Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

"There's a lot less of them now, but it looks like we've still got the bulk of their forces coming after us."

Olivia was looking at the view displayed by her corvette's aft cameras and saw that thirty-six hostiles were fast approaching.

Among them was the ringleader of this attack. Easily identifiable since his ship was by far the most powerful among the force.

When Avery had come up with his plan, he had expected Doyle to go after him or Ezra, but there had always been a chance that he would prioritize Olivia and the corvette that she commanded. It was their group's largest craft after all.

In terms of sheer firepower, they had Avery, Ezra, and Kaiden beat. Though, speed and maneuverability were another matter. While corvettes might have been on the smaller size of warships used by the Alliance Police, they were considered large for mercenaries that typically preferred light and quick vessels that were better for hunting space pirates with.

"Ma'am, we've got about two more minutes until they are in weapons range." Olivia's adjutant, a man named Langdon, and second in command said to her.

"Got it. Have Havanna get ready to fire the stern pulse lasers. Even if we're at the edge of our range, I expect that she can land a few hits."

Olivia relayed quick and concise orders to her crew, and everyone waited at their stations with tension in the air.

This was going to be their most intense battle since joining Avery's team. Normally they had they were relegated to a more supportive role during missions and kept far from danger.

Since this ship was not just for battle but also housed noncombatants like Grtio and his uncle Vi'ivando, Avery naturally wanted to minimize the risk Olivia's corvette would be put in.

Regrettably, the current situation did not allow for such safety measures.

"Okay, fire now."

At Olivia's command, Havanna aimed at the lead vessel of Doyle's force and four long-range pulse lasers fired at the same time.

Obviously, the man piloting the ship noticed the incoming attack and took evasive maneuvers.

However, Hanna had already taken this into account.

The first round of pulse lasers she had fired had only been a means to get her target to move as she wanted. A second later she fired the remaining two stern pulse lasers at the location the man was heading to evade the first attack.

"Two direct hits, but their shields withstood it." Langdon informed Olivia.

Havanna's maneuver had worked perfectly. Yet, the power of a mere two pulse laser strikes was not enough to bring down their opponents.

For weaker civilian ships or pirates, it probably would have fully exhausted their shields. Against other mercenaries with well-balanced ships that had decent shielding, it was going to take a bit more.

Still, that opening attack had served its purpose. It showed Doyle's followers that they could and would be hit if they tried to approach.

"They're trying to return fire, but we're still beyond their weapons' effective range. No real damage to our shields so far."

Olivia quietly chuckled at this update from Langdon. It was obvious that Doyle's men were trying to retaliate. However, firing their weapons from the current distance between them was foolish.

They mostly had high rate of fire multi-cannons equipped for hunting Jalllas.

At a closer range they could deal some seriously devastating damage, but considering the current position between them, the projectile spread from the rapidly shooting weapons was too great and led most of the shots to go wide and miss Olivia's corvette. For the most part they were merely hitting asteroids or flying off into space.

As for the few vessels equipped with laser weaponry, their range was inferior to the specially designed pulse lasers used by Olivia's corvette.

To keep them in the backlines, Avery had prioritized range above all else when fixing up and equipping the captured Reswen Theocracy warship.

"Looks like they're finally not hesitating anymore. Their leader must have barked orders at them to stop being cowards or something along those lines" Olivia muttered to herself.

After taking the first few hits from Havanna's accurate blasting, Doyle's followers had been reluctant to charge forward.

The chance that some of them would die was quite high, and this fear kept them in place. Just as Avery's team had been having a harder time fighting other mercenaries, so were Doyle's men.

They were used to having overwhelming numbers and force that was capable of crushing their opponents. Whether that be space monsters or pirates.

Except this time, Avery's team had enough power to punch back and do serious damage to them. It was only natural that such undisciplined people as those that followed Doyle lacked the resolve necessary to fight a battle that was not wholly in their favor.

Still, they were currently more afraid of their boss than Olivia and the corvette she commanded. A few threats from him pushed them into action.

"Rorson, deploy the nesting mines that Grito worked up for us. We need to slow them down as much as possible and wait for the others or perhaps the Alliance police to show up."

Doing as Olivia told him, Rorson input the command into his console and four compartments opened up on the back of the ship.

Since joining the crew, Grito and Vi'ivando had been working on upgrading the ship's systems. Normally this pertained to internal programs and hardware that were out of date considering the age of the ship, but they had also come up with a few pieces of interesting equipment as well.

One of which happened to be the nesting mines that Olivia had asked Rorson to use.

As each mine flew out of their compartments, they swiftly began to move on their own.

Then when they reached the designated position, four panels opened up in each cardinal direction and another smaller mine came flying out.

This process repeated itself a half dozen times before all of the mines had been deployed. Starting with the largest that were about four meters in diameter and ending with ones that were only a few centimeters.