Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

With the controls of the advanced vessel held firmly in his hands, Avery gunned it towards the oncoming pirates.

Immediately the ship's thrusters roared to life and sent him forward like a streak of light.

Despite the SCXD-011 having exemplary inertial dampeners, the sudden acceleration still pushed Avery back up against the pilot's seat.

"It's still better than when I really pushed my other ship, though." Avery said with a smirk on his face.

He had dealt with greater g-force before and knew he could handle what he was currently under with ease.

Seeing his advance, the four pirates slowed down and began to spread out to cut off any chance of escape and make it more difficult to target them. Trained soldiers they were not, but after living a life of crime that required them to gun down other spacecraft, they had developed at least some skill when it came to ship-on-ship combat.

The moment Avery came into weapons range, the four pirates opened fire on him with their weapon systems.

Three of them four had twin pulse lasers equipped that boasted decent fire power. Each one was around five times stronger than the old and weak weapon currently equipped to Avery's original vessel.

The final pirate's ship was loaded out with three missile pods that fired relentlessly. These missiles flew far slower than the other pirates' lasers, but they packed far more of a punch.

Avery had never truly fought pirates before, always choosing to flee as he had the previous day. Still, he could tell that these four were likely fairly skilled for outlaws if the stories he had heard from mercenaries and Alliance Officers were to be believed.

Even as he did his best to enact evasive maneuvers, Avery found around a third of the lasers hitting his shields. He was not an expert dogfighter by any means. This was honestly his first time really going on the offensive since he first journeyed out into space.

Fortunately, the craft he was currently piloting was far and away better than what the pirates had. Their lasers had hardly damaged his shields, and the missiles which would have done more were easy enough to evade so long as Avery paid attention to avoiding them.

Had he been flying his older ship; he already would have been consumed by the explosion of his vessel being destroyed. Yet things were different now. He had the means to take what was thrown at him, and dish it back tenfold.

"Got you!"

After maneuvering himself for several seconds while under fire, Avery finally managed to line up a shot on one of the pirates.

He pulled the trigger and all three of the forward heavy laser cannons fired.

The red beams traveled the distance to the pirate's craft in practically an instant.

At the last moment the man attempted to avoid the attack when his computer warned him that weapons had been locked on. But it was too late.

Even as the ship sharply turned to the side, one of the cannon blasts hit the side of the vessel.

A bright explosion lit the inky blackness of space as the pirate's shields and armor failed to stop the laser.

There was a single loud scream over the open comms for a single instant before silence once again returned.

At once the remaining three pirates began shouting at each other for any information on what had happened.

While they had thought he had been defenseless, the SCXD-011 was simply hiding its fangs.

Without any warning, three panels had opened up and military grade heavy laser cannons normally only found on larger ships had popped out.

The cobbled together pirate vessels stood no chance against the overwhelming firepower that Avery currently had.

"F*ck, I'm out of here!"

"Is he some kind of monster?!"

"Keep it together you two!"

Hearing the panicked voices of his three remaining tormentors, Avery could not help but chuckle lightly. The tables had turned quite quickly, and it was their turn to learn what the fear of death by unstoppable force was.

Quickly two of the pirates scattered like roaches that had a light shined on them.

However, this was a poor move. Now that they were no longer putting as much pressure on him, Avery was able to maneuver his ship more freely.

Within just a couple of seconds he had another of the pirates in his sights and fired a volley from his laser cannons.

The second pirate craft erupted into an even larger blast than the first thanks to all the missiles it had onboard.

For as morbid as it was, the sight was strangely beautiful. As if a bright flower had suddenly bloomed in the infinite darkness of space.

Of course, Avery did not spend more than a moment marveling at the massive explosion. He still had two more vermin to exterminate before he could celebrate.

Turning his ship around, he chased after the farthest pirate that was trying to get away. His sensors had informed him that the craft was powering up its lightspeed drive.

While not impossible, tracking someone once they went to lightspeed was typically a drawn-out process. It would be impractical to pursue them if this happened.

"You're not going to get away, however." Avery said as his targeting system locked onto the ship in front of him.

With a quick input to fire the laser cannons, three balls of light zipped through space and tore through the third craft.

It was all over in a mere moment just like the previous two. Most small ships simply could not hope to hold up to the fire power that the SCXD-011 possessed.

Except, Avery did not have long to appreciate his feats. A loud alarm began blaring, and his console informed him that the last remaining hostile was on a collision course towards him.

"Are they insane?!" Avery shouted in surprise.

Instead of running away, the last pirate was flying towards him at full speed.

They were firing their lasers haphazardly and showed no signs of slowing down.

Avery had heard that sometimes pirates would kamikaze themselves in desperate situations, but he never expected it to happen to him here.

Nevertheless, for the sole remaining pirate, this was about his only real option. If he counted to fight, he would die. If he somehow got away and returned to base, he would be subjected to a fate worse than death for his failures.

All of his options led to a gruesome end, so he might as well go out on his own terms and take down the person that had brought him such misfortune.

Swiftly Avery pulled on the controls to turn his ship around and fire, but it soon became apparent that he was not going to be fast enough. He was still inexperienced with his current vessel and lacked the training and experience to handle it.

'I'm not going to make it.'

Realizing he would never get the front of the ship turned around in time, Avery instead activated one of the SCXD-011's other weapons.

So far, he had only used the laser cannons since they were both the easiest and cheapest to use. Lasers only needed energy from the vessel's generator to be fired, but the rest of the craft's weapons utilized limited ammo supplies that were costly to refill.

This was not the time to worry about stuff like that, though. Avery needed to use everything at his disposal to avoid a collision.