Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Katarina considered Cerise's deal for less than a second before knowing that she would rather go down fighting than surrender.

Knowing what she and her team had done today, if they were captured, it would certainly mean the rest of their lives stuck in prison. They had not just kidnapped one person after all. Dozens of members of Nianni's security team had also been killed.

'I'd rather die than let that happen. And if that's how things are going to have to be, I'll at least take that b*tch with us.'

Katarina directed her most trusted subordinate, Krissy, to aim her weapon at Nianni and fire if Cerise so much as twitched.

Holding her own laser rifle to the side, Katarina continued the process of forcing it to overload.

She then stepped forward towards Cerise without fear.

"I think that you're the one that should surrender. If you try anything else, we'll kill our captive even if it means we all die afterwards. I bet that you'll take some heavy blame for letting her die. The backlash in the Alliance will be enormous considering how many fans she has." Katarina said threateningly.

"That might be true, but I obviously can't let you go with her. How about this instead. I'll let all of you leave here alive and get on your escape ship, if you release the girl to me."

"Do you think that I'm an idiot!" Katarina shouted. "If we don't have a hostage onboard, the Alliance Police will simply blast our vessel into oblivion the second we exit the hangar. Either my team and I get out of this alive with Nianni, or all of us die."

For the first time, Cerise's expression shifted as her lips turned into a frown.

She could tell that Katarina was serious. She was ready to kill herself and her crew members if at least served as a last act of spite.

Of course, though Katarina did mean what she was saying, this conversation was only meant as a distraction.

In just a few more seconds, she would finish disengaging the safety mechanisms on her weapon and could force it to overload into a fairly devastating explosion.

Cerise was undoubtedly strong, but even she would not get out unscathed if hit by such an attack. At east, Katarina could not imagine anyone out there that could.

"Fine. I'll surrender. Here, take my weapon." Katarina suddenly said, shocking Cerise for the first time.

Without waiting for a response, she tossed her weapon and turned around and started running.

For a moment, Cerise thought about killing Katarina as she fled. She had walked into the range of her threads to talk, and it would be a simple matter to decapitate her as she ran away.

Still, she refrained from doing so, since she had no idea how Katarina's subordinates would act once their leader was dead.

Most likely the one with her gun aimed at Nianni would kill the famous singer as ordered.

'This is why I hate hostage situations.'

As she was thinking about her next move, Cerise glanced over at the laser rifle flying towards her.

She had not paid much attention to the weapon once it left Katarina's hands, but her honed instincts had been nagging at her that something was wrong.

There was no reason for Katarina to throw away her gun in this situation. Maybe she had meant it as a distraction to get out of Cerise's range, but if she was really concerned about that, she never would have stepped up in the first place.

No, there had to be a greater meaning to it, and soon her aim became apparent.

Cerise saw that the weapon was beginning to glow brightly where powerpacks were inserted to power the weapon.

In all her time in the Alliance Police, she had never seen an overloaded weapon before.

It was material that covered, but for the last half a millennium, safety mechanisms had been installed in nearly all laser weaponry to prevent his from happening. It would need to be done intentionally.

'So that's what she was doing fiddling around with it.'

Now realizing what was going on, Cerise immediately moved into action.

Using her left hand, she manipulated her threads to grab the laser rifle and prevent I from getting any closer to her.

What she really wanted to do was fling it back at Katarina and her cronies, but doing so would catch Nianni in the blast. Something that needed to be avoided at all costs.

With her right hand, she gathered her threads together and created a thicker one out of them.

Then, she pierced the wall behind her with it and used it as an anchor to pull herself back with astounding speed.

After she had past the point where her threads were jammed into the wall, she released them and allowed herself to go flying.

At the same time, she also let go of the soon to explode laser rifle. Certain that she had gotten it far enough away to not harm Nianni.

"BOOM!"

A powerful explosion formed from the overloaded weapon.

It was lacking in intensity compared to a typical laser grenade, but it still spread out far and wide. Consuming everything that was in its way.

Thanks to having launched herself away, only the very fringes of the blast reached her. And for the first time Cerise's personal shield generator activated to protect her.

Fortunately, the defensive barrier absorbed the entirety of explosion that had caught up to her. Its capacity only being depleted by about three percent.

"Now how do I want to play this?" Cerise mumbled to herself.

She was completely uninjured and perfectly capable of rushing right back into the fray.

However, unless she was able to take her opponents completely unaware and kill or incapacitate them all before they could make a move, Nianni was likely to end up getting killed.

At the very least she was still obscured by smoke billowing out from the explosion, so she had a few moments to think while the fire suppression system got to work.

For a moment she considered playing dead to get the drop on Katarina and her crew but quickly dismissed the idea. It was too full of holes.

Seeing the damage in front of her, there was a good chance that Katarina was already picking a different route to head to the hangar rather than rushing down the now destroyed path in front of them.

Also, even if they did come this way, one of them might decide to fire on Cerise to make sure she was finished off.

That would force her to give up on playing dead immediately and start the fight again from a disadvantageous position.

'I wish that I had more surveillance gear on me. I'd already deployed everything I had earlier and didn't have time to retrieve anything since I had to rush to cut them off.' Katarina thought, frustrated by her lack of equipment.

Although it had seemed like she had been waiting patiently for Katarina and her group, truthfully, Cerise had arrived in front of the hangar doors just a few seconds before them.

Knowing that she did not have much time, Cerise decided to chase after Katarina and her team.

While she knew where the hangar the escape ship they had been heading towards was, there was a possibility that they had another escape route planned.

If she headed back to that area expecting them to show up, but they never did, then she would have to rush around to track them down again. In the worst-case scenario, they might even get away.

"This mission is turning out to be far more troubling than I thought it would be. After this is all over, I'm going to force the chief to let me take a long vacation on a nice planet far away and have him pay for it." Cerise grumbled as she deftly maneuvered through the area destroyed by Katarina's overloaded laser rifle.

When she got to the other side, as expected, Katarina's team was already gone.

Most likely they were heading towards the hangar from another direction as Cerise had anticipated they would.

Luckily, she was able to still pick up the energy signatures of their weapons with her scanner and followed after them.

This time, she planned on getting the drop on them before they realized what was going on.

Her first priority was securing Nianni. Anything after that was secondary.

"Who are these two?"

As she was tracking down Katarina and her crew, she noticed that they were now headed in a completely different direction. It seemed that they did have another escape route and were heading there instead now.

Except, while keeping her distance and waiting for the right time to strike, Cerise had noticed two new energy signatures appearing on her scanner.

At first, she thought that they might be reinforcements, but the energy signatures were clearly not from the same laser rifles that Katarina and her subordinates were using, and their movements were strange if they were allies.

The two individuals had stopped before coming into contact with Katarina's group and seemed to be moving through the hallways so as to get in front of them.

It was definitely strange so far as Cerise could tell.

'My best bet is that they're members of the security personnel. But they don't seem to have any typical weaponry on them. At least what I can pick up from their energy signatures.'

Cerise's scanner was the most advanced currently in use by the Alliance Police and only given out for special missions. The rank and file did not even know of its existence.

The device was capable of quickly and efficiently compiling the data its sensors received and providing nearly one hundred percent accurate information.

"Well, if they're trying to rescue Nianni as well, I can use them. And if they're more enemies, I merely need to take them down as well." Cerise said, confidently moving forward while keeping watch of the situation.