Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary-Chapter 252 Something Fishy (2)

"So how do you think they pulled it off?"

Avery glanced over at Kasandra with a contemplative look on his face after she asked him this question.

Eventually his lips twisted into a frown, and he shook his head.

"I hate to say it, but the most likely outcome I can think of is that they cheated somehow. Their movements were almost too perfect. As if they knew what was going to happen before it did. The only mistakes they made also looked a bit forced. It made me think that they were trying to look a bit bad to cover up how impossible their performance was." Avery said, not particularly happy with the answer he had come up with.

Certainly, the staff running this competition had been monitoring any incoming and outgoing signals to the nine vessels that were competing to make sure that none of them watched any live broadcasts or received any transmissions that would give them forewarning of what to expect.

However, this security against cheating was not foolproof.

There were ways around it.

The easiest being simply bribing one of the officials to allow for some unscrupulous viewing of the event, or just outright obtaining the details of the entire competition.

With how much money the contract up for grabs was worth, Avery could easily envision one or more of the corporations using bribery to give themselves an advantage. Of course, this came with a major risk should they be exposed.

Undoubtably such a flagrant violation of the rules would mean instant disqualification, and the company involved would receive a pretty hefty fine. Not to mention the loss of trust from the Alliance Police. They would probably slow down or completely stop buying ships from the offenders and possibly even release their wrongdoings to the public to smear their name further. Similar to what occurred with Snyder Heavy Industries because of the strexnoid debacle.

Another method to circumvent the monitoring would be to have someone onboard with an implant in their head that could receive data from a frequency that was not being surveilled.

No one would be any wiser in that case and it would be nearly impossible to track unless someone involved admitted to it.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. Maybe their onboard computer is just that much better than the Dauntless' and they had a team assisting the pilot who all had major augmentations that only focused on enhancing their brains and cognitive abilities. In that case, it might be possible." Kasandra said, finding a possibly plausible reason that was a bit farfetched.

As they were discussing their thoughts on the issue, the next round of the event started.

For now, they decided to table the matter since there was little that they could do about it in the first place.

All they had were suspicions based on what they had seen. Putting forward any accusations without a shred of proof would only make them look bad, and surely if they thought something seemed a bit off, then the organizers running the coemption would too. They would be the ones to investigate and determine if there had been any foul play.

"This is going to be one to watch." Kasandra said, her eyes focused on the ship displayed on the Dauntless' viewscreen.

Going up fifth was the sleek, emerald green colored vessel that was Ravasz Dynamic's entry.

From its appearance alone, it was obviously a fast craft and having watched a recording of its performance during the opening ceremony, Avery and Kasandra knew that it had a pilot that could handle its high-level capabilities.

The moment that they were cleared to begin, the vessel roared to life and began blasting through the course.

Unlike Stifur's entrant that seemed to have practically prophetic insight into the drones' movements, Ravasz Dynamic's vessel zoomed by the obstacles with sheer speed and skill.

Honestly, Avery was impressed that the pilot could handle how fast the ship was going and the intense maneuvers that were necessary to zip through the drones impeding the way forward.

'Could I pull the same things off?' Avery wondered.

He was pretty good, but his time as a pilot was not all that long. His recent augmentations had allowed him to reach another level above what he had been at before. However, he still needed to build up more experience.

There were reflexes he had yet to fully develop, and there were undoubtably tricks using the engines, thrusters, and weapon systems he was unaware of.

While it had been a desperate move, when Doyle had used a low yield missile to change the trajectory of his ship, that had been something Avery had never even thought about before.

Nevertheless, in the second part of the course, the pilot flying Ravasz Dynamic's vessel was forced to slow down a bit.

Unlike Avery, who had Kasandra's assistance right around this point and was able to find the best possible path forward, the pilot from Ravasz Dynamics only relied on their sheer skill and ability to push forward.

At the final stretch of the course, they did not bother blasting a path through the weaponized drones and instead took evasive maneuvers and activated their booster engines.

The burst of speed this gave the ship was astounding to say the least, and though they took a few hits, the vessel shot through to the end to achieve the fastest clear time of the day.

Without any added penalties Ravasz Dynamic's finished at thirteen minutes and two seconds. While with the added penalties, they were pushed up to sixteen minutes and thirty-six seconds.

"First place was nice while it lasted." Kasandra said with a long sigh.

They had now been definitively dethroned from their place at the top.

There was a thirty-three second difference between their times. Which while not too far away, was not all that close either.

Fortunately, this was just the first of many events to come, and it was not as if the entire competition would be decided by which corporations' ship placed first in the first round.

After Ravasz Dynamic's turn, two more entrants went by quickly.

The ship from a company called Star Road Enterprises got a final time of twenty minutes and fifteen seconds, while the vessel representing Treolaus Aerospace came incredibly close to beating out Avery's time. Finishing at seventeen minutes twelve seconds once penalties had been added.

This left Avery comfortably in second place with only two more competitors to go. Meaning that he was guaranteed at least fourth place even if both of them beat his time.

Except, when it was time for the eighth round of the event, the pilot behind the ship started making disastrous mistakes one after the other.

"Did they not even hire an experienced pilot and just through a random amateur behind the controls?" Avery said aloud, a gobsmacked expression on his face.

This was supposed to be a high-level competition amongst the very best shipbuilding companies in the Dramid Alliance. It was utterly unexpected to see any of them doing so poorly at any point.

"They didn't even try to slow down. Their plowed right into that drone."

Kasandra blinked rapidly and rubbed her eyes. Wondering if what she was seeing was some sort of visual hallucination.

Just to make sure that this was not some prank being pulled by the network they were watching, Avery switched over to another feed, but it was exactly the same there. The pilot appeared to be a bumbling idiot.

Yet, Avery had not noticed such a lack of skill in any of the opening ceremony displays and pulled up the recording to watch how this pilot and their ship performed then.

'Yeah, they did perfectly fine during the opening ceremony. They're flying here is without a doubt that of an expert's. So how did that change so drastically during the few hours between then and now?' Avery thought, perplexed.

Carefully, he watched every movement and judged what he saw to the best of his experience.

It was as he did, that he noticed some inconsistencies.

At some points the vessel was maneuvering so bad that it would take skill to pull off.

An inexperienced amateur might be clumsy, but some of what Avery was witnessing would be difficult to accomplish accidently just because you did not understand the controls.

"The pilots flying like that intentionally. I just can't think of a reason why they would want to throw this event though. Or maybe they are even trying to sabotage their chances for the entire competition." Avery stated.

This was suspicious in a completely different manner from Stifur's performance.

Avery could easily figure out a motive for someone trying to cheat, but not the other way around. Intentionally doing bad just made no sense to him. What would have been the point of entering in the first place if you had no desire to win.

Eventually, the poor showing pilot reached the end.

Their time was far and away the worst out of everyone to have gone yet. Without penalties, they were already over thirty minutes and after considering every crash and shot that had hit them, their final score was fifty-seven minutes and forty-one seconds. More than double the time of second to last place.

"Something tells me that this competition is not going to be as simple as we thought it was going to be." Kasandra said, her eyes filled with uneasiness.

"I think that I have to agree with you there. There are things going on that were' obviously not privy to. And considering our luck, I doubt we're getting away without getting dragged into it."

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