by G. R. Cooper
With a start, Phani realized he’d screwed up again. He should have maneuvered his ship closer to the impact point. He was near the maximum distance for the torpedo. It would take much longer than necessary to loot the ship, and anyone could attack him until he got out of the system. He selected the control for his mining drone, which was what would take whatever loot was available on the cargo ship. For the third time in as many seconds, Phani panicked again. He frantically checked the screen, looking for the target class indicator. He found it, it showed the target to be a cargo class ship.
“Thanks all gods,” breathed Phani, shuddering at the thought that he could just as easily have attacked a heavy battle cruiser through his carelessness. He laid in a course for the mining drone and sent it.
Phani felt a premonition. A dread. He switched to his nav controls and quickly set a course for the shepherd moon he’d nearly torpedoed. At full acceleration, it was just a few minutes away. He set his engines to flank speed, then noticed the icon for his torpedo control was flashing.
He switched back to the attack screen and saw, to his delight and relief, that he’d hit the cargo ship and it had fallen out of hyperspace. His drone was about five minutes away from being able to loot it, which would probably take a minute or two. Factoring in the return time for the drone, he probably had another fifteen minutes in system before he could run back to the space station, hopefully with enough new found, albeit ill gotten, riches to satisfy his creditors.
His ship reached the shepherd moon and, skirting the surface, the rounded it until he was on the opposite side of the moon from the system jump point. Well out of line of sight for the cargo ship. He didn’t know why he felt the need to hide, but it felt right, he thought, as he settled his ship into the bottom of a large crater.
Chapter 17
Birmingham, West Midlands. UK.
Eric West stood in the entrance doorway to his flat. He’d just returned home from a long day at work. Just as he was unlocking his front door, his neighbor opened her door. She was probably heading out for the evening. She’d looked surprised to see him, shocked. It was obvious, he thought, that she hadn’t heard him returning. He had initiated a conversation; she was cute enough, he thought, and he was sure she had a crush on him.
He was halfway through telling her about how he’d had to deal with a particularly stupid customer that day, and was just getting through how the moron wasn’t able to configure his home network to work with his new router, simple stuff, when his phone text notification went off.
He didn’t see her relieved look, or hear her subsequent dash downstairs, two at a time, after he’d quickly taken leave and entered his home.
The text had been from his executive officer. There was a pirate detected within the last few minutes. He’d have to hurry.
He ran into his computer room, shedding his backpack and jacket as he entered.
“Number one,” he shouted, “status!”
Instead of answering, his AI, zoomed the nav display until it centered on the attacked cargo ship.
“I don’t believe it,” muttered Eric. “Of all the nerve.” This pirate was toying with him, personally. He’d attacked a cargo ship near the system jump point. Almost within firing range of his usual stakeout position, near that pathetic little moon.
Since his last time there, screwed over by that worthless newbie and his ostentatious mining clipper, he’d been hunting in another sector of the system. If you stretched a line between the jump point and the most targeted pirate hunting ground, where the trade routes really began to converge, his location was on a line perpendicular and about the same length. He was about one AU, or eight light minutes, away from the hunting ground, which was the same distance between jump point and the hunting ground.
“Uhm,” he muttered, “the hypotenuse of a right triangle is how much longer than the other sides if they’re equal length?”
“A squared plus B squared equals C squared,” said the AI.
“Yes, yes, I know that,” lied Eric. “How long after the attack did we receive notification?”
“Eleven minutes and 20 seconds,” replied the XO, “as we were 1.414 astronomical units away.”
“Shit,” exclaimed Eric. “Eleven fucking minutes. All ahead flank!” He needed to get there fast, so he had to get up to the required few percent of C, light speed, before making the jump.
“How long has it been since you received the activity?”
“Five minutes, sir.”
So it was sixteen and a bit minutes since the attack. He’d have to hurry.
He sat, heavily, into his chair.
“I don’t have time to raise shields or even charge the cannon before I jump,” he muttered, pounding one fist on his chair arm. “This is starting to smell like a trap.” The more he thought, the more sure he became.
Nobody would be stupid enough to attack so near the jump point unless they were baiting him, he thought.
“One hundred percent power to the shields,” he said. He’d be naked for a while after the jump, which here in empty space, well outside of any planetary gravity wells, would happen just as soon as he reached minimum speed; any second.
He started going through his worst case scenario.
“If I were going to trap a privateer pirate hunter,” he muttered, “I’d have a couple of heavy hitting ships cloaked near the target, just waiting for me to jump in.” He stood, reached for the nav screen, selected jump coordinates from his saved list. He chose the coordinates of the shepherd moon. Near the attack point, but not right on top of it. He’d use to moon to try to cover his flank until he had a better idea of the situation he was jumping into. He returned to his chair, sat, and began tapping nervously on the chair arm.
“Sir, we’ve reached …” began his XO.
“Jump!”
Eric leaned forward in his seat, eager to trip whatever ambush he was walking into.
