Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

After celebrating their success on the first day, the extermination force that Zefield had put together was in for a rude awakening.
The next day, another wave of space monsters arrived and showed no signs of slowing down.
Each of the hunting squads went out to deal with their respective target, but there were a several times when they were forced to retreat of call-in backup from the reserves.
Some of the Fluem, which were the space monsters that could absorb light and use their large wings like solar sails even rushed in to attack the Intrepid.
While none of the creatures showed high levels of intelligence, their instincts were sharp enough that they could identify and prioritize threats.
Perhaps it was simply because of the carrier ship’s size, or maybe the monsters had managed to identify it as something crucial that needed to be destroyed.
There was no way to really tell what was going through these creatures’ heads, but one thing was for certain. They were determined to eliminate every intruder in their system.
"Try to position us closer to the asteroid and keep it between us and them."
Avery was shouting orders to the Intrepid’s bridge crew from his command chair.
A surprising twenty-four Fluem had broken through to their position and were attacking them relentlessly.
This group was almost nothing like the first one that they had encountered upon entering the system.
They moved quicker and seemed far more well-coordinated with each other.
Every second all of them were spraying out balls of light towards the Intrepid. Mostly ignoring the other vessels around them.
If there was any saving grace, it was that Avery had noticed that they seemed hesitant to get within a certain distance of the giant asteroid and that they would try and attack only at angles where there was little to no chance of hitting the object.
Part of him wondered why they acted in such a manner. but now was hardly the time to be analyzing the reason for their behavior. All that mattered was that it gave them a slight advantage in this confirmation.
"Concentrate our lasers on them one at a time. That should overcome their resistance. Fire missiles and multicannons to suppress them and limit their movements. Let the others whose ships are more geared to fight them take them down."
While Avery commanded the Intrepid, the rest of his company’s forces were already out fighting to protect the carrier ship.
Fluem were quite tricky thanks to being able to absorb blasts laser weaponry, but there were a couple of standouts among Avery’s team that had weapons focusing on physical ammunition that was very effective against them.
Ezra’s railgun especially tore through them with ease, and if he aimed his shot right, he could kill one in a single hit.
The one doing the most work though, was Kaiden.
His new Corvette was heavily armored for a craft of its size and had used every conceivable point where weapons could be installed to arm itself.
Naturally, this made his vessel slower than the average corvette and less maneuverable. It had sacrificed some thrusters for extra weapons and defenses.
If he operated alone, this probably would not have been the best idea as enemies would have an easier time running away from his ship.
Kaiden knew that he was part of a large mercenary group now, though. Something that was likely to be a long-term arrangement considering that his sister was married to Avery.
That was why he had gone with a very specialized craft. One that focused heavily on firepower.
His corvette had multiple different weapon types installed, with all of them being the most powerful of their class currently on the market.
Right now, his four Driard Mk XVI Multicannons and Visnave Medium Railgun were making mincemeat of the Fluem.
The endless spray of bullets tore their relatively soft exteriors apart, and the shots from the vessel’s railgun that was three sizes larger than the one Ezra had installed on his Specter blew one to pieces each time it fired.
"We’ve got more common in. This time with some of the signal interference type creatures."
One of the bridge crew manning the sensors alerted Avery to enemy reinforcements that were closing in on them.
So far it had only been Fluem that had managed to slip by the rest of the fleet since they were by far the fastest of the space monsters, but this time they had some of the small three-meter-long monsters shaped like pill bugs accompanying them.
They were annoying little creatures that everyone just called pests rather than having assigned them any sort of name.
For space monsters, they were tiny and lacked any real offensive capabilities.
Against unshielded ships they could throw themselves at the outer hull and chew away at armor plating, but that was about all they were capable of doing in the way of damage.
However, what made them annoying was when they swarmed an area and released gases and electromagnetic waves that messed with communications and sensors.
Just a few did not cause much of a problem, but they were always in groups of several hundreds if not thousands. Making them a real headache when dealing with any of the actually dangerous space monsters in this system.
"Contact Burke and tell him to take a squad of fourteen combatants to hunt down the little pests. We need to maintain our short-range communications at the very least so that we can continue to coordinate with each other."
"Tell Kaiden and Ezra to take half of our remaining forces and disengage for now. Let the rest of us handle the remainder of the first group of Fluem. I want them to circle around so that they can flank the next batch when they arrive. The Intrepid still has plenty of shield capacity left to take attacks."
Avery hastily gave out what he thought to be the best orders for their current circumstances.
He had figured that they would be drawn into some fighting eventually, but he had not expected it to be so soon and so intense right from the second day.
This had not occurred the first time that Zefield and his team had tried to conqueror the system from its monstrous inhabitants.
They had taken more time to become anywhere near this aggressive before.
Except, likely because of the presence of far more intruders than last time, the space monsters had been whipped up into a frenzy already.
Fortunately, it was not to the point that the battles had become overwhelming.
The fighting was just consuming a lot more time and energy than expected.
Right before the next wave of enemies arrived, a full volley from the Intrepid’s laser cannons blew apart the last remaining Fluem of the first group.
"We’ve already got some experience fighting these things. We’ll just keep at it and chip away at them until they’re all dead." Avery said reassuringly to the bridge crew who were obviously becoming more tense.
Some of them were still young and inexperienced.
They had fought plenty pf pirates before, but that had always felt easy and safe.
The Intrepid had hardly ever been attacked then, and even when it was, their enemies’ weapons had been unable to deal any real damage.
This was different though.
Right now, they were facing monstrous creatures that attacked relentlessly and with no sign of self-preservation. Even as their comrades were slaughtered, not a single Fluem faltered and continued to attack the Intrepid.
Behavior like this was a bit unnatural for a living creature.
Yet, it was likely from their leftover programming when they were developed as biological weapons by the people that had created them.
Without any time to rest, Avery’s company continued to fight against the threat against them.
There were not any reinforcements that came to assist as everyone else was busy with their own respective battles.
Through good tactics and their quality weapons and equipment, his team managed to get through the attack without incurring any losses.
’Looks like that’s the last of them. The Intrepid’s hexagonal plate shields took the brunt of the damage, so our main shield is still above eighty percent capacity. I really will need to thank Ardesen for coming up with this design when we get back.’ Avery thought as he assessed the damage done to his team.
Thanks to most of the enemy attacks having targeted the Intrepid, only a few vessels had more than depleted shields and scratches.
Those that were in need of repairs were not too broken up and were quickly directed inside of the Intrepid to get fixed up.
It was only around twenty minutes later that Avery received a direct message from Zefield.
Another wave of Fluem had tried to zip by, but he had led part of his team to personally stop them.
Apparently, the front lines were also now secured and the first group of those that needed repairs or were injured were being sent back.
"Doesn’t look like our work is going to end anytime soon."
Knowing that they were about to be receiving a wave of people that needed support, Avery began issuing commands for the Intrepid’s crew to prepare.
There were more than vessels to fix up this time as well, so Avery personally reached out to Doctor Raiti and asked her to head to the Intrepid’s sickbay and be ready to receive patients.
It was one thing after another, but this was the job that they had signed onto.
Eventually the second day of the campaign to clear out the system came to an end. With battles still raging on as they transitioned into day three.