What Do You Mean I'm The Captain Of A Yandere Mercenary Company?

Chapter 437: Avoid Combat

I stifled a yawn as I stretched my arms over my head.

Itʼs been three days so far and nothing has happened on this escort mission.

We did come across a few pirates but they took one look at us and quickly flew off, probably afraid that we were there to hunt them.

Obviously, we didnʼt do that since the client was insistent on avoiding combat as much as possible so we just let them leave while we continued on our way.

I was worried that they might go and find backup to raid us but nothing happened for the past few days so I donʼt think they were doing that.

For now, I was alone on the bridge and on watch in case anything happened.

Lea was supposed to be with me on watch duty but she had left her position temporarily to answer the call of nature.

Ries was still working at the back of the ship while Mara and Amber were taking a break since they were the ones on watch before us.

Weʼre about two more jumps away from our destination which I estimate would take another three more days to reach there.

As much as I was hoping that no problem came up during this escort job, itʼs really boring when nothing happe--

My ship was suddenly forced out of Travel mode and I was almost thrown forward from the inertia.

Several alarms blared and I quickly brought up my screens to do a quick check of the ship.

Travel Drives, disabled.

Engines, temporarily disabled.

Power generators, rebooting.

Weapon systems, rebooting.

Communications system, rebooted.

Right then, a call came through and I connected to it immediately, prompting the voice of the client to come through.

”Interdiction blast!! Everyone on high alert! Avoid combat if possible! Once your engines are up, full speed towards the Warp Gate and maintain formation!!”

Wait? Really? If we got hit by an interdiction blast, that means the enemy already plans to attack us, donʼt they? Shouldnʼt we be preparing to defend instead of just running blindly ahead and let them shoot at us from behind?

And as if to prove my point, the screen that showed a map of the area around my ship let out a warning beep.

Turning to eye it, the edge of the screen was starting to fill up with red dots that was rapidly approaching our formation.

My eyes went to the ship status screen again and the status of the engines just turned back to ʼonlineʼ.

I immediately pushed the throttle to maximum and the ship lurched forward, joining the others in flying away from our current position.

But the ones pursuing us had a speed advantage over us so they were already catching up despite our efforts to pull away from them.

Seems like our client wouldnʼt be getting what he wants after all.

I immediately initiated a short range scan, the map updating itself to show the classifications of the ships pursuing us.

Huh… Three C Class Corvettes, two C Class medium Gun boats, one C Class small Destroyer, twelve B Class Heavy Fighters and fifteen A Class fighters… No wonder these guys were not afraid of us…

Seems like those pirate ships that we let go really went to gather a large enough group to raid us… Guess avoiding combat was a really bad decision after all.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk, weʼre going to have to somehow deal with this.

Right as I was wondering if I should turn the ship to engage the pursuers, the door opened and footsteps thundered up the stairs.

”My apologies for being late, Mistress!” Lea shouted, running in while wearing absolutely not a shred of cloth on her.

She quickly took position at the weapons terminal and the status for the weapons system turned ʼonlineʼ on my screen.

”Mistress, I have them. Shall I open fire?” Lea asked without looking away from her screen.

Since weʼre already at this stage…

”Remember they arenʼt going to compensate us for any combat encounters. Make each shot count, ok?”

”Of course, Mistress.”

”Do you need me to turn?”

”Not at all Mistress, I will only need one gun for this.”

From where I say, I could see that she was manually controlling the back most railgun that was located at the bottom of our ship.

I maintained our flight path and speed so that she had an easier time aiming and I was not disappointed when she finally fired the railgun.

Because those pirates had been trying to catch up to us, they had placed all power to engines and neglected assigning any power to their shields.

Thus, I got to see the glorious sight of Leaʼs railgun shred through three A Class Fighters, two B Class Heavy Fighters and punch through the side of a C Class Corvette which ended up also taking out two of its engines.

While weʼre still outnumbered in the smaller shipsʼ department, we now have an almost equal number of C Class ships.

The sight of so many of their numbers getting taken out caused a few of the other ships to turn away in a panic, disrupting their formation and causing their entire formation to slow down.

But Lea seemed to have accounted for that because the next shot she fired pierced through four A Class Fighters and four B Class Heavy Fighters, three of them who had been in the midst of trying to flee.

Damn Lea… Just two shots and you already almost evened out the numbers between our two groups… Has anyone told you that youʼre really op?

”Hey!! We should turn around and finish them off! Quickly!!” Someone shouted over the comms.

”Look! Theyʼre hesitating now! This is the best chance! Get them!!”

”Hahaha! That ship is awesome!! Letʼs do this!!”

”Power to guns!! Letʼs turn this thing around!!”

Several of our ships started to turn in preparation to face those pirate ships, clearly intent on finishing them off.

But before they could even complete their turn, the voice of the client came from the comms.

”No! They are already retreating! Let them go! Charge up your Travel Drives and go!”

Wait… Seriously?

There was a pause before an angry voice from one of the Mercs came from over the comms, ”What are you talking about?! Those guys would just run away to get more people to come after us!! We need to get rid of them right now!”

”No they wonʼt! They already saw the consequences of coming after us! They will leave us alone now! Weʼre only two more jumps away from reaching our destination! Just let them run!”

There was another pause as all the Mercs on the call took a while to process what the guy just said before they all launched into an angry tirade.

”No they wonʼt! The pirates in this sector are relentless!!”

”Theyʼll definitely get more people! We need to take them out before they go back and report this!!”

”This is the best chance we have right now while they are still disorganised!”

”Come on guys! Letʼs just go and get them!”

”No! This is an order! Charge up your Travel Drives right now! Anyone who disobeys will be fired on the spot! You will not get any pay at all!”

Lea turned and shot me a look, clearly also of the opinion that this captainʼs ideas were entirely nonsensical.

Iʼm not even from this universe and the fact that I thought his words were stupid shows something.

”Lea?” I called out.

”Yes Mistress?”

I tapped on the console so that my voice could be heard through the comms to the other Captains.

”This is the Iridescence. Weʼre charging up our Travel Drives now. Countdown fifteen seconds.”

Right as I said that, I turned my ship so that the broadside was facing towards the disorganised enemy.

Lea immediately turned back to the console while I intentionally allocated the minimal amount of power to charge up the Travel Drives.

”I have them.”

”Fire at will.”

All five of our shipʼs main guns fired at the same time.

The high intensity lasers melted through the shields of the smaller ships before the railgun rounds pierced through them a few seconds later.

I only got to see a whole bunch of explosions on the screen before I had to turn the ship back to face the direction of our destination.

Unfortunately, with only a single salvo, we could not take out any of the C Class ships since they had already powered up their shields.

But I think from the number of explosions I saw that briefly flashed on the screen, I think we managed to either wipe out the A and B Class ships or left only a few of them remaining.

Either way, that definitely thinned their numbers by a lot to the point that this group should not be able to beat us if they still chose to engage us.

Right as my ship completed its turn, our Travel Drives also finished charging and we shot forward alongside all the other ships.

Thereʼs only one thing on my mind though…

This guy is a fucking liar… We didnʼt even get to loot…