Just outside the Human race's territory in the Shen Wu system, Alex dragged four ships of varying sizes behind his own back into the Human side of things.
He had reversed the target of the four ship's tractor beams, using them to lock themselves on to Alex's ship, rather than holding Alex's ship in place.
With this, Alex was essentially towing the four ships back with him.
30 minutes had passed since Alex had interrogated the crew of the biggest ship.
This left him with only 3 hours of rest before he headed back out to the battlefield.
He wasn't happy about this one bit.
But one thing he was happy about, was the information he had gathered from the pirate crews of the four ships that he had interrogated.
Spread across the four ships, there were 100 additional crew members in total, with all of them hiding whenever Alex moved on to their ship to inspect.
Of course, the first and most important question Alex had asked them — why he shouldn't kill them — gave him quite some unique answers.
As expected, the maintenance workers had been forced to work on the ships against their will, with their family's lives being on the line if they declined the four leader's 'offer'.
Alex let them live.
They could have lied, but he had corroborated their stories with the other, actual pirate crew members and it seemed to be true.
But even if it wasn't, Alex doubted they'd ever get to see their families again anyway when he handed the ships over to the federation.
Since the federation would likely be less lenient on them regardless of their stories, just because of the fact that they were aliens.
They wouldn't be killed in some sort of scheme for their soul cores, as they didn't have any due to being unawakened, but they would likely be prisoners for the rest of their lives.
There were 25 maintenance members in total, all had been spared.
As for the remaining 75 pirates?
Alex had killed the lower ranking grunt members who likely knew very little information and were only good for slaughtering innocent people.
This left him with a little over 15 awakened pirates left, all who were higher up the food chain than the rest of them.
They were more likely to know useful information.
Unfortunately for Alex, it seemed that the four captains stored all of their loot and treasure at a secret location only they four knew about, so there was a fat chance he would ever get to see that.
He was completely unaware of the ruckus he had caused in the human ranks with the presence of the four ships behind him.
To make sure that none of the pirates tried anything drastic, he had moved them all to his own ship to watch over until he reached the federation.
"Master, a large number of Human ships are closing in on us."
But Alex was brought out of his leisurely attitude by the robotic voice of his AI assistant.
Alex was surprised by what he was hearing, and looked out the front window of the main deck to see what was going on.
And just as the AI had stated, there were many Human ships approaching, and over 70% of them were military ships from the federation.
There were thousands of them...
"???"
Alex was utterly confused.
'Did they know I was coming?'
But at that moment, Alex received a communication request, while at the same time on the other side, a similar air of confusion went through those at the forefront of the makeshift fleet.
"Isn't that the King class prodigy Alex's personal ship?"
Then, he looked at the four ships behind it, with their tractor beams locked on to Alex's.
"Has something happened to Alex!?"
He pressed the communication button almost immediately.
He contacted Alex's ship.
"A communication request has come from Colonel Margit."
The AI announced for Alex.
As soon as Alex answered, the man appeared on the main deck in holographic form.
"Alex, what are you doing? Who are these guys? I don't recognise a single one of their races... Are they another interfering third party!?"
It seemed this wasn't the first time Colonel Margit had encountered such a situation.