by G. R. Cooper
He brought up the sensor screen next to the nav map. He was a few AU in from the station, so any information would be fairly old, but he wanted to see if any ships were showing up on passive scan. Nothing that he could see.
“Clive, can you access the station’s controls and see if anyone is in the area there?”
“Yes sir, and yes there is,” Clive answered. “The HMS Westy is in his usual spot, just outside the front of the station.”
He chose the jump point that was forward of, but what he referred to as the rear of, the station. By force of habit, he still thought of the station as facing backward along its orbital path. The station; the Shepherd’s Crook, he reminded himself. He checked the helm station. Plenty of speed for a jump, so he did.
The Shepherd Moon arrived, in the next instant, at the rear of the Shepherd’s Crook. To Duncan’s surprise, almost immediately ships began to jump into space on the opposite side of the station.
Chapter 9
Eric West had returned, after his successful hunt, to one of his stalking spots; in the lee of the shepherd moon in the ring of the system’s fourth planet. He was still elated, riding the lingering adrenaline rush from his first success as captain. His first kill.
He wasn’t, he decided, going to let that Taipan asshole ruin his mood; turning it, instead, into a stronger determination to track him down, to make him the Westy’s next kill.
“The nerve of that guy,” he muttered, succumbing to his rising anger. “Please don’t shoot me,” he mocked, “thanks for keeping the system safe!” He pounded his fist on his chair arm.
As if in response, another Delta class destroyer jumped into space a dozen kilometers ahead of him. Then another, close by. And another.
Eric was covered in a sudden wash of cold sweat. He stood, moving to the sensor screen. Several more ships were jumping in. Seven or eight.
“Number One, all ahead flank!” he moved back to the seat. “Raise shields and charge the cannon.” He sat again, gripping each chair arm until his knuckles were white. “And check and see if any of my crew is online.”
He’d need his full team, with the large increase of efficiency their individual skills provided, to hope to bring all of his stations online and keep them running at full steam effectively for this fight. By himself, with just the artificial intelligences manning the stations, he was at a distinct disadvantage against even one player crewed ship.
“Aye aye, sir,” said his AI XO. “None of the crew is online.”
“Dammit!” Eric screamed, as his ship began accelerating away the moonlet. “Set course, waypoint 1,” he said, calming himself. He’d set the waypoint earlier for the Lagrange point he would race to in order to jump.
It was futile, he knew. He couldn’t outrun them and they’d be able to take shots at him until he reached the jump point. There was no way he could win, but there was no way he’d go down without a fight.
“Open the missile bays,” he said, almost calmly, “and target the port and starboard lead-most ships.” The destroyers had begun to close on him, to the sides and rear; but they hadn’t begun to fire. He checked the sensor array; all of the ships had full shields. He assumed they had charged cannon.
“Done, sir,” said the XO. Eric waited. They hadn’t shot. Yet. If he shot first, they’d have recourse to fire at will, with no repercussions. He’d be nothing more than any other pirate at that point. He looked to his shields. Ten percent.
The first of the destroyers, on the port side, then fired, and the Westy’s shields dropped to five percent. The destroyer, Eric looked to his targeting display and saw it was named ‘23rd Ronin’, had only used one of its plasma batteries, the forward. Its squadmate, ‘12th Ronin’ on the starboard side, then loosed another, single, blast. Eric’s shields were now at zero. There were no more shots fired.
“Number One, all power to shields,” he began. Removing the power split between the shields and his plasma cannon made his shields much stronger, but they wouldn’t regenerate faster. He saw the rising marker displaying his shield status begin to rise. He was soon at two percent.
“And send a hail, a distress, to the Navy.” They wouldn’t get here any time soon - he was almost directly halfway between two naval bases at the two closest space stations - but they might get here soon enough to make these bastards pay a heavy price.
“Aye aye, sir. Done.”
Eric looked to his tactical map. The other ships, now accelerating as quickly as the Westy, were arrayed in a horseshoe pattern from his port around the stern and up his starboard side. They all now displayed in a red hue; his signal that he could now freely attack them. Since they were grouped in the same fleet, the hostile actions of one were considered by interstellar law to be the actions of the group.
Eric’s mind returned from the escape to the fight at hand. He moved to the weapons station and selected ‘Alpha Strike’ for each of his two missile batteries, the starboard and port, which targeted the 12th and 23rd Ronin, respectively. The alpha strike would send a laser like stream of missiles to one location on the targeted ship, the engines in this case, and try to punch a hole through the electromagnetic shield while leaving enough missiles left over to take out the targeted system.
“Port and starboard batteries,” he said, “fire!”
The nose of the Westy blazed into a rapidly flashing flare of lights and a brief, quickly left behind, stream of smoke as the missiles began launching from either side of his bow batteries. The light show moved aft as the batteries along the sides launched in turn. Eric pounded his right fist onto his chair arm, thrilled!
