I angled my ship to join the formation escorting the Destroyer.

There were fifteen other ships not counting Amber and myself escorting the Destroyer, five of them were clearly the client's bodyguards since they were all the same design of A Class fighters while the other ten were a mix of varying designs and classes.

Some of them even look like they were patchwork ships that were barely being held together using spare parts.

I guess that's the expected quality of the ships around here or something.

Just by looking at the Destroyer and the escort ships, even I could tell that the client was most likely connected to the government in some way or other.

But well, as long as he's paying us, I guess I don't care who he really is.

A call came through and I tapped on my console to answer it, revealing the leader that we met just now.

"Calling all escorts, we'll be engaging travel speed in ten seconds."

I reached for my controls and directed power to my travel drives, preparing to match their speed as the timer started counting down.

When the number reached zero, all of us engaged our travel drives at the same time and sped away from the station.

I made sure to mute the call with the leader and turned back to Lea, "How are things over there?"

I found her looking at the controls with a serious face, "I… Think I have a hang of it. The controls are pretty simple."

I leaned back in my chair, "Hopefully we wouldn't meet any--"

"Interdiction pulse incoming!"

I turned back to the controls and immediately held the controls as I bit back a curse at opening my mouth too soon.

"Hold on tight!" I warned Lea, right as the interdiction pulse hit us.

We were shaken out of our travel speed and I felt myself lurched forward from the sudden stop.

I immediately moved power to my shields and weapons to prepare for any hostiles that were going to take advantage of that interdiction pulse.

My console started beeping out warnings just as the leader shouted out his own warning, "Enemy ships incoming!"

I checked the map to see a bunch of red dots in the distance moving quickly towards us. The number at the bottom of the screen showed that there were at least forty or so enemies flying towards us.

The only good thing was that the group consisted of mainly A Class fighters and bombers while we had a C Class Destroyer and several more B Class ships.

"Bloody hell, what the heck did this guy do?!" I whined.

Amber grinned at me through the screen, "If we want to run, we still can~"

I gave her a look, "Do you want to?"

"Hell no~ We're looking at free Credits right there!"

Well… I expected her to say something like that… Because I had the same idea as she did.

The leader started taking charge of the fight, "All ships, form a line! Maintain distance and protect the Destroyer at all costs!"

We turned as one to face towards the fleet of enemy fighters while the Destroyer faced its broadside towards them.

"Hold the line!" The leader commanded.

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A split second later, the Destroyer fired its broadside laser cannons at the enemy ships, piercing through at least six of them with just one salvo.

"Hold! Hold!" The leader commanded again.

Everyone waited and the Destroyer fired its cannons once more, shooting down three of the enemy ships in the second salvo.

"All ships, fire at will!"

"Lea! Weapons free!"

"On it, Captain!"

I honestly wasn't expecting Lea to do much since she was new to the controls so I focused on shooting down my own targets with my photon laser instead.

At this range, they were basically sitting ducks for me as I took my time lining up my shots before firing at them.

A few of the other Mercs also fired their own weapons at the enemy fleet, taking out a good number of their ships before they even got within range of their own weapons.

At this point, I'm seriously wondering if this was just a last ditch and futile attempt by that gang to try and stop us from leaving.

Because it's quite clear that they would definitely not be able to stop us with a group like this.

They've already lost half of their numbers and they've not even reached us yet. And even if these twenty ships reached us, they're definitely not going to be able to deal with the escorts let alone the Destroyer that our client is in, which is their supposed target.

Why are they even willing to just throw their lives away like this? Like they're really throwing themselves into a situation where they can't win you know? Are they just too dumb to realise this fact or has that gang indoctrinated their members so much that they literally don't mind dying for them?

Either way, they really are crazy.

I was looking for another target for myself to shoot at when I saw a railgun bullet fly out from the top of my ship and pierce through two of the ships in a line.

"Nice shot, Lea!" I praised.

"Thank you, Captain. I'm still getting used to it. Just give me some time with it and I should be better with my aim."

She's still getting used to it and she already managed to shoot down two ships with a single shot.

And seriously? Was this already not good enough of an aim to you? Just saying that she is a talented sharpshooter would be an understatement.

"Break formation, scatter!" The leader barked through the comms.

Wait… He wants us to scatter? Ah fuck it.

I pushed forward on my throttle and boosted downwards and away from the Destroyer to distance us from it.

The other Mercs also started to fire up their own engines to distance themselves from the ship, all of us moving in different directions.

The area above the Destroyer's cannons opened up to reveal a whole bunch of barrels jutting upwards.

I wondered what those were for since the barrels were not pointed at the enemy fighters, right as a whole horde of missiles were fired out from the barrels.

The swarm of missiles flew towards the enemy fighters, each of them targeting a fighter and chasing after them with deadly precision.

Once they saw the swarm of missiles flying towards them, the enemy fighters also scattered in different directions.

I watched as the swarm of missiles completely decimated the enemy fighters, wiping out more than half of the remaining fighters with just one wave of missiles.

Do they not have shields at all?

Also, does our client even need us to escort them if they have armaments like this?

There's only eight fighters left and they definitely won't be able to pass us so I was expecting them to run away after this.

But instead, those eight fighters still turned back and charged towards us.

What the heck? Are they really looking to die?

"Lea, shoot them down."

"Already on it."

The moment she said those words, the railgun fired and pierced through three more fighters with that single shot.

Ok, she really just lined up multiple ships with one shot that easily huh?

I wasn't even specifically positioning myself to help her line up her shots so this was all her.

The other Mercs also started firing as well and the remaining ships were quickly shot down in just a few seconds flat, completely wiping out the fleet that was sent against us.

I looked at the sea of debris that was floating out there and wondered what exactly their plan was for this.

Did they not expect to be met with this much resistance or something? Otherwise why would they just throw themselves at us like that?

Coupled with the thugs we have shot inside the station, I believe they've lost at least over a hundred people by now and most likely a few million Credits worth of stuff, all just to try and capture or kill this client of ours.

What really was the plan here? Who's even in charge of organising this?

The leader turned to address us again, "Everyone form up. Once the interdiction has worn off, charge up your travel drives and we'll leave as soon as we can."

"Bummer… I didn't even get to do anything… And we're not even going to loot the debris?" Amber groaned.

I made sure that my voice was only connected to Amber's before speaking, "We can set a marker here and return later to sift through them?"

"Ohhh~ Tera, you're a genius! We'll do that!"

Well… I mean… Wasn't this the obvious thing to do? Of course we're not going to just leave all that delicious loot floating around right there!

These idiots were already giving us so much trouble so we'll need to milk everything out of them as much as possible to make this entire job worth it!

I just hope there's actually something worth our time to scavenge in that pile of debris.

As I tried to power up my travel drives, I suddenly received an error message telling me the travel drives were unable to come online.

"Fuck! They set up an interdiction field!" The leader cursed. "Everyone! Full speed ahead! We need to get out of here!"

Ah fuck… Did they really send forty ships to buy them time to set up this field? These guys really are crazy…