Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary - Chapter 336

Chapter 336: Chapter 336 From Hunters to Prey
“Hehe. Looks like we’ve got some idiots passing through.”

A man wearing old clothing that looked to be falling apart was sitting in a dimly lit cockpit that had trash and dusted pilled up on the floor.

His dark brown hair was long and greasy, adding more evidence that he did not particularly care about hygiene or his appearance.

Resting haphazardly in an open cabinet was a long cylindrical device used for smoking certain types of drugs, and a thick syringe with a packet of a light orange liquid sitting next to it stored inside.

If one looked closely around the man’s mouth, they would notice a red rash that was in its beginning stages. A clear sign of heavy drug abuse.

At this point though, the man was too hooked to ever even think about getting off the substances he regularly took.

The only things that he really had to look forward to were the next hit and the thrill of the hunt.

Fortunately, the normally dull monitor duty he was currently on where he had to maintain at least a certain level of sobriety had just become interesting.

One of the small sensor stations disguised as an asteroid had just picked up a few ships passing by at light speed. Presumably as they made their way through the last stretch of the journey towards the nearby hyperspace entrance.

The man swiftly hit a button on his ship’s console and transmitted the data to the other’s that were lying in wait.

“A large but older cargo ship that’s not in the greatest condition. With just a pair of guards that look like either strong two star, or new three star mercenaries. This bunch must be stupid to have come this way without more forces. Don’t they know that there are pirates in this area.” The man said with a pleased smirk on his face.

At the signal that was just transmitted, a little over a hundred pirates began to mobilize.

While their vessels were not great, and neither were their sills, they made up for this with this large numbers.

Two mid rank mercenaries with only a pair of small ships were not going to be enough to stop them.

Soon they would have the large cargo vessel at their mercy and make off with all of the loot that they could.

When all of the pirates around had set themselves up for an ambush, they waited for their prey to arrive.

They operated on the very edge of a barely populated system that only had a few dozen hyper lanes that received minimal travel.

Still, there was enough prey that came around for them to be fairly prosperous as outlaws, and the Alliance Police did not have enough resources to keep every hyper lane guarded at all times.

With the informants placed on each of the five stations in this system, the pirates learned about any special raids the police planned to conduct and knew when to hide.

Sometimes they would even send out older ships with members that had displeased the leadership as sacrifices so that the Alliance Police felt like they were accomplishing something.

None of their bases had been discovered yet, but they did not want the police to become too aggressive if they felt like they were not getting any results.

“Oh boy. This is going to be a juicy payday. These fools are transporting hundreds of tons of pongrulsig spice. I bet I’ll be able to afford to spend some time with one of my boss’ girls again with the reward from this.” The pirate that had initially detected the ships said while licking his lips and wearing a depraved expression.

Since they so thoroughly outnumbered their targets, the over a hundred strong group of pirates had surrounded the two mercenary ships and the cargo vessel they were protecting.

Before starting their attack, they were shouting insults over open comms.

They enjoyed causing terror in their victims before they killed them, and a lot of them reveled in hearing mercenaries that thought that they were the hunters begging for their lives.

This time, there were no return transmissions from the mercenaries of the cargo ship. It seemed that they were going to remain silent until the end.

“I guess that they’re going to be idiots to the end. If they had played along, they would have been able to live a little bit longer.”

Eventually, the pirates were starting to get tired of taunting and jeering at their prey. It was time to attack and get this over with.

Yet just moments before they began their assault, dozens of readings of ships approaching at light speed were detected.

A few seconds later, several other mercenary vessels appeared in the area. It was now the pirates that were surrounded.

Naturally, they still outnumbered the mercenaries that numbered close to forty in total.

However, there was a vast difference in the power between he pirates and these new mercenaries.

Though most of their ships were around the same level as the two escorts protecting the cargo vessel, a few of them were clearly far better, and there was even a foreign military corvette among them.

“Scatter!”

The top-ranking pirate sent out the order to everyone else once the monetary shock had worn off.

It was now apparent that they were not the ones that had been setting a trap but had been lured into one instead.

Like insects that had just had light shined on them, the previously confident pirates began fleeing in every direction.

They knew that this mistake was going to cost several of them their lives. To mercenaries, they were just flying bundles of Krenin waiting to be claimed.

The trap that they had been caught in, while not completely unknown, was a pretty rare strategy for mercenaries to employ.

There were great risks involved, and the initial cost of purchasing tempting goods that would catch the attention of pirates was not cheap.

Nevertheless, when it worked, it tended to work very well.

As was currently evident by the haul of notorious pirates that almost all had bounties on them.

“Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t!” The pirate with long, greasy brown hair shouted as he weaved through laser and multi-cannon fire.

No one was specifically targeting him right now, but even a stray shot could leave his shields on the brink of falling apart.

He was not a particularly important member of the group, and had, as of yet, even had a bounty placed on him.

All he was after was enough to keep his supplies of drugs stable and occasionally have a wild night.

That meant he mostly stuck to grunt jobs, and would only participate in raids when they seemed surefire. As they had today.

It was thanks in large part to his mediocracy that he was still alive.

The mercenaries were targeting those with higher bounties on their heads first.

Except, this group had no intention of letting a single pirate that had flown into their trap get away.

There was an area that had less mercenaries around it and was the path that most of the pirates that had the chance to were heading towards to escape.

If they could just slip back into the nearby asteroid field that they typically hid in, their chances of getting away would become far greater.

Of course, had they been better trained or even just a sounder state of mind, they might have found this suspicious.

The mercenaries that had attacked them had obviously set this trap up diligently, so why would they leave an easy escape route for the pirates to use.

“F*ck! That’s not possible! What the hell is this?!”

Just as he was about to escape, a new craft that had not been visible before suddenly came into view.

It was another corvette class vessel, and one that had an unfamiliar design and advanced cloaking technology.

With higher end sensors, it would have been detected long ago by the pirates, but they did not possess anything that could pick it up until it was practically right on top of them.

The sensors that they all possessed were not meant for precision and merely to detect possible prey wandering into their territory. They had not noticed that this cloaked ship had been here since the beginning.

A volley of weapons fire beat back the pirates that were trying to run away, and the man that had first detected the ships that had gotten them int this disaster used his own compatriots as shields to survive.

For a bit longer, he ran away, using every trick he could think of to stay alive. But it was all for naught.

As his allies were destroyed, there was less to distract the mercenaries, and they soon came after him directly.

In the end, he chose the only option that had any chance of letting him survive.

“I surrender! Please don’t kill me!” The man screamed over open comms.

The bravado he had once shown before being cornered like a rat was nowhere to be seen. And now all he could do was beg for his life.