When Avery came out of lightspeed travel, his view screen displayed over a hundred ships under control of the Alliance Police encircling the Yuson System's tenth planet.
"That's a lot of firepower they've got." Avery whistled.
There were nine heavy cruisers, sixteen light cruisers, three dozen destroyers, and over fifty frigates.
This constituted a large portion of the Alliance Police's forces in the system and each of the vessels had been locked into a tight pattern to blockade the planet to prevent the space pirates from slipping away.
Avery also noticed on his sensors a large number of wrecked spacecrafts. It seemed that some of the pirates had grown scared or impatient and attempted to make a break for it at some point.
Of course, unless they left in mass, the Alliance Police would have more than enough weapons to take them down with ease.
"They must be waiting for outside reinforcements, or some collaborators to open up a path of escape. Otherwise, their leaders probably would have already ordered an evacuation and attempted to escape in the chaos." Avery surmised.
Still, it was likely too late for any outside help now. The main reason the Alliance Police had so far refrained from launching an assault was due to a lack of smaller fighters to hunt down the pirates as they fled or hid.
Perhaps the frigates and destroyers might be able to navigate the numerous moons clustered together with some difficulties, but the light and heavy cruiser certainly would be nearly impossible to maneuver with any haste. Even the smallest light cruiser was over three hundred eighty meters long.
After marveling at the sight of the gas giant and its moons that he had only seen from a distance before, Avery synced up the Dauntless' navigation with the other mercenaries in his group and flew into position.
Soon, he had reached his destination and waited on standby behind one of the smaller moons. With all but the necessary systems offline to lower the odds of being detected.
Now all Avery needed to do was wait for the Alliance Police to start off the battle by bombarding the base with their heavy weaponry.
In the meantime, he began examining the other ships that his fellow mercenaries had.
Most of them had vessels around or a bit smaller than the Dauntless, but a few had spacecrafts that would be classified on the smaller end of medium size.
"Oh, so that's what those two are flying."
Not long after he began observing the other mercenaries, he noticed two nearly identical ships.
Both were around sixty percent bigger than his dauntless and among some of the larger vessels that any of the mercenaries possessed.
Avery had to hold back from scanning Kaiden and Kasandra's ships, since it was generally considered rude to do so without a valid reason.
Nevertheless, even from just his view screen, he could tell that the sleek silver vessels that almost looked like the fangs of some beast were likely a contributing factor to the moniker the two siblings had been given.
"Without more data, I can't be sure, but they look to be built for speed firepower. I bet it would be difficult to deal with them." Avery mused.
As he was considering how he would fight the two of them in a hypothetical situation where they became hostile, a transmission was sent out that the bombardment was about to begin.
A few seconds later, Avery's sensors picked up large energy signatures from the heavy and light cruisers powering up their weapons.
With a slight tilt of his ship so that he could see the nearest Alliance Vessel, Avery watched it open fire from his position.
Several heavy bore lasers lit up the darkness of space as they fired through an opening in the many moons towards the base.
Obviously, everything had been calculated beforehand to allow for the maximum amount of time to hit the pirates' stronghold.
It hardly took any time at all to punch through the base's shielding and cause massive damage to its outer armor.
By the time a different moon had once again blocked off the line of fire, the pirate's outpost was already heavily damaged and on the brink of collapse.
"Looks like they're fleeing like expected." Avery heard some of the mercenaries say over short range comms.
Once the pirates realized that they were under attack by the powerful military grade weaponry of the Alliance Police's large vessels, a majority of them lost all semblance of composure and started making a break for it.
Still, there were some that decided to stick around and use the vast number of moons for cover. Clinging to the hope that reinforcements from outside might come and break the blockade.
"It doesn't matter how well they try to hide at this point, however. It's only a matter of time until they're hunted down." Avery said, powering his ship up to full output to engage in combat.
The first wave of pirates was about to pass by the moon and the other mercenaries in the same group as him. As soon as they did, they would all jump out and get the drop on them.
"""Let's get 'em!""" Multiple mercenaries shouted at the same time.
A hectic battle soon ensued as dozens of mercenaries ambushed the fleeing pirates.
Avery shot into the fray without an ounce of worry and began picking out his targets. The g-force of the sudden acceleration pushing his back up against his seat.
He needed to take out a large number of the enemies to earn a big payout to afford his father's treatment. Now was not the time for caution.
"Anyway, there might be more of them, but these guys aren't anywhere close to as strong as the opponents in the four star rank advancement program." Avery said while wearing a fierce smile.
Thanks to the Dauntless' impressive thrusters, he was the first to engage the pirates, with the only ones trailing close behind being Kaiden and Kassandra.
"Sh*t! We've got a mercenary in an unknown vessel coming in fast."
"Don't worry about it and waste 'em. There's more behind it. Get rid of the idiot leading the charge quickly and then break through."
The pirate's communication went crazy when Avery first popped out from behind the moon, and all of them quickly began training their weapons on him.