by G. R. Cooper
“Yes, sir. Gray Eagle is showing.”
“Perfect,” chuckled Eric. A weapon’s station man; just what he wanted. “Send him a note, tell him to report for duty,” he added, then paused and thought. “Add a smiley emoticon, please.” He moved to the navigation screen, zoomed in to center on the cargo ship.
“Number One, add the sensor array to the nav screen as well.”
He set a waypoint to the center of sphere. The cargo ship began accelerating. It jumped to hyperspace just as the Westy arrived at the outer edge of the sphere.
“What’s up, Eric-dude?”
Gray Eagle had arrived. His long, silver hair and bushy white beard incongruous with his sleek, black naval uniform. He sat at the weapon’s station.
“We’ve got a pirate cornered,” began Eric, “and we’re going to bloody well kill it.”
“Rock on, dude!” said Gray Eagle, leaning over the weapon’s station, checking the status of the plasma cannon while opening the missile bay doors.
“When we find it,” continued Eric, “target with the forward cannon. It’s set to twenty percent power. We just want to burn off any sensor absorbent coating. Once that’s damaged and we have a good target lock, send in missiles, one at a time, until the engines are disabled.”
Eric returned to the sensor screen. “Jordi, as soon as we enter the sphere, start dropping passive buoys. Not so soon that the coverage overlaps. We want to eventually fill up this space with enough that there’s nowhere left for him to hide.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Jordi saluted, smiling. Then he bent back over his station.
Eric stood back, surveying his screens. He laughed at himself when he noticed that he was, literally, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. This was the moment he’d been working toward; captaining a ship with his friends as crew, hunting down a wily and elusive prey.
He hoped, more than anything, that the bastard out there was the same guy who’d led him on that chase around that damned shepherd moon. He groaned a little, thinking about how much he really wanted to blow that guy to hell. Taunting him by repeatedly begging not to be shot had put Eric’s temper over the edge. He’d chased the ship around that moon for half an hour; and he still didn’t know how the guy had gotten away from him.
Eric smiled; once he’d begun running him down, though, the mocking fake pleas had ceased. “At least I was able to teach him that lesson,” he muttered. “Do not fuck with me.”
The HMS Westy reached the center of the sphere described by the passive sensor buoys. Jordi dropped another sensor, to join the ones he’d been placing as the ship made a line from the outer edge of the sphere to the center. Eric paused to think.
“Which way would you go, if you were trying to sneak away,” he asked.
“Away from us,” said Gray Eagle.
Jordi nodded, “Directly away.”
“Which is why I don’t think he will,” said Eric, mentally flipping a four-sided coin; port, starboard, up or down. He decided it came up ‘down’. He reached for the helm screen, rolled the ship one hundred and eighty degrees; upside down from its previous stance. He then changed the orientation further, pitching up ninety degrees. Now it was pointing straight ‘down’, perpendicular to their previous bearing.
“You really didn’t need to roll the ship first, dude,” laughed Gray Eagle, “all you had to do was drop the nose.”
Eric was in too good a mood to let this insubordination bother him, so he laughed.
“Number One, all ahead full!” he said as he returned to his chair. He sat and turned, “Jordi, anything on the sensors?”
“Nothing on any of the passive scans. I’m running a narrow beam active scan to the front of us,” Jordi responded.
“Good, good.” Eric resumed tapping his fingers. The narrow beam scan was much more likely to return a hidden ship, if it hit. That was also where Jordi’s advanced player skills paid off; his Sensor VI level gave him approximately a cumulative ten percent increase in finding and locking onto a cloaked target.
“Wait,” said Jordi, “I’ve got something. Come left twenty degrees …”
“Port,” corrected Eric.
“ … and pitch up by 30.”
“Number One, comply,” said Eric, standing again.
“It’s faint,” said Jordi as the ship adjusted to its new bearing. “Gray Eagle, it’s about three degrees off the starboard bow now, straight ahead.”