“Open missile bays,” he said. He wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Volley pattern alpha,” Eric continued. That was one of the pre programmed launch patterns he’d created to tailor his attacks to any type of target. Alpha was his heavy hit. All missiles fired at one target, streamed to maximize the damage in any given area of the target. In this case, he’d target the engine; try to cause a core overload and completely destroy the ship in one, heavy, punch. It would probably take three quarters of his missiles, arriving in a laser like stream, to take down the shield, leaving several to strike into the engine compartment. He hoped that’d be enough.
“Shield status,” growled Eric.
“Shields at fifty percent,” responded his XO. “Three minutes to full charge.”
He looked to the scan station, selected a full, narrow beam, and hit the area of the cargo ship. The only return was the victim itself, which, having restored its shield, began moving, then jumped. He waited three minutes, shifting his scan around to target various likely spots around the jump point and attack point. No returns. His shields reached a hundred percent capacity.
“Number one, all ahead flank,” he shouted eagerly, “and full auxiliary power to the plasma cannon.” He’d be ready for a fight, whatever fight was coming, very soon. He smiled.
By the time he’d reached the point where the cargo ship had been ambushed, Eric’s ship was fully shielded, with primed cannon and readied missile bays. But he didn’t have a target. He hurriedly began laying out a box pattern navigation plot; larger than normal to account for the extra time that a cloaked pirate could have moved since looting.
“Sir, we’re being hailed,” said his XO just as Eric was placing the last waypoint.
“Display,” said Eric.
“It is text only, sir. No voice or video.”
Eric looked to the top of his main display, to the virtual screen that represented his view on the bridge. He read the text that crawled along the top.
“Please don’t shoot me.”
Chapter 18
Duncan sat
in the control room of the space station, taking inventory. After he’d returned from the Canis Arcturus expedition, he had decided that he needed to take a breather, to think about what had happened, so quickly, and what he needed to do.
First, he called in sick. He had no meetings planned at work and there was nothing he really needed to do that couldn’t wait a day. He thought that, in reality, there was nothing he really needed to do that couldn’t wait considerably longer than a day. He saw his role, every manager’s role really, was to make sure that the people working for him, the people actually doing the work, had everything they needed to complete the job. Once they had the tools, direction and plan they needed, he was superfluous until something came up that needed to be fixed. He’d hear about that if he were on sick leave or not. His executives, as well as the company’s customers, knew his one inviolable rule was that all communication with the team had to go through him; so he wasn’t worried that he needed to babysit the team, to act as a shield against unwanted, and often conflicting, communication.
Second, he thought through how to go about turning his special situation with the Werewolves into an ongoing operation. He’d need to purchase, at the cost of about one hundred thousand credits each, several automated cargo drones in order to ship his goods to and from this station. The only ship that had a letter of marque, as it were, to enter Eta Bootis safely, was the Shepherd Moon. At least, he thought that was the case. He wasn’t willing to risk, yet, the cost of a cargo drone to test the theory.
He thanked, for at least the tenth time, his lucky stars. Finding the station was a boon to his plan he could not have foreseen. Instead of having to fly between Eta Bootis and the space station at Keppler 22B in the Shepherd Moon each time he bought and sold cargo, with the subsequent, huge, cost in fuel, he simply had to make the single jump between his station and the Werewolves. Transhipping via the cargo drones was extraordinarily cheaper.
“Clive,” he asked, “does this station have ability to use cargo drones?” Best to ensure, he thought, before proceeding with the plan.
“Yes, sir,” Clive responded, nodding. Duncan liked that the game seemed to view the control room of the space station as being the equivalent of a ship’s bridge and, thus, Clive was able to apparate. He preferred speaking to a person, if artificial, to a disembodied voice.
“The only facility lacking,” he continued, “is a full mission control. That is, a mission control that can provide instantaneous travel.”
“I can create apartments? Casinos? Arenas? All that?”
“Yes, sir. All it requires are the facilities. In that regard, this station operates much like a colony, and as the colony owner, you can supply and manage any facilities you desire.”
“I presume those facilities cost money. A lot of money.”
Clive smiled, shrugged. “Of course.”
“Very well,” he said, resigned, “how much for the cargo facility?”
“One million credits, but it does come with one cargo ship, a one hundred thousand credit value.”
“Oh, well,” said Duncan, “you have to spend money to make money. Buy one.”
“Very good, sir. I have done so and it is being shipped. It should arrive here via cargo ship in a few hours. Once it does, I’ll go ahead and prepare and install it.”
Duncan pulled up two price sheets, one for the station at Kepler 22B, one for the Werewolves at Eta Bootis. He began buying lower priced resources from Kepler that would be shipped to a destination he’d name in a few hours, as soon as his cargo facilities were enabled. He stopped, thought, then pulled up a nav map. He zoomed out, showing almost the entire quadrant of the galaxy.
