Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary - Chapter 357

Chapter 357: Chapter 357 Outcome and Regrets
When he came to, Avery first felt a dull pain in his head.

It was incomparable to what he had been experiencing before passing out, but it did serve as a reminder of what had happened to him.

As his eyes fluttered open, he saw the glass of a sealed medical pod in front of him.

There was an IV sticking out of his left arm that was providing both fluids and medicine to him.

“Display vitals.”

At Avery’s command, the glass in front of him turned into a screen that showed his body’s current condition.

Things such as his heartrate, blood pressure, cell production, and respiration rate were all within normal bounds based off of past measurements and expected norms for his body. Though his brain activity was currently a bit lower than usual.

It was not anything particularly disconcerting from what he could tell, but when he moved to pull up that data from when he was first put into the pod, his eyes went wide from shock.

His optical, parietal, and temporal lobes had all been heavily damaged, to the point where it should have required specialized medical procedures beyond what the Dauntless’ medical pod was capable of to fix them.

Both of Avery’s optic nerves had been basically destroyed to the point that he should not have been able to see right now.

Basically, every part of his body that aided in the function of vision had been damaged to varying degrees.

“It’s been thirty-one hours since I was put in the medical pod. I need to figure out what’s been going on since I passed out.” Avery mumbled to himself.

Before getting up though, he had the medical pod play an accelerated timelapse of how his body had recovered.

Almost immediately it became apparent that the only reason he had regained consciousness so quickly and with his ability to see intact was thanks to the special organ that Dr. Raiti had crafted for him.

It had flooded his body with regenerative cells that had swiftly gotten to work on fixing the damaged parts of his brain and optical nerves.

Truly it made him grateful that he had shelled out millions of Krenin to have it grown from his cells and grafted into his body.

Of course, the monumental changes to his body that he still did not fully understand likely came about thanks to the augmentations that he had received. And that meant that whatever he had done that caused his brain to overload was thanks to them as well.

‘There’s no point in dwelling on it now. I’m still alive and the medical pod shows that all of my vitals are fine right now. Next time I see Dr. Raiti, I’ll have her give me a comprehensive examination. That’s what she wants to do anyway.’

After disengaging the medical pod, Avery pulled himself out and headed to his room to find a change of clothes since he was currently only in his underwear.

He had thought that Jasmine would come to find him quickly now that he was up, but she was nowhere to be found.

Avery gave a verbal command to the Dauntless’ computer, and it confirmed that he was currently the only one onboard.

“Then where are we then?”

Once he was dressed, he headed back to the cockpit and pulled up the ship’s logs for the last two days.

It did not take long for him to find that the Dauntless was currently docked in Cerise Gunvald’s battleship’s hangar.

After her fleet had joined in the fight against Commander Triswei’s rogue forces, the battle had been brought to a swift end.

“Jasmine must be dealing with the aftermath right now in my stead. Damn I fell like a f*cking failure right now.” Avery said as he slammed his fist into his thigh in frustration.

He still could not fully recall what he had done in the minutes before falling unconscious, but he understood that he had gone out of control.

His entire mind had been fully occupied with annihilating those that had killed his subordinates that everything else had just become background static. Even Jasmine who had been sitting right next to him.

It was not until she forced him out of his seat that he came back to his senses. By then though, the damage had already been done. The extrasensory sight that he had hardly question had nearly overwhelmed and killed him.

Now that he had ascertained his whereabouts, Avery pulled up information that he had to know.

The battle had been fierce, and he knew at least three of his team members had perished before he blacked out.

Unfortunately, when he brought up the damage and casualty reports recorded on the Dauntless’ computer, he found that there were more deaths than just those three.

In total, seven members of his team and six ships had been lost.

They were all former members of Burke’s company and were all from the last group he had recruited before disbanding and being absorbed by Avery’s team. Each of them having been mercenaries for only a short time.

Avery could feel the rage that had caused him to snap boiling up inside of him again.

He had said that he would keep everyone alive and had fought so hard to do so. Yet against an overwhelming foe, he had been unable to prevent the sacrifices of some of his people.

There were many out there that would say that he was lucky to have escaped from the conflict with relatively few losses considering what they were up against.

Still, the weight of the deaths weighed heavily on Avery.

Being a mercenary meant walking hand in hand with violence, and loss of life was inevitable.

Avery himself had killed more people than he could count since joining the profession.

Sometimes he thought back on those that had died due to his direct or even indirect actions, but he never felt bad about what he had done.

The people he had killed were the types to do a lot worse to others, and getting rid of them was for the best.

However, the deaths of people he knew and that worked under him hit him a lot harder than the thousands of pirates he had personally killed.

‘We’ve been threatened and badly hurt before, but this is the first time anyone has ever died. I knew I would happen eventually; we couldn’t be so lucky to avoid casualties forever. I just didn’t expect it to be this bad.’ Avery thought, lamenting the outcome of the recent conflict.

His mind was racing with ways that he could have done better to have prevented their deaths.

If only he had done more research into the system, he might have been more suspicious of how the pirates had grown so large unabated.

Or, he could have tried to push through the three destroyers when he had the chance. Had he not sent Kaiden away and they had all fought together, it was possible that they could have broken through without any casualties.

“Avery.”

Hearing someone calling his name, Avery whipped around and saw a familiar visage standing in the doorway.

From her voice he already knew who it was, but he was a bit surprised that it was Kasandra who had shown up and not Jasmine.

For just a moment they just stared at each other, before Kasandra rushed over to Avery.

At first, he thought that she might hit him again for how reckless he had been, but all she did was wrap him up in her arms and embraced him.

“We were so worried about you. No one knew what had happened and the data from the medical pod was so grim.” Kasandra said, tears rolling down her face and onto Avery’s neck as she clung to him.

His condition had been so bad that a normal person could have ended up dying.

It was only thanks to the enhancements that he received that he was already up and moving again after having been in such a critical state.

“I’m not exactly sure what the cause was either, but I’m fine now.”

Avery stroked the back of her head and slid his fingers through her hair comfortingly.

He knew from experience how gut-wrenching it was to hear about a loved one suddenly ending up with serious injuries.

The first time for him had been after his father’s accident that had left the man paralyzed, and he imagined that those close to him had just gone through something similar.

Thankfully, he had pulled through and would fully recover, but it still must have been quite the scare.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but I was excepting Jasmine to come by first. She’s not onboard, so do you know where she is right now?” Avery asked, curious about where his other lover and copilot was.

“Yeah, she’s in a meeting with Cerise Gunvald and some other Alliance Police officers right now. We’ve basically been dealing with what to do next for the entire day. It was my turn to come and check on you next, so when we got the alert from the medical pod that you had gotten up, I came rushing over.”

This was what Avery had expected, and from what Kasandra told him, Jasmine wanted to rush over herself as well, but they were at a critical point in the meeting and she could not leave.

“I see. Then I should head over now. You’ve all been working hard while I recovered, so now that I’m back up, I need to do what’s necessary as a leader.”