He slewed the forward view to the left to watch, awestruck, as the port stream of missiles began striking the shield of the 23rd Ronin. The explosions flashed in rapid succession until, after only a second or two, they ceased. Eric looked to the sensor station. The 23rd Ronin was down to sixty percent shield, the 12th Ronin about the same. He laughed, grimly. Even an alpha strike directed solely at one of these destroyers with full shields wouldn’t have broken through. If he’d begun with a full plasma broadside, then followed up quickly enough with an alpha strike, he might have been able to punch through the shield and taken out an engine or two.
“Not today, though,” said Eric.
In response, the 12th and 23rd Ronin fired a plasma burst, this time from their midships turret, and brought the Westy’s shields back to zero percent. The rest of the squadron remained silent in their vigil, seemingly shepherding the Westy to the jump point.
“Are you lot just toying with me?” he wondered. “Then why fire at all? That doesn’t make sense.” When the Westy reached the L5 point, now less than a minute away, he’d be able to jump from the system, to safety.
“Missile bays reloaded,” said his XO.
Eric looked to the sensor display; the 12th and 23rd Ronin’s shields were back up to seventy-five percent. He thought for a few seconds, calculating on a mental napkin.
“Target the engines of the 23rd Ronin, both batteries. Alpha strike. Fire!”
Again the Westy was enveloped in light and smoke as it sprayed missiles into space. His targeting system dispersed the firing order to ensure a continual stream of hits as the missiles from the starboard side curved around the ship toward the target on the port.
Eric looked to the viewscreen again, watching as his missiles struck in rapid succession. The 23rd Ronin’s shields dropped quickly, at a constant rate, as each hit took away a little more of its stored energy. Finally, the shield dropped to zero and the remaining two missiles impacted into the engine bay, exploding gloriously. The 23rd Ronin began to fall behind, its acceleration stunted. Eric looked to the sensor array. The bastard’s engines were at ninety percent. Eric laughed. He laughed at the joy of combat, and he laughed at the futility of this fight.
Then he reached the waypoint.
“JUMP!”
The Westy was away, ensconced in the gray safety of hyperspace. Eric leaned back in the captain’s chair, incredulous. He bega
n to let out a sigh of relief.
Then choked on it.
Stars leapt into view on the screen. Almost immediately, the Westy began rocking from a series of explosions. Smoke filled the forward viewscreen as the bridge began to burn. Lights turned off for a brief second before emergency backups, bathing the smoke in red, came online.
Eric looked to damage control. His engines were out. His shields were gone. Two of his three plasma turrets were destroyed, and innumerable holes filled his ship, which began a slow roll to port. Exhaust fans sucked the smoke from the bridge, and the now clear view forward showed a dance of stars, swirling slowly around the screen. Into that view crept a large ship - a Grizzly class battle cruiser. The sensors showed the name; The Last Ronin.
“We’re being hailed, sir,” said his executive officer.
“On screen,” said Eric, dejectedly.
Kato, on the bridge of The Last Ronin, stood in front of the captain’s chair, again slow clapping. His crew, shown along the bottom of the screen, in front of and below their captain, began to join in the clapping. Kato put his hands behind his back, smiling.
“Do you know,” he began, “what’s even more predictable than trying to be unpredictable?”
He waited for a moment, but Eric remained silent.
Kato shrugged, then answered himself.
“Being predictable by being predictable.”
Kato shrugged again, and smiled even more broadly.
Then he cut off communication.
Then The Last Ronin fired. A full broadside.
Chapter 10
Duncan had sat in the control room of his station, the Shepherd’s Crook, watching the space battle unfold on his front doorstep. As the Westy had begun speeding off toward the Lagrange jump point, dragging the new ships in tow, the Shepherd Moon had entered the station through the ‘back’ door; the hangar door on the opposite side of the station. After docking, Duncan raced to the control room to view the chase almost in its entirety.
He had been, he admitted to himself, thrilled with the fight that the Westy had displayed throughout the chase. He’d been genuinely impressed. He’d also been genuinely baffled by the response of the attackers. At any time after they’d jumped in, the eight of them, arrayed around and chasing the Westy, could have quickly overwhelmed and destroyed it.
His bafflement turned to shock as the Westy actually reached the jump point, unscathed, and gone into hyperspace. That shock, however, quickly turned to understanding as he saw a torpedo firing from an uncloaking battle cruiser. The Westy, hit by the torpedo, returned to ‘normal’ space and was rocked by an extremely fast series of shots from several of the battle cruiser batteries. The destroyer then rolled, smoking, for a few seconds before a complete broadside from the cruiser obliterated it. Shortly thereafter, the attacking group began jumping out of the system.
“I don’t know who these enemies you’ve made are, Eric,” he muttered, “but I’m pretty sure I know how you made them,” he smiled, remembering his interactions with the acerbic martinet.
Duncan brought his email queue up on the control room’s main screen; he’d received notice of a new message. It was from the interior designers of his new, Kepler 22B, apartment. They were already done. He was surprised. “That was fast,” he thought.
He left the control room and, after the destination prompt, went through to his new pad.
“Wow,” he muttered, looking around. Instead of a blank, white rectangle, his apartment was now much more interesting. Next to the window-into-space that he’d installed, and facing it, was a sunken, horse-shoe shaped, deep brown leather couch. The top of the couch seat was level with the mahogany clad floor. The couch surrounded a round, copper fire-pit.
