He knew the battle must be swift, to not let the other force take note of their appearance, and then pincer then from behind. Suddenly an idea popped up his mind, so he said:

"Change of plans, slightly though. When we attack that large cruiser, leave a couple of fighters here to monitor the other force. When they march to meet us, start detonating the bombs planted around the buried cruisers. Make sure the detonation occurs when these cruisers leave the star system, not before."

Rigo understood the meaning behind this, as adding chaos to the enemy's plan was always a good strategy. Even if they lost their surprise attack advantage, they knew the enemies' plans, and this was the best thing to use the plan of the enemy against him.

But the issue here was the timing, it had to be superb, not little early, not too much late.

"How about we leave Islinda here to do this?" Rigo asked, as Islinda was now staying back at the capital city, watching over things.

"Hmm," James just thought about it, and found it was the best idea, "fine, just tell her to move from there when we start moving, and be ready to detonate the bombs."

Rigo sent the new assignment to Islinda, who knew the plan, and understood how important her role would be.

Just as she was about to head back to the bar, she noticed some eyes were focused on her cruiser. she landed it in a place designated for cruisers to park here, but it seemed she either got exposed, or those were just a random type of a thief.

She sighed, as either way she would face trouble at such a delicate timing. She didn't want to attract anymore trouble, so she returned inside the cruiser, and took it off to another city.

She didn't know that these people were watching her since she entered the capital, as part of their job to search for any suspicious strangers.

The more they followed her, the more suspicion they became, and just as she left, they were about to ask their boss to come here and break into her cruiser and search it.

As she departed, they sent this info to their superiors. Many reports were already coming about many suspicious people, as this place, originally, was a lair of dark trade, so all of the people were suspicious.

The report of her entered into a huge pile of reports, and luckily it got neglected by those who were observing these reports. Many of the clients here had vigilant nature, and so when they were observed, they would notice that, and in a normal way they would leave here and go for another city, or a planet, or even leave here eventually.

So, by this accidental move, Islinda got herself out of a big trouble that might have compromised the whole operation. She was lucky, as luck always played a great role in determining the success of failure of any plan; no matter how meticulously planned or carefully executed!

All was set, and the pieces started to move. James was with the fleet, getting the latest update on the situation inside that big cruiser.

His men managed to infiltrate it successfully, and now they were sending updated intel to them.

The first obvious, and weird, thing to spot was the low number of mercenaries running the cruiser. It was a large cruiser, one that needed tens of thousands to operate, but the droids only met hundreds along the way to the energy generation deck.

"That's suspicious," James muttered, as he didn't think the whole big cruiser would be this empty.

"Perhaps we killed many of their men already," Rigo said, before adding, "and Islinda told us before about these patrols, I think they have already divided their forces."

His words were somehow logical, but James didn't buy it. he felt there was another reason, hidden perhaps from their eyes. He sighed, tired from this hard to achieve goal, as it seemed those mercenaries weren't that easy to deal with.

What he knew that any large cruiser could contain a huge number of soldiers or mercenaries. Even if they sent people down there to help, this would never affect the population of this large cruiser, turning it into such a haunted state!

"Just send some of our droids in fighters to scan the remaining systems beside us, let them search in a radius of ten system afar."

"Affirmative."

Rigo didn't argue with James, as he knew his reason was too perfect to be true. He then arranged things, and he lowered the traveling speed of the fleet, so they wouldn't run into a trap without knowing it.

If the cruiser was empty then that meant it came here this way. That possibility made him realize he wasn't the only one laying traps here, and his enemy was trying to hunt him the same way he was hunting them.

And the victor would go to the most daring one!

James had another stroke of brilliance, as an idea popped up in his mind. He remained silent, thinking over and over about this thought. The more he thought about it the more he liked it. he turned to Rigo as he said at once:

"Make our droids make a small hall, unseen and undetected by any scanners, and send all the droids inside that large cruiser, and make them take control over it."

Rigo just glanced silently at his leader, feeling how bold and greedy he was. He didn't comment, either, as he also felt it was a great opportunity to gain a large cruiser out of nowhere.

This changed everything, as they stopped travelling and he sent all the droids he could spare. Over one thousand droids moved, like dead pieces of metal in space, towards the direction of that large cruiser.

Instead of destroying the cruiser, they were now aiming to hijack it! if not for the repeated reports coming from the inside droids about the small numbers of mercenaries here; Rigo would obviously object to such approach.

But his one thousand droids were more than enough to secure the whole ship. A large cruiser was destined to fall in their hands, not just by mere fluke. Luck always favored the brave, also winning.

The operation took four hours to be completed, as the number of mercenaries inside was initially low, and against their droids, they didn't stand a chance.

This made them gain full and absolute control over the large cruiser.

"The large cruiser is under our full control, supreme leader!" Rigo's tone was full of joy and pride. James could relate to that, as he was also feeling the same. But he didn't rush to early celebrate, a hard win victory must be secured first or else bad things might happen.

"Make then scan the data of the ship first, let's see what we missed here."

"Affirmative."

It didn't take more than one hour to unveil the mystery here. initially, the mercenaries weren't one group, as they were three different groups, and they had three different leaders with three different opinions and plans.

One was to go and look for them in that asteroid belt, and the other went in hiding here, away from the eyes of James, and the third cruiser leader saw it was already a lost cause; departed already from here and left the whole place.

'That's relieving," James muttered when he read the documents sent by his droids. "Call back all we sent for search, make them join the others in the large cruiser, then make them attack it. don't forget to send a signal of us falling in the trap just after we wrap that battle."

"…"

Rigo had no other opinion, as this was the best approach here. He started to organize everything, and the battle was really a one sided fight. They watched it on the holographic broadcast their droids sent, and the battle ended beautifully, with more than fifty cruisers of different sizes to join their fleet.

James ordered all the prisoners to be executed, as always, then a signal was sent to the main fleet of mercenaries, waiting for them to take the bait.

The message sent from Islinda told them they had already started moving towards their location, and James was getting excited about it.

"Let Islinda detonate the bomb when ready," he said, as he was now one system away from the large cruiser, two system away from the eleven planet system.

Things were heading beautifully, and finally according to plan.

Just as the mercenary fleet left the system, Islinda detonated the bombs. A lot of explosions occurred in the planets, causing more chaos and spreading panic among the inhabitants.

And it was logic for the officials to lose their calm, ordering the mercenary fleet to come back. This made the mercenaries chaotic, and they behaved like James had expected, splitting the fleet into two, with the main force, the large cruiser, to head towards theirs.