by G. R. Cooper
“Especially,” she added, “if, as some people think, we’ll be able to transfer our consciousness into computers.”
He asked, “Would you want to live like that? Are you still alive? Do you still exist if you’re just your consciousness?”
She shrugged.
“And where does philosophy go? Without the biological imperatives that define most of our existence, what do we contemplate?”
She shrugged again. “Would you want to live like that?”
“As opposed to being dead? Sure. It’s got to be better than nothing.”
“How do you know death is nothing?”
“There’s no evidence for anything else,” he shrugged.
“There’s no evidence against it.”
“Just faith that it exists. I don’t have that faith. Not enough, anyway, to avoid taking another route if it’s offered to me.”
“But,” she said spreading her arms, “what about all of the life around you? You can’t believe it just happened, that there’s nothing greater.”
“Why not?” he answered, “I’m literally surrounded by an infinite amount of empirical evidence that it did just happen. And absolutely zero evidence that there’s anything greater.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “you’re twenty-two …”
“Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three, sorry. When you’re a doddering old person of forty-five like me, you might see aging and death a little differently. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, I’m looking at working for another decade or two just to be able to retire and sit on my ass and wait to die, pinning my hopes on some fairy tale afterlife that I don’t believe in.”
Duncan pushed back his chair. “I have no motivation anymore. I just don’t care. What’s the point of busting my ass, just so I can roll over and die to make room for some jerk who’ll make the same dumb mistakes I did.”
He finished his beer. “Now, if you can find a way that I can live a long time, a timeline I can sink my teeth into, then I’m interested again.”
Chapter 12
Duncan walked onto the bridge of his ship. He wondered what to name it. There was no reason he had to name it at all, so he’d take his time, come up with something he liked.
The ship arrived at the interstellar jump point, left hyperspace. The display screen on the bridge flooded with stars in unfamiliar constellations. He was slightly above the plane of the ring around a gas giant, also several hundred kilometers from the outer edge. He brought up his scanning instrumentation, set to passive.
The gas giant was the fourth planet in the system, several AU out from its star; a run of the mill yellow G class, much like the Sun. He slewed the ship until it was pointing toward the planet, its blue orb dominating the screen, dwarfing the yellow sun far distant. At the outer edge of the ring was a small moon. Nestled close to the moon was a ship; close enough that its shadow highlighted its shape. The HMS Westy.
“Can he see me?”
“No sir.” responded Clive, “we came out cloaked. If he was actively scanning our location, he would be able to detect our presence, but not our exact location from that range. He’s not actively scanning, however. We are invisible to him as long as we move slowly, keep our shields off and refrain from any active nav scanning. Our cloak will keep him from acquiring us visually.”
Duncan was glad that he’d spent the money for the cloak. Even from this distance, the Westy was clearly visible; backlit by the shepherd moon.
“However,” continued Clive, “assuming he were monitoring the faster than light traffic through this system, as is likely, he will know we’re in the area, as he will have noted that we’re no longer in hyperspace.”
Duncan wasn’t worried that he’d be attacked, at least not by the Westy. That guy was a jerk, but he seemed to only worry about hunting pirates so Duncan thought he was safe. He hoped. Pirates were no threat to him, they seemed only to attack the automated cargo drones that delivered goods between systems. At least, most pirates we no threat. He supposed that players could buy the extremely expensive naval vessels like the Westy, but as far as he knew, nobody risked those ships for the relatively meager returns they could get from piracy.
He’d read that pirates usually bought the cheapest ship they could get away with, to limit their costs if destroyed. Being destroyed while engaged in piracy negated your insurance policy, so most didn’t bother with that added expense either. Another dangerous option, rarely taken, was engaging in piracy while in a ship taken from mission control. If you were caught while in a mission ship, you wouldn’t be allowed to take another mission for a very long time.
Duncan brought his ship in above the plane of the ring. Once inside, he dropped it down, to use the bulk of the ring to help mask his presence from the Westy.