“Right,” said Gray Eagle, adjusting the forward cannon, “Range?”
“Tough to tell,” said Jordi.
Eric began rubbing his hands together again. “Fire!”
“Rock on, dude!”
Gray Eagle reached to the control for turret one, hit the big red fire button on top. Twin beams lanced forward, into space. Nothing.
“Adjust right, uhm, starboard just a tic,” said Jordi excitedly.
Gray Eagle moved the targeting joystick. “Three seconds until the cannon recharge, dude!”
“Fire when ready,” said Eric.
“Firing!”
“YES!” screamed Eric. One of the beams had intercepted the ship, slashing down the side. Minimal damage, but it was enough to disrupt the ship’s light and sensor absorbent cladding. The sensor station jumped to life with the newly acquired returns.
“Target acquired,” said Jordi.
Eric looked to the tactical display. The pirate was now highlighted, several hundred kilometers ahead, course slightly offset to the outside of their own.
“All ahead, flank!” Eric shouted. “Gray Eagle, slave all plasma turrets and lock on target. But don’t fire!”
As if in response, the pirate, a clipper, leaped forward as well, its engines now glowing hot from the sudden dump of fuel into them, but it was futile. There was no way he could outrun the Westy, its only hope was to get fast enough to be able to jump.
“Missile away!” laughed Gray Eagle. The small rocket raced away from the destroyer and within seconds had intercepted, and exploded. Two of the five engine nozzles on the pirate went dark.
“One more, if you please, Mr. Eagle!” laughed Eric.
Chapter 5
Duncan and his friends were sitting in Matt’s apartment discussing the fight against the Arn when Duncan had a thought.
“Clive, rent me a small apartment on this station.”
“Yes, sir.”
He had decided he wanted to have a place, a pied-a-terre, on the public station, the ‘American’ station at Kepler 22B. He thought it would allow him to better come and go while maintaining the secret of his space station. Once a player had visited a station, they could return through the lost tech magic of the Old Ones, so he was able to go back and forth between his station and any other station he’d been to.
An apartment would allow him to go directly to or from his station and a private location in the public station. After they wrapped up their discussion, and split the loot from the Arn, his friends all logged off.
Duncan got up and left Matt’s apartment. Exiting through the door, he heard:
“Destination?”
“My apartment.”
He walked through the second door into a small apartment. It was shaped like Matt’s, one larger room with, presumably, a small bedroom through a door on the far wall. Unlike Matt’s, it was bare. He’d have to look into furnishing both this and his quarters on his station, as well as the captain’s quarters of the Shepherd Moon. He looked at the long wall to the right.
“Clive, can I put a window on that far wall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I’m sure it costs nothing,” laughed Duncan to himself. He pulled up a commerce menu and navigated until he found the furnishings tab. He bought a large, wall-sized ‘window’ and placed it. The entire wall now showed a view out into space. The beautiful, Earth-like planet, Kepler 22B, took up the lower portion of the window; the rest of the view showed the backbone of the milky way. Ship traffic, leaving and arriving the station, moved through the screen. He loved it. The
vista brought to his mind a space geek’s version of a giant fish-tank.
He checked a ‘Interior Decorator’ tab and found, and hired, another player who would purchase and place, for a suitable markup, furnishings and decorations for his apartment. He selected a theme and budget and sent off the request, paid in advance.
He smiled, then turned and left the apartment.
“Destination?”
“Control room.”
Duncan exited through and, transported across the entire quadrant, into the control room of his space station, walking to the chair that sat in the back of the room. He nodded to Clive, standing to the right of the chair, who nodded back. Turning, he dropped into the chair and looked to the control room’s front wall, that showed, as though on an Imax movie screen, the view out the front of the station. He brought up his station control panel, and noted that he had a message, from Phani, waiting for him.
