by G. R. Cooper
Eric looked to the rest of the screen, a two-dimensional, top-down view of this quadrant of the solar system. The Westy was pointing directly at the center. A torpedo could be fired from any facing, but a forward shot directly toward a target in front would result in the torpedo using less fuel - not having to circle after shooting - thus extending its range.
“Select target designated ‘alpha’,” he said, highlighting one of the passing ships. The indicators swung and readjusted as the readouts responded to the target. Eric would fine tune his settings on thru-traffic, so he’d be ready when the bastard Taipan’s ship showed.
Eric sat, playing the waiting game, for hours, when he got what he was waiting for. A ship had just jumped to lightspeed from within the system; its tachyon wave originating at the jump point ahead of the Westy.
“Select target designated ‘delta’,” he intoned, rising from his seat and moving to the weapons station. The ship was to his port, a few million kilometers out. Eric had reoriented the Westy earlier, based on his mock attacks of transit shipping, to point the destroyer directly at the point where the ship would pass in front of him when the torpedo would reach it. A perfect perpendicular attack.
He clasped his hands behind his back and nervously looked to the target. His heart began to pound in adrenaline fueled anticipation. He’d run through this attack a dozen times on earlier traffic; calculating ranges, speeds, angles, timing. He’d done everything except fire the torpedo. He nervously began to slap the top of his right hand into the palm of his left.
“It’s quite simple, really,” he muttered, “the course of the ship and the course of the torpedo need to make two sides of a right triangle. And as long as the torpedo and the ship arrive at the ninety-degree angle of the triangle at the same time, it’s a hit.” He realized, now, why that pirate he’d gained the torpedos from hadn’t fired a second shot; the target would have been past the pirate, and the parameters for his shot would have been highly unlikely to result in a success.
He looked again at the timers. The first for the cargo ship, counting down until the time that it would reach the marker Eric had set for it - the marker his torpedo was now aimed at. The timer for the torpedo was static, and would remain so until he fired. Eric just needed to wait until the two timers equalled each other, and then fire. Ten more seconds.
Eric ran over the targeting information once again. Angle off bow. Range. Speed of target. All fine. He looked once more to the icon marked ‘cargo ship’. Then the timers matched.
“Torpedo one! Fire!,” he yelled, clapping his hands again excitedly.
He watched as the forward view from his ship suddenly lit, as the flash of the torpedo’s motor illuminated the bow as it leapt in pursuit of Taipan’s cargo ship.
“Number One, all ahead flank,” he reached to the sensors, turned off the cladding. If Taipan was watching, Eric wanted him to know who was attacking.
The Westy jumped forward, like a thoroughbred released from the gate, in pursuit of the torpedo. He couldn’t hope to match the incredible constant acceleration of the missile, already lost from view, but he wanted to arrive at the cargo ship as close as he could, as soon as he could, after he’d knocked it out of hyperspace.
A flash of light in the distance accompanied the sudden appearance of a cargo ship a few hundred kilometers off his bow.
“YES!” Eric exulted. “Number One, send the drone. Loot that bastard!”
“Sir, we have another contact,” said the XO.
Eric looked up to the sensor screen, alarmed and suddenly awash in a cold drench of fear.
“Sir, we have another contact,” his AI XO repeated.
Eric focused on the screen, at the system jump point highlighted. The wave of anxiety left him and he smiled. Another cargo ship, another target from Taipan. This one was heading in the opposite direction; on one of the routes that led to the station used by the Indian players.
“Let me know the second my drone returns from the first cargo ship,” he said moving to the navigation screen.
“Aye aye, sir.”
Eric began to plot a course, a course to intercept the second cargo ship. He chose a spot near the outside edge of the solar system; near where the cargo ship would transit to interstellar space. After that, he couldn’t track it individually - if he jumped into the next system, he couldn’t be sure that he’d attack the right target. He’d have to hurry, have to judge everything just right in order to be at the right spot at the right time to get another torpedo hit.
“Come about, one-hundred and eighty degrees,” he said, preparing for the dash to jump speed. The stars on the view screen began to shift to the left - port, he reminded himself - and Taipan’s stationary cargo ship moved off the same side of the screen.
“The drone has returned, sir,” began the XO, “but is unable to bring aboard the cargo.”
“Why the bloody hell not?” growled Eric.
“We don’t have a cargo bay, sir. It’s a load of minerals, I’m afraid, and we have nowhere to store it.”
Eric laughed, “Dump it. Get the drone back on board.” He didn’t care about the load; had no idea what its value might be. That was irrelevant. All he wanted to do was hurt Taipan.
“Done, sir,” said the XO after a few seconds.
“All ahead, flank.” He stretched, happy with the course plot he’d laid in.
He looked to the weapons screen, to the three plasma turrets still targeted on Taipan’s cargo ship, rapidly shrinking in the distance as the Westy shrieked toward jump velocity.
He pressed the fire button.
Chapter 23
Eric’s second attack had gone as well as the first, though more hectically. His plot had put him in the right place, with just enough time to target Taipan’s cargo ship and launch a quick torpedo. He’d been a bit farther away than he’d have liked, but made best speed to the attack point and sent his drone to loot the ship upon his arrival.