“Clive, can we be detected when we start scanning for minerals?”
“Yes. But only from short range, and that’s only for the broad scan. The focused scan is detectable only a little further than its own range.”
Duncan set the mineral scan to the broadest, widest, range and began scanning the ring. At that intensity, he wouldn’t get any returns more specific than non-ferrous anomaly, meaning something that wasn’t iron; an indication of the possibility of a more valuable ore.
After the first of these returns, he sent one of his mining drones to check. Once it arrived, it performed a localized, focused scan. Kamacite. Nickel-iron. Not especially valuable, but it was his first ‘find’, so he decided to mine it.
As his drone began excavating, he moved into the ring, continued to scan. He found a few more kamacite loads, but decided not to exploit them. He moved within the ring, moved along the line of the current, enough faster than the flow so that the rocks looked like they were slowly approaching him. He marveled at the view, slewing the viewscreen to port and starboard.
“Clive, can I go outside? Do an EVA?”
“Yes, sir. In the hanger, there is a small airlock next to the main hanger airlock. Inside it are suits for extravehicular activities.”
Duncan jumped up from the captain’s seat, heading to the hangar. As he arrived, he turned to his right, saw the small airlock tucked between the large hangar doors and the bulkhead. He went through the door. Several hard suits stood open, lined up on either side of the airlock. He stepped into one, which closed, clamshell like, around him.
A row of suit specific gauges arranged in a line across the lower part of his field of view. Oxygen level as well as estimated time remaining at current consumption. Thruster fuel amount. He walked to the outside airlock; it opened and he stepped through.
The view from the bridge was impressive, but didn’t compare to the view Duncan saw now. With only a glass ball around his head, his entire field of view was nothing but stars, planet, and the flow of rocks as he moved through the planetary ring. He did nothing, stunned, until he realized that the view was literally breathtaking. He inhaled, deeply, then hit the suit’s thrusters and spun to bring the ship into view. He was still too close to get a good look at the whole of it, so he thrust backward, away.
Once he could see the entire ship, he stopped. The wedge like nose, jutting from the oblong, rounded box of the bridge was far to his left. Behind the bridge, the long rectangular cargo hold stretched back to the box of the hangar bay. Above and below the cargo hold were the berths for each of the two mining drones; one full, one empty. As he watched, the second drone approached the ship, merged with it.
He knew that the drone was now offloading its load of kamacite into the ore refinery inside the cargo hold. The ore would then be swarmed by uncounted microscopic organisms; microbes called Metallosphaera sedula. They were chemolithotrophs, archaea or single cell micro-organisms, that fed on the iron and sulfur minerals while leaving behind any heavy, valuable, metals as residue.
Duncan had been surprised to learn that these creatures actually existed on earth, first found in 1989 living in the sulfur springs around Italy’s Vesuvius, and that
studies had been conducted to test their utility for just this purpose; mining in space. Those tests had found that not only were these archaea suitable for ore extraction in space, they seemed to prefer it; space dust samples that took them two months to consume on earth were finished in two weeks in space. Those numbers had been improved through ‘genetic modification’, according to the game designers, to the point that by the time the next hopper full of space dust was dropped in for them, the first would have already been consumed. The refinery had been, besides the ship itself, the single most expensive purchase he’d made; but the savings it provided, in both time and fuel not being spent transporting mostly useless ore, would eventually more than make up for the initial cost.
He looked toward the aft. Past the cargo hold and hangar were the fuel tanks and engines, fully one quarter the length of the ship. The nozzles that would glow white hot under acceleration were now a dull metal. Unused.
Duncan looked forward, past the hangar section topped with dishes, antennae and assorted bits of what he assumed were his shield and cloaking, as well as scanning and navigation devices. He thought.
“Clive, is the cloaking still on? Why can I see the ship?”
