Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary - Chapter 342

Chapter 342: Chapter 342 Attack on the Pirates’ Bases (4)
With the strongest forces of the pirates crushed, Avery rushed towards the pirates’ main base that was equipped with muti-cannons, laser turrets, and missile launchers.

“Avery, we’re taking on a bit too much fire.” Jasmine said worriedly as she had one hand hovered over the button to active the Dauntless’ shield cells, and the other rapidly firing of chafes, flares, and decoy beacons.

The alert that they were being hit was going off just about every second as lasers and bullets impacted against the shields.

Even with Avery’s evasive maneuvers and the target disrupting devices Jasmine was constantly deploying, there were just too many weapons firing at the Dauntless to avoid everything.

“These pirates have really gone all out in weaponizing this place. Oh, some more missiles are incoming.” Avery replied without a hint of concern.

Instead, he sent the Dauntless down into a nosedive and fired his plasma launchers at the incoming missiles.

When the two met, the white-hot plasma burned through the missiles and caused them to detonate far enough away that even the fringes of the explosion did not reach.

After a bit more daring maneuvering and the activation of one of the Dauntless’ shield cells, Avery had finally managed to get where he wanted to be.

He now had his ship hovering only a few meters above the surface of the large asteroid the pirates had carved out for their main base.

This made it so that only a few of their weapons could target the Dauntless, and Avery could fly around and cause as much damage as he wanted.

To start, he targeted the missile launcher turrets that were by far the most dangerous weapons these pirates had.

Their lasers and muti-cannons were older and lacking power compared to more modern weaponry, and they did not pose the risk of immediately destroying a ship like the missiles did.

“That’s one.”

A volley from the Dauntless’ three laser cannons impacted a missile turret and punched through its shielding and caused the ammunition inside to explode.

While the blast looked small on the surface of the massive base when viewed from afar, it truthfully caused some heavy damage inside the pirate’s base.

The outer plating beneath the rock had been breached, and around a twentieth of the interior had to be sealed off or the artificial atmosphere would have been pulled out into space.

“Damn it! What are the guys outside doing right now?! How could they let someone get this close?!”

“Sh*t, we’ve got another breach! Someone do something about those damn missile launchers!”

“I’ll initiate the emergency release and detach them from the base!”

“No you idiots! Those weapons are the only things keeping us from being overrun! Just fire everything we have even if their collateral damage! Kill all those f*cking mercenaries!”

Listening in on the internal comms of the base, Avery could hear the pirates panicking and the very colorful language they were using to describe him and his team.

As they began to panic, the pirates inside launched a barrage of missiles at the Dauntless despite the fact that every miss would be impacting directly into their base due to how close he was.

Still, they must have decided that this was preferable to him destroying the turrets and causing larger explosions that caused major internal damage.

However, their heavy focus on Avery allowed another vessel to slip by the bases’ defenses and fly around its surface while taking out any armaments they came across.

“I’ll help back you up here. Can’t let our leader do all of the hard work, now can I.” Liesel said as she zipped around and destroyed a multi-cannon turret with her ship’s laser blaster.

Having felt that she had not accomplished as much as the other higher-ranking members of Avery’s group, Liesel felt that now was her time to shine.

Her ship’s fast firing weapons were perfect for taking out the multitude of weapon turrets along the base that were only lightly shielded.

She may not have had any heavy hitting weaponry equipped, like Avery’s plasma cannons, or Ezra’s railgun. But she was able to deal a consistently high rate of damage with her multi-barrel laser blasters and micro missiles.

“Well, if you’re offering to lighten the load, I’ll let you have the bottom half of the base, and I’ll take the top. Just try not to get hit by our allies’ bombardment.”

While the two of them raced around the surface of the base taking out defenses, Kasandra, Kaiden, Ezra, and Olivia were blasting the place from farther away.

Without any ships outside to provide cover and keep their attackers off of them, the base’s defenses were quickly whittled away.

Once all of the turrets had been destroyed or disabled, and the internal power distribution system had been shut down by targeted bombardment, Avery and the other leaders of his team docked their ships and prepared to take the inside of the base.

“We weren’t able to take this one as cleanly as the others, so there are areas that have taken heavy damage and are lacking oxygen or are on fire. So, everyone make sure that you put on your hostile environment suit and check that you’ve got at least twelve hours of air. After avoiding any casualties so far, I don’t want anyone dying because of a stupid mistake.” Avery said, his voice being transmitted to everyone that was part of the assault team.

When everyone was ready, each of the docked ships breached the base’s airlocks and rushed inside.

Despite expecting to encounter some fierce resistance, all Avery immediately saw were eight people hastily trying to set up a mounted laser cannon.

It seemed that the damage and havoc they had caused while disabling the base had caused far more problems for the pirates than initially anticipated if this was the only response they were preparing.

The first pirate to notice Avery and Jasmine shouted at the others to alert them to intruders.

Immediately they all reached for the laser pistols at their waists, but they never got the chance to even unholster them.

“Looks like you had a few more waiting for you than I did.” Ezra said, running over with his twin hand cannon sized laser pistols in his hands.

He had docked at the closest airlock to where the Dauntless was, and there had only been two unprepared guards when he had entered.

“Yeah, I was honestly expecting a bit more. It almost feels like a waste that we’re mobilizing so many people.” Avery said with a joking tone.

As it turned out, Liesel and Kasandra had only had to deal with small groups as well, and even the large forces Kaiden and Olivia were commanding had not met any significant resistance.

“Ah, I think I just heard why the pirates couldn’t respond properly. They’re complaining about their external and internal sensors being down. Seems like they were expecting us but had no idea exactly where we we’re going to enter from and spread out their forces to cover every possible point.” Jasmine said, having set up her receiver to always be transmitting the pirates’ communications.

If the pirates knew that most of the conversations and planning were being heard by their enemies, they would probably want to cry tears of blood.

Unfortunately for them, Avery had gotten all the access codes and frequencies that this group used from the first two pirates that had been captured.

In this battle, the only thing the pirates beat Avery’s team in was numbers. And with a shattered command structure and panic setting in, they could not even use this one advantage effectively.

“Doesn’t look like this is going to be too difficult. Let’s meet up with the others first and then clean this place out.”

Following the positioning data of his forces, Avery first met up with Olivia’s squad that was only a few hundred meters away.

Not long after that, Liesel came running over with Kasandra since the two of them had already met up, and Kaiden’s group joined them just a little over a minute later.

During that time a few pirates had come by and started attacking them, but they were not particularly well equipped.

Their weapons were weak, and most of them were lacking personal shield generators and had little to no protection against return fire.

“Now that we’re all together, let’s wipe out the bulk of the pirates. Once that’s done, we’ll split up into smaller groups and flush out any that are still hiding.” Avery said, before taking the lead towards where the pirates had set up a command center since the base’s original one had already been destroyed.

Now that some intel was coming in from the pirates that had come in contact with Avery’s team, the entire base knew where their location was now.

Yet, though the pirates attempted to make plans to surround and kill the intruders, nothing they tried ever worked and the casualties on their side continued to pile up.

Being privy to everything that the pirates said gave Avery the information he needed to perfectly counter every strategy that the pirates could come up with.

With hardly any resistance, they marched towards where the pirate leaders were scrambling to find a way out of this situation.

There were no ships left to flee on, and the grunts under their commands were dropping like flies whenever they confronted the mercenaries.

It had gotten to the point where only around a third of their personnel were following their orders anymore.

The rest were running around looking for some way to escape, or hiding and hoping that they would not be discovered before the mercenaries left.

It seemed that things really were hopeless for the pirates.