"You're crazy…" Samson muttered over our comms.

"That's why I love her~" Amber shot back while giggling over her own comms.

I could see Samson rolling his eyes before looking straight at me, "I swear… This plan of yours is either going to get us killed or we're going to be heroes."

The other Mercs that were also accompanying us shared a laugh with him but said nothing more.

I shrugged, "Hey, you volunteered for this, remember?"

"Yea, that's only because I'm doing it out of the kindness of my heart, mind you."

"In that case, I thank you for your infinite compassion, Samson, for volunteering yourself on this perilous journey!"

He sighed and chose to keep his mouth shut this time.

The plan I came up with was pretty simple though I guess the risk of it was also rather high.

We all know that the pirates are pretty confident of beating us even right now so I'm guessing that they know we were outnumbered and outgunned.

Possibly they already predicted that even if the military were to seek help from Mercenaries, not everyone would be on board to help defend the station as well.

This was the specific point that I was hoping to take advantage of in this plan.

You see… If us Mercs knew that we were screwed in this situation, it would make sense for us to look for a way out of it, right? That's why a few of us would pretend to flee coincidentally in the direction of the pirate fleet and then run into them by accident.

Then we would beg for our lives and offer to either join them or even give them information about what the military's plans were in dealing with the pirates.

If they take the bait, then we would definitely be able to get their attention and give the others the time needed to get into position to ambush the pirates.

Since I was the one who suggested it, of course I volunteered myself for it. Mostly because I was confident that even if they tried to shoot at me, I could at least escape from them.

I still needed volunteers to join me since just having a single ship flying towards the pirate ship would definitely not be taken seriously. We needed at least a group small enough to appear non-threatening but also large enough to make the pirates consider if attacking us was worth their time and effort.

When asked for volunteers, Amber had stood up, called me crazy before giving me a deep kiss on the lips and saying that she was in.

Samson then volunteered himself a few seconds later though he never said why at that time, which then prompted the other Mercs to start volunteering for the role as well.

Of course… There's also the chance that they just ignore whatever we have to say and just shoot at us. That's why there's that high risk involved for this role.

But not to worry, I have a plan for that as well where it should lower the chance of us just getting shot without warning.

That plan involved all of us communicating in an open channel which was why we had other Mercs listening in on our conversations right now as well.

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On an open channel like this, it's easy for others to pick up on our signal and listen in despite not being an intended recipient of the message. Usually these channels would be used to broadcast messages to other ships or when you're contacting strangers.

Assuming that these pirates aren't complete retards, they would pick up on our comms and at least listen in on what we were saying.

Of course, it can only be picked up if you were within range so we fully intend on acting out a small skit to sell the idea that we were indeed defectors or Mercs who weren't planning to go against the pirates.

Samson looked down at one of his console panels, "We're nearing the designated area."

I clapped my hands together, "Alright, places everyone! Let's get this thing rolling!"

I ignored the looks the others were giving me and settled myself into my role. We don't exactly have a script of course but we had kind of discussed how it would go on the way here so we're just going to wing it.

No one here is a professional actor so I doubt we would do a good job of acting it out with a script anyway.

I cleared my throat, "Ahem… Well I suppose it's expected of those military bastards to come up with a plan like that eh? Did they really think any Merc would happily sacrifice themselves just because they tell them to?"

There was a pause and I feared that this topic wasn't enough to get these Mercs to act normally. I specifically picked this topic since there was already animosity between the Mercs and the military before this so perhaps we could just leverage that here.

Amber was the one who responded, "What can I say, typical of those military assholes who always think they're better than us. If it wasn't for the fact that there were more of them there, I might have just gone to punch that captain in the face."

Somehow I have a feeling that her words carried a little bit of truth in them.

The other Mercs then quickly jumped in on the conversation.

"Yeah! What's with those bastards calling us honourless huh?! Are they the ones who have to take a job to help retrieve some poor guy's family from a derelict ship?! Of course not!"

"And then we have to be the ones to escort ships in and out of systems like these! If you are so great, we wouldn't even have to do this because they would do a better job at keeping space lanes safe!"

"Yeah! Fuck them! They think we only work for money?! We'll show them how we work for money! Make them even regret showing us that shitty attitude!"

Looks like it's working well, they're really letting all those repressed frustrations out right now and they don't even need to act for that.

I checked the map on my screen and we should be well within range for the pirates to pick up our comms by now.

I decided to take a little risk, "That Captain seemed to be so confident of this plan too. He even claimed that it was our honour to be there and be part of that 'historical moment' where we get to see a pirate lord get blasted before they could even do anything. What an ass."

Before anyone could respond to me however, a gruff voice that belonged to none of our group came over the speakers.

"Oh really now? Tell me all about it you little piggies."

The battlecruiser came out of the nebula like it had just materialised out of thin air, the rest of the pirate fleet surrounding it and making a quite intimidating display.

All of us stopped our ships and maintained a distance away from them, some of the Mercs goggling at the sheer number of pirates in front of us.

The same gruff voice spoke again, "So… What's it going to be? I heard you little piggies chatting about those military bastards having a plan to blast my fleet to bits right?"

I'm guessing this voice belonged to the pirate lord. He's only joining the comm using his voice channel so we can only hear him but he must be able to see us since we opened our video channels as well.

I gulped, "Ye… Yeah… The… The Captain gathered all the Mercs he could find… And tried to force us to help them fight you…"

The pirate lord sneered, "Oh really? What's this plan of theirs? Tell me."

I acted a little bit scared, "If… If we tell you… Could we--"

"Oh you want to be let go right? Sure, we can do that."

Even I know that he was lying and we would definitely be shot out of space the moment I told him.

I shook my head, "No, no… We wanted to join your fleet!"

There was a pause and I was a little afraid that my lie may be too unbelievable even for him.

"You… Want to join us?" He asked.

I nodded, "Yes! We got sick of how Mercs were being treated and we felt that it was more profitable and we'd get more respect if we just joined your pirate fleet! We're already being treated like trash over there anyway so we might as well just throw our lot in with you!"

"Hahahaha! You hear that boys?! These little Mercs who have been hunting us for a living now want to join us! What do you guys say to that?!"

A chorus of expletives came from over the comms, all of them cursing us and demanding our deaths.

Ok… I was not expecting them to be that against that idea…

Oh… Now I'm getting warnings about weapons being locked onto my ship…

Err… Where's the battleship?