He’d remembered that he was halfway between the space station he’d begun at and the space station that was used mainly by Indian players. The cost to ship to either station wouldn’t be different for him. The price differential for resources between the two stations wasn’t enough to make any profit on transhipment between the two, those prices tended to more or less level out, but even a few percent difference between the human stations could add to his profit with the Werewolves; a two percent difference in price wasn’t enough to make it worthwhile ship the goods between the two, but it might make the difference between a twenty percent and a twenty two percent profit with the Werewolves. That could add up. He added the Indians into his mental calculations.
He saw some movement on the viewscreen. A mining ship had just jumped into the system. That made him think. He wanted to keep the station private, to keep the station out of the public eye. He could only imagine the splash that the news about a privately owned space station would make in the game world; it would probably be the biggest news in game history. It would probably even make news outside of the game.
The more he thought about it, the more he decided that he couldn’t even trust his friends with the news. At least not yet. He needed to make sure he had enough resources to purchase his way out of any problems that might come up; and having his location suddenly become the most popular destination in the galaxy was sure to introduce problems he couldn’t begin to imagine.
Duncan watched as the mining ship began to move, inward toward the planetary ring, but more or less on a direct course for the station. Then it stopped. With a flash of light, a torpedo leaped from the ship, speeding toward the space station.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed. “He’s firing on us. Clive, can he do any damage to this station?”
“None at all, sir.”
The torpedo gained speed by the second as it continually thrust toward the station, then, suddenly it began to veer away from the planet. By the time it had reached the station, it was heading ninety degrees outward from its original course. Duncan got an extremely short, but extremely close up view of the rocket as it sped across his view, just skimming the surface of the space station.
He shifted the view to watch the torpedo as, still accelerating, it headed out into space. After about half a minute, it exploded and a cargo drone dropped out of hyperspace. Duncan swung the view back to the mining ship. It began accelerating, heading for the space station.
“What is he playing at?” he said to himself. “It doesn’t make any sense to attack from so far away.” Clive provided no insight. The only thing that Duncan could decide was that this guy, this pirate, really didn’t know what he was doing.
“Oh well,” he said, “whoever you are, you’re very lucky that the HMS Westy isn’t hanging around today.”
He went back to his charts, occasionally glancing at the mining ship, until it finally reached the station. It got close, then skimmed the surface until it was on the side opposite its arrival point. Then it stopped and slowly maneuvered itself into the crater that camouflaged the hangar door on the other side of the landing bay from where Duncan sat.
Duncan closed the pricing charts. He’d spent close to a million credits on resources to be shipped to the station; he’d have to begin making trips back and forth to Eta Bootis as he filled the Shepherd Moon. That left him with a little over three million in balance from the twenty five he’d gained from the rail gun auction. To buy as many credits as he’d spent, he’d have had to spend a few months salary, before taxes; and he made a pretty good living. He’d leave the three million alone for now, a strategic reserve. For emergencies.
He opened a screen containing information about the system, the system his station was in. He zoomed into the third planet. It was in an orbit about one AU out from the star; roughly the same as the Earth from the Sun. That was, however, the only earthlike aspect to the planet. It was a lifeless, barren rock. More like Mars than Earth. Everything he read about it, though, made it a prime candidate for terraforming. It was within the Goldilocks Zone, the area of space in a star’s orbit that wasn’t too hot, wasn’t too cold, but just right for life.
Terraforming wasn’t a requirement for colonization, but it was a bonus. It was attractive to colonists, for one. The game system would automatically add population, over tim
e, to the colony as colony managers created incentives. Open a mining operation? Colonists would arrive to mine. Clear an area for farming? Colonists would arrive to farm. As colonists arrived and thrived, even more would arrive to serve secondary roles. Villages would form, then grow into cities as more and more colonists arrive. That was the game; ensure that you managed the resources to grow your facilities and attract colonists. Over time, a very long time in gaming terms, you could go from a barren rock like the third planet to a thriving colony.
But, first, he had to terraform the planet.
Naturally, that would be expensive. Probably tens of millions of credits, over time, for facilities and resources. But the initial cost, the initial terraforming kit, was roughly five million credits.
Duncan was still focused on the charts describing the third planet, when the screen was suddenly filled with a destroyer. The ship had jumped into the space just in front of his position, startling him.
“Who the hell is that,” he stammered, closing the charts.
“The HMS Westy, sir.”
The ship sat, close by the station, for three minutes.
“Why is he just sitting there,” Duncan wondered, “instead of heading off to hunt down the pirate?”
As if in response, the ship slewed, pointing its nose toward the cargo ship. Then its engines glowed white, as it began to streak toward the stationary piracy victim. A black honeycomb of openings appeared on the near side and, Duncan assumed, far side of the ship as Eric opened his missile bays. Duncan watched, fascinated, as it sped outward, trying to run down the prey that Duncan knew was in the opposite direction. As it arrived, he saw it stop; Eric was surely casting about with his scanners, trying to find his easy kill.
After a minute, Clive spoke.
