by G. R. Cooper
“It got old, though,” he said to himself, and when he saw the group had acquired enough to buy an older class destroyer, he’d convinced them that it was the way to go. Hell, some of the guys had even put in real money to help fix up and equip the ship. He just didn’t understand why they weren’t here. He had himself invested in getting six top of the line monitors, thinking that commanding the crew, his crew, this way would be more efficient than using the VR interface. All of that, he’d done for them.
Now, when the payoff finally looked like it was about to happen, they were nowhere to be found.
“Number One, is any of my crew online?”
“Negative. Shall I send out a call to arms?”
“No. Fuck them. If they’re not interested, I don’t need them.”
He sat in a large leather high backed chair in the middle of the room. “Fuck them,” he repeated to the room. “If I can’t count on them now, what’s it going to be like during the bloody World Cup next summer?” He pounded on the chair’s armrest. “Fuck them.”
As if in response, a red light flared on the map.
“Captain, I’ve detected …”
“I can see that. Flank speed! Waypoint 1!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You answer a command with ‘aye aye’. I’ve told you again and again!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Shut up you fucking idiot.”
He stood, approached the monitors. The pirate’s torpedo had been a hit. The green dot had come to a rest and the red dot moved to intercept it. The torpedoes didn’t damage ships, they disrupted the shields generated to protect the ship during faster than light travel. After the shield was disrupted, the ship dropped out of warp space into normal space, and the pirates could board and plunder until the FTL drive regenerated the shield; about twenty minutes. Once that happened, the fully automated cargo ship jumped back to light speed and resumed its course.
After the shield was back up, there was no way to remove loot from the ship, so unless the pirate wanted to spend another very expensive torpedo to keep it there, there was no reason for them to remain in the area. That was especially so since a popular, but expensive, add on that many cargo ship owners were now buying was an ansible-based distress signal that sent out a plea that was instantaneously transmitted to the nearest space station; which would then dispatch a Navy ship. The response time depended upon how far away the attack was from the station; the Navy usually arrived very quickly if only a system or two away, but even at the furthest reaches they could be expected in less than twenty minutes. Eric wanted to be there well before that could happen. Sharing credit for the kill was not part of his plan.
He began working on one of the screens, bringing up his shields. They took the longest to initiate of any ship board system, about five minutes, and they also sent out the largest electro magnetic signature. Any shipping within about one AU would be able to detect him in about eight minutes at most, as the shield’s field emission radiated out at light speed. He set the shields at twenty percent of ship’s power. Weak, but he didn’t expect to be hit. Unfortunately, the power allocation had no effect on shield generation time. One hundred percent power to shields or twenty percent power both took around five minutes to generate or regenerate. The difference was in how quickly they were depleted after being hit.
He wasn’t really concerned about shields, however, but wanted to be able to set the remaining, majority, of the ship’s power reserve toward the weapons. Unlike the merchant class ships, his class didn’t have to share power between engines and shields; he had a dedicated power source for the engines. But he did have to share between the shields and weapons, and his shields needed a constant power supply to maintain them, also unlike the merchant who could set shield power and forget it. His shields, though, could take a much heavier pounding as a result. But he had to choose between a heavy offense or a heavy defense, and he wanted the first shot to count. To be the only shot needed.
“A quick short, sharp shock, they don’t do it again. Dig it?” he said in his best Cockney accent.
“Are you asking me to play ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, Captain?”
“Sure, Number One,” laughed Eric, “but only until we reach waypoint one.”
As he finished the initiation sequence for the shields, he moved to the monitor he had dedicated as the weapons station. He was going to put everything, eighty percent of ship’s power, into the plasma cannon. One shot should be able to take out most light pirates. For this kind of job, they usually used a small mining ship. They were small, relatively cheap, and had a decent sized cargo bay for loot. The controls for the torpedo were inside the weapon, and once activated and launched required no further input, so the pirates didn’t worry about buying any weapons systems upgrades for their ships.
Where they did, however, tend to spend was in stealth. Surface coatings that could reduce the albedo of their ships to almost nothing. They also added active camouflage systems that received star light on one side of the ship and projected it on the opposite side, so you couldn’t find them just by looking for parts of space where stars weren’t. Unless they were moving fast enough that they couldn’t conceal either their engine emissions or the miniscule heat generated by encountering randoms atoms of space stuff, they were next to invisible; the only thing that gave them away was the wake, and subsequent explosion, of the torpedo.
They also tended, for stealth and price concerns, to avoid any sort of combat shields. So while they were very very hard to detect if they were running silent, they were very very easy to kill when found.
He finished bringing the weapons online and looked to the shield screen. They were at sixty percent. Three minutes. Right on schedule. Three minutes to go until jump. He moved to the navigation screen.
“Number One. Overlay the jump locations I calculated earlier.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
A grid like spread of blue letters, Greek, appeared. One was almost on top of the red dot.
“Remove all but Delta. Add its coordinates to the jump drive control.”