He opened it and spread the message, opaque for readability, over the window. Phani had completed his daily run to Eta Bootis, for good profits. He apologized, abjectly, for failing to follow the return protocol Duncan had given him; apparently he’d jumped to the station uncloaked, but was sure that there was nobody in system to learn of the station from his mistake.
Duncan smiled. He really liked the guy. He was honest. Conscientious. Duncan truly hoped that Phani would be able to make a living, make a better life for himself, through their partnership.
He continued reading, then mentally kicked himself. Phani had noticed that the Canis Arcturus station, like the player stations, didn’t just deal in the minerals that Duncan had focused on. They also traded in weapons, certificates - anything else players might covet. Duncan had been too stupid to notice, or even think to notice, the opportunity. Phani had not been.
Again, he was impressed with the man’s honesty. He could have quietly bought up armloads of blueprints, recipes and certificates and Duncan would never have known. Instead, before purchasing even one, he’d contacted Duncan with a fair business proposition; Phani would buy what he thought he could market, but provide Duncan with a right of first refusal, at cost, for any that Duncan wanted.
Duncan forced himself to a rule - he would only purchase items that he, personally, needed or wanted to use to improve his character, colony, ship or space station. He’d never take advantage of Phani’s honesty to cheat him out of a valuable item only to sell it himself.
He replied, thanking Phani, and agreed to the deal. Then he sat back, closed the message window, and looked out at the stars.
“Destination?”
“The bridge,” Duncan said, “of the Shepherd Moon.”
He walked through on to the bridge, to the captain’s chair. He looked at Clive, who nodded at him. Duncan nodded back.
“Long time, no see,” he joked. “Are there any contacts?”
“The HMS Westy, sir,” Clive responded, “but he’s 1.5 AU out-system.”
“So, roughly twelve light minutes away from us,” Duncan pondered, “and thus no danger, at least as far as leaving the station. Open the hangar doors.”
‘Yes, sir,” added Clive, “and he seems to be prosecuting a contact.”
“What?”
“Attacking a pirate,” clarified Clive.
“I see. Take us out of the station, make for the jump point,” Duncan ordered, “and don’t forget to close the hangar doors behind us.”
Duncan then brought up his trading screen. He’d made several hundred thousand credits from Phani’s delivery that day. He used one hundred thousand to order a drone from the Indian station; doubling his cargo fleet. This gave him one to ship to and from the Kepler station, and one for the Indian route. He filled the drone he already owned with the day’s purchase from Eta Bootis and ordered it sent to Kepler, where the resources would fetch him another hundred thousand or so.
He placed an order at the Indian station, which would be loaded onto his new drone before it shipped out. Satisfied with the day’s business, he closed the screen and brought up the system map. Duncan zoomed in on the third planet, then plotted a course there. It was time, he thought, to start searching out an appropriate spot to begin terraforming.
The first thing he’d have to do, he’d read, to begin the process was to develop an atmosphere. If he could find enough frozen carbon dioxide, dry ice, on the planet, he’d be able to sublimate it; turn it into a gas that would begin to increase the atmospheric pressure. He could also mine the system’s comets, probably out in the Oort cloud, for ammonia, methane or other greenhouse gasses. In addition to the atmosphere, he had to figure out liquid water requirements, soil requirements, and the many factors required of him to build up the planet to be suitable for colonization.
He was going to have a busy year.
Chapter 6
Eric West’s and Gray Eagle’s laughter mixed to accompany the launch of the second missile. Like its predecessor it leaped from the HMS Westy and impacted with, and destroyed, two of the pirate’s engines. The ship’s acceleration began to slow appreciably; the closure rate for the destroyer leapt accordingly.
Eric stood, approached the forward viewscreen, watching as the pirate grew by the second as the Westy ran it down.
“One more, please, Gray Eagle,” said Eric. “It wouldn’t do for the ship to accelerate to the speed required for a hyperspace jump.” Even one engine would eventually push it to jump speed.
The third missile of the fight launched and accelerated toward the pirate.
