Starship Isabella Ch. 03

"I love it when you call me Mom," Ana told Brad. "It just makes me want to fuck you even more. My son the motherfucker," Ana mused, the pressure making them all act a little silly.

The Isabella continued to travel at top speed outside the concentration of stars and planets of the galactic disk. The ship traveled well beyond the range of the pirates long running battle at Vectum, but remained at high alert in case that the pirates they'd just destroyed had gotten a message off to others of their ilk. The bulk of the remaining pirates, thinking that Vectum had several billion embryos in their vaults, had been hammering the planet's defenses for days.

After the pirate fleet had destroyed all of the aged robotically AMI controlled Fleet gunships in orbit around Vectum, with substantial losses, they went for the visible gun emplacements and buildings on the surface. Before making a last-ditch effort to land on Vectum, all twenty thousand class A guns below the surface of the small planet popped up from their bunkers and began firing simultaneously. The first few salvos destroyed over fifty percent of the aggressive pirate ships and a quick follow-up salvo scored an equal percentage of hits on the rest. The few lucky pirates who had survived the initial attack began moving off, only to be met by all of the Confederation's Spacecraft Carriers and their escort ships. The pirate's stranglehold on the Confederation ended. It would take several more months to round up the remaining pirates and retake Sado, but the cleanup would be much easier now that over ninety-nine percent of the pirate ships had been destroyed.

News of the major battle off Vectum and the successful trip of the Isabella reached Eden the day before the starship reached the planet. No mention was made about theprecious cargo they carried, until they landed on Eden.