“Light the fire,” he said, and the pit sprang to life with a blue gas flame. The couch took that entire part of the room; it was as wide as the room and, thus, the window. It looked like it would hold fifteen or twenty people.
He looked behind him, to the wall opposite the window. It was now taken up by a floor to ceiling, wall to wall, backlit fishtank; judging by the inhabitants, salt water. He looked closer at the fish. Improbably small great white sharks, no more than six inches long, shared the water, benignly it seemed, with other deep sea inhabitants of a similar scale. A single, foot and a half long blue whale surfaced near the ceiling, blew, then plunged underwater chased by a pod of tiny dolphins. Duncan smiled. He could watch this thing all day long.
He looked to the front wall. On either side of his entrance, a series of black and white cityscapes hung. The first an oblique view of, he thought, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in Manhattan. Another was a dizzying top down view from what he presumed was the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. He didn’t recognize the others. He would have thought them incongruous in the setting of a space station; but they worked. At least, he thought they did.
That was it for his front room, but, he thought, apart from a place for me and my friends to sit and some cool things to look at, what more did he need?
He moved to the door to the smaller room, looked through. It had been made into a bedroom. Another full wall window into space took up the far wall, while most of the rest of the room was taken up by a large, much larger than king sized, bed. Four poster. Sheer sheets of some kind of white, see-through fabric hung from the three sides not used by the massive headboard.
“Do people really use beds in this game?” he wondered, amused. He moved to the one other piece of furniture; a georgian wardrobe that matched the bed. He opened it. A standard in-game storage space for whatever weaponry or armor he cared to keep there. It was empty.
Duncan returned to the main room, hopped down into the couch and sat, looking over the fire pit out into the stars. He brought up the game wiki over the window and began reading on interior decoration.
“How did they do it so fast?” he muttered. The answer was quickly forthcoming and, Duncan thought, should have been obvious. The various apartment layouts could be created with the decorator tool, expensive naturally, and stored, as blueprints. All they had been required to do to fulfill their contract was to look at his design request, choose one of their stock blueprints, do the same for the other decorations they’d built - the couch, fire pit, fish tank and bedroom suite - then come into the apartment and set them. It probably hadn’t taken them more than a few minutes after they’d received the bid. Still it looked great and he left them a five star, glowing review.
He reopened the decorator’s page and started a new series of requests. He asked for, and didn’t see any reason why they wouldn’t fulfill, a series of custom build jobs. He described, in detail, what he wanted from each room. He asked for plain, undecorated spaces, but each meticulously described as to their dimensions, as well as the location of any doors. He also requested that this contract be filled via blueprint only. He would, he said, do the placement himself.
He’d need to purchase a decorator tool to do the placement. He was fine with that, but he didn’t want to spend the time to learn how to use the CAD interface to actually architect the spaces.
Duncan paused, partway through drafting the email.
“Clive,” he said, “am I right to assume that I can place apartments within my space station?”
“Yes, sir,” Clive answered. “You can build most facilities available to colony owners, including apartments. The cost is determined, in this case, by the square footage.”
He continued with the email, explaining that he understood the odd nature of this request and he had also read and understood the placement requirements. He assured them that the contract was to be considered as-is and that if he found himself unable to use the blueprints, he would in no way seek to get a refund. He also added that they were free to keep and sell the designs they built for him as part of their blueprint database. It was best, he thought, to forestall as many questions they were likely to have before work began; he had enough ‘clarification’ emails to deal with in his day job, he didn’t want to worr
y about that in the game.
He sent the email then leaned back in the couch, looking once again past the space traffic to Kepler 22B and the stars beyond.
Duncan smiled yet again, happy with his purchase, then turned, got up from the couch, and left, returning to the space station. He was, he thought, glad that the game designers had allowed the ability to go from station to station, for a fee, of course, provided you had already visited them both. He made a mental note to take the Shepherd Moon on a grand tour of all of the various stations; West Coast America, South America, Brazil, Australasia, the Japanese and several other Pacific Rim locations, the Russian, European, African and, of course and likely first, the Indian. He wondered if any other player had as yet established a foothold in all of the various stations.
Duncan re-entered his station control room and was startled. Waiting there was Phani, standing unmoving, with his arms crossed over his chest, his palms flat against it, angled toward the opposite shoulder. He reminded Duncan of a vampire in his coffin, only standing. That’s when Phani startled him again. He spoke.
“Hello, Taipan,” he said in accented English, “there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter 11
Phani Mutha looked to Taipan as the American stood in the station control room; the station now named ‘Shepherd’s Crook’. That had confused him. He didn’t understand the reference. He knew the ship, the Shepherd Moon, had been named for the station itself; disguised as it was as a shepherd moon in the ring around a blue gas-giant planet. But he didn’t understand ‘crook’. He looked it up online, and was startled. Concerned.
“Are we to be villains,” he asked Taipan, “criminals or thieves?”
The American tilted his head sideways, confused. “What do you mean?”
“The name of the station,” Phani responded. “Are we to be ‘crooks’?”