Chapter 40 They will pay.

The Council failed to foresee one eventuality.

The pirates had enough of being hunted like prey by the upstart system and some of them decided to band together.

The result was a fleet of over thirty ships that decided to blast the Sol system species back to the stone age.

They were sure that with half a dozen cruisers and other ships as support they would get rid of the danger and rule this sector of space once again.

When the alarm sounded in the moon base everyone jumped into action.

There was a warning of over thirty ships in FTL coming straight to Sol .

When the fleet jumped in there was no communications; they simply opened fire on the nearest ship which was a captured pirate vessel now transporting materials from the asteroid belt.

The Terran ship never stood a chance, their shields flared for a moment and disappeared under the relentless onslaught.

 The crew died in an instant when the ship was torn apart.

The other two Terran ships that were in the vicinity tried to escape but they didn't make it and only managed to fire off some shots at the enemy before they shared the fate of their comrades.

Then the pirates spotted a small fleet of terran ships coming their way and they decided to split into two groups.

First group would engage the defense fleet and the second would go for earth and bombard it from space.

The first group consisted of four cruisers,six frigates and some civilian ships with weapons.

They met the earth defense fleet that had three cruisers and eight captured pirate ships in a fierce battle both sides traded blow after devastating blow.

The ships were torn to shreds by energy weapons,shields flickered and went down, ships lost control and stumbled.

The whole area was full of energy beams,missiles and kinetic rounds.

The humans had more fire power but they were outnumbered and paid the price in blood for defending their homes.

When it was finally over only one pirate cruiser managed to escape along with two frigates,the rest of the fleet was destroyed.

But humans also paid a high price for the victory.

they lost five of the captured ships and Steuner's an Simon's cruisers were heavily damaged in the battle.

All together they lost eight ships and two were out of action.

The group that went for earth was totally annihilated by the defense satellites that formed five rings around the planet to protect it from all sides and the pirates got torn to pieces by the sheer volume of the energy beams that were fired their way.

Humanity lost over four hundred men and many more were injured.

Among the injured were Steuner who was in a critical condition after his bridge exploded and the only thing that saved him was his armor but he lost his tail and his right hand.

He was immediately put into a regeneration tank but it was impossible to tell if he would survive.

Simon also was heavily injured and placed in the tank but his state was stable.

Both of their ships were towed back to the moon and the repair drones started to remove the damaged parts and install new ones.

The repairs would take three weeks to complete.

Mikael and the rest of the ships that survived now transported the soldiers to clear the pirate ships that were cripled and humans were in no mood to be merciful.

The captured pirates were beaten in every sense of the word and if they offered any resistance at all then they were just slaughtered.

The pirates intended to destroy earth and killed many of its soldiers but the effect they got was different from what they hoped for.

A week later the Terran council approved by a unanimous vote the law against piracy in space that stated:

Every pirate found and captured was to be sentenced to death or executed on the spot if he resisted arrest in any way without exceptions

The earth fleet was in a sorry state right now but given time it would recover and become even stronger and when that happened there would be a great pirate hunt in retaliation for this attack.

Humanity was pissed and it wanted blood,pirate blood.

Two weeks after the battle Simon regained consciousness and his first words were:

-Did everyone make it?

Mikael informed him about the losses they suffered and about Steuner who was still in the tank regenerating his arm and tail.

-They will pay for this even if it's the last thing I do.

Simon vowed through his clenched teeth.

-Don't worry kid, all of humanity wants a piece of them and the moment we are all fit for combat and the new ships are in service ,the council decided to unleash us on them and we have the right to exterminate them.

The old man said with a cold voice .

Steuner woke up the day he was taken out of the tank and he was furious.

It took Mikael and some soldiers from his ship that survived to calm him down.

Steuners crew had the most casualties among the three of them and only 14 out of 60 soldiers survived from which eight were injured.

He treated them as his own battle clan which meant that they were his brothers and the soldiers loved this approach also respecting his war chief status and often using it as his rank.

Now he lost most of them and he wanted vengeance .

He calmed down only after hearing that they just needed time to prepare and then he could rip any pirate he found into pieces.

All of humanity vowed to exact a bloody revenge for the attack on their home system.

Engineers and scientists worked around the clock to create better weapons,shields,defense satellites, medical equipment,hull plating and many more things to aid the military.

The workers and drones worked tirelessly to build more shipyards planetside for destroyers, frigates and corvette class ships.

The recruitment centers all over the world were under siege by people wanting to enlist.

Pirates tried to wipe them out?Then they would make sure that there was no pirate stupid enough to even think of coming within a thousand light years from their system.

This was the wake up call humanity needed and only now did they understand Simon's words about someone coming and doing what they wanted to earth and humanity.

There were some scout ships nearing completion at the time of the attack which were quickly completed and sent out to locate the pirates within two hundred light years from Sol system and they reported the coordinates of many hideouts and ships.

This region of space was truly crawling with pirates and humanity wanted them gone.