Avery gritted his teeth in frustration, but he knew that he couldn’t delay any longer.

"This is going to be the last one. Once we’ve got everyone out of here, we’re leaving."

Zefield’s strategy to seed in remote controlled vessels to buy some extra time had worked, but not well enough.

There were only three ships left now and they were not going to last more than another minute.

Avery had moved as quickly as he could. Still, there were limits to what he and his three companions were capable of on their own.

Thirteen vessels were still in need of evacuation, with around two hundred people on them combined.

It honestly was not easy, and Avery felt a pang of guilt when he made the call to abandon them.

After informing Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel, Avery sent a message to Zefield.

The seven star mercenary clearly was not happy with the decision, but he understood and knew that they could not linger any longer.

From what they had already gathered from trying to fight the horrifying entity was that their weapons were basically ineffective against the thing.

Even explosions from their highest yield weaponry did not seem to be capable of singeing its skin.

Whatever the thing was, it was an existence beyond what they were capable of handling.

Their only option was to escape and hope that it would not be able to find its way to the Dramid Alliance.

With the call being made, those that were capable of doing so prepared to leave.

Avery and his three partners had returned to the Dauntless and while Avery prepared his ship for the jump to hyperspace, Kasandra controlled the Intrepid remotely and synced it up with them.

When there was only about a minute left until the monstrosity reached their location, the entrance to the hyperlane opened and the few ships that were able to move entered.

Glancing at the rear view displayed in a corner of the Dauntless’ viewscreen, Avery glanced at each of the vessels being left behind one last time.

A lot of them were empty with the people that had been onboard safely transferred over to the Intrepid.

However, the thirteen ships that were still manned lingered in Avery’s mind even after he took his eyes off of them.

It was always tough to lose people in situations like these. Avery may not have known any of them well, but it still hurt him to have to leave them behind to suffer a truly horrendous end.

From what he could tell, that creature was not going to allow their deaths to be easy.

The entire time he could sense its sadistic and warped mind.

Fully understanding the thing was impossible and he had only gleaned the slightest of insight thanks to his own abilities.

Still, he knew that it reveled in fear and torment. That was something the monstrosity had not been trying to hide at all.

Avery had felt that it wanted him to know.

’At least most of us will be able to get away.’ Avery thought as he sighed in relief as they entered hyperspace.

Now they would be safe and could leave that horrid system behind them.

Except, the entity was not going to let them go so easily.

Around fifty seconds after they had gone through the hyperspace entrance, the Dauntless’ sensors picked up the entrance opening again.

"What the f*ck?!" Liesel exclaimed as the shimmering walls of hyperspace shuddered.

All at once the extradimensional space they were in started to twist and bend unnaturally and their group’s forward momentum appeared to come to a complete halt.

Something inexplicable was occurring within the alternate dimension that was used to travel effectively faster than light speed.

There were certain rare phenomenon that were known to be able to destabilize hyperspace, and many tests had been conducted to see what limits there were within hyperspace.

Nevertheless, neither Avery nor anyone else present had ever heard of anything like what currently going on around them happening.

Once a ship got inside of hyperspace, it was generally accepted that they were safe from any outside influence.

Only the entrances and exits were susceptible to being influenced by outside forces and only in extreme scenarios.

Typically, the only thing that had any effect on hyperlanes was large celestial bodies that could bend and contract them.

Yet, as Avery looked at the display from the stern camera, he saw countless shifting tendrils ripping open the hyperspace entrance they had just gone through.

It seemed that their assumption that they would be safe once escaping into hyperspace had been horribly wrong.

There were a handful of space monsters known to be able to enter hyperlanes, but they were few and far between and very rare.

Some others had special means of traveling that could allow them to warp space around them, and that was clearly how the entity stalking them moved its own enormous mass.

To see that it could somehow breach and destabilize hyperspace was both shocking and terrifying.

Needless to say, panic was setting in quickly now that new circumstances had made it impossible to escape.

Every second that went by, the creature pushed its way further into the hyperlane and the space shuddered like it might break apart at any moment.

"Avery, what are you doing?!"

Kasandra shouted when she noticed Avery frantically loading a phasic torpedo into the Dauntless’ torpedo launcher.

Firing attacks in hyperspace was something everyone knew was a bad idea.

Even low intensity lasers could cause unintended consequences that could see ships damage or possibly destroyed by errant energy discharges.

However, Avery was about to fire the strongest weapon the Dauntless had access to.

Obviously, the risks of doing so were extreme.

Hyperspace was already in a precarious and unprecedented state. There was no telling what detonating a powerful explosive would do.

"I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s the best that I have. I don’t think the torpedo will be able to hurt the thing, but hopeful we can disrupt the entrance and push it back out into normal space."

Truthfully, Avery had no idea if his plan had any chance of working.

With how things were developing though, their only real chance was to try something crazy and hope for the best.

If it ended up with them blowing up or being ripped apart by hyperspace as the dimension collapsed around them, that would still be a better outcome than ending up as a meal for the monstrous creature chasing after them.

Without waiting or conferring with anyone else, Avery pressed down on the trigger and fired the phasic torpedo.

Time seemed to slow as they all watched the explosive fly through hyperspace behind them.

As they waited to see what would happen in what could possibly be their last few seconds alive, Avery felt a hard grip on his hand.

He looked over and saw Kasandra grabbing on to him.

Her facial expression was a mess of different emotions.

Knowing that there was nothing else to do, Avery grabbed ahold of her hand with his own and smiled reassuringly at her.

Whatever was going to occur was out of their hands now. All they could do was wait.

A blinding explosion rocked the space behind them, and time seemed to start moving again.

The shockwave from the blast soon reached the Dauntless.

Avery half expected this to be the end, but other than losing a bit of shield capacity, they were fine.

Hyperspace also did not break apart and vaporize them or leave them trapped between dimensions.

Honestly, it felt like a miracle. At least until Avery noticed that the hyperlane still was twisted and warped.

Once the blinding light of the blast had cleared, he stared at the stern display and saw that several tendrils were still ripping through the hyperspace entrance.

The explosion did seem to have pushed the entity back as there was less of it coming through now.

Still, it had not been enough to fully dislodge the thing and allow them to get away.

Avery contemplated firing another phasic torpedo, but before he could, Jasmine stopped him.

She had been watching the specialized hyperspace sensors, and the readings were far from good.

The dimension was very close to fully destabilizing.

If that occurred, the best thing they could hope for was being ejected back into normal space with severe damage to their ship.

More likely though, they would be utterly obliterated.

Avery’s mind moved faster than he felt it ever had before to try and come up with a solution.

He could hear Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel speaking, apparently they had received a call from Zefield.

However, Avery had mostly tuned them out.

He felt that he was close to something. A way for them to get out of this crisis alive.

Suddenly, something clicked inside of him.

He turned around from the Dauntless viewscreen and closed his eyes.

With his hands outstretched he focused on his psionic abilities. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

What was going to happen was beyond him, but he trusted his instincts in this moment.

A surge of energy rushed out of him, and the next moment, everything went black.

The last thing he remembered being falling into a puddle of something wet and warm, and the distinct scent of iron filling his nose.