Shepherd Moon: Omegaverse: Volume 1 (5 page)

He changed the view back to visible light and focused back on the scope’s target reticle. The large werewolf had moved, so he re-centered it, dropped the sight onto the center of the beast’s torso. He fired.

The gun kicked again, and once he got the gun back under control and refocused the big bad wolf was gone. Vince, Clancey and Matt, running full speed, charged into the square. The crackle of their weapons came through the radio. He saw nothing more of any werewolves, then saw his friends reach the two captives. One of them pulled the first colonist out of the fire and cut his binds. Another was releasing the second.

“Clive, can you turn on my friend’s names?”

He could now see, through his scope, that it was Clancey freeing the first colonist, Vince the second, and that Matt was now opening up the chest in the center.

“No new loot,” said Matt, closing the chest. He moved toward what was left of the werewolf boss.

Duncan reloaded the gun, then began to stand.

“I don’t understand why we haven’t seen the ‘Mission Over’ message yet,” said Clancey.

Matt answered, “Must be …”

“SHIT!” shouted Shannon.

Running up the hill from the northwest, a werewolf was yards away from Duncan. Teeth bared, it leaped toward him. Duncan fell, backward, pulling the trigger as much out of reflex as conscious thought. The werewolf’s torso disintegrated as the slug tore through it. Unslowed, the tungsten spear left a vapor trail as it sped into the sky.

Shocked, Duncan sat and looked around, disoriented. He saw across the top of his view:

Mission Completed.

Chapter 5

“I’m so sorry, Duncan,” said Shannon. They’d returned from the mission and were hanging around Matt’s place. “I have no idea how I didn’t see him. His movement must have been masked by you.”

“Again, no problem,” Duncan laughed. Shannon had been pleading forgiveness since the mission wrapped. “That makes sense. I was between him and the shuttle. I also didn’t get any sound indications on my map. He must have wandered off in that direction when the shuttle lifted off after our first mission, and then my shooting brought him back.”

“Or the big bad wolf sent him to find out what Duncan’s rail gun noise was,” suggested Matt.

While talking, he was also looking over his character sheet. After the mission, Clive had notified him that he had some skill points to spend. He was looking through the
Combat Arms
section.

“Do I need to spend some points on Sniper training?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t,” said Clancey, “That’s usually helpful in giving you a better indication of target range and in judging wind speed and direction through the scope. With a regular rifle and scope. With that scope, that doesn’t really matter. It will calculate all of that based on environmental factors as well as your slug loadout. Just target, point and shoot with that thing.”

“Yeah,” said Vince “If I was you, I’d drop everything into getting a heavy armor certification. You’ll need that before you’re allowed to rent any, and if you don’t have the cert, your insurance for armor you buy would be stupidly expensive.”

“Do any of you want to use the rail gun?” Duncan asked, a bit overwhelmed by all of this newfound power.

The others shook their heads.

“Nah,” said Clancey, “we specialize in the fast in and fast out, hit-and-run raid.”

“The old
in-out, in-out,
” said Shannon, thrusting her right index finger through a circle made by the index finger and thumb of her left hand.

Vince laughed, “Long missions eat into our drinking time. Sniping isn’t really much needed the way we play.”

“You should sell it and buy a full set of kick ass equipment,” added Shannon.

Matt had been sitting, quietly. Now he spoke up.

“Who wants to hear about the loot?” They all turned to him. “First off, the mission had two parts. It turns out we not only needed to find out why comms from the colony had been lost, namely the werewolves, but we also got a bonus for colonists rescued. I’m going to give my share to mister first timer.”

The rest of his friends gave their assent as well.

“Ok then,” continued Matt, “that means that Taipan gets about ten thousand credits.”

“Is that a lot?”

Clancey responded, “It’s a really good start for a newbie. Almost enough for a starter set of power armor. You can probably get an OK outfit with that, but I’d wait. Especially if you’re going to focus on sniping …”

“Camper!” yelled Vince.

“ … in which case go on some more missions, do some camping,
uhm
sniping that is, and get enough for a really kick ass set of armor.”

“Or,” added Shannon, “sell it, like I said.”

“But yeah,” said Vince, “that
is
a lot for a single mission.”

“I’m not done,” grinned Matt. “In addition to the bonus for the colonists, that big bad wolf that Duncan wasted had a bounty on his head. He wasn’t just a non-player character, Duncan, he was an AI, which is what we call NPC’s that have a character arc. He’d done a lot of colony hits, and as he fought, and lived, his skills grew. He was a really bad dude. If Duncan hadn’t splashed him, he would’ve given the three of us a really nasty fight.”

“Sweet,” said Shannon

Matt continued, “yeah, and he dropped some interesting loot as well.” A dialog box popped up in Duncan’s view, he accepted it and examined the item.

Cowl of the Wolf. Won by Duncan Sheriden August 27, 2021

He put it on. His friends laughed.

“You look like some kind of shaman!” hooted Shannon.

Duncan opened his character screen. His head was now shrouded in fur, the wolf’s head staring over the top of his eyebrows. Red eyes glaring, fangs bared, ears pointing upward. The fur extended down over his shoulders into a short cape. He brought up the object information.

Cowl of the Wolf. Provides visual camouflage in similarly colored environments, as well as infra-red cover in all environments. Reduces species aggression from Canis Arcturus to neutral.

That explains why the big bad wolf didn’t show up on the infra-red scan, Duncan realized.