“The cloaking is still on, sir. Your suit is overriding the cloak for you. The ship is still invisible to anyone not a part of the crew”
He then noticed that the mining drone was still on the ship. It must have finished extracting all of the ore from its target. Duncan turned to faced the ship’s airlock and began thrusting.
As Duncan entered the bridge, he noted several more likely returns from the broad scan. He dispatched the drones to examine them. He was still moving through the ring, their course taking them toward the outer rim of it.
“Sir, we are approaching the range where the Westy can detect our broad range mineral scans with his passive scanner. Shall I suspend scanning.”
“No. Keep scanning.” He leaned over the sensor station, “Can you overlay our scanning range?”
A translucent sphere appeared around the ship on the sensor display. Its outer limit nearly touched the Westy, one half light second distant.
“Decloak.”
Two seconds passed. A red line appeared between the Westy and his ship.
“We are being scanned sir.”
“Alright.” Duncan replied, “Are our jump drives recharged?”
“Yes sir. They recharged approximately fifteen minutes after we arrived in system. But we are too deep in the planet’s gravity well to jump from this location.”
Duncan pulled up the nav menu. He plotted a course to the nearest Lagrange point; just in case. Each orbiting pair of bodies, in this case the blue gas giant and the shepherd moon, has a series of five points in space where a smaller, third, mass can orbit in a constant pattern with the two larger masses; where the gravitational pull of the two larger masses equals the centripedal force needed for the smaller mass to orbit with them. What this meant for space ships, within the game, was access to points of space that were sufficiently free of gravitational pull to be considered ‘outside’ of a large mass gravity well; this allowed them to engage their hyperdrive.
The Lagrange one and two, or L1 and L2, points were on a direct line from the larger to the smaller mass; the L1 point being between the large and small object, the L2 on the ‘outside’ of the smaller mass. The L3 point lay on the orbit line directly opposite the location of the smaller mass; the larger mass was halfway between the smaller mass and the L3.
The L4 and L5 preceeded and followed, respectively, the smaller mass, on its line of orbit. Duncan plotted a course for the shepherd moon’s L5 point; the one that trailed it in orbit.
The two drones had reached their targets and begun their scan. He looked to the mining control panel. One had stopped near a large asteroid, the other a much smaller rock; small enough to fit, whole, in the drones hopper. The asteroid contained mineable quantities of Palladium. The small rock was Palladium as well, but in much higher concentration. He set the first drone to begin mining, then had the second simply capture the load directly into its hopper.
He changed ship’s course, angling out of the ring. He looked to the Westy. Its scan had stopped, and he hadn’t moved or begun charging his shields. Duncan assumed that, for the moment at least, he was safe from him.
“Clive, plot our time to waypoint one,” the Lagrange point, “at maximum thrust. Do the same for the Westy. Let me know when he can get there faster than we can.”
Clive did one better. Over waypoint one on the nav map, a green “3:36” appeared. Below it, a light red “HMS Westy - 5:52”. If Westy did anything he didn’t like, he could be there well before he was in any danger. He hoped.
“Clive, power up the shields. Give me enough to withstand a full broadside from the Westy.”
“Fifty percent shields, aye, sir.” said the crewman at the shield station.
The green marker next to waypoint one on the nav screen changed to “6:44” as the nav computer recalculated for maximum thrust during shield generation. Once that power had been applied to the shield, about five minutes, his power reserve available would increase again.
“Sir,” said the crewman at the comm station “we’re being hailed. It’s the HMS Westy.”
Chapter 13
Duncan rose from the captain’s chair, clasped his hands behind his back and looked at the comms station. “Answer the call.”
A window opened on the bridge view screen, showing Eric West on the bridge of of the HMS Westy, sitting ponderously imperious in his captain’s chair. He spread his arms.
“Are you trying to screw up my … “ he paused. “Oh. It’s you.” His final word weighed the sentence with a gravity of derision. He gripped either arm of his chair. Duncan didn’t answer, just waited unmoving.
