Omegaverse 1-3
Author: G.R. Cooper
Date: 2015-12-10 05:00:00+00:00
Description: "Duncan Sheriden enters, at the bidding of several friends, into the virtual universe; the Omegaverse. As he explores the alien races, star systems and planets, he discovers a rich, vast, limitless expanse of possibilities. From gritty fights for control of colonies with hostile alien and human forces, to interstellar trade, to thrilling hunts to eradicate space piracy, to epic battles between star-ships, Duncan finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the virtual world. As Duncan gains and evolves his online power, his 'real world' friends and activities take smaller and smaller roles as Du

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About the Cover

Dedication

PART ONE : SHEPHERD MOON

Meta 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Meta 2

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Meta 3

Epilog

Design Document

PART TWO : SHEPHERD'S CROOK

Prolog

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Meta 4

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Meta 5

Epilog

Press Release

PART THREE : SHEPHERD'S CROSS

Prolog

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15
meta 6

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilog

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Omegaverse Volumes 1-3

Shepherd Moon

Shepherd’s Crook

Shepherd’s Cross

by G.R. Cooper

Copyright © 2015 G.R. Cooper

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

About the Cover

The painting ‘Snow Patrol’ is by artist Benedick Bana. His amazing work can be viewed at http://benedickbana.deviantart.com/.

The graphic design for the cover was done by Clay Caricofe of Milotron Design, and can be contacted at http://milotron.com/

My infinite thanks to both of them for their hard work and wonderful results.

To my family.

The ones I’m related to and the ones I’m not.

PART ONE :

SHEPHERD MOON

meta 1

are they ready?

they?

hardly.

it’s only been twenty thousand cycles.

but, maybe, individuals might be ready.

pick some likely candidates.

test them.

Chapter 1

Duncan Sheridan stood in front of the glass wall, awed. A planet hung above the viewport, dominating the vista. Looking up at the blue orb threatened to disorient him, replacing up with down; negating every life lesson gravity had taught.

“What’s it made of?”

“The planet? Whatever planets are made of. It doesn’t matter. It’s just computer graphics anyway.”

Duncan turned his head to look at his friend, “No. I meant the glass.” He looked back at the view, “I mean, it’s a huge half dome. It must be a hundred meters across.”

“At least,” said Matt.

“And there are no visible supports, no framing. Just an unbroken semi circle of clear glass.” He looked back at Matt, “Is it silica? Diamond? What?”

Matt laughed, “You want to know, fundamentally, what it really is? It’s computer code. It’s a rule. A rule that says ‘this thing separates nasty space vacuum from life supporting gasses, it’s see through, and probably indestructible’.”

“And anyway,” Matt continued, “you’re twenty seconds into the first location in a functionally limitless virtual universe. The room was designed to impress new players and the first thing you notice is the one thing you can’t see.” Matt laughed again, “You’re hilarious. C’mon, let’s get you setup.”

Matt pulled Duncan away from the view and, turning, they walked toward what looked like an information kiosk. As they approached it, Duncan heard, as though a voice inside his head;

“Welcome to ‘Omegaverse’, Duncan Sheridan. I’m your personal assistant, Clive. You can call me up by name or by selecting the question mark icon in the lower left side of your user interface. Please do so now.”

An icon in the lower left of his field of view began rapidly flashing so he focused on it, then thought ‘select’ and the neural interface in his VR helmet carried out the command.

“Thank you, Duncan. As you move through the Omegaverse, you will undoubtedly have many questions. I will, to the best of my ability, give you the answers!”

Duncan smiled. “What’s the glass in the dome made of?”

“A lattice of carbon, similar to diamonds, we believe. The technology is beyond our capabilities. We assume, like most of the technology in the Omegaverse, that it was created by the Old Ones.”

“What are the Old Ones?”

“A race from the distant past. Nothing is known of their history. All we have left of them is their technology.”

“What planet is that? The one we’re orbiting.”

“Kepler 22B.”

“Thanks. How do I go back to talking to other players?” he asked. Matt looked bored.

“Either click on my icon, which functions as a toggle, or dismiss me verbally. Others around you can’t hear you and I talk. In time, we’ll get to know each other well enough that you won’t have to either call or dismiss me.”

Matt smiled at him, “Are you ready?”

“Am I ready for what? Playing?” Duncan asked, “What about my name, my character, my class, skills, attributes. All that stuff?”

Matt waved his hands dismissively, “None of that stuff applies. This isn’t like some fantasy role playing game where you’re playing an elf or a barbarian. You’re you. Duncan Sheridan, twentieth level dork!”