Meanwhile, his friends had also been reading the description.

“What does neutral aggression mean?” asked Shannon.

“I’m not sure,” said Vince, ”but it sounds like if he’s wearing that, they won’t automatically attack.”

“I’m checking the wiki now,” said Clancey, “and Vince is right. Apparently, if he was wearing that cowl, or anything with that species’ neutral aggression tag, he could even land on the werewolf home planet and not be attacked.”

“I haven’t been able to find a record of a Cowl of the Wolf in any of the wikis or player auction house,” said Matt, “and the neutral aggression bit is really rare on any items.”

“What’s Arcturus”, asked Duncan. A display popped up, centered on his view. It showed a starmap with the Sun and Arcturus highlighted. Arcturus wasn’t all that far, relatively speaking, from the Earth.

The others were obviously studying as well. Vince responded.

“A star about thirty seven light years from Earth, or about six hundred light years from this station.”

“The werewolves,” added Shannon, “aren’t actually from Arcturus. Their home planet is around a star about three light years from there. Called Eta Bootis.” She started singing, “I like Eta Bootis and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny!”

“And with that,” said Matt,”I need a beer.”

“Stoofoo! I’m a great singer!”

“Are you going to pass around some virtual drinks or something?” asked Duncan.

“We could,” answered Matt, “Or we could log off, head to the bar and take advantage of Shannon’s employee discount. You in?”

“Sure.” said Duncan.

“I get an employee discount?”

Duncan took off his helmet, got up from his couch and walked into the kitchen. His apartment wasn’t large, but it was well appointed. Someone had taken an old, early twentieth century, rail warehouse and converted it into lofts. Century old clay brick walls and rough hewn beam ceilings were accented by modern stainless steel appliances and shining wood floors. The only real drawback, apart from the price, was that the rail line still ran. Every few hours, freight trains pulled past, shaking the place. It had obviously been decided that the aesthetics of the apartments outweighed the need to add sound proofing. He’d gotten used to it fairly quickly, though.

He pulled open the refrigerator, grabbed some food and a beer, and walked back to the couch. Sitting, he turned on the TV and told it to switch to the computer input. He had a bit of time until his friends could get to the bar, which was only a half a block away from him. One of the reasons he wasn’t too off-put by the apartment’s high rent was that it was in the middle of downtown. Or, as Shannon put it,
within stumbling distance of all the bars.
He decided to use the extra time provided to read up on the game.

As he ate, he read through the various activities, called ‘Occupations’ in game. Everything his friends had described, and everything he had experienced so far, fell under the ‘Soldier’ umbrella of occupations. That was, however, only one of the branching pathways he could choose.

Matt had described the game progression as being based on activity, instead of “class” which was how many games defined gameplay pathways. The only limit to what you wanted to do was, in many cases, access to equipment. You could pilot spacecraft in combat, or as a miner. You could manage colonies, large or small. There were a substantial number of players who spent all of their time in one of the various space station casinos, gambling with game credits.

He switched to reading about the werewolves and their home planet. Not much was known, apart from the location. Their rabid xenophobia, as well as ravenous appetites, left little room for any exploration.

Finishing the last of his now warm beer, he sank back into the couch and started to think. The fundamentals of a plan formed. He knew, or at least thought he knew, how he was going to play this new game. As he reached for his VR helmet, his phone buzzed. A text message had come through. It was Matt.

“You’re not coming are you?

Duncan looked at the time. He’d been reading for over an hour.

“Uh, no. Sorry.”

“I knew it! I told them you’d get sucked into the game again! First round is on you next time. Have fun!”

Duncan put back on the helmet, reentered the game world. The nascent plan had no firm path, but he knew one thing; it was going to be expensive. He left Matt’s place, and entered Mission Control and made his way to the manufactory, opening it. He took a deep breath, pulled the rail gun out of his inventory and placed it inside. He selected the “
create blueprint
” option on the control menu, confirmed the five hundred credit cost, and took the resulting plan from the slot.

Duncan then brought up the ‘
Player Auctions’
menu, set the filter to sort from highest priced items to lowest. He didn’t bother to read what the highest priced item was, he just read the ‘
Buy it now’
option. Five million credits. He decided to set that as his reserve price. If reserve wasn’t meant, he’d auction it off again with a lower one, but he wanted to be sure that he got every possible credit. It might not wind up making a difference, but he’d decided that his first foray into the player auction wasn’t going to result in some other player getting a bargain.

“Clive, setup an auction for the rail gun plans. Set the reserve price to be five million credits”

“
Certainly, sir. Shall I set the auction to run for the default amount of time, forty eight hours? Do you want the auction under your name or shall I set it up to be anonymous?”

“Anonymous please, and two days is fine.”

He looked at the newly open slot in his inventory pack. “Well,” he thought, “that’s that. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

For the first time since entering the game, he began to look around the space station. The mission control room stretched out to the left and right, curving behind him as he looked toward the viewport. Dozens of other players, singly and in groups, were moving through the room. Some returning from missions, some leaving on them.

He pulled up a map of the station. The mission control room was a torus; he could walk in either direction and wind up where he began in the donut shaped room that circled the outside of the station. Inside of the ring was where the player homes, stores, bars, and everything else was located. They weren’t specifically located on the map, just listed. Walking into any of the portals dotted around the interior of the mission control room could take you to any of the other rooms in the station, so the actual layout of most of the station was irrelevant, with a few exceptions. Like
Mission Control
and the
Hangar.