Chapter 3

Victor woke up to Aimee's mouth around his cock and just seconds after opening his eyes, he gave her what she wanted.

"Good morning, Master," Aimee said after swallowing.

"Good morning, Sweetheart," Victor replied, "Has Carla sent her reports yet?"

"Yes, Master, I'll go get them," Aimee said, getting up to retrieve the reports.

Getting dressed Victor noticed that there was a small bulge in her belly and that she was wearing a butt plug, which he took to mean that it really was morning by the ship's clock. Aimee was a creature of habit and a clean freak to boot, so every morning at the exact same hour she gave herself an enema. Most other women took daily enemas too, especially in the military where hygiene was considered a big deal, but you could really set your watch by Aimee.

"Here they are, Master," Aimee said when she had returned with the reports.

"Thank you, Sweetheart," Victor said.

Victor moved over to his desk and began reading. The reports said that everything was working as well as could be expected; the sub-light, warp, and jump drives; the sensors; the shields; the weapon systems; the life support systems; though there were still plenty of things that could pretty much only be tested in battle, everything that could be tested had been tested.

When he was finished reading, Victor walked to the bridge.

At the bridge he found Carla reclined in the Watch Officer's seat, a concubine from the ship's bordello between her legs. Victor was feeling especially generous in his excitement over getting back into command of a spaceship, so he made a mental note to budget for the purchase and maintenance of personal servants as gifts to his senior officers.

When Carla noticed Victor she sat up and shooed the girl away before saying, "Hello, Master."

"Hello, Carla," Victor replied. He saw a flash of the girl's butt and thighs under her skirt as she walked out of the bridge, and with amusement amended his mental note to include a provision for Carla's sadistic tendencies when he authorized the purchase of her gift. He would make sure that Carla's servant had a slight masochistic streak; he wouldn't get her a full blown pain slut of course, they were too much trouble and he suspected that Carla wouldn't enjoy it fully if her victim enjoyed her attentions very much at all, but he had the compassion to make sure the girl would consider her service to Carla merely uncomfortable, rather than a living hell.

"Did you read my report, Master?" Carla asked.

"Yes, I did," Victor said with a grin on his face, "It looks like we're finally ready to go into action. I'd like you to get your people to find a good place for pirate hunting out on the frontier."

"They'll get right on it, Master," Carla replied, she shared his enthusiasm.

The ICS Nixie had been traveling from port system to port system on the frontier for two months. The ship's captain, Lord Victor Brandt, and its first officer, Carla Brandt, had been anxiously awaiting an opportunity to battle test the ship and to see some action themselves. Now they had it.

Spaceships travel through three different methods. One is through its sub-light drive, which propels the ship at top speeds around .1c to .15c, which is ten to fifteen percent of the speed of light, and usually reaches its top speed after around a half of an hour, which puts its acceleration at about 2,500 g; as a side note, traveling at such accelerations is completely safe due to a ship's inertial dampeners. The second is through the ship's warp drive, which creates an artificial bubble of normal space-time around the ship and then expands the space behind the ship while contracting the space in front of the ship, creating a sort of wave that the ship rides to its destination; warp drive allows travel at the low multiples of the speed of light, with top speeds for ships at around 5c typically, though it is often used during interplanetary travel simply to reach the high fractions of the speed of light, usually around .8c. The jump drive is for interstellar travel, when activated it instantly transports the ship to a point in space far away. Jump drives have limited ranges and voyages take place in sequences of jumps with long downtimes between jumps to recharge the jump drive; the period of time between jumps is where ambushes, piracy, and all sorts of stuff tend to happen.

The ICS Nixie had just made its first jump on its journey to Lauratum from Aquina, when another ship jumped in after it.

"We have a bite!" Carla exclaimed when her tactical display showed that the Nixie's FTL drives had been disabled by the other ship's jammers.

"Overt guns, fire on target alpha, remember, act like a cargo crew, panic, miss a lot, don't oversell it, but don't undersell it either," Victor barked out orders as he manipulated his tactical readout, "Shields, be ready to max power the second they start firing. Helm, floor it. Felicia, they're at a little over ten million kilometers, you have about thirteen minutes till boarding."