Shepherd Moon: Omegaverse: Volume 1 (14 page)

“What?” it asked brusquely.

“Uhm,
hi”
said Duncan, hesitantly. He was unsure of what to say. Best just to get to the point, he figured.

“I’d like to land on your home planet and meet with your leaders to begin a trade mission,” he said.

“Wait”, said the wolf, and communication was cut off.

Ships began to jump from around the system to his location. Before long, he was surrounded on all sides, escape impossible. Duncan pulled up his systems screen and ensured that his shields and cloak were off. He wanted there to be no mistaking his intentions.

He looked at the ships around him. They were interchangeable destroyers, about the size of the HMS Westy. Not especially formidable on their own, but a swarm of them could take down a medium cruiser fairly quickly. Of course, even one would make short work of his clipper.

Eclipsing them all, a gargantuan ship, a heavy battle cruiser, jumped into the space in front of Duncan. Banks of plasma cannons, dozens of them, all focused on his tiny ship.

“We’re being hailed, sir,” said the comm crewman.

Duncan stood, checked that his cowl was on his head.

“Answer it,” he said, putting his arms behind his back.

Another alpha wolf appeared on the screen. Duncan could tell it was not the same one. First of all, the bridge it was in was much larger, with many more crew. Secondly, this wolf seemed older. Grayer. White whiskers sprouted randomly around its snout and ears.

It leaned forward in its seat, its eyes boring through Duncan in undisguised hostility.

“Follow me to the space station. If you deviate from course, you will be destroyed. If you attempt to land on our planet, you will be destroyed. If you scan our planet, ships or station, you will be destroyed. Attempt no further hails.” It turned its head and nodded to something offscreen, and the communication was again cut off.

“Do as he said, Clive,” said Duncan, breathing a sigh of relief.

This might just work after all, he thought.

His escorts made Duncan’s best speed and they all arrived at the space station within a few minutes. The heavy battle cruiser peeled away, revealing the entire station its bulk had previously eclipsed. It was smaller than the main stations, smaller even than Duncan’s space station. It was a rounded rectangle, wider than it was tall, with only a couple of docking stations. He had Clive pull into one.

Duncan walked to the ship exit, to his left, and went through the airlock door and entered the
Canis Arcturis
space station. The room he entered was was a barren cube. No windows adorned the walls, which blended into the ceiling and floor. The only thing that differentiated wall from floor from ceiling was a single plinth, topped by what looked like a TV screen, sitting in the middle of the room. Duncan approached it.

The screen showed a hierarchical list of resources and objects for sale. He opened the topmost category and it produced a list of mineral resources available. He began to scan the prices. Nothing jumped out as extraordinarily different from the last public listing he’d read. Then he kicked himself. He didn’t have to do this from memory.

He looked to his own player inventory screen and brought up those public listings.

“Clive, please highlight those resources that have at least a five percent variance in price”

Several of the entries on his viewscreen now showed a highlight coupled with the plus or minus price variant from the
Canis Arcturus
prices.

“Ten percent minimum variance, please.”

The list changed, fewer minerals were highlighted. For a few there was as much as a twenty percent difference in price. He focused on the werewolf screen and began buying resources that were cheaper, much cheaper, here than they were elsewhere. He also noted which resources were much more expensive. Duncan knew that over time, the price variances would level out as he bought and sold more here, but for now it was practically a license to print money and he was going to take full advantage of it.

After he’d filled his holds with cheaply purchased minerals, Duncan returned to his ship to prepare to leave. He entered the bridge, buoyant that his plans were working out so well. He’d spent about one hundred thousand credits for items he’d be able to sell for about a hundred and twenty. He sat in the captain’s chair.

“Sir,” said Clive, “while you were away, I negotiated an agreement with the
Canis Arcturis
which allows this ship to come and go as you please, as long it follows the course restrictions placed on the first visit. To and from the station and jump point, no scans allowed, no hails.”

“Excellent, thank you,” said Duncan, impressed.

“There is one problem, though, sir.” Clive continued, “the ship has no name. It needs one in order to formalize the agreement.”

“Ok,” said Duncan. He paused, thinking.

“Set the ship’s name to ‘
Shepherd Moon’.”

Chapter 16

Pune, Maharashtra. India

Phani Mutha was out of hope. He was in a race to outrun the Omegaverse billing department, his landlord and the electric company. All of those bills were due, and it was just a question of which was going to catch him first. He might be able to pay one, but there was no way he’d be able to pay all three. Any of them could demand payment at any moment, and when one of them did he was effectively unemployed and homeless. Every sound in his building had become the spectre of his landlord’s knock, every flicker in his lamp was his electricity being disconnected, and every message on his computer was to tell him that his account had been suspended for lack of payment.

He’d been huddled over that computer all day, too nervous to eat, taking mining mission after mining mission. He’d made money, but not enough. Phani had just returned from his last mission and was staring at his bank inventory, willing the balance to be higher. He looked to the lone item in his vault, the blueprint for a torpedo he’d found during his earlier, much earlier, run of good fortune. He could sell it and might get enough to get him through this crisis. But, no, he thought. To raise the best price, he’d have to auction it off. To get players bidding against each other. He didn’t have the time.

He made a decision. Taking the blueprint from his vault, he walked to the manufactory. He put the design in and took out the torpedo. It was as much as one player could carry, but he didn’t have to carry it far. He turned and walked to the mission control.