Still, though, it had taken longer - much longer - than he was comfortable with.
“Number One,” he began, “how long since our first torpedo launch?”
“Nineteen minutes, sir” answered his AI XO.
“Too long,” he muttered to himself, “too bloody long.” The Navy could arrive at anytime if Taipan had put in a distress call - it wouldn’t even had to have been an automated call. If he was watching, as Eric was sure he was, Taipan could have sent a direct message to the Navy from the safety of his clipper ship. His calculations put the likely response time from the Navy at around twenty minutes. He moved to his chair, sat heavily. “How long until that drone returns from the ship?”
“That depends,” answered the XO, “on what is in the cargo hold.”
Eric nodded, absently, and began tapping his fingers nervously on the chair’s armrest. He saw his drone leave the cargo ship.
“What’s it found?” he asked quietly.
“Another load of minerals, I’m afraid. Which we can’t …”
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said dismissively. “We don’t have a cargo hold. Dump the load. Get the drone back on board as soon as possible.” He moved to the weapon’s screen, to the plasma cannons targeting Taipan’s ship. Then he halted, movement out of the corner of his eye - on the sensor screen - causing him to freeze, breathless.
“Sir, I’ve detected …”
“Yes, I see it,” Eric gulped. At least a half-dozen ships, detected by their tachyon wave signatures, were inbound from the direction of Kepler station.
The Navy had arrived.
“Rig for silent running,” Eric told the XO, his calm voice belying the panic he felt. The AI then turned on the cladding and ensured that all active scanning sensors were turned off. As soon the drone was aboard, Eric laid in a new course. Directly toward the incoming flotilla.
“All ahead one-third. All engines stop at one-tenth lightspeed.” That would accelerate him just quickly enough to remain invisible to passive sensors at distance, as well as stopping accelerat
ion at the point that random atoms in the not quite vacuum of space could no longer get out of his way without becoming excited enough to register his passing. Faster than that and each atom he hit would be driven off its natural path with enough force that the additional energy would register the agitation as an increase in heat, enough to make it noticeable to neighboring craft.
Eric was bringing the HMS Westy toward the Naval ships in the hopes that, upon dropping out of hyperspace, the attack squadron would rapidly advance toward the cargo ship location, leaving him behind, and hopefully outside of, their area of focus.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm his rapidly nauseating stomach. He was caught in the act of piracy. The insurance for his ship wouldn’t pay out if he was destroyed. The HMS Westy was, he realized, in danger of being taken from him.
He took another deep breath. It didn’t work; he leaned from his chair and returned his dinner to the microwave tray that now lay in the room’s trash can.
As he straightened in his chair, he saw ships begin to enter normal space in front of him, in rapid succession. Eight Delta destroyers around a Grizzly class battle cruiser in their center. His lunch threatened to join his dinner.
“All stop,” he moaned, “and reverse thrust at ten-percent until we’ve stopped.” The best way to remain invisible was to not move at all. He hoped. He gripped both arm rests until they creaked; oblivious to the small strand of spittle and regurgitated dinner that hung from his lower lip.
The leftmost destroyer then flared in a staccato succession of flashing lights. A hedgehog. Eric looked to his passive sensors. The pattern described by the destroyer’s array of latent detectors looked to be a large sphere encompassing the cargo ship, the naval vessels and, unfortunately, himself. But the sphere was so large there was no overlap between each of the buoys.
Eric, feeling a sense of relief, began to plot a course toward the naval group, but at a forty-five degree down angle. A course that would take him directly between a triangle of naval sensors; an area indicated to his calculations as being uncovered. He might be able to inch his way free of this trap, he thought. Then his attention was again pulled to the forward view.
The other seven destroyers now, in unison, flashed to life as they each launched their own hedgehog. Eric’s heart once again sank as he saw what they were doing. Within the larger sphere, seven smaller globes of sensors began appear. He saw, with dread, that there was now no direct route to escape. Even if he could wind his way through the maze, the odds were that one of the enemy ships would find him before he could reach open space and relative safety.
His heart then stopped, dread replaced with certainty, as the Navy sensor array fully deployed and Eric saw directly in front of the HMS Westy, almost close enough to read a serial number, a hedgehog buoy.
Eric was glad that he’d come to a full stop - he could only imagine that he’d be so much space dust already if that sensor had deployed that close to him while he still had any appreciable forward momentum. The eight naval destroyers now began to move into the sphere of spheres, to begin the hunt that Eric knew would, inexorably, lead to his destruction. The battle cruiser sat, implacable, near the outside the sphere. Waiting for its hounds to flush its prey.
Eric laughed, all of his pent up fear and dread washed away by the cold reality of resignation.
“If there’s nothing you can do, there’s no call to worry,” he said. And there was, literally, nothing he could do, he thought. Any movement would attract overwhelming attention. All he could do was wait, passively, and hope that the Navy would give up their hunt while he was still undiscovered.