“He’s trying to raise his shields,” added Jordi, “but I don’t think he’ll have time.”
Jordi was proven right as the missile impacted, finally destroying the last of the pirate’s engines. It now coasted, and the still accelerating destroyer ate the distance between them in ever larger bites. Eric adjusted the helm, first coming starboard then port, until he was on a matching course, a little above, the pirate. The Westy came in over the ship and Eric dropped and reversed the engines, at max thrust, until he’d matched the speed of the pirate ship.
“All stop,” he shouted, “come about, left ninety degrees!”
“Port,” interjected Jordi.
The Westy spun until it was perpendicular to the direction of the pirate. They’d stopped, relative to their prey, a couple of kilometers ahead and were now ‘floating’, broadside, along with them through open space.
“Nice pilot shit, dude,” laughed Gray Eagle enthusiastically.
Eric smiled, grimly.
“Thank you, Mr. Eagle,” Eric returned to his chair, sat. “Now, if you would, please charge your cannon fully, and target a full missile broadside on that thieving bastard!”
“Captain, we’re receiving a hail.”
“Thank you, Number One,” said Eric, standing, “on-screen please.”
The forward view was replaced by the scene of a small bridge. In the captain’s chair sat a man, slow clapping and smiling. He had short, spiked, gray hair. He stood, still smiling.
“Well done!,” he said enthusiastically, “What gave me away? How did you know which direction I’d run?”
“You were predictable in trying to be unpredictable,” said Eric. He read the information display that came with the hail. The ship was a standard merchant clipper. Fast, good cargo space. It had even been outfitted with shields. A much nicer ship than pirates usually used. It was named ‘13th Ronin’ and was currently being captained by someone named ‘Kato’. Eric assumed that’s who he was talking to.
“It really wasn’t that hard to figure out.” said Eric, putting his hands behind his back. “You were too clever by half.”
Kato shrugged. “You got me. A fair cop, as you’d say. I’m impressed. Are you currently part of a fleet?”
Eric wasn’t sure how to answer. He was part of ‘Fleet Bigweek’, but that was just a name for his clan. Their entire fleet consisted of the HMS Westy. He decided to assume that the question was more general.
“No, I’m not,” Eric returned to his seat, “I’m
a privateer. A hunter of pirates. A hunter of you,’ he emphasised the last word, smiling.
Kato shrugged again, “The ‘Inner Lizards’ are always on the lookout for a good captain, a good crew. Are you interested in joining us?”
“Become a pirate?” Eric asked incredulously.
“Not at all,” said Kato, waving his hands dismissively. “This was an anomaly. I had a torpedo we’d found, so I thought to try out the experience, to see if there was a better way to hunt them down.” He laughed, “All we got out of it was a cargo load full of dry ice and a few missiles up the ass.”
“Ah, I see. So you’re not really a real pirate, then?” Eric asked sarcastically.
“If that’s the case,” interjected Jordi, “why are you still trying to raise your shields?”
Eric nodded, but made a mental note to remind the crew that all such observations should be sent to him via a private message. It was the captain’s role to entreat with adversaries.
“A valid question, sir!” laughed Kato, reaching for his control station. “It was merely a process, an artifact, left running from our exciting game of cat and mouse.”
“He has turned off shields now,” said Jordi.
Gray Eagle let out a short, evil laugh.
Eric smiled.
“Now, as we were saying. You wish for me to join your completely above board, in no way a bunch of pirates, fleet?”
Kato raised his hands, palms up, smiled and nodded.
“Mr. Eagle,” whispered Eric. “A full broadside, if you please. Open fire.”
“Mr. Jordi,” Eric said, “please retrieve our sensor buoys and reload the hedgehog.”
“Already working it,” said Jordi. “The process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” Jordi stood, “The hedgehog status light will change to green once it’s done! Thanks, Eric, that was fun! Let me know when you’ve found another one.”
“Yeah,” said Gray Eagle, “he blew up real good, dude.” He also stood.