“Some parts are customizable,” he continued, “You can set your nickname, the name that displays to other players. But for the most part, any special abilities or skills you have develop for you as you play, however you play. But everything you need to do, you just ‘do’, your skills are as much tied to your actual abilities as it is anything else. As you practice, you’ll likely gain in proficiency in artificial increments, but that just helps by a matter of a few percent, so it’s only really noticeable statistically. By far, most of the advancement you’ll do as a player is tied to your equipment.”

Duncan shook his head, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Matt smiled, “It will, soon enough.” He turned, “Follow me,” and started walking toward a door opposite the glass dome, behind the kiosk.

Duncan followed through the automatic door, which led into a short hallway with another door at the other end. Once through the door, which closed behind them, a disembodied voice asked

“Destination?”

“Home sweet home,” said Matt, who continued through the alcove. As he reached the end, the next door opened and Matt, Duncan in tow, walked through into what, Duncan thought, looked like a medium sized apartment, sparsely furnished with disjointedly eclectic styles.

Matt waved his arms expansively, “Mi casa es su casa,” after which Duncan received a message, in text, across the top of his field of view:

Access level granted: Permanent Guest. Special restrictions: None.

“Guest?” asked Duncan.

“Yeah, that means that you’re allowed to be here whenever you like. Permanent means that I don’t have to be here. No restrictions means you can access or mess with whatever you like,” laughed Matt, “so don’t fuck up my place.”

“Wow, thanks,” said Duncan, who then heard Clive’s voice:

“I’ve setup your access code for this destination to be “Matt’s Place”, though you can change it to whatever you like. Just ask!”

“Thanks,” subvocalized Duncan, then to Matt, “Do I need a key or something?”

“Nah. You’re allowed in and so is anyone you’re grouped with, but they don’t have any access apart from being here, walking around. They can look, but not touch.”

Duncan began looking around the space, “This place is better decorated than your real apartment.”

“Cleaner, too!” Matt laughed, “Have a seat, I’ll be back in a minute”. He went through a door in the wall opposite the front door.

Instead, Duncan began exploring the room. Next to the front door, hanging on the wall, was an old time, twentieth century, advertisement poster for Coca-Cola. At the bottom right, it was numbered, 27/500. Clive chimed in:

“Advertisers can purchase loot drops, in lots. Depending upon rarity and desirability, these items can command a large sum in auctions.”

“Really,” asked Duncan, “for a decoration?”

He focused on the bottom, reading the fine print. Trademark and copyright notices. Then saw ‘found by Matt Vanderveer, March 16 2021’.

“Yes”, continued Clive, “but the drops aren’t limited to decorations. Clothing, weapons, anything you can think of, really, has probably been marketed in some manner.”

Matt returned, “Like it? Found that poster during a really hairy fight. Wasn’t sure I was going to be able to survive long enough to get it back here. I could probably sell it for twenty bucks, but I like it.”

“Here,” continued Matt, “I have some equipment you can have.”

A dialog box appeared in Duncan’s upper right field of view. He focused on it and saw a list of items. An M4 assault rifle, a .45 m1911 pistol, some body armor and a few small packages marked “.45 5 magazines” or “5.56 5 magazines”. He looked to the “Accept” icon below the list and chose it.

Clive helpfully began flashing another icon on the left side of his view, marked Inventory, so Duncan chose that, opening another, larger sheet. He began reading through the list, which overlaid his field of view. The boxes, icons and words were semi-transparent, so he was able to walk to the middle of the room and sit in one of the chairs near where Matt was sitting.

“Isn’t this kind of low-tech for a space game?” Duncan asked, “I mean, I just assumed this would all be lasers and plasma rifles in the 40 watt range.”

Matt laughed. “Just what you see here, pal. Anyway, we’ll be heading off to clear out an earth-like planet. Probably nothing more than the local equivalent of some tigers and bears. These will be enough, and the ammo is dirt cheap. We’ll get to the cool toys later.”

“This isn’t exactly what I’d want to go up against tigers and bears, either,” said Duncan.

Matt laughed, “Don’t worry. There are four of us.”

Duncan closed the inventory window, paused and looked at Matt.

“This is a lot of information, pretty fast.”

“Yeah, but if you’d been alone, you’d have been led through a series of newbie introductions,” he laughed, “At this point, you’d probably be learning how to call up your inventory, change your clothes, or select how you look. Since you have me,” he bowed, “you get the quicky intro.”

Duncan looked over Matt. The resemblance to his real life visage was remarkable.

“What do I look like?”

