Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Avery could tell that Doyle was shaken the instant that half of his main weapons ran out of ammunition.

His vessels movements slowed down, and he momentarily stopped his vicious assault against the Dauntless.

Having already been anticipating this scenario since the start of their battle, Avery turned his vessel around and dove in to go on the attack.

"Deploying flares and chaffs." Jasmine said as Doyle fired a round of missiles to hold them back.

Trusting in his crew members responses, Avery kept on a straight path and avoided most of Doyle's attacks as he closed in. Taking only a few stray laser hits along the way.

Naturally, he had his three main laser cannons firing, and he watched as they burst against Doyle's shields which were managing to hold up and absorb the damage.

'Let's see how he takes to this.'

Once he was at a closer range, Avery tilted the Dauntless slightly to the right and fired a round from his starboard side plasma launcher.

Obviously, Doyle turned his attention towards dodging the deadly attack that was capable of ripping through shields and hull alike.

Still, his best path to escape was one that Avery had left open for him. Having controlled Doyle's movements with the first round from one of his plasma launchers and a continuous stream of fire from his laser cannons.

Swiftly charging forward with his main thrusters and then spinning around using the Dauntless' attitude adjustment thrusters, Avery lined up his port side plasma launcher.

The ball of burning hot white plasma streaked through the short distance between the two vessels.

Only by the skin of his teeth did Doyle manage to avoid having the center mass of his ship impacted by the surely fatal strike.

Using all of his experience he had pulled off a dangerous evasive maneuver by blowing up one of his own lower yield missiles close to his own craft to create a sudden and normally impossible burst of speed.

Still, this had not been quite enough to fully evade the incoming ball of plasma, and it impacted his shields and burning through the armor plating along the bottom of his hull.

While he had executed an impressive maneuverer that had allowed him to avoid certain death, Doyle was still in a near hopeless situation.

His shields had finally been exhausted, and he was out of shield cells to replenish them. All that he had left to protect himself was his vessel's armor, and though it was high-quality, it would not stand up long against Avery's military grade laser cannons.

Doyle felt himself being jostled around as a blast impacted his ship and he could tell from the emergency warnings popping up on the main viewscreen that he was in some deep trouble.

This was not the first time he had been in such danger before though. Back when he and Burke were first starting out as mercenaries, they had gotten involved in jobs they were far from ready to handle and had needed to use their wits and whatever cheap equipment they had on hand to get away.

Perhaps his memories of the past were resurfacing now that it seemed that his end was moments away.

"It's a cheap trick, but it might just work." Doyle mumbled, recalling something he had once used to avoid a swarm of pirates.

At this point he already knew that winning was off the table. He had overestimated himself and underestimated his opponents. Never had he imagined that Avery's group of four could take on his force of over a hundred ships.

Things might have gone differently if he had been more chiasmatic and had a greater number of followers so that half of his forces had not been unmanned. But there was no changing what had already happened.

With a determination to not die, Doyle loaded the pieces of equipment he had not used in a very long time into launch compartments. Normally this was where his recovery drones would shoot out from, but they were capable of delivering more than just their intended purpose.

It was only when his armor plating was one or two more hits away from failing that he was ready.

"Here goes nothing."

At the press of a button, several decoy beacons and a fast-moving spherical device ejected from Doyle's vessel.

Immediately Avery recognized what was going on.

In a time that seemed so long ago now he had used this very same trick to escape some pirates that were out to kill him.

It was a maneuverer used by the weak since they had no option to fight back. A last-ditch effort to escape their inevitable end.

Avery had never expected Doyle to deploy such a move as this one. Something some one that was objectively stronger than most would have little need of.

When the flash mine went off, Avery's viewscreen was momentarily lit up a bright white and nothing else was visible.

The sensors were likewise picking up multiple signatures that appeared to be Doyle's ship, making it hard to pin down where he currently was. At least at first.

Being an experimental spacecraft that Storren Corp. wanted to present to the Alliance Police as a new model for them to adopt as their primary small class vessel, the Dauntless was equipped with exceptional hardware and software.

In only a millisecond, the light intensity adjustment filter on the external cameras kicked in and erased the bright flash obscuring Avery's and his crew's outside view.

After that, the advanced sensors found minor discrepancies in the decoy beacons and marked them as such.

Doyle's desperate trick had only bought him a fraction of a second, and Avery swiftly tracked the direction he was trying to escape in.

"I guess neither his pride nor anger were strong enough to overcome his survival instinct. He should have used that brief opening to attack rather than running away." Kasandra said scathing as Doyle fled.

He had started this battle to kill Avery and his team, but he was clearly unprepared to die himself considering his current actions. Since he clearly lacked this resolve, it would have been better if he never came after them in the first place.

Avery gave chase after Doyle. Firing volley after volley from his laser cannons.

A few hits glanced off of the side of the Final Horizon, and soon the medium sized craft started to smoke as its internal systems incurred heavy damage.

"Send him a request for surrender. Since Burke asked, I'll at least try and bring Doyle in alive." Avery said, feeling a hint pity for his previously fearsome for that was now on the run for his life.

However, though he initially seemed to accept the offer to surrender, the second that he thought he could use this as an opportunity to attack, Doyle spun his ship around and opened fire at close range.

He was barely able to get a few shots off though before several bursts of red light engulfed his vessel.

"All of his weapon system have been destroyed." Jasmine informed Avery.

No longer having any means to fight back with, Doyle tried to escape once more.

Yet, from outside his current sensor range, an attack from elsewhere had already been launched.

Just as he turned around to flee, a sharp piece of metal pierced through his thrusters and left Doyle's vessel dead in space.