Chapter 486 - 486 Decisive Strike
With a sudden burst of speed, the stealth probe shot forward.
It had started out around three kilometers away from the commander type that it was aimed at and quickly closed that distance.
When it passed the threshold of two and a half kilometers, the space monster that controlled the pests finally noticed the probe.
Within that distance, it could detect anything due to the constant low level psychic field the creature created.
Except, knowing about the probe now did the monster little could.
The probe was already too close and moving too quickly for it to dodge or have one of the monsters under its command intercept it.
Naturally, the enormous space monster moved to intercept the invisible object with its enormous body.
There was no telling what the thing was, so it moved to destroy it.
But this turned out to be a bad move on its part.
The commander types mostly lacked combat abilities. Their entire purpose was to control the species of space monster assigned to them. So that was basically all that they could do.
Their only real means of attack was to ram into something with their giant bodies or swallow things whole.
Had the leader of the pests had more time, it likely would have aimed to eat the probe. Something that would have led to an even worse outcome.
Instead though, the massive creature tried to ram the fast-approaching object with its head.
Its movements were astoundingly quick for its size, but this turned out to be a bad move. As the probe now had a direct shot on its single gargantuan eye.
Normally this would not serve as much of a problem for the monster, as it actually had several thick lenses to protect such an obvious weak spot.
Had the probe been a projectile just focusing on speed and mass to deal damage, it likely would have bounced off harmlessly.
Of course, it had been fitted with a fairly powerful warhead to deal maximum damage.
Even a creature as large as the commander type would not be able to shrug off the explosion that was about to occur.
When the probe impacted the tough outer lens of the monster's eye, it bounced back a couple of meters before the bomb inside went off.
An eight-hundred-meter radius blast then engulfed the commander type's huge, rounded, bulbous head.
The defensive layers of the creature's eye were quickly breached, and it recoiled in immense pain.
Its top layers of skin were also heavily scorched by the heat of the expanding explosion.
Anyone within a few hundred thousand kilometers with even a hint of psionic abilities would have heard the psychic scream the monster released upon taking the hit.
Avery, who was currently taking his turn as bait certainly noticed.
It gave him a slight headache, but he still grinned. Knowing that the plan was moving forward and that one of their targets had just been hit hard.
This was only the beginning though.
With one of their brethren attacked, the other four commander types whipped the creatures under their control into a frenzy.
Obviously, they knew that this strike against one of their own most have come from the intruders that had been flaunting themselves.
They had been keeping most of their armies around them as it should not have been necessary to mobilize all of their forces just to deal with a few ships.
Now, however, they were enraged.
A new wave of monsters twice as large as the one already chasing after Avery began to move.
The commander types were no longer going to be holding anything back against him. They would use everything at their disposal to crush him.
Of course, this was exactly the outcome that everyone was hoping for.
The strike with the probe was merely meant to agitate the space monsters and thin out their ranks. It also served the purpose of breaking the psychic connection that was controlling the pests.
Being the smallest and most numerous species of space monster, they posed the greatest risk of discovering Victoria's stealth ship.
But that no longer held true now.
Thousands of the small space monsters were flying around without direction.
They had almost no offensive capabilities, so they did not do any damage to the other types, but they at least slowed them down by getting in their way.
Several actually impacted against the hull of Victoria's vessel, but they rebounded off of it harmlessly.
Usually this would have alerted the commander type that controlled them, but currently it was a bit preoccupied just having taken a powerful explosion to the face.
"Okay, we're moving into position now. Prepare the torpedoes for launch."
Now that there was a more open path forward, Victoria sped her cloaked ship along at a much faster rate than before.
While the other four commander types' first response was outrage, the second was to begin shoring up their own defenses.
The different types of monsters under their control were already gathering around them to block off any attempted attacks against them.
This meant that the window of opportunity to strike was rapidly closing. Victoria needed to move her craft closer quickly and deliver the finish blows.
Thankfully, there were less monsters in the way now, and she was soon in the best position possible to attack her two targets.
"Fire at maximum rate and use them all. I don't care how expensive those torpedoes are, use every single one of them. This is the only shot were going to get." Victoria ordered.
The crew member in charge of the weapons did not need to be told twice.
While typically firing such expensive weapons without restraint would have made almost any mercenary hesitant, this was a truly dire situation that they were in.
If they could not bring down their targets here and now, there was a good chance that none of them would ever escape this system.
Two phasic torpedoes fired from out of the stealth ship's pair of launchers.
They could only fire two at a time, but as soon as the first round was fired, the next round was already getting ready to go.
As soon as the torpedo's left, they became visible again.
Alerting the commander types and the other nearby space monsters.
Almost immediately, Volmargars and Hinvieners moved to protect their masters.
The torpedoes were obviously dangerous, and with one commander type already having been injured, it was clear that these weapons could cause serious harm.
Two colossal explosions erupted when the two torpedoes impacted.
Both of them had failed to reach their targets, but they still killed several of the space monsters in the way and blew away many more.
This opened up a path for the next round that were fired soon after.
Miraculously, these were blocked as well, but the commandery types that were controlling the Volmargars and Hinvieners were running out of disposable pawns to protect themselves with.
On the third volley, one of the torpedoes finally reached its intended target.
The commander type controlling the Volmargars was unable to get its thralls to move quickly enough to stop the torpedo from hit it.
A blinding light erupted from the weapon as it detonated, and the entire creature was consumed by the explosion.
Surprisingly, it had survived the hit from the phasic torpedo, but another one coming before it had any chance to recover.
As for the commander type controlling the Hinvieners, it had far more entities that it could control.
Until the very end it was able to block all of the phasic torpedoes expect the last one.
The consecutive powerful explosions had finally blown away its minions and a direct hit was landed on it.
Unfortunately, after firing twelve phasic torpedoes, Victoria's vessel had run out.
While the leader of the Hinvieners had suffered serious damage it was still alive.
Still, the outcome was acceptable.
One of the commander types had been eliminated and two others were injured to the point that they could no longer exert their control over other space monsters.
This left only two types operating as usual, while the other three were going out of control.
It was now the perfect time for the mercenary fleet to make their move and escape from the system.
Before that though, Victoria turned her stealth ship around and charted a course out of the horde of monsters.
At this point, their presence was well known, and it was only a matter of time before a swarm of monsters came looking for her ship.
Fortunately, the Intrepid, Zefield's Destroyed, and Kaiden's corvette arrived a few moments later.
Their first order of business was to blast away the monsters surrounding the Dauntless, but after that they fired off several volleys to cover Victoria now that she was actively transmitting her location data to them.
Everything seemed to be going well.
They would all get away and could go and join the rest of the forces that were currently clearing out the space monsters blocking the hyperspace entrance.
Yet, before they were able to jump to light speed, the two commander types remaining and the space monsters under their control began to act strangely.
While before they focused their aggression on the mercenary fleet that had intruded into their territory, their interest had shifted somewhere else.
The Fluem and Dorumin stopped chasing after the Dauntless and Victoria's cloaked vessel.
Instead, they had turned in the opposite direction and were moving at full speed to go somewhere else along with their leaders.
At first, it might have seemed like they were running away. Except that clearly was not the case.
It took a few moments, but Avery soon realized where they were going. The fleeing space monsters' current path would take them directly to the giant asteroid that they normally avoided.