Phani quickly selected the first mining mission listed and entered the ship. He transferred the torpedo from his personal inventory to the ship’s. It would now be ready to use. He sat in the pilot’s chair and hit the launch button. The viewscreen was suddenly swamped by stars and a large, blue, ringed planet. He checked the nav to confirm that it was indeed the same planet he’d lost the palladium load on. Hopefully, he thought, that means that my luck will finally change again. Or maybe it meant it never would. He shrugged, began to accelerate toward the ring, out of habit.

Then he remembered, he wasn’t here to mine. He was here to hunt. Typing, two fingered, he brought up his navigation display and began to survey the system. He was near the system jump point, which was lucky. All traffic passing through a star system had to go through the jump point. It was the navigational bottleneck which ensured that, whatever their source or destination, all ships would pass by close to him. If his mission had taken him to a planet further out, or even to the Oort cloud, he would have had to be lucky indeed to have a ship pass him by.

His luck was changing, he saw, for the better. Several ships were in transit through the system. All he had to do was pick one, target it and shoot.

He opened the ship control screen and selected the torpedo from its inventory and clicked through various warnings about the repercussions of piracy. An entirely unfamiliar screen overlay projected onto his cockpit. Dials and gauges that meant nothing to him. Angle on bow. Elevation on bow. Speed. Bearing. Range.

Phani selected the first ship, the closest ship, and the dials swung and the gauges rotated as the torpedo’s computer calculated how to hit the target. A line projected from his ship to the target. The angle on bow was ninety degrees. It was perpendicular to him. He knew from what little he’d read that the best angle to launch a torpedo was ninety degrees. He selected the dial marked ‘Speed’. It was currently set in the middle of its range. He rotated it left, the torpedo speed decreased, but its range, marked by a circular red line, increased. It also changed the angle on bow, compensating for the additional time it would take to reach the target. He rotated it back. The range decreased, but it was still long enough to hit the target ship.

The elevation on bow showed “Plus 100” in green letters. He assumed that meant that it was a little above him, but that the green numbers indicated that it was within firing parameters. All of the other numbers were green as well. He hoped that meant that he was likely to get a good hit. As he was watching, the angle off bow shifted away from ninety degrees as both his ship and the target moved relative to each other.

Phani set his ship to all stop, which stabilized the angle for the most part. He then increased the speed of the torpedo until the angle off bow again reached ninety degrees. Then he took a deep breath and pressed the ‘Fire’ button.

A red dot leapt from the icon marking his ship on the display, but it wasn’t fired toward the target. A cold sweat broke out over him as he realized he’d been confusing “angle off bow” and “bearing”. Or had he? He started to rock within his seat, overcome with anxiety. The torpedo raced off, heading nowhere near the target ship.

Then it began to turn. It changed its course until it was indeed headed toward the target’s path. Phani had another shock as the torpedo’s route took it perilously close to a shepherd moon, but it missed and sped off into space, accelerating by the second. The time on the torpedo control screen counted down. It would reach the target in thirty seconds.

With a start, Phani realized he’d screwed up again. He should have maneuvered his ship closer to the impact point. He was near the maximum distance for the torpedo. It would take much longer than necessary to loot the ship, and anyone could attack him until he got out of the system. He selected the control for his mining drone, which was what would take whatever loot was available on the cargo ship. For the third time in as many seconds, Phani panicked again. He frantically checked the screen, looking for the target class indicator. He found it, it showed the target to be a cargo class ship.

“Thanks all gods,” breathed Phani, shuddering at the thought that he could just as easily have attacked a heavy battle cruiser through his carelessness. He laid in a course for the mining drone and sent it.

Phani felt a premonition. A dread. He switched to his nav controls and quickly set a course for the shepherd moon he’d nearly torpedoed. At full acceleration, it was just a few minutes away. He set his engines to flank speed, then noticed the icon for his torpedo control was flashing.

He switched back to the attack screen and saw, to his delight and relief, that he’d hit the cargo ship and it had fallen out of hyperspace. His drone was about five minutes away from being able to loot it, which would probably take a minute or two. Factoring in the return time for the drone, he probably had another fifteen minutes in system before he could run back to the space station, hopefully with enough new found, albeit ill gotten, riches to satisfy his creditors.

His ship reached the shepherd moon and, skirting the surface, the rounded it until he was on the opposite side of the moon from the system jump point. Well out of line of sight for the cargo ship. He didn’t know why he felt the need to hide, but it felt right, he thought, as he settled his ship into the bottom of a large crater.

Chapter 17

Birmingham, West Midlands. UK.

Eric West stood in the entrance doorway to his flat. He’d just returned home from a long day at work. Just as he was unlocking his front door, his neighbor opened her door. She was probably heading out for the evening. She’d looked surprised to see him, shocked. It was obvious, he thought, that she hadn’t heard him returning. He had initiated a conversation; she was cute enough, he thought, and he was sure she had a crush on him.

He was halfway through telling her about how he’d had to deal with a particularly stupid customer that day, and was just getting through how the moron wasn’t able to configure his home network to work with his new router, simple stuff, when his phone text notification went off.

He didn’t see her relieved look, or hear her subsequent dash downstairs, two at a time, after he’d quickly taken leave and entered his home.

The text had been from his executive officer. There was a pirate detected within the last few minutes. He’d have to hurry.

He ran into his computer room, shedding his backpack and jacket as he entered.

“Number one,” he shouted, “status!”

Instead of answering, his AI, zoomed the nav display until it centered on the attacked cargo ship.