The remainder of the journey back was devoid of any major incidents. It was just quiet travel time where everyone did their best to get back to normal. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

About two weeks in, the half of the fleet that Avery was in met back up with the half that had left before the nightmarish entity had broken fully free of its prison.

They had been waiting in a mostly empty system, and while the two groups had been in commutation, joining back up brought the huge losses and failure of their mission back to the forefront of everyone’s minds.

Hundreds had died and a massive amount of resources had been wasted with nothing to show for everything.

For almost everyone that had followed Zefield, this was the worst defeat of their careers. And spelled the end for some of them.

"This is the final list? No one else?"

"Yes, these are the only ones that spoke up and are adamant. It’s a shame, but I suppose it was inevitably going to happen at some point. When facing such immense danger, some people realize that they just can’t take it." Kasandra said, shaking her head in disappointment and resignation.

Avery sighed as he scrolled through the list.

Of the people he had recently recruited to serve as crew on his carrier vessel, just about seven percent had decided to quit after seeing how truly dangerous mercenary work could be.

Up until this mission, they had mainly been busting up pirate groups that were basically no threat to Avery’s company.

They possessed advanced ships with weapons that were all military grade and some being truly top-of-the-line.

There were not many pirate groups that could stand up to them with their current level of power, and Avery made sure not to bite off more than they could chew.

"This is going to make crew assignments more difficult."

"That it is. I’ve already started building a new roster but we’re manning this ship with close to the minimum numbers already if we want all of the stations to always be manned. Losing close to two hundred people is going to put a strain on the others. We might want to think about recruiting a bit more once we’re back in Alliance space." Kasandra suggested.

Avery nodded his head despite grimacing at the prospect.

Recruiting good people took time and effort and would limit their activates a bit.

It was obviously easier to find people in more populated systems, but those places typically had less mercenary work to go around. Especially for a group like his.

’It will probably be good to give everyone a bit of rest anyway. Really, the fact that we’re only losing this many could be considered a win. It honestly could have been a lot more when I think back on what we went through.’

After another half hour of discussion with just Kasandra, the other leaders of Avery’s company arrived in his office for a full meeting.

They were less than a day away from returning to the outer reaches of the Dramid Alliance and it was time to plan out their next moves after this job was officially over.

...

When the light of hyperspace faded around them, the view of hundreds of ships and dozens of outposts showed up on the Intrepid’s viewscreen.

Though many suspected that Zefield had been employed to clear out the system that housed a habitable world, interest in exploration had not died down, but only increased.

There were still plenty of profiters hoping to strike it reach past the borders of the Dramid Alliance.

Even if the grand prize slipped through their grasps, there was still potential in making money by mapping out hyper lanes and selling the data, or luckily coming across a good mining site filled with rare resources.

Of course, the main goal was still being the first to lay a claim to the rare habitable world.

Avery could not help but find it all grimly funny.

No matter how hard any of the people here tried, they had no shot at taking that system.

’That creature would tear them all apart like wet paper. The same as it did to us.’

No doubt once Zefield reported to his employer that he would also share the information they had collected with the Mercenary Association.

People needed to be warned about what was out there, though it was doubtful that everyone would heed the warnings.

Some would probably think it a tactic of some kind to buy more time, while others would believe that they could push through with more preparations and a larger force.

Avery could already imagine the stories of entire expeditions going missing in the future.

Like scavengers circling a wounded animal, several ships from other groups came over towards Zefield’s expedition team.

It was obvious to anyone that had been paying attention when they left that they had returned with far fewer ships than they went out with.

No doubt Zefield was receiving dozens of transmissions, all of them likely feigning concern while truthfully attempting to glen some information of what happened.

A few calls even came to the Intrepid since it was the largest vessel of the fleet, but Avery was hardly in the mood to deal with people like these and transferred everything over to Zefield.

Hours passed as they slowly made their way through the system with the undivided attention of nearly everyone else on them.

Avery tried not to let it get to him, but it certainly hammered home just how beaten up and defeated they must have looked right now.

Eventually, Zefield reached out to everyone and asked that they stick around for no more than two days.

He was going to reach out to his client and see how things would pan out.

His hope was that he could at least receive partial payment for the information they had collected, though he was obviously not optimistic.

Still, Zefield assured everyone that he would pay them all what they were due. Even if it came out of his own pockets.