The map adjusted. He reached out and pulled down on the map screen, rotating the solar system ninety degrees from the ecliptic. His jump location was too “high”.
“Reduce the ‘X’ coordinate by twenty thousand kilometers”
The blue dot now sat almost on top of the red dot. He was now thirty seconds from the L5 point. His warp drive was online and targeted. His shields were at full capacity and his plasma cannon ready to fire. The music, now playing ‘On the Run’, reached a crescendo. The words “Live for today, gone tomorrow” erupted from his speakers, followed by maniacal laughter. Then the music suddenly stopped. He’d reached waypoint one.
“Someone’s about to get a very rude surprise,” Eric chuckled.
Chapter 7
“Captain, we have reached Waypoint One,” said the AI executive officer on the HMS Westy.
“Initiate jump drive,” replied Eric West.
The starfield through the viewport didn’t change noticeably, but Eric didn’t expect it to. The jump was too short. The center point of his system map, however, was now on the red and green dots. In addition, his ship’s inertia had been bled by the jump and he was now stationary, at least as far as forward momentum was concerned.
He looked to his scan display and the passive instruments showed the location of the cargo ship and nothing else.
“Come port forty-five degrees.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
The starfield view began moving toward the right and the cargo ship, in the distance, came onto the left side of the screen. He reached for the scan display and set active scanning in a cone centered on the visible ship. There were no returns other than the cargo ship. The pirate was no longer near its prey. He widened the scanning cone, which had the effect of increasing the area scanned at the cost of lowering the fidelity of the information gleaned. Still no returns.
He looked to the red dot on t
he starmap. It was no help. Scanned from seven light minutes, nearly one astronomical unit, his sensors had only been able to place the ship in a cube of space whose measure was far too large for anything like an exact location.
He changed the starmap for a local, tactical map. It centered on his ship and showed the cargo ship a few hundred kilometers out, off his port bow. He began, quickly to mark out a cube of space on the map, centered on the cargo ship and much larger than the area his long range scan had enclosed the pirate within, then selected sensor control.
“All ahead flank,” he shouted, “following the course I’ve laid in. Drop a passive sensor buoy every hundred kilometers.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
At least, he thought, it seems that dipshit AI has figured out how to respond correctly. He spun the tactical map on its axis, first one way, then another. His active scan was still locked on the cargo ship, and its scanning area shifted as the ship moved through the course. It was highly unlikely to detect anything while he was moving so quickly, but it was also likely to keep the pirate, if he was still here, from moving at more than the barest crawl. No doubt the crew of the pirate was shitting their pants, he thought grimly, as they watched him hunt. He smiled.
He switched back to the starmap, and dragged the information displayed backward along the timeline. He paused at the moment before his jump, then set the display to run backward at 1:1 time. There was no appreciable movement of the red dot, so, he thought, it couldn’t have snuck away and jumped while he was busy preparing his ship for combat. All ships, even pirates, had to achieve a few percent of C, light speed, before making a jump; the kinetic energy being used to ‘jump start’ the hyperdrive shield, it was believed, which seemed to explain why ships emerged from faster than light with no forward velocity.
So they couldn’t jump while stationary, and he would have detected movement of the speed required to jump; the bastard had snuck in and he was trying to sneak away. He reset the map, then changed it back to tactical.
“Was there a distress call sent by the cargo ship?”
“None that we detected, Captain.”
Good, he thought, no need to worry about any Navy boats showing up and stealing his kill.
The cargo ship, shields now raised, began accelerating. Reaching the required speed, it jumped.
He moved back to his chair, sat, and watched the tactical map show his ship moving through the kill box he’d described, every now and then dropping a pinpoint of light designating a buoy.
“As long as I’ve got more patience than you, mister pirate, I’ll whittle down this box until I’ve found you and then I’ll kill you. And I’ve got all the patience in the world.”
After the route was complete, the buoys laid, he got up and began rotating the map, looking for any holes he might have left around the edges of the cube. There were none he could see. The passive array hadn’t yet detected anything, but he didn’t expect it to. “It’s not there to find the bastard,” he muttered, “but to pen him in. If he tries to leave the bounded area, he’ll have to get close enough to one of them to set it off.”
He began moving the ship around the outside of the cube, focusing the wide beam of his active sensors toward the middle of it. He was getting returns, but nothing specific enough to start an attack. All he could tell from his hunt so far was that he had, indeed, boxed the pirate in.
“Number One, are any of the crew online yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Shit. Setup an open, pilot mission. Minimum requirements, minimum payout.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
He needed someone, anyone, to take one of his fighters out and use the onboard active sensors to help him triangulate and nail down the exact location of the bastard. He’d prefer to set it on autopilot and let it run the pattern on its own, but he couldn’t do that without a pilot sitting in it. He plotted a course for the fighter, then set a complimentary course for himself. Between the two, they should have no trouble.
“It doesn’t make any damn sense,” he said out loud, ”why do I need some idiot sitting in the ship?”
