CHAPTER 343: CHAPTER 343

It was apparent that something was wrong the moment that Avery’s team breached the doors of the room where the pirate leaders were holed up.

Dozens of laser blasts came flying their way as expected. That was not the issue.

The problem was the haggard looking people that had been lined up in front of the pirate leaders and their guards.

Pirates were well known for kidnapping the people on the ships they captured.

Slavery may have been illegal throughout the entirety of the Dramid Alliance, but that could not fully stop the horrid practice.

While pirates dipped their hands into all manner of enterprises, the three main ones that kept them in business were providing illegal goods and services, selling stolen merchandise for cheap to merchants that had made deals with them, and acquiring slaves for debauched bastards.

’They didn’t talk about this on any of the comms. Did they figure us out, or did they just make an execute the strategy internally without using any communication devices?’ Avery thought as he pulled his team back.

Frankly, it was a gambit on the pirates’ part to use hostages to stop them.

Due to the dangers that pirates presented to the order of the Dramid Alliance, it was acceptable for there to be casualties in the process of eliminating them.

If this had been a police raid instead, it’s likely that the base would have just been reduced to dust rather than risk boarding it at all.

That would have left everyone that the pirates had abducted dead anyway, and there were some that would argue that was for the better.

The terrible things that pirates did to those they captured often left both physical and mental scars that never fully healed.

Still, one look from Jasmine told Avery that she wanted to rescue the pirates’ prisoners if at all possible, and morally, Avery wanted to as well.

However, the problem was trying to do so without putting those following him at extreme risk. It had already been necessary for them to retreat once.

"Liesel, do you think you’d be able to access the station’s main controls?"

Though she was a bit surprised to suddenly be called out, Liesel turned towards Avery and promptly responded.

"Probably. We already have the basic codes from those two pirates we first captured, and I don’t think that their security will be all that great. I’ll just need a little bit of time to give myself admin access."

"Good, let’s move to a panel you can use." Avery said, directing his forces away from where the top-ranking pirates had prepared their last stand.

He then directed Kasandra and Kaiden to take a team to the pirates’ storage and grab something from there.

Of course, now that the pirates had determined that they had a usable strategy against the mercenaries invading them, they were trying to get the chaos under control a direct their forces to crush the intruders.

’Well, they probably don’t know that we’re listening in on them since they’re still delivering orders over the same communication frequencies. I suppose that it’s possible this is a trick to feed us mis information, so I need to take everything said with a grain of salt.’

Fortunately, before the pirates could get squads together using their captives as human shields to go on the offensive, Liesel obtained access to all of the assess systems, and Kasandra and Kaiden’s squad returned with crates filled with the item Avery was after.

"Liesel, start making their lives hell by sealing all of the doors. I’m sure that the bosses will try and interfere, but I know that you can keep ahead of them. I don’t want anyone going anywhere except where I want them to be." Avery said, giving out his orders.

Once Liesel had started working on her task, he directed others to begin preparing for the surprise that he had in store for the pirates that still thought that their cowardly trick was going to save them.

...

"I can’t lock them out. Some rat has infiltrated our systems." One of the upper ranking pirates said as he slammed his fists down on the console in front of him.

Still inside their temporary command center, the leading pirates of this group were trying to regain control of the situation.

They had managed to restore a bit of order, and around seventy percent of the pirates still onboard the station were listening to their orders again, and were preparing to crush the group of mercenaries attacking them.

Truthfully, they thought that it was foolish for the mercenaries to come here to take the place in person.

Their biggest advantage was their high-quality ships and weapons. Something that they were not able to utilize inside a structure.

Yet, because the bases’ forces had been scattered, the mercenaries had cut through to its heart with hardly any resistance and had only been pushed back thanks to the desperate use of hostages.

There was a high chance that it would not have worked, since there were plenty of brutal merceries that would have just shot through the wall of prisoners without a single ounce of hesitation.

Though it was hard to say that it was fortunate, the bunch attacking them at least appeared to have a strong sense of virtue.

Except, it was not long after things started to go their way that a new problem occurred.

Somehow the mercenaries had gained the same level of access to the base as the groups’ leaders.

Practically all the doors and emergency bulkheads were sealed, and whenever they managed to unseal an area, the mercenaries went ahead and caused issues elsewhere and then locked it backdown.

"We’ll just have to have them blast through the doors. This base is done for if we don’t stop those mercenaries. We’ve got to capture some of them so that the ones still outside can’t just blow us up."

"No, I think it’s time we leave. We’ve still got our escape vessel waiting."

"You idiot, we’ll be blown away the moment we try to run. Even if our sensors are barely working, we know that some of them are still outside circling the station."

"Maybe we can cut a deal with them. These hostages seem to have some value. Perhaps they came here to rescue someone specifically."

"These mercenaries don’t seem the type open to negotiations. Otherwise, they already would have reached out to us. We just need to kill them all."

The pirates’ leadership began squabbling with each other as to what they would do now that another problem had presented itself.

Some of their peers had fled while their auxiliary bases were being crushed, and now a few of those that had remained wished that they had done the same.

They had hoped that by amassing all of their remaining forces at their main base, that they could fight off the mercenaries attacking them, but that had proven to impossible for them.

"We can’t just stay here and wait for something to happen. We need to do something now."

Just as one of the pirate bosses said this, something did indeed happen. Except, it was not from their side.

The environmental controls suddenly activated and began blowing air into the room at a far higher pressure than normal.

Not long after, a barely visible white gas began to fill the room, and the people inside started to feel relaxed and lethargic.

"Wait! This is-"

One of the pirates realized what was going on, but it was already too late.

All of their minds became addled by the high dose of the illicit drug that they were breathing in. This had scrambled their thoughts and left them in a state of semi-unconscious euphoria.

Naturally, the same thing happened to the hostages that the pirates had been using as human shields.

Still, this was a comparably better outcome than being killed in the crossfire between mercenaries and pirates.

...

"Okay, the gas has been distributed to the parts of the stations where the pirates were congregating. I can’t say I got all of them, but most of them should be off in la la land by now even if they’ve built up a tolerance to the substance." Liesel said, informing Avery of the success of his plan.

From the pirates that they had captured, he had already been able to get a list of illegal substances that this group was dealing in.

One of them happened to be a gaseous drug that was often released in small rooms for groups to breathe in at the same time.

It was a powerful depressant that had a strong relaxing effect several times that of most alcoholic drinks, and in high does could even cause some hallucinations.

Of course, it was dangerous to use because of how highly addictive it could be and the fact that heavy use caused extreme damage to neuro pathways of most species.

In this situation though, it had been the Avery’s best option for subduing the pirates without having to risk the lives of the people they had abducted.