Once Avery reached the edge of the final moon along his path, he saw the Alliance Police and the pirates locked in a massive battle.
Lasers and missiles were flying from both sides, and the wreckage of destroyed vessels littered the area.
Currently, neither side appeared to be winning, but the pirates were slowly gaining the advantage thanks to the nearly two hundred small spacecraft that had joined the fray while trying to escape.
Seeing this scene, Avery understood why the Alliance police were calling on the mercenaries for aid.
"I guess we're plunging back in." Avery said as he shot into the chaotic battle.
Setting his sights on the pirates' light fighters, he hunted them down with his powerful weaponry.
It was not long before other mercenaries started to arrive and turn the tides.
Without needing to worry about the smaller ships swarming them now, the Alliance Police's frigates, destroyers, and cruisers were able to turn their full focus on the weaponized transport vessels that had arrived from outside of the system.
At this point, it seemed that victory was assured. Some of the pirates had managed to get away during the brief period of time that the blockade was broken, but the majority of them were trapped by the current battle.
Yet, in a desperate move, one of the large transports that was already nearly destroyed, turned towards the heavy cruiser positioned to block off any more pirates from escaping.
With its thrusters blasting, the vessel was on a direct collision course with the cruiser.
Immediately the Alliance Police aimed as many weapons as they could to stop the kamikaze attack.
Unfortunately, they were only half successful. They were able to destroy most of the ship before impact, but its momentum carried large chunks of debris forwards.
Several fiery balls of metal impacted the heavy cruiser. Causing it significant damage and to be pushed away from its position.
This left an opening for the remining armed transport vessels and pirates to escape.
At once they swarmed through this opening. The smaller and quicker fighters taking the lead.
Then when they had gotten far enough away to activate their lightspeed drives, they disappeared into the vast expanse of space.
"Avery! What are you doing?!" Kasandra shouted when she noticed the Dauntless speeding up and heading towards the tail end of the retreating pirates.
"I'm not letting them get away so easily."
A fire in his eyes, he dove towards the nearest medium sized vessel and blasted it with both of his plasma launchers.
Unable to take the attacks, the transport lost its shields and took heavy enough damage to be disabled.
After the first, Avery headed for a second, but by the time he had fired on it, the other pirates noticed his one-man assault.
A barrage of lasers came towards him, and the powerful shields protecting his ship depleted at an astounding rate.
Hastily, Kassandra activated one of the Dauntless' shield cells, but that was only going to last a dozen more seconds under such heavy fire.
"We need to pull back! There's only one shield cell left!"
"Okay. I've just got to give them one last parting gift."
His sights set on the closest large sized ship; Avery pulled the trigger on the final weapon the Dauntless had at its disposal.
The single torpedo tube on the bottom of the vessel came to life for the first time.
Avery only had four torpedoes onboard, and he had refrained from using them so far for multiple reasons.
They were prohibitively expensive; with the type he had costing around eight hundred thousand Krenin to replace. Plus, he would need to be at least a five star mercenary that the Alliance trusted to be allowed to buy more of them.
These torpedoes were also only really useful against large craft that had decent shields and plating. Otherwise, they were massive overkill, and Avery had other options at his disposal.
However, the time had finally come for him to put one to use.
After firing it, Avery did not wait to see if the torpedo would hit the target. Instead, he turned around and pushed his thrusters to get him as far away as possible.
Noticing the incoming projectile, the vessel it was aimed at focused its fire on the torpedo to stop it.
"Come on, make it." Avery said, watching his sensors to see if he hit.
Another issue with powerful torpedoes was how easily they were shot down. Everyone knew how much damage they could do, so unless they were fired at close range, they were more often than not blown apart before reaching their target.
Except, fortune seemed to be on Avery's side this time. His phasic torpedo managed to avoid more than a few glancing blows that its shield generator was able to soak up.
For just a moment, when it reached the enemy's shields, the torpedo seemed to slow down, before breaking through.
The technology used in its construction allowed it to pass through even military grade shielding. The souped-up pirate transport never stood a chance.
A bright flash of light erupted from the phasic torpedo when it finally connected, and the large ship was completely consumed.
As the powerful explosion continued to expand, it even reached some of the other ships trying to escape and knocked them off course.
Two more large transports, and five medium were unable to jump to light speed with the rest of the pirates' rearguard.
Naturally, the Alliance Police homed in on these stragglers and quickly bombarded them with concentrated fire. With the the bulk of the forces having fled, the few remaining ships that were already damaged went down without being able to put up much of a fight.
"Whew. That was certainly exhilarating." Avery said while letting out a deep sigh.
Kassandra next to him, was sitting up straight in her seat, with both her ears and tail stiff and frozen from how on edge she had been.
Still, as much as she had thought him crazy in the moment, after the fact, she could see that his actions had indeed been heroic. He had managed to cause a massive blow to the pirates at the very end and kept a good portion of their forces from escaping, and undoubtably causing havoc in the future.