CHAPTER 311: CHAPTER 311 ARRIVAL OF COMPLICATIONS

Despite the seventh ranked competitor’s best efforts, there was little that he could do to stop Avery from providing "aid".

This was not a truly antagonistic event, so it was not like he could try to shoo Avery away by attacking him. Not that doing so would have made a difference anyway considering the difference in their combat skills.

For the roles that each of them was acting out, they were all technically part of the same response team. That meant if one competitor came to help out another that was lagging behind, there was not much that could be done.

Of course, this meant that Avery was rapidly increasing his score, while the test pilot in seventh was losing his own chance to do so.

"Okay, I think we’ve gotten what we can from the orbital stations in this area, let’s head down tot eh surface now." Kasandra said, displaying their next target on the viewscreen.

Following her instructions, Avery headed off. Leaving enough faux energy lifeforms and "people" in need of rescue to keep the seventh ranked competitor busy for a bit while they headed off to the bases on the planet.

It was a bit tricker to fly once they got within the atmosphere and pull of the planet’s gravity, but not to the point where it had too much of an effect on Avery’s piloting.

For nearly a half hour, Avery and Kasandra focused on protecting the bases under attack by energy lifeforms. However, their time of being uncontested could not go on forever.

"We’ve got another ship coming in fast. Looks like it’s Jack Huxley."

Avery pulled up the image display from one of the Dauntless’ port cameras and had it track Jack’s ship.

There was no doubt from the trajectory that he was on that he was coming right towards them.

Except, it did not appear that the three transports that were under his command were anywhere nearby. He was completely alone.

"I guess he must be trying to rack up points just by eliminating energy lifeforms. We don’t know exactly how we’re being assessed, so I suppose that could be a viable strategy." Avery said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Seeing as how this was likely to be the case, Avery turned a greater attention on eliminating the imitation energy lifeforms and had his own transports back off for a bit.

Even if Jack Huxley arrived to a completely safe area, he would not be able to help many "people" evacuate with only his vessel.

Yet, as both Avery and Kasandra kept an eye on their competitor’s approach, he never once showed any interest in any of the faux energy lifeforms that he passed along the way.

Certainly, it could have been that he thought he could pick them up later and that he needed to try and steal the ones Avery was currently fighting. Still, most would not find that to be a particularly sound strategy. Not unless his goal was simply to sabotage Avery and he did not care about winning.

"His chances really aren’t good. The best he could do is third place overall even if he wins this one and the other rankings for this event line up perfectly for him. He’s probably still feeling bitter about the free-for-all battle still and is trying to get payback against us."

"Yeah, that’s mostly likely what this is." Avery said in agreement.

It was thanks to him and Liesel that Jack had been forced to drop out of the first event held the day before.

Their actions had even been the cause of his so-called teammate abandoning him and setting up a minefield that had ultimately led to his defeat.

Except, as the man kept closing in on them, something about his movements and the energy readings coming from his ship instinctually gave Avery a bad feeling.

He could feel a pit in his stomach that something was not right.

"Kasandra, raise the shields to full strength and release, flares, chaffs, and decoy beacons!"

Hearing the deadly seriousness in his voice, Kasandra did not ask for any clarification about the orders.

At the same time, Avery hastily turned the Dauntless around to put some distance between him and Jack Huxely.

Not but a moment later, alarms started blaring through the cockpit as a powerful weapon was fired at the Dauntless.

Looking at the screen, Avery’s eyes went wide to see that Jack had just launched a phasic torpedo.

This was beyond just trying to interfere with the event; he was trying to kill them.

Slamming the Dauntless’ thrusters, Avery swiftly assessed the best path of escape

Considering that the torpedo had been fired slightly above them, the only real option was to dive towards the planet’s surface and fly along as close as possible to it.

While doing so, Avery also fired off his stern scatterguns in a bid to possibly damage or destroy the torpedo.

It had been a while since Avery had felt this kind of intense pressure. His life was really on the line here.

Had he thought of Jack as a true enemy, he would have been prepared for the possibility of such an attack, but not once did he think that another competitor was going to suddenly try and blow him up with such a deadly weapon.

Fortunately, Avery was quite familiar with the aspects of a phasic torpedo.

From the sensor data the Dauntless had collected, he already knew what its range and yield would be.

Thanks to his quick reaction, Avery was able to keep ahead of the torpedo and eventually a projectile from his scattergun hit it and breached through the weapon’s shielding.

This managed to damage its propulsion system and forced it to explode early.

"Brace for impact!" Kasandra shouted as the blast reached them.

The Dauntless shook as it was engulfed in a bright white light.

Avery had managed to keep ahead of the phasic torpedo, but he had not quite managed to escape its blast radius before it went off.

Thankfully, they were at the edge of the explosion and managed to come out of it without sustaining too much damage.

Their shields were now down to only twenty percent, but the outer plating and structural integrity of the vessel were still fine.

"I can’t believe that f*cker just tried to kill us!" Avery shouted in fury.

He was already sending out wideband distress calls and providing information about what had just occurred. Of course, no one in the vicinity had missed what Jack Huxley had tried to do.

Nevertheless, there was no one in much of a position to respond.

While Avery was being attacked by Jack, dozens of cloaked vessels had just been detected by sensors and appeared in the space around the planet.

There was also another battle going on between different competitors.

At nearly the same moment that Jack had gone after Avery, Atlas had begun an all-out assault on Cerise.

"They’re jamming long-range commications. I can’t send anything outside of the planet’s confines." Kasandra said, a distressed look on her face.

It was not long before a transmission being sent out on multiple frequency was detected by the Dauntless’ communications array.

Figuring that this was almost certainly coming from the ships that had just appeared, Avery opened it up to listen to what they had to say. Whatever information that they could get was going to be important.

"To all those staging and competition in this farce of a competition. Surrender peacefully and your lives will not be harmed. All we want are the vessels that you are piloting. You’ll be free to go once we have them."

This message was being played on repeat in a clearly disguised voice.

"That’s obviously a load of sh*t." Kasandra spat. "They definitely plan to kill us or sell us off to who knows where."

Avery figured that Kasandra’s assessment was absolutely right. Jack Huxley had just attempted to kill them, and seeing as how he had flown closer to the clearly hostile vessels, there was little doubt that he was working with them.

Letting themselves be captured would put them on the fast track to a very bad ending.

"If this was what Cerise was warning us about, I wish she would have given us more concreate information." Avery grumbled.

Three of the enemy ships began closing in on the Dauntless.

Avery had not made a move yet, so it may have seemed like he was planning to surrender.

"We’ve got one in the cargo bay, right?"

"Yeah, and it’s loaded and ready to fire."

"Then let’s return the favor for earlier."

Without warning, Avery sent the Dauntless flying directly towards the vessels closing in on him.

They were all corvette class ships and quite a bit larger than the Dauntless. With one of them having a hangar large enough to fit a single small craft. No doubt meant to detain the Dauntless.

However, Avery was going to give themselves else.

"You can consider this us returning the gift Jack Huxley sent to us." Avery said over wide band communications as he launched his own phasic torpedo at the approaching ships.