All of us engaged our engines and sped off after the Destroyer, aiming to get out of the interdiction field.

The fact that they even set up an interdiction field in the first place meant that they had something planned for us while we were stuck here.

Worst of all, we don’t even know how big the field is so we don’t know how far we need to travel to get out of it.

The field itself would have been a sphere that was projected around us and we had no idea where exactly inside this sphere we were either.

Without the travel drives, the speed of our travel was really slow as compared to with it, especially since we were matching the Destroyer’s speed.

I kept my eyes on the map just in case any enemies appeared and Lea did the same on her end by manning the railgun.

I could tell that everyone was on edge from the comms and even Amber wasn’t talking much over our call, opting to focus on watching her map as well.

“Do you think they would actually send more guys after us, Captain?” Lea asked.

“I don’t doubt it. They wouldn’t have sent that many people after us and set up such a trap if they weren’t planning to do anything with it.” Continue your adventure with empire

Amber scoffed, “Or they could just be completely stupid and desperate.”

Well… I actually wouldn’t say that is impossible either considering what they’ve done so far. This whole thing could just be a ploy to waste our time and make us paranoid the entire way as a last ‘fuck you’ to us.

Definitely annoying, but I guess it’s preferable to them actually being able to intercept us.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, a warning came from my console notifying me of a high energy object appearing at the edge of my sensors.

Turning towards the console, I found myself looking at a giant red dot that was at least one and a half times the size of the Destroyer we were escorting heading directly towards us.

Looking up through my windscreen, I saw a small speck heading towards us that matched the position on the map.

I tapped on the screen to do a scan of the object and frowned when I realised what it was.

“A D Class Drone Carrier…” Amber muttered at the same time I had arrived at the same conclusion.

“Well fuck,” I cursed, realising another fact. “Those forty ships we shot down… Those were unmanned drones weren’t they?”

“Damn it… No wonder they were so stupid… This also means they barely have any loot on them!”

They really got us with that.

And seriously, hoe the fuck did that gang afford a D Class Carrier?!

Another beep came from the console and I turned to it to see a mass of tiny red dots forming around the big one.

Turning my gaze towards my windscreen once more, I could see a distinct ‘cloud’ being ejected out of the speck and heading towards us.

Oh god… There has to be more than a hundred of them…

The leader immediately started barking orders into the comms channel, “All ships! Redirect heading! Maintain formation and shoot down any drones that get within range!”

The Destroyer adjusted its direction to point diagonally to the right, aiming to fly past the Drone Carrier instead of engaging it.

At this range, the drones coming out from the carrier would mow us down before we could even get within firing range of it so avoiding this fight was the right call.

The only problem was the fact that this Drone Carrier does not seem intent on letting us go and the drones were on an interception course with us.

The silver lining for this was that we still outrange the drones so we could thin their number before they got to us.

Everything here was dependent on how far the edge of the interdiction field was and whether we could escape from this before we were overwhelmed by the number of drones.

Amber was visibly sulking, “Tsk… We don’t even get a bounty payout by killing these drones… We’re literally losing money by shooting at them…”

“Well… If we want to have a payout from our client, I’m afraid we have no choice but to just do it.” I pointed out.

“Still doesn’t make this any less annoying… Directing power to weapons.”

I did the same as well and gave Lea the instruction to fire on any drones that came within range of her railgun at will.

Our small fleet continued its course and the cloud of drones continued getting closer and closer to us, right until they were in the firing range of my photon laser.

I pushed on my flight stick to adjust my heading, making sure that my photon laser was pointed directly in the middle of the drones before firing the weapon in question.

The laser shot out from my ship pierced through several drones in one shot purely by the virtue of them being so clustered together.

Our client’s Destroyer also opened fire and its laser cannons shot down a good number of drones with a single salvo.

The other Mercs with long ranged weapons joined in as well, each of their shots finding their marks easily enough.

But despite that, it doesn’t even look like our attacks made a dent in it.

As though learning that it was not a good idea for them to be packed together so closely, the drones scattered and started flying towards us in a sort of cube shaped formation except with large spaces in between each drone.

Now, even if I fired my photon laser while trying to target as many of the drones as possible with each shot, I found myself only shooting down maybe two or three of them at most.

I turned to look at Lea and found her staring intently at her console, as though she was thinking of just where she should shoot the railgun to take down as many drones as she could with a single shot.

Sure enough, as soon as we got within range of my railgun turret, Lea fired the gun without hesitation.

I watched as the railgun round flew through the space between our fleet and the formation of drones and hit the first drone before continuing to pierce through five more.

Six drones in just a single shot… And she only started using this weapon barely an hour ago.

She’s a natural.

The panels above the Destroyer’s cannons slid open again and the missile launchers fired a salvo of the missiles towards the drones.

The drones started evasive manoeuvres in an attempt to avoid them but most of the missiles still found their mark and took down a good dozen of them.

Unfortunately, despite all that we had done, the drones still got within range and we were now under fire from over several dozens of drone fighters at once.

I saw one of the Destroyer’s escort ships get instantly shredded into pieces by the hail of lasers, the ship itself exploding in a ball of fire and spinning away out into the darkness of space.

“Hang on!” I warned, pushing forward on the throttle and engaging my thrusters, dodging through the lasers that were aimed at me.

Lea still had no problem as she managed to shoot down four drones with another shot from the railgun, despite the fact that I was dodging and weaving through space erratically.

Of course, I was no slouch either as I started firing my ship’s energy chainguns and mowed through a whole crowd of them that had been too preoccupied shooting at the Destroyer to bother with me.

I had to push my ship’s nose downwards to avoid a Merc ship that was spinning out of control from having its engines destroyed, right before it crashed into another drone and exploded, destroying both itself and the drone it crashed into.

The Destroyer was doing its best to shoot down the drones that were swarming around us but it was clearly lacking in the point defence sector as its armaments were more suited for medium to long range combat.

It is only thanks to its stronger shields that the drones were not able to do much damage to it but sooner or later, those would go down as well if we don’t get out of here any time soon.

Shit… There’s too many of them and more of them were being deployed by the Carrier.

I think we might need to abandon the client at this rate…

Just as I shot down another group of drones that were harassing another Merc, the Destroyer fired another salvo of missiles out through its missile launchers.

I bit back a curse at them as I did my best to avoid getting in the path of those missiles while they flew towards the drones that they were targeting, making sure that I was also out of the blast radius of any missiles that end up hitting a drone as well.

Just as I thought about cursing the leader through the comms for doing such a risky move, I got the notification ping that my ship’s travel drives were now back online.

Oh hell yeah! Let’s get out of here already!!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep