Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2

by G. R. Cooper

  Taipan laughed, and Phani was glad the American was not able to see the flush of embarrassment that burned his neck and face, shaming him.

  “No,” he said, still laughing. “A crook is also a kind of staff. A staff with a curved end; used to control sheep. Used by a shepherd.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Phani, still embarrassed.

  “No,” said Taipan, suddenly serious. “I apologize. I didn’t consider that it might be confusing to others. I’m sorry.”

  Taipan seemed to realize Phani’s discomfort. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I only named it on a whim. We can change it.”

  “No,” said Phani, mollified. “It’s a good name,” he laughed, “now that I understand it.”

  “Good,” said Taipan. “Hey, I’m glad to finally hear your voice!”

  “Me too,” laughed Phani, “I found an inexpensive microphone and speaker set for my computer. I believe it will be beneficial to both our current and future business dealings. Which is what I’d like to discuss with you, if you have the time.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Thank you,” began Phani, “I have been doing some reading. Some research. There are,“ he said, “at this point in the game, no full player colonies. At least not that I’ve found.”

  Taipan nodded, “I haven’t heard of any. Just a few feeder colonies that might one day grow into a full colony.”

  “Among the toolset available for colony administrators,” Phani continued, “are facilities for crafting. For creating not only the means to create standard weapons and armor, and other game items, but there is the possibility, with access to the right recipes, to create items that are not currently available. Being the first to market with these items would be, I’m sure you will agree, very profitable.”

  “That makes sense,” said Taipan. “And you think we should invest in some of those facilities for this station and go into business.”

  “Yes,” said Phani. “If you were to provide the capital needed to purchase these facilities, I would provide the labor and resources required to make the items. I would also handle the sales.”

  “And what would our relationship be, in this business,” asked Taipan.

  “Equal partners. Equal share of the profits. Does that seem equitable?”

  Taipan seemed to think for a moment.

  “Clive,” he said, “give Phani access to my bank account, as far as purchasing equipment for this station.”

  Phani entered the bridge of the Shepherd Moon. After he and Taipan had begun working out a purchasing plan as well as budgets, the American had left instructions for him then left the game. Phani would, on this run to Eta Bootis, scour the Canis Arcturus stock for any recipes that looked promising, and base his first facility purchase on that. Taipan had pointed out that making a decision on what facilities to buy was premature; until they knew what they could make, there was no point in buying any crafting equipment.

  He brought the ship online, and rose from the docking spot near the rear of the hanger. As the ship hung in front of the hangar door, Phani ensured that the area outside the station was clear of contacts, and then he enabled the cloaking device.

  “Open the hangar doors, please,” he said, reaching for the navigation screen where he laid to a course for Eta Bootis. Once the doors had opened, he carefully engaged forward thrust, taking the ship into space, “Close the hangar doors, please.”

  After ensuring that the doors had closed, he engaged full speed to his first waypoint, the L4 jump point that lay on the shepherd moon’s orbit, ahead.

  As he traveled, Phani brought up the public sale and auction listings, to familiarize himself with the various recipe offerings in preparation for making his first purchase from the private Canis Arcturus shop. He made a few, short, notes on the notepad he kept next to his computer, then opened one of the cold bottles of beer he’d bought before this gaming session and took a long drink. Setting the bottle down, he picked up the rapidly dwindling pack of cigarettes on his desk and lit one, thinking.

  He knew, whatever recipe he decided to buy, his market was likely to be the Americans - they had the most money; or, at least, they seemed most willing to spend their money in the game. He looked up to the louvered shutters on his window, currently being pounded, yet again, by the season’s monsoon; he could smell the mildewed humidity from Pune’s streets. Whatever he decided to make, he thought, it had to be something that the American’s would want, it had to be cheap enough that they could all buy it, and it had to be expensive enough to make him rich.

  Phani heard the navigation tone, saw that he’d reached the L4 point, reached to his keyboard and initiated the jump.

  The Shepherd Moon jumped into Eta Bootis near the Canis Arcturus space station. As on every previous flight, Phani was instantly surrounded by a phalanx, an escort, of destroyers that would accompany him to the station and then escort him back toward the jump point. The station hung in what looked to be the Lagrange 3 point for what, Phani assumed, was the Werewolf homeworld.

  The L3 was one of five Lagrange points in space where the gravity from the planet and the star, Eta Bootis, precisely equaled the centripetal force required for a smaller object to move with them. In addition to providing a jump point, these ‘bumps’ in the gravity wells allowed a fairly stable orbit to be maintained for little or no energy cost at those locations. While the four other Lagrange points were around the planet Eta Bootis 2, the L3 point was on its orbit line completely opposite where the planet now was.

  What that meant was that in jumping to wherever the L3 point was, the Shepherd Moon was always the furthest away, on the planet’s orbit line, that it could be from the planet; and the star Eta Bootis was directly between them. Even if he’d wanted to violate the free passage treaty and scan the Werewolf homeworld, the bulk of the star made that most difficult.

  Phani shortly arrived at the station, decamped and entered it. He rapidly sold off the mineral load carried by the ship, then replaced it with ore purchased from the Werewolves; then he switched past the other goods and certificates for sale and selected the recipes screen.

  Recipes were like blueprints, but used to manufacture items through a colonization based facility. As there were no player generated colonies, as yet, operational, he hoped to be able to initiate and corner the market in a variety of objects. He began scrolling through, reading the names of the various recipes and their required facilities.

  The Flora I facility seemed targeted for freshly terraformed worlds. He scrolled through various grasses, flowers and flowering plants; the plant-life that would take newly mineralized soil and give it something to bear, something to minimize erosion. It would take, he saw, several Flora facilities, operating, he assumed, in stages, to get to the ‘kings’ of plant life; the larger trees up to and including the redwood. He wondered if alien plants and animals could be seeded. If so, he saw no evidence in this, admittedly limited, listing.

  “Flowers might be a possibility,“ he mused, “as something people might want to place in their flats.” A flower shop, though, didn’t feel to him like the right choice. He made a mental note to return to the idea if nothing better came up.

  He moved on to the fauna listings, the most basic of which were coral and the soil-aerating and plant-pollinating Fauna I through to the lions, tigers, sharks and bears; the tops of the various food chains. He didn’t see anything that he thought he could make any money off of. At first. Then, near the bottom of the list, he saw it; he knew what he had to buy. It would require one of the highest level, and thus most expensive, fauna creators, but he was sure that it was the right decision. He selected the entry, ‘Domesticated Animals’, and pressed the ‘buy’ button.

  Phani Mutha smiled, taking a sip of his beer. He was going to open a pet shop.

  Chapter 12

  Duncan laughed, reading the email from Phani. He thought that the man had a brilliant idea; just about every player in the game had at least an apartment. Who wouldn’t want a dog o
r two, or maybe some cats or other pets to liven their place up. Duncan had enjoyed the fish tank, and that was only a display, really; the fish in it were in no way an artificial intelligence.

  “What’s funny?” asked Matt.

  “Nothing, just a sec,” grinned Duncan, sending off his response to Phani, agreeing to the proposal. The Fauna VI facility was expensive, a couple of million credits - about the profits from a couple of dozen of Eta Bootis runs - but he had no doubt that the pet store would rapidly pay for itself. Besides, he thought, they’d need the facility for colonization eventually anyway.

  “Get your head in the game!” shouted Vince, laughing, “We drop in three minutes!”

  He was in a shuttle with his four friends, Shannon again the command and control, preparing for combat while an audible countdown sang out; currently sounding off every minute. They’d all received a news flash this afternoon, along with all of the other players based at the Kepler station, that an invasion was occurring on one of the planets in the sector and that a large, joint operation to repulse the attack had been called for that evening.

  Mission control was busier than Duncan had ever seen it during his, admittedly short, time in the game. Squads of five jostled to get through airlocks into ships around the entire circumference of the station. Once inside, the countdown building the excitement, everyone read about the upcoming mission’s parameters.

  “What’s an ‘orbit drop’” asked Duncan.

  “Very cool!” said Vince.

  “Yeah,” added Clancey. “Instead of landing and waiting or taking back off, the shuttle will remain in orbit and we’ll jump like paratroops out of the back.”

  “It’s only done every now and then,” continued Matt. “It would probably get old if we did it every mission, but this time …”

  “With probably hundreds of groups of players,” interjected Vince.

  Matt nodded, “ … it should be very, very cool.”

  “And I have to sit up here in the shuttle with my thumb up my ass,” grumbled Shannon.

  “Lucky thumb,” cracked Vince.

  “Stoofoo, jackass!” laughed Shannon.

  A message came over the loudspeaker, “Two minutes to drop!”

  “Won’t we splat? asked Duncan.

  “Nah,” said Matt, “we’ll fall through the atmosphere just fine. Keep your helmet faceplate closed. A parachute will automatically open.”

  “Pretty near the ground,” added Clancey, “so don’t panic.”

  Duncan went back to his inventory screen, selecting gear, donning armor.

  “Shannon,” said Matt, “can you find us some nice safe territory to land on?”

  “On it,” she said. “It looks like our little sector of responsibility is just to the west of a small town. I’ll put you down just behind a hill near there. It looks like it’s covering the line of sight to the down, and there’s a copse of trees nearby to the north.”

  “Sounds good,” said Matt.

  “But I’m going to drop Vince right damn in the middle of the town square.”

  “Even better,” laughed Vince.

  “One minute to drop!”

  Duncan had finished with his armor, and it, as well as his plasma rifle, were connected through to the shuttle’s conduit power feed. He checked that his m1911 .45 was loaded, a round in the chamber. He had plenty of grenades.

  “Thirty seconds to drop!”

  “Aw, shit!” yelled Duncan. “I know what I need.”

  “What,” asked Clancey, concerned.

  “10 seconds to drop!”

  “A friggin’ Pearlight conduit rail-gun with a Hawkeye scope!”

  “5 seconds to drop!”

  His friends all started laughing. Then they jumped.

