As for returning them back, he wasn't this kind to do this.
After all he had dealt with these merchants, and they weren't literally working for him.
So he wasn't much obliged in their protection. If not for the current stressing circumstances, he wouldn't care about rapidly solving this problem and would ask the merchants to arrange their own protecting squads.
Yet when his forces reached these invaders, they all resisted and he couldn't get a hostage easily except after hours of fights and many killings.
Despite managing to gain all the goods safely at the end, James wasn't satisfied until he had the news finally of his men capturing a single cruiser as hostage.
"Finally," he sighed, "what he did to them to make them prefer dying than to surrender?" he was speechless at that hidden foe of him. "Relay the orders, I want them squeezed and everything they know must reach me at once," he said while watching the ongoing fights as he casually said, "and kill the rest."
