by G. R. Cooper
“Anna never asked if I’d miss tequila,” Duncan muttered, taking a sip.
“What?” asked Clancey.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“So,” continued Clancey, “been on any shopping sprees?”
“Yeah. Bought a fully tricked out Clipper class. Mining rig, extra cargo, best shields and cloaking. You name it, I got it.”
“Holy shit,” said Shannon, rejoining with Duncan’s beer.
“Yeah,” said Clancey, “that must have cost the better part of twenty million.”
“About that,” confirmed Duncan, “but it should be able to get me wherever I want to go. The extra fuel means that I’ll be able to jump to some systems that aren’t on the main nav routes.”
“Maybe there’s a reason they’re not on the main routes,” countered Clancey. “Maybe there’s nothing there worth seeing.”
“Maybe,” grinned Duncan, “maybe not.”
“In any case,” added Shannon, “that’s not really very multiplayer, is it? Are you bored with playing with us already?”
“Nope,” countered Duncan, “far from it. But I’ve still got a boatload of money left to equip with some really good gear. And besides,” he shrugged, “the ship does come with a shuttle. There’s nothing a C and C five can do that my shuttle can’t.”
“Except instantaneous travel. We can’t just zip from the space station to the mission objective like we can with the automated shuttles.”
“And there’s no guarantee that we’ll find anything to do if we do go hunting on our own” said Clancey.
“All true,” said Duncan. He drank from his beer, and wondered why he didn’t tell them about the space station. Probably because he’d just found it and didn’t really know anything about it. That was his first thought. He quickly dismissed it. He knew better. It was really because he was a private person. He just didn’t like people to know his business. He didn’t know why. He just knew that all of the hype about the rail gun auction had bothered him. If he hadn’t sold it anonymously, he’d be famous within the game now. The attention of fame, attention of any kind, was anathema to him. His friends wouldn’t understand that, he knew. Nobody ever did. They always took his aloofness as a personal insult, an editorial on his feelings about them.
Duncan licked the beer foam from his top lip.
“All true,” he reiterated, “but you never know. We might find a good little planet we can terraform.”
“That takes the better part of a year,” said Clancey, “even if you’re doing it full time.”
“But it does generate on-planet missions. We can play those missions; they’re no different from the ones you’ll get at a space station. And completing them helps accelerate the terraforming process.”
“How?” asked Shannon.
“Among the rewards for those missions are usually resources needed by some aspect of your terraforming. And even after terraformation has completed, you still need to build camps, villages and begin to colonize. Completing missions helps to attract colonists, trade. All sorts of stuff.”
“You’ve been reading,” grinned Clancey.
“I have,” admitted Duncan. “Terraforming and colony building are like a long term, real time strategy game. Very long term. Going from a terraformed planet to a full, industrial colony can take years. Real years. I like those kinds of games. So does Jamie.” Their friend Jamie was a hard core gamer, but didn’t really like the first person shooter kind of game that they usually played in the Omegaverse. His friends had been trying to get Jamie into the game as long as they had Duncan.
“True,” said Clancey. “So what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to try to find a trade route, or a hard to find trade item, and corner the market,” he said, the plan details coming to him as he spoke. He needed to go somewhere nobody else went. Where nobody else could go. He thought he knew of just such a place.
Chapter 15
Duncan entered the bridge of his ship. It had just left the station, the immense hangar doors closing back into the false crater. There was nobody in the star system that he could detect, other than himself. He wasn’t surprised. It was still morning, east coast time, and most of the players would be at work or asleep. Still, he’d had Clive run all of the contacts for the area since he’d logged out the night before. What little traffic there was had seemed transitory. His real concern, the HMS Westy, hadn’t been in system since their last encounter.
He walked to the central chair, sat, and looked around. His crew were hovering over their respective work stations. Clive stood to his right, a little behind. Activity was constant but unobtrusive. Like background music. But it wasn’t real. They were computer animations, contrived solely for his benefit. He didn’t wonder at the confusion Shannon and Mike had shown at his plan; here he was, in a game designed for limitless players, playing by himself.
There were thousands of groups in this game. Many of them had dozens, if not hundreds, of members. There were factions of groups that numbered in the thousands of players. Space battles between hundreds of ships, while not common, weren’t rare. And Duncan had, almost from the start of his game career, come into enough money to purchase his way into a position of power among any of the groups. But he hadn’t. He wanted to play by himself.
It addressed his personality, he thought. Where most other players saw the game space as a stage to make a name for themselves, Duncan saw it as a vast mostly unexplored area. He could go anywhere, with time. He could see things before anyone else. He didn’t necessarily want to do it alone, but the solitude held no dread for him. He wanted to build something, but was just as happy if nobody else ever saw it.
That’s what drove his plan and made his decisions for him.
He brought up the navigation display.
“All ahead full speed,” he said. “Take me to the jump point, Clive.”
A waypoint appeared on the jump point. He selected it and, from there, traced a line to the jump point in system Eta Bootis. He was going to visit the Canis Arcturus. At their homeworld.
“Is my insurance all paid up?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” answered Clive.
The starfield resolved itself as Duncan jumped into Eta Bootis. It was a main sequence star, roughly twice the mass and three times the radius of Earth’s sun. The readout indicated that it was evolving into a red giant; a middle aged star that was running out of fuel, it would one day grow large enough to engulf the inner planets, of which the Canis Arcturus homeworld was one. But that was far in the future.
“I’m picking up a large number of ships, sir.” said the nav station, “The nearest is approximately ninety light seconds away.”
They had a minute and half until they were detected by the closest ship. It would then, via the faster than light ansible communicator, alert the rest of the fleet.
“Perhaps we should make ourselves known first. Use that time to figure out if we need to run,” Duncan smiled.
“Six minutes until our jump drives are charged, sir” said the helm station.
“We’ll be dead by then if they’re hostile,” said Duncan. “Open a hailing frequency to all ships,” he paused, “No, wait! Shit!”
He opened his inventory page. His head was bare.
“Where the fuck did I leave that cowl?” he said. He began to sweat. If he’d left his Canis Arcturis artifact in the station or in his bank vault, he was rapidly going to be out the two million credit insurance on his ship.
He leaped from the chair, remembering, and ran to the door at the back of the bridge. The door to his private quarters. He went through, saw the cowl lying on the floor, breathed a sigh of relief, and grabbed the furry hat. Duncan put it on his head and returned to the bridge.
“Open a hailing frequency,” he repeated, “to all ships.”
The hail was answered, and an imposing werewolf appeared on the screen. He was of a type with the one that Duncan had killed in his second mission. The larger, alpha wolf he’d ta
ken with the sniper shot while it was in the middle of managing the roasting of a colonist.
“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, t
he 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.