“Nothing like the real Duncan. Just some generic schmuck,” laughed Matt, while Clive opened up a box labeled Personal Info.

“If you like,” said Clive “I can scrape your social media accounts for pictures, and put together a reasonable facsimile of you. Be advised, however, that while this service is free for the first time, any additional changes require a payment based on the amount of change as well as current market rates. Would you like me to make the change?”

“Sure.”

“There he is!” exclaimed Matt, “That’s the ugly mug I’m used to seeing on the barstool next to mine!”

The picture in the top left of the Personal Info page changed to mirror the picture he used on social media for his profile picture. Below was listed the standard social media information such as name, age, and location. All but his name were currently grayed out, indicating that they were not shared publicly.

Just then, the door opened, admitting Clancey and Vince.

“Well,” said Vince, “look who finally got off his ass and signed up.”

“Yeah, let’s go kill some shit!” said Clancey.

“Sounds good,” said Matt getting up from his chair, “time to saddle up,” and headed for the door. The two new guys did an about face, following him. Duncan jumped up and trailed his three friends, the door to Matt’s place closing behind him as the four crowded into the short hallway.

“Destination?”

“Mission Control” said Matt and Clancey simultaneously.

The door opened as Clancey, first in line, arrived. Once through, Duncan looked around into the space, much larger than even the first introduction room had been.

“C’mon,” said Clancey, “Let’s find a good 4 ship.”

“Shannon going to make it?” asked Matt.

“Yeah,” said Vince “but probably for not an hour or so. Plenty of time for a milk run.”

The four of them, Duncan in trail, entered through another automatic airlock, into what looked like a small booth, with two seats on either side. As they grabbed their seats, Clive piped up for Duncan:

“As this is your first mission, there are some differences between what you’re experiencing from the rest. Matt, as group leader, is currently selecting mission parameters; difficulty, duration and so on. All of them are currently selecting whether or not to rent mission equipment, or to insure equipment they own. Until you’ve had a chance to gain some experience and earn some credits, equipment or insurance will be provided to you, free of charge.”

A message flashed across the top of his field of view;

“Vinsanity and Clancey have been added to your group by Pope.”

“Hey newb!,” yelled Vince “Set your nickname.”

“Clive,” said Duncan, “set my nickname to Taipan”. The cheers from his teammates told him that Clive had complied. Clive added:

“I’ve also taken the liberty of setting up a standard combat overlay. This will display the nicknames of your teammates over their heads, color coded to reflect their current health status, green, yellow or red. We can tailor this to your specific needs over time. During the mission, I’ll leave it off by default, but you can ask for it at any time.”

“When do we get there?” Duncan asked, looking around at his teammates, their heads crowned by the green letters spelling out Pope, Vinsanity and Clancey.

“We’re already there,” said Vince, “and we’ll un-ass this crate as soon as you’re ready. Lock and load, newb!”

Duncan pulled up his inventory screen, “Clive, unbox those magazines and put them in the bandolier slots.” He pulled the .45 from its holster slot, grabbed a pistol magazine from the bandolier, slammed it home, and jacked a round. After replacing the loaded pistol in the holster, he pulled the M4 off the large inventory slot on his back. To his friends, it looked like he reached behind himself and pulled the rifle off of his back. He pulled a 30 round magazine from the bandolier, put it into the rifle, and pulled the charging handle on the top of the receiver. He made sure the safety was on, then looked up to his friends.

“Ready.”

Chapter 2

the evening before

Charlottesville, Virginia. USA

Duncan pulled open the door and walked into the brewpub. After the hot Virginia humidity, the air conditioning made it feel like his skin was suddenly awash in cold water. As his eyes adjusted from the brightness of the late afternoon sun to the dimly lit interior of the restaurant, he made his practiced way through the crowd to his usual seat at the end of the copper topped bar.

He placed a large box on the bar as he climbed onto the stool. Reaching around the box, he lifted the pint of ale that Shannon had begun pouring as soon as she saw him walking down the street to the bar. He took his first, long deep draw from the glass, sighed, and set the glass back onto the bar.

“You’re late”, said Matt, one stool over. “For beer. Are you unwell?”

“Nah, just had to drop by the store and pick up a little something.” He used his pocketknife to begin slicing through the packaging tape on the box.

“The nagging finally paid off, did it?” said Clancey, sitting around the corner from Duncan and Matt who took the two seats at the end of the bar. “You’re finally going to join us.”

The opened box revealed what, to Duncan, looked like a kind of egg shaped vase; rounded at the back, more pointed in the front, with a large hole in the middle. He pulled it onto his head.

“Hey, Shannon! Does this make my head look fat?”

“No more than usual, fathead,” she laughed, “Now finish that beer, I’ve already pulled your next one.”

He took the helmet off, took a drink of his beer, and looked through the bottom of the box, pulling out a small container. He read the label.

“Haptic gloves?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Vince, “they go with the helmet. They provide feedback, so you can feel and use stuff in the game.”

Clancey nodded, “It’s pretty freaky until you get used to it, but once you do, it really does make it seem more real.”

“Much better than using a mouse and keyboard,” added Matt.

Duncan put the gloves back in the larger box, looked back at the smooth plastic egg of the helmet.

“There aren’t any connection ports,” he mused.

“Yep,” said Clancey. “It’s self contained. Computer, display, wireless connection, speakers. It’s all in that egg. There’s a little pad for charging the battery. Just leave it sitting on the pad overnight, and you’ll be good to go. Never had any battery issues.”

Duncan put the helmet back in the box, which he then closed. He took another long pull on his beer, slid the empty glass toward the bartender and replaced it with the one she’d just brought. He looked up as his friends let out a cheer of welcome. Their friend Jamie had arrived, in town for the weekend from Baltimore.

As Shannon ran from behind the bar to give Jamie a hug, Vince and Clancey changed seats to allow him one on the corner, in the middle of the group. After the welcomes were complete, Jamie looked to the box sitting on the bar in front of Duncan.

“What is that thing?” he asked.

“Virtual reality helmet,” said Duncan.

“Next gen,” added Clancey.

“Duncan’s doom,” laughed Vince.

“Your future,” said Matt in an evil whisper.

Jamie laughed.

“My future, how so?”

“We’ve got Duncan to finally get one to join us in the Omegaverse, now we just have to get you in as well,” said Shannon, shoving an overflowing shot glass of tequila in front of Jamie.

“And what the hell is an Omegaverse?” asked Jamie as he lifted the glass to his nose, sniffed deeply and then gently sipped through the surface tension of the liquid bubble of agave nectar that threatened to overflow the glass rim.

They began to describe it for Jamie. The Omegaverse was an online universe consisting of many games. The aspect that his friends focused on playing was a first person shooter game, called the ‘Soldier’. It consisted of a variety of mission types; some against AI opponents, some against human ones. The missions could be small, even solo, or could contain hundreds of other players working in cooperation or in conflict.

A large variety of equipment was available, so loadouts could be configured to suit any specific mission parameters. One mission could be a group of 3 players with rifles, hunting through a jungle covered planet for a deadly beast, the next could be a large scale invasion of an industrial world with hundreds of attackers and defenders fighting for control.

In addition to the Soldier class of missions, there were tracks for those who’d rather Pilot spacecraft. From the solitary, exploration based miner, to the space trading merchant all the way to the heavy, navy-like warship classes. The latter of which were often crewed by large numbers of players at individual stations such as navigation, weapons, helm and shields. Space battles between factions controlling hundreds of ships fighting for control of entire sectors of the galaxy had occurred.

Tangential activities were also springing up throughout the game. Player apartments had given rise to interior decorators. Some players had turned their apartments into stores; buying and selling rare game items. There was even a scholar class developing; dedicated to studying the fictional technology, to trace it to its alien origins through clues players had been finding in the universe.

Jaimie, and Duncan, were taking all of this in.

“So, what’s the game?” asked Jamie.

“Isn’t that what they’ve been telling us?” asked Duncan.

“Not really. These are all activities and, while I’m sure they’re fun, they aren’t really a game. Games are, fundamentally, problem solving as entertainment. I see the entertainment, part, but where are the problems that need to be solved?”

“I see where you’re going,” said Shannon, cleaning out a pint glass. “The reason for all of this running around and shooting. Control. Control of parts of the game galaxy. As we complete missions or grow our wealth, our faction gains in power, prestige.”

“Yeah,” nodded Matt, “and with those gains come individual benefits. Access to newer cooler stuff.”

“The game is fairly new, now,” said Clancey, “and the factions are still forming. They’re mainly focused around the space stations. Our station is made up of mainly east coast Americans, with some Europeans and a few close time-zones thrown in. Those are automatically generated. You’re placed in those factions when you start, but player generated factions are starting to spring up.”

“You can check the zones of control on the larger maps, and none of the neighboring zones have begun to overlap, but it’s a long term game. As players terraform and colonize, those zones will grow. Once the zones begin to butt up against each other, the conflict will increase.”

Duncan took another swallow of beer. “Colonize?”

“Yeah,” nodded Vince, “that’s done through a sort of real time strategy resource management game. And by real time they mean real long time. It looks like it’ll take years, in real terms, to terraform and colonize a planet.”

“Though you can colonize without terraforming, it’s just much more expensive,” added Clancey.

“How?”

“Domes. Underground cities. Floating cities in cloud giants. That sort of thing,” continued Matt. “Very expensive. Very.”

“But for now?” asked Jamie.

“For now, we just go in and have some fun. Our gains are mainly personal, even though they’re helping, big picture wise, the faction,” said Vince. “This is like a big game of chess, with lots of different players; and right now the only pieces on the board are pawns. The kings, bishops, knights are all being created. By ourselves, playing the game.”

“But for now,” continued Duncan, “you’re just a bunch of big bad killing machines?”

“Yep.”

“Even Shannon?” laughed Duncan.

“Stoofoo!” shouted Shannon, using her pronunciation for the acronym for ‘shut the fuck up’, “I’d kick your ass all over the place, newbie!” She smiled, “Besides, I’m not a boots on the ground type; I’m command and control.”

“Que es?” asked Duncan.

“I manage the fight,” she said. “As damage is taken by those morons,” she waved her hand to encompass Matt, Clancey and Vince, “their shield power drops. I manage the power supply that regenerates those shields. Naturally, the power supply isn’t enough to take care of them all at once, so I have to juggle their needs with the available juice.”

“Like the healer in a fantasy game?” asked Jamie.

Shannon nodded, “Yep.” then moved down the bar to take care of other customers.

“There’s more to it than that,” said Clancey.

“And Shannon’s one of the best,” added Matt. Clancey and Vince nodded agreement. “I can’t remember the last time we got croaked while Shannon was watching over us.”

“You’ll see,” continued Matt, “when we take you out. We’ll keep it nice and easy your first few missions. Just until you settle in and get used to the game.”

“Tonight?” Duncan asked, draining his beer.

“Definately not,” said Matt, signalling Shannon for another round. “This beer isn’t going to drink itself. We’ll play tomorrow.”

“After the hangover,” added Clancey.

Chapter 3

“Out! Move move move!” Matt shouted in his best drill instructor imitation, “Last in, first out!”

Duncan rose and moved through the opening door. Under a bright, blue, earth-like sky, he began to look around. Everything was recognizable, if not specifically identifiable. Trees forested the area to his right, but not like any trees he knew. The colors of the world, too, were close to being right, but not. The blue of the sky, the green of the grass; not quite what he would have expected, but not quite different enough to be jarring. Everything about everything he could see was just a little bit off. Alien. Then he realized that, in truth, in this place, he was the alien.

He heard his friends moving behind him, to the left and to the right, and saw a small, translucent square appear in the lower right of his field of view.

“This is your map view” said Clive “You are the centered blue dot, your friends are green. Yellow will represent unknown entities, red for enemies. Your detection radius is currently limited to visual and aural distances and wavelengths. Equipment to expand upon your abilities is available for rent or purchase from the station commissaries or player auctions.”

His friends had moved to cover his flanks and rear, so he began to walk forward. He glanced at the map. He was heading more or less north, at least according to the markings on the map. Whether that had any relation to the magnetic poles on this planet, he didn’t know. The forest was to the east. To the west were gently rolling plains, as far as he could see. Ahead of him, several hundred yards out, were a low cluster of buildings. A spur of the forest reached out to them, nearly touching the nearest building.

“Where to?” he asked “Those buildings?”

“Yeah” said Vince “that’s as likely a place as any.” The green dot to his left flank pulsated gently as he was speaking, so Duncan assumed that meant that’s where Vince was located.

“Heads up. We landed close. No chance of sneaking up on whatever’s in there,” said Clancey on his right flank.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” said Matt. “There’s nothing to worry about. Unless I chose a red, of course.”

“What?” asked Clancey.

“You did, didn’t you?” growled Vince. “You dick.”

“What’s a red?” asked Duncan, slowing his pace. They’d covered half the distance to the buildings. He could make out more details on the plain, boxy structures. They were really nothing more than cubes, the roof just another flat side. The side fronting him, on the closest structure, had a window, about a meter square. Just around the corner, he could see that a door, opened, was in the middle of the side facing an open area bounded by the rest of the structures. They were similarly laid out; facing inward, spread around like a group of pioneers had tried to make a defensive circle with too few wagons.

“Missions are color coded according to their difficulty,” said Matt. “Most missions are in the green to yellow range. Green being the easiest.”

“And red being the ‘don’t choose this or you’ll die’ option,” said Vince.

Clancey, in a mocking, singsong voice, sounded out “‘Oooh, let’s take Duncan on a milkrun, he said. It’s his first time, he said’. And we’re not equipped for a red.”

“Color coding is based on your equipment, as well as the experience level of the team,” explained Matt, “We’ve only got assault rifles, and it’s Duncan’s first mission. That’s probably why it showed red for our group. Probably,” he laughed.

“I’m going to kick your ass,” said Vince, “if it’s a shit-ton of greenies with blasters. Or werewolves.”

“Greenies?”

“Yeah. From ‘little green men’. Short, aggressive little fuckers. They work well in teams. I forget what they’re real name is.”

“The Arn,” interjected Clancey.

“Yeah,” continued Vince, “but most people call them greenies or LGM’s.”

“And werewolves?” asked Duncan.

“You’ll know them when you see them,” said Matt.

“Ok, hold up a sec,” said Matt. “This is a feeder colony. A starter group of colonists. This planet has been terraformed, and this is the first foothold for humans. The group that sent them lost contact. We’re here to find out why.”

“Wait. Is this a human mission?” asked Clancey.

“Yeah.”

Vince groaned, “So, when you say it’s a red …”

“Yeah.”

“What?” Duncan asked while sweeping the area in front of him, for the fifth time, with his rifle.

“Well,” said Matt, “with automatic, host generated, missions. The difficulty color level is pretty spot on. This mission is generated by another player. He puts up a reward, and it gets dropped into the mission pool. He selected the difficulty parameters. He might be wrong, it might be easier, much easier, than a host generated red.”

“Or not?”

“Or not,” agreed Matt. “It might be a case of ‘this is a red because there’s no color for a mission much, much worse’. That’s part of the fun!”

“Fun. Right,” said Vince.

“Shit. You’re insured. Your equipment will be regenerated. All you have to lose is whatever loot or experience you gain in this mission.”

“Shit. You’re insured”, mocked Clancey, “but if you start getting croaked a lot, your insurance goes through the roof.”

“Simple solution to that,” laughed Matt.

“Don’t croak!” said Vince and Clancey simultaneously.

They were a few meters from the first dwelling. Duncan began moving around to the left, keeping his weapon toward the door on the northwest corner. As he got closer, he could see a leg, human, just inside the door, on the ground and stretching into the darkness of the interior. As he reached the door, he turned on the flashlight attached to the end of the rifle’s barrel.

The leg ended just above the knee. Messily so. He raised the rifle, moving the light beam further into the darkness. The rest of the leg’s owner, more or less, was strewn around the room.

His friends had moved past him, around the first building toward the center of the open, grassless area surrounded by the buildings. More similarly disassembled colonists were in a pile next to a large container.

“Well,” said Matt, “it wasn’t greenies.”

“Nope.” agreed Vince.

“Werewolves?” asked Duncan.

“Yup.”

“Are we screwed?”

“Most likely,” said Clancey, “Duncan, check out that crate, we’ll get ready.”

Duncan moved to the crate, opened the lid. As he did, he heard a clicking sound. From the direction they’d just arrived. It sounded like something was tapping on the wall of the first building. On the wall opposite where they now stood. On the wall they’d just passed, a minute ago. His map overlay pulsated, yellow, on the lower, southern, part. Unknown sound.

The sound continued, and was picked up, in turn, by each building around the circle, clockwise. First to the west, then around to the north, finally completing the circle to the east. The tapping sound grew as more joined. The map pulsed yellow in all directions now.

Duncan stole a look into the crate, saw only a piece of paper. He grabbed it and thrust it into his backpack without reading it, and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

“Duncan! You take the north, Vince the east, Clancey the west,” said Matt, “I’ve got the south.”

The group was now spread, in a diamond, each about 2 meters from the other. A last stand posture, covering all directions. Surrounded.

“Did anyone bring grenades?” asked Matt.

“For a milk run?” laughed Vince. “Shit, I only brought a hundred and fifty rounds for the rifle, and a couple of magazines for the pistol.” The tapping continued.

“I almost forgot, Duncan,” said Clancey, “Ammunition is tied to its magazine. It’s not like a first person shooter game where, if you hit ‘reload’, it just gives you a full load from your total bullets. If you shoot off half a mag, then reload, the magazine that drops still has fifteen of your bullets. Pick it up. That half magazine might come in handy. But don’t let that stop you from reloading during a lull. If we get one.”

The tapping reached a crescendo, then, simultaneously all around the circle, stopped.

“When will they … “ Duncan’s question was interrupted when Matt opened fire. He forced himself to keep looking north. Nothing was coming from there, yet. Two dots of red rapidly moved on his map, from the south, northward, then disappeared. Matt had the first two kills of the day. Duncan’s hands began to shake. He heard a metallic sound behind him, and assumed that was Matt reloading. Howling took up where the clicking had left off. Matt opened fire again. Then Vince. Then Clancey. Red dots surged from the south, then the west and east. Duncan then realized Matt had been right. He knew werewolves by sight.

It wasn’t that they looked like stereotypical movie werewolves. They were tall, a little taller than human average. Hirsute. Massive, muscular shoulders and long arms. A long torso tapering down to small hips and short, thin legs. But it was the face that gave them their wolf like appearance. The long dog snout with a too large mouth that had an impossibility of teeth. They seemed designed solely to render; the top and bottom rows nothing but long canine teeth. It reminded not so much a wolf’s but a shark’s mouth. At least, he thought, from the shape of the teeth.

Duncan noticed all of this in the split second it took for the werewolf to leap over the building and charge. In the moment Duncan required to jerk his weapon toward the beast, it had covered half the distance. Probably fifteen yards. Quadrupedal, its massive arms propelled it at frightening speed, the legs providing direction. As Duncan squeezed the trigger, he realized that they look much more hyena than wolf.

The rifle jerked in his hands; the feedback of his haptic gloves, added to the staccato hammer of sound, surprised him. The werewolf's torso jerked to its left, stitched by a trio of holes. Duncan squeezed the trigger again, sending another three round burst. And again. It fell dead at Duncan’s feet.

Before he could recover his thoughts, two more attacked. One each from either side of the hut. He fired at the rightmost, hitting it in a leg. It wavered, so he switched targets and put two quick bursts in its direction. Most missed, but a couple hit, slowing it. A little. Duncan aimed and put a burst into its head. As it dropped, Duncan switched back to the wounded one.

The wreck of its leg had slowed it considerably, but it still came toward him. Now five yards away, Duncan could see its hands. Human-like, but with short fingers that ended in a nightmare of claws. He put two more bursts into it. Finishing it.

He wondered how many shots he’d fired. Enough. He pressed the magazine release on the rifle with his right hand while his left moved to the ammunition pouch on his belt.

As if waiting for this moment, a dark grey blur erupted from the door of the building. Duncan knew he wouldn’t have time to reload the rifle, so he dropped it and drew his pistol. Pulling onto target, he began firing as fast as he could. As the slide slammed open after his eighth and final shot, he stepped to the left to avoid the now lifeless corpse that slid through where he’d been standing a moment before. He was pretty sure he’d only hit it once, but the .45 caliber bullet seems to have been sufficient. He released the empty magazine, put a fresh one in and thumbed the slide release. Loaded, he replaced it in its holster, and bent to retrieve his M4.

He stood, put a fresh magazine in the rifle, and pulled the charging handle; startling himself as the bullet he’d forgotten was still in the chamber was ejected past his face.

He turned. “Well that wasn’t so …”, he choked on the rest of his sentence. The area behind him had turned into an abattoir floor; parts of Matt and Vince strewn among the corpses of their opponents. Clancey, on the ground, was pushing a dead werewolf off his legs. His left leg was a horror of ground meat, bone and spurting blood. A claw’s rake across his chest added to the gore.

“Wasn’t so … what?” laughed Clancey.

“I’ll help you get back to the ship.”

“Screw that,” said Clancey. “Just give me their rifles and pistols and haul ass. You got the loot, right?”

“A piece of paper.” Duncan gathered the weapons, some magazines from the corpses, and tossed them to Clancey, who began reloading them and placing them on the ground next to his legs.

“Yeah, could be anything.” The clicking began again, beginning in the north this time.

“Run,” said Clancey.

Duncan moved off to the south, quickly. As he reached the southernmost building, he slowed, crouched and moved his way around to the outermost wall. The tapping was still localized in the northernmost buildings, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The wall was clear of werewolves, so he began sprinting, south, toward the ship.

He hadn’t covered more than twenty or thirty meters when howls once again cut the air. Shortly thereafter, he heard two M4’s open up. Clancey must have one in each hand, he thought. Then the flat boom from pistols. Then silence. Too quickly.

The howling picked up in intensity. It was answered to his left, to the east, from the woods. It got louder as he ran. He could see the shuttle in the distance, but he could also see the red pulsing on his map from behind and to his left growing in intensity and rapidity. They were getting closer, but he didn’t pause to look. He just kept running.

