"He says that he'll et with you. Though, he won't train you unless he feels like you've got potential. I don't know how he'll judge you, but you've got two days until he's free. I'd use that ti to brush up on what you can pertaining to rcenary work."
Avery's father forwarded him the ssage his acquaintance had sent, which had the ti and location where they would et in two days.
"Thanks pops. This ans a lot to . I promise I won't let you down. You'll be well again soon." Avery said, giving his father a reassuring smile before leaving.
When he ca out into the main room, he found that his mother had already left for work. He had wanted to say goodbye to her as well, but he had spent too much ti talking to his father.
With his business at his parents now completed, Avery left the building and headed to his own nearby apartnt.
It was in a similar-looking building, albeit not quite as nice.
Once he made it back to his small single room apartnt, he imdiately headed over to his desk and booted up his computer. He had a lot of work to get done in the next couple days and had no intention of wasting a single mont.
...
"That's about all I can do. It's ti to get going."
It was finally the day of his eting with his father's older rcenary buddy.
Avery had spent the last two days online studying what he could about being a rcenary.
There was honestly a good deal of conflicting information out there since pretty much all rcenaries were free willed and stuck to their own ideas.
This made sense, of course. Any competent rcenary would have enough skill to join the Alliance Police or the military if they wanted.
But a lot of rcenaries were the type that hated to follow soone else's orders all the ti, and generally liked to travel amongst the stars as they pleased.
Still, there was one major consensus among all the information Avery had found. And that was that rcenaries needed to be confident in a fight.
Luckily, Avery had a top-of-the-line spacecraft at his disposable, so experience was all he really lacked at this point. Sothing he was hoping the rcenary he was scheduled to et could help with.
Wearing a grin on his face, Avery exited his apartnt and the building it was in.
From there he found the nearest tram station and grabbed a ride on the colony's public transportation system.
His destination was within the fourth district. A bit of a rough area, but nothing too bad as long as one stuck to the main streets.
One of Avery's favorite bars happened to be around the eting place that his father's acquaintance had set, so he was at least sowhat familiar with the surroundings.
"The road's been blocked off. I wonder what's going on?"
When he was getting close to his destination, Avery found the street leading in the direction he was heading covered in barricades.
He imdiately pulled out his terminal to ascertain what had occurred, but there was not any information on the road closure.
"That's unusual. They normally update things like this pretty fast." Avery muttered, the map of the colony he had pulled up not showing the blockage.
All he could conclude was that whatever was causing the problem had happened recently.
Fortunately, with just a couple of inputs, he had his terminal plan a route around the road.
It would see him through so smaller streets and back alleys, but he would still be able to arrive on ti.
Before leaving the main road, though, he shifted the jacket he was wearing to better expose the laser pistol sitting in a holster on his waist.
Avery did not think that he would run into any trouble, but just in case so thugs sized him up, the exposed weapon would serve as a decent deterrent.
After he felt he was ready, Avery followed the route that his terminal had set.
With a bit of haste, he weaved through the smaller streets and alleys.
A couple of tis he crossed the path of so less than savory types, but they all made way for him when they saw he was ard. None of them wanted any real trouble.
However, just two alleys before he would exit back onto the main road in front of the shop he was ant to et the five star rcenary at, a large man blocked Avery's path.
At once Avery ca to a stop and his right hand reflexively reached down towards his weapon.
The tall man in front of him stood a head over him and was wearing a hooded cloak that obscured his entire body except for his mouth.
"Avery Asteria, I've co on behalf of Storren Corp. to retrieve our lost ship."
Hearing this instantly put Avery on edge. He had figured that a representative of Storren Corp. would co to et with him eventually, but this felt like it was too soon and the setting out of place.
'If they had a location here that would be one thing. Except I know that the nearest Storren Corp. branch is over two weeks away from Yuson II. Unless this guy was already here or at another nearby colony, there's no way he could get here this quickly.' Avery thought, his mind racing to figure out what was happening.
The fact that he had not received any sort of correspondence beforehand was also suspect. Instead, this man was simply ambushing him in a random alleyway.
"I don't have anything to talk about with you. Why don't you try contacting normally, and we can talk then."
"That won't do I'm afraid. My superiors are very intent on retrieving their lost property as soon as possible. If you simply cooperate, a hefty reward will be paid to you." The man said in a coercive tone.
This was the last straw for Avery. It was clear to him that words were not going to help him out here. Storren Corp. had sent soone to intimidate him into giving up his rightful property, and he was not going to just stand around and take it.
Without any warning, Avery unholstered his laser pistol and pointed it at the man. He had it on a lower setting that would only burn, but it would still hurt like hell and be enough to incapacitate most people.
Yet, before he could pull the trigger, a red flash of light impacted his weapon and sent it flying out of his hand. Avery watched the gun fall to the ground as a look of shock warped his face.
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