Eric seemed to gather himself.
“I’m trying to ambush pirates,” he said, his tone pedantic, as though speaking to a slow and unloved child. “Your activity, especially your shield, will scare them away. They’ll see you and won’t attack cargo shipping. Thus, I’ll have wasted hours in wait.”
Duncan tried to project an air of thought. He waited, then answered.
“Yes.”
Eric stared for a second, then cut off communication. A second later, Duncan’s passive scan detected movement from the Westy. Shortly after that, indications that Eric was charging his shields and his weapons.
Duncan looked to his nav screen. He’d moved further from the jump point, and his shields were now fully charged. The display showed him as being 4:10 away from the Lagrange point, at full thrust. The display for the Westy showed it at 5:40. Then 5:39. Then 5:38. Duncan didn’t know whether the Westy was headed for him or the jump point; Duncan was directly between them. He had also cleared the planetary ring.
“Increase thrust to twenty-five percent,” he said. He left the course alone, true for the shepherd moon, slightly offset from the opposing course of the Westy. His timer to the jump point began to increase faster; the timer for the destroyer dropped second by second.
He looked over his instruments. “Crap”, he said, kicking himself mentally. He realized that it would have cost him nothing extra to charge the shields to full capacity. He’d had plenty of power reserves while charging to dedicate them to a complete charge, and once charged they required little additional power to maintain. As it was, if he now decided to boost the shield, he’d be limited in the amount of power he could spend on the engines. And he was becoming increasingly worried that he’d need both. Soon.
“I guess you guys won’t prevent me from making a stupid mistake,” he said to the bridge crew. They didn’t respond. “Let’s hope that won’t wind up being an expensive lesson.”
“Clive,” he continued, “What happens to the Westy if they attack? Are there any repercussions for killing us?”
“Sir, you can report him to the Navy. If he’s still here when they jump in, they’ll attack. If he’s reported enough times, the Navy will attack him
on sight. You can also place a bounty on his head, then any ship can attack him until the bounty is claimed.”
Clive continued, “There is currently no bounty on the HMS Westy, and no record of it attacking a ship without a bounty or a pirate flag.”
“Pirate flag?”
“A ship caught pirating a cargo vessel is flagged as a pirate until it can jump from the system. There are two additional caveats. One, a third party vessel, not grouped with the pirate, must be in system at the time of the piracy, assuming the victim of the piracy is a cargo drone. Two, the third party must remain in system for the flag to remain; once either the pirate or all other ships in system at the time of the piracy leave the system, the flag is removed.”
“Ah,” responded Duncan, “I see.” He’d thought that pirate flag referred to an actual flag, somehow fluttering from the ship itself.
The waypoint selected on the nav map began flashing. Duncan glanced at it. The Westy’s time to the jump point at max thrust was now less than his. He could no longer outrun him. He was still out of range of the plasma cannon the Westy carried, but the destroyer’s much faster velocity would soon be able to bring them in range, no matter which way he decided to run.
He mentally shrugged. “Begin a long range mineral scan on that moon.” He assumed that any ore on something that size had long since been picked clean, but he wanted Eric to know exactly what he was up to; just going about his business. He was still at the outer limit of range for the scan.
“Increase thrust to fifty percent.” The closure rate to the Westy increased, as well as his time to jump point. He deleted the waypoint timer for both ships. The offset from the Westy’s course increased as his path diverged. The Westy then changed course. An intercept course.
“All stop,” said Duncan. He was halfway to the moon. He’d coast for a while. The nav map showed the Westy approaching, fast. She came behind his ship, curving to match course, overtaking him quickly. As it passed, the destroyer came into view at the top of Duncan’s forward viewscreen, its thrusters reversed and glowed as it slowed to the mining ship’s speed. It matched velocity and seemed to hover several hundred meters ahead.
