streets and back alleys, but he would still be able to arrive on time.

Before leaving the main road, though, he shifted the jacket he was wearing to better expose the laser pistol sitting in a holster on his waist.

Avery did not think that he would run into any trouble, but just in case some thugs sized him up, the exposed weapon would serve as a decent deterrent.

After he felt he was ready, Avery followed the route that his terminal had set.

With a bit of haste, he weaved through the smaller streets and alleys.

A couple of times he crossed the path of some less than savory types, but they all made way for him when they saw he was armed. None of them wanted any real trouble.

However, just two alleys before he would exit back onto the main road in front of the shop he was meant to meet the five star mercenary at, a large man blocked Avery's path.

At once Avery came to a stop and his right hand reflexively reached down towards his weapon.

The tall man in front of him stood a head over him and was wearing a hooded cloak that obscured his entire body except for his mouth.

"Avery Asteria, I've come on behalf of Storren Corp. to retrieve our lost ship."

Hearing this instantly put Avery on edge. He had figured that a representative of Storren Corp. would come to meet with him eventually, but this felt like it was too soon and the setting out of place.

'If they had a location here that would be one thing. Except I know that the nearest Storren Corp. branch is over two weeks away from Yuson II. Unless this guy was already here or at another nearby colony, there's no way he could get here this quickly.' Avery thought, his mind racing to figure out what was happening.

The fact that he had not received any sort of correspondence beforehand was also suspect. Instead, this man was simply ambushing him in a random alleyway.

"I don't have anything to talk about with you. Why don't you try contacting me normally, and we can talk then."

"That won't do I'm afraid. My superiors are very intent on retrieving their lost property as soon as possible. If you simply cooperate, a hefty reward will be paid to you." The man said in a coercive tone.

This was the last straw for Avery. It was clear to him that words were not going to help him out here. Storren Corp. had sent someone to intimidate him into giving up his rightful property, and he was not going to just stand around and take it.

Without any warning, Avery unholstered his laser pistol and pointed it at the man. He had it on a lower setting that would only burn, but it would still hurt like hell and be enough to incapacitate most people.

Yet, before he could pull the trigger, a red flash of light impacted his weapon and sent it flying out of his hand. Avery watched the gun fall to the ground as a look of shock warped his face.