As he approached the shuttle, the red pulsations on the map had nearly converged onto the center. He thought he could hear grass rustling, or maybe heavy breathing, from behind. Then he was through the automatic door, which closed shut behind him. Within a second or two he heard tapping on the bulkhead.

“Clive! Get me the fuck out of here!”

Chapter 4

Duncan exited the shuttle, once again in the hangar bay of the space station. Vince and Matt stood there, slow clapping. Clancey was approaching the group, laughing. A message flashed across the top of his field of view;

Mission partially complete. 34% of goals reached.

“What the hell does that mean, ‘thirty four percent of goals reached’?” asked Duncan.

“It means,” said Matt, “that there’s a shit-ton of bad guys left. More or less. Maybe there were other goals we’d have discovered if we’d got further along, or maybe it was ‘kill ‘em all’”.

“It also means,” added Clancey, “that any rewards provided by the mission creator won’t be given until all of the mission goals are met. Money will be split according to percentage complete,” he continued, “so far we’ve got a third. Any special items added as payment go to the group that has the highest percentage of completeness.”

“Let’s make that be us,” said Vince, “Let’s gear up and go back.”

“Are you serious?” asked Duncan, “We got slaughtered.”

Matt laughed. “We weren’t equipped. We will be this time, it’ll be fine.”

“Plus you’ll have me!” said Shannon, joining the group. “Someone’s got to keep you dorks alive.”

“Hey,” said Clancey, “what was the loot?”

Duncan had forgotten all about it. He opened his backpack, and pulled up the paper.

“It says it’s a Pearlite Conduit Rail Gun with a Hawkeye.”

Everyone was quiet.

“What?” asked Duncan. “Is it good?”

“Everything you just said,” said Clancey, “is the best. Pearlite means it’s very, very tough. It also disperses heat very well.”

Vince continued. “The Hawkeye is the highest magnification, highest resolution scope you can fit on a personal weapon. Having one on a Rail Gun means you can reach out and touch someone far away indeed.”

“And a conduit means that you can feed it power directly from the shuttle, like our body armor does. Usually a rail gun is such an energy hog, you need an extra backpack battery just to power it. And even so, you’ll only get a few shots out of a battery. As such, rail guns aren’t really usable outside of a few isolated cases. Running a conduit from the shuttle? Shit, you could probably fire it all day long.”

Duncan received a dialog box from Clancey, 20 rounds of rail gun slugs. Disintigrating sabot, he read. An inner, tungsten spear encased in a lighter bullet. On impact, the spear would continue through just about any target while the outer coating would come apart, ripping through the target like a point blank shotgun blast. He accepted.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Clancey, “I just grabbed them from a player auction. They ain’t cheap, so shoot straight,” he laughed.

A point of light began flashing on his map overlay.

“In order to retrieve your rail gun, proceed to the kiosk on the map,” said Clive, “or you can place the plans into a player auction. Of course, you can always just give it away.”

Duncan walked to the standalone booth, pulled the paper out of his backpack and inserted it into a slot labeled ‘Manufactory’. After a moment, the top of the manufactory lifted, revealing his new weapon. He grabbed it, turned, and trotted back to his group.

“Why all the steps,” asked Duncan. “Why not just give me the gun in the loot box?”

“Sometimes they do,” responded Clancey.

“But most often,” interjected Vince,” you get a blueprint for the item. Trust me, if you’re ever close to being loaded, weight wise, you’ll be glad to get a nice little blueprint instead of some massive object.”

Clancey nodded, “Plus, if you decide to sell something in the auction, the buyer pays shipping costs. So if your gun gets bought by some guy on the other side of known space, he’d have to add a shit ton of money to get it there. The blueprint can be sent cheap, it really opens up your market possibilities.”

“You can also reverse the process. Put the gun into the manufactory, add a bunch of credits, and it munches up the gun and spits out a blueprint. It really just depends on how far and wide you want your purchasing audience to be whether you sell the object or the plans.”

“And that gun would start an insane universal bidding war.”

“C’mon,” said Matt “I’ve got a C and C 5. Shannon’s up. Time to get some werewolf payback.”

They crowded into a transport that had a slightly larger interior, as well as a door on the far bulkhead. Shannon went through that door as the rest grabbed four seats. Duncan made sure to grab one away from the door. He didn’t want to be first out this time. He remembered that tapping all too well, and didn’t want to be the first to encounter them again.

“What’s a ‘C and C’ 5?”

Matt answered, “C and C means command and control. That’s what Shannon does. It’s our version of an RPG healer. She controls the power; the power feeds our armor suits and, thanks to the conduit, your gun.”

“She’s also got access to a much better map,” said Vince, “and can