  Duncan looked to his left, then to his right, then back to the front. All around him, and he assumed behind him, meteoric streaks of fire were etching through the atmosphere of the planet as hundreds of players dropped from shuttles spread over hundreds of kilometers. He looked down toward the rapidly approaching ground; still probably the better part of a hundred thousand meters below him.

  “How do I control this,” he asked.

  “Control what?” came Shannon’s voice, calm.

  “This drop. My attitude.”

  “Are you out of control?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  She laughed softly, “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Your fall and landing are all automatic. If it gets too much, just close your eyes. You’ll be able to feel the parachute when it opens.”

  Duncan gulped. He was, he had to admit, not a fan of heights. Even standing on a ladder could make him woozy. He had recurring nightmares that involved merely standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. Interestingly, though, he wasn’t bothered by heights as long as he was strapped into something. Roller coasters never bothered him; he’d even flown in a small, two seat, aerobatic open cockpit biplane through loops and rolls. He’d enjoyed that.

  Falling, however, affected him physiologically, even in games. Even in flat, non-VR games played on computer monitors. He couldn’t even leap off of a cliff or building in a game without feeling a lightness in his gut, an uncomfortable tingling in his scrotum. He looked upward, focusing on the streaks, now disappearing as the players all dropped into the atmosphere and slowed.

  “Where’s all this heat bleeding to?” he wondered aloud. “How are we not all burning up?”

  “It’s a game,” laughed Matt. “It’s magic masquerading as ‘old one’ technology.”

  “Isn’t that kind of lazy?” Duncan asked, “Game design wise?” He was trying to keep his mind occupied; to keep from looking below the clouds that were inching into the lower part of his vision.

  “As long as it’s internally consistent,” said Vince, “it doesn’t matter. What was that Asimov quote?”

  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” answered Clancey, “and it was Clarke, not Asimov.”

  “Yeah,” said Vince, “that’s the one. They could probably justify actual magic-looking game aspects by some technological crutch.”

  “You could shoot magic-missiles from your fingers or lightning bolts from your eyes,” he continued, “and explain it away by saying it’s nanobots or some Tesla-esque electrical focusing device or some such.”

  “So,” responded Duncan, relieved as clouds enveloped his view, “as long as you have some bullshit pseudo-technical explanation you can science-fiction-ize any mystical, metaphysical horse-shit that man has thought up over the last few thousand years.”

  “Yup,” said Vince, “even death can be overcome. We resurrect in game. They explain it by saying it’s done with some highly advanced rapid cloning. One of the partial scientific justifications is that it can only bring you back from the last copy; the last time you checked in at a space station. That’s mainly a game design decision too. If you had no penalty for death in the game, it would become meaningless. So adding that you lose all experience points as well as loot acquired since your last backup makes it hurt just enough to matter, but not enough to really screw you over.”

  “Like permanent, dead-is-dead, death.”

  “Exactly,” said Vince, “if you had to start over from the beginning, how many people would continue to keep playing?”

  “I’m glad we can resurrect in the game,” said Duncan, finally looking down. Bile rose in his throat as the ground, a few hundred meters below, rushed toward him, dizzying him. “I get the feeling I’m going to need it very, very soon.”

  Chapter 13

  Eric West looked up from his computer screen as the phone on his desk rang. He pulled on a headset and answered the line.

  “Emu Systems customer support,” he said, “my name is Eric. How can I help you?”

  “The internet,” said the female voice on the line, “isn’t working.”

  He closed his eyes, mentally sighed, and began filling out the contact sheet on his computer. Eric asked the
lady, who sounded elderly and as computer literate as a terrier, for her name, contact information - all of the info his manager could use to show what an amazing department they had and how he deserved a large bonus and, maybe, a company leased BMW. Of course, Eric thought, he being the manager. Eric would never see any of the perks his efforts provided to the suit wearing, hair slicked, public school boy who ran the department.

  After he spent the better part of a half an hour trying to explain that the internet was working correctly, and that the connection to said internet provided by his company was also working, and that the wireless router in her house was apparently the cause of the problem - a router that had nothing to do with his company - he was stymied by the classic customer checkmate. She demanded to speak to his manager.

  Eric could hear him, in his beautifully appointed office, apologizing on behalf of Eric; his face reddened. Embarrassed and angry, he closed out the contact form and assigned it to his manager.

  He dashed off a quick email to his clanmates, explaining that they’d need to each pitch in to pay for the insurance on the replacement for the HMS Westy; adding that if they’d been available to man their stations, he wouldn’t have lost the ship in the first place. A lie, he knew, but he felt he could use this setback as an opportunity to enforce the need for the group to play as a group.

  As he clicked send, he heard movement behind him. He opened a data sheet for a new series of high speed modems being rolled out over the next few months and pretended to be absorbed in it until he heard a cough behind him.

  Eric turned in his chair, forced himself to return the crooked half-smile his manager wore. Eric wondered if the guy had picked up that mien learning to seduce first year coeds at Oxford or Cambridge or wherever.

  “It’s not what you say, Eric,” the manager began, using his rote speech, “but how you say it.” He smiled fully now, beaming, “I got the old bat happy. Gave her a free month of service and the number of the router support line, but,” the crooked smile returned, “it shouldn’t have come to that, should it?”