“What?” he heard from his left.
He leaped up, reached the screen setup to view the starfield, in reality the bridge view out the forward windows, and slewed the orientation to see inside the bridge. There was another player standing there. That was quick, he thought. He looked at the guy.
“What the hell is a ‘Taipan’” Eric growled, still startled.
“It’s a snake. From Australia, I think.” the newcomer answered.
“Well, ‘snake from Oz’,” he mocked, “I need you to babysit one of my fighters while it conducts a search routine I program into it. Think you can manage that?”
“Sure!” he paused. “How?”
Eric’s jaw dropped. “What? How?” He looked at Taipan’s clothes. “Jesus Christ! You’re still wearing your newbie suit. How long have you been playing?”
“A few hours.”
“How many missions?”
“This is my third. But my first as a pilot.”
“Shit,” said Eric, resignedly. “Go through that door on your left. When asked for a destination, say ‘Hangar’. Get in the first fighter. Don’t touch anything.”
He watched Taipan go through the door, which closed behind him. Eric muttered derisively, “I may be new at this, too, but at least I’m prepared. I know what I’m doing.” He spun the bridge view forward again, then scanned his sensors. They hadn’t picked up anything.
“Number One, is the pilot in the fighter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Launch it.”
“Ok newbie,” he said, “here’s the plan. I’m going to be sending your ship around and controlling its sensors. I need you to do two things for me.”
“What’s that?” he heard over the radio.
“‘Jack’ and ‘Shit’. Do nothing. Touch nothing. Look at the pretty stars and keep your bloody mouth shut,” he growled. “Can you manage that?”
“Aye aye.”
Eric rolled his eyes, then forgot the newbie. He selected the fighter on the tactical map and began designating its course. Once it reached the side of the cube opposite the destroyer’s location, he had it stop and turn to face the center of the search area.
“Ok, Taipan, tell your AI buddy to do this: Set widebeam active scan,” he paused, “azimuth one eighty, elevation one eighty,” he paused again, “initiate scan.”
A pyramid appeared on the tactical screen, pointed at the fighter, showing the area the fighter was now scanning. It was a wide beam scan, the widest possible, and wouldn’t find the pirate on its own, but coupled with the tight beam scans he was about to run from the destroyer, they would rapidly run the hapless prey to ground. He selected a waypoint for the destroyer that was ninety-degrees out from the fighter.
“Number One, flank speed to …” his voice caught in his throat.
Fire leapt from the fighter, twin beams of laser. And again. They tore through the absorbent coatings on a Class D freighter, now highlighted on his sensors in red. Missiles joined the lasers as the newbie unleashed all of his firepower.
“NO!” screamed Eric. Then leaped for the weapon station. He highlighted the pirate, selected his plasma cannons and yelled,
“Number One! Full broadside. FIRE!”
The three turrets, one fore and two aft, fired. His roll angle to the pirate was awkward, but all three had a bearing on the target. The beams sliced through the ship, the fire from turret one going through the ships engine core which instantly reached a critical mass and exploded, taking the entire merchant ship cum pirate with it. Across the top of his bridge view screen he saw;
Target destroyed. You are credited with 36 percent. Assist.
“Number One, recall that fighter. Maximum speed.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Stunned, he turned and moved to the chair. He sat, pounded once on the chair’s arm.
“What the hell just happened
?” he muttered.
Over the radio, a reply, “Well, I saw …”
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” screamed Eric.
He saw that the fighter was back in the hanger. Then he looked to the scan display. Nothing remained of the pirate. He’d been so thrown he hadn’t been able to target his fire. Hadn’t been able to hit it just to disable. He must have hit the core. Or, he thought, that dipshit newbie did. He didn’t even have the decency to just use lasers. The asshole used missiles. His missiles. They weren’t expensive, but they weren’t free.
He heard the door to the bridge open but didn’t, couldn’t, slew the bridge view around to look at the newbie who’d ruined his kill. He wouldn’t even get proper credit since the guy wasn’t grouped with him or part of his crew; his worthless, useless fucking crew. He seethed.
“Get off my fucking ship,” he whispered.
Chapter 8
Duncan walked back into Mission Control. Bemused. He began replaying the mission in his head; he couldn’t understand what he’d done to get that kind of reaction.
He’d been ignoring all of the other players moving around him, coming from or going to missions. Then he noticed that several stopped in front of him. One spoke.
“Taipan. Did you just get back from a mission on board the HMS Westy?”
Shocked, he looked at each of them. They all wore bulky, scarred armor. All in the same colors. A uniform. All carried large, menacing weapons.
“I guess,” he replied.
One spoke, “Yeah, this is the guy. We found him.”
Duncan looked to the left, then the right. More players, soldiers, wearing the same uniform armor, brandishing the same kinds of weapons, joined the group. He was surrounded. Duncan’s heart began to race.
The same one that spoke before spread his arms, including the entire group.
“We’d all like to apologize on behalf of the clan.”
“What?” asked Duncan, confused.