He began to mentally calculate the cost of returning the hulk of his destroyed ship to port. The cost of repairing, refurbishing and re-outfitting. It would probably cost nearly half of the original purchase price. There was no way he could afford that, and, he was sure, no way that his ‘friends’ in Fleet Bigweek would put up their fair share of the costs - not when their last, asinine, directive to him had been to sell it.
“Sir, we’re receiving a hail,” said his XO.
Eric shrugged, “On screen.” He looked to the front screen, now overlaid with the bridge of the Grizzly class cruiser. Eric, shocked, realized that he hadn’t been cornered by the Navy after all.
“Arrrrrggh, matey!” laughed Kato. “We seem to have come full circle. Hunter becomes hunted, privateer becomes pirate.”
Kato moved into the camera, his face filling Eric’s screen.
“I’ll ask you this one more time, and one more time only,” he said, smiling broadly. “Do you want to join the Inner Lizards?”
Eric looked at Kato, nonplussed. Then he looked to the screen he had been using that evening for email and clan management. He reached to it, reached to the button that said ‘Disband Clan’. He pressed it.
“Yes,” said Eric. “Yes I do.”
Chapter 24
“Phani babu?”
Phani looked up from his new used computer, where he was busy installing the Omegaverse software, to his new employee, sitting next to him in the second bedroom, used as an office, in his new flat. His old computer, being used by the new hire, was sitting next to the new one on a long table that took up much of one side of the room.
“Yes Rahul?” he smiled.
“I’m sorry to bother you once again, but I need to check on the price for a mineral, and I’ve forgotten how.”
Phani reached over, pressed the keyboard combination that brought up the Kepler and Eta Bootis mineral marketplaces. He also made a note of the process in a small notebook on the desk, ripped out the page, and placed it next to Rahul on the table.
“That’s fine, Rahul,” said Phani. “I’m here to answer any questions.”
He watched as the young man traced his finger down the screen, finding the current market prices for the mineral he’d just discovered.
“Oh my,” Rahul exclaimed. “Palladium is a very good metal, is it not?”
Phani laughed, remembering the load he’d lost a month before, “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Rahul began the process of sending his drone to exploit the palladium bearing asteroid. This was his first day on the job, and he’d shown a remarkable facility for understanding the 3D space, as presented on a 2D screen, of the Omegaverse universe. He seemed a natural pilot, and was giddy at the thought of earning a living playing a game.
Phani watched as his employee used the new mining ship purchased that morning. One of two that Phani would use, in concert with the Shepherd Moon, as a small mining fleet. The smaller, nimbler dedicated mining ships would dash out to find ore, then bring it back to the larger clipper ship for smelting. Phani was already seeing that the rate at which he could collect ore was more than doubled, just from the added mobility and speed the smaller ship provided.
The ships, one of the most inexpensive models in the game, would soon pay for themselves. As soon as Phani had the second computer running the game software, he would join Rahul in mining the asteroid belt - and even with two of them, he didn’t think they’d be able to fill the holds of the Shepherd Moon in a single day. The vast storage space of the ship, along with the on board smelting ability thanks to the chemolithotrophs - bacteria which separated the valuable ore from the worthless tailings - made for an extremely large space to fill. Each day’s take was likely to be worth more than he’d earned in a month of taking mining missions from mission control - even if he had to deal with the occasional losses due to piracy.
The day before, he had lost both of his mineral loads - all he had mined - to two pirate attacks. One had even gone so far as to destroy a cargo ship, costing him the insurance premium. Since they were shipping from a private facility, the insurance didn’t cover the losses of the minerals, so he had made no money that day. Once the Shepherd’s Crook opened to the public, however, his shipments that originated there would come under the insurance umbrella. He hoped that yesterday’s losses would be his last.
He made another note, placed it
next to the first he’d written.
“Make sure to collect these minerals,” Phani said, indicating the new note. “They are being requested by the terraformation process on our planet. We need to provide them in abundance to hasten the process.”
“Yes, Phani babu,” said Rahul, not understanding anything except that he was to be on the lookout for the listed resources.
Phani returned his view to the new computer; the software installation process was nearly complete. Then he noticed a new email message indicated. Not in his normal personal account, but within one of the three folders he had created to receive the three unconditional favors he had given Taipan at the beginning of their relationship. Phani’s pulse quickened as he reached to open the folder, to see what was being requested of him.
Excited, he opened the email and read it. It contained only one line. Only five words. Only five words that would allow him to fulfill part of his debt to Taipan.
He read through them three times in the time it took to take a breath - ‘Accept it as a gift’.
Phani joined Rahul in mining, the two ships making quick work of stripping this section of the asteroid belt clean of valuable resources, but he was distracted.
What did Taipan mean by accept it as a gift? Accept what? He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to seem as though he didn’t understand. What is some sort of American custom that he didn’t know about? Is this something that anyone in that country would have understood?
He tried to put it from his mind, but couldn’t. He reached for his cigarette pack and lighter when there was a knock on the door; he got up, pulling a smoke from the pack and putting it behind his ear. He dropped the pack back onto the table, and walked through his new apartment to the front door, opening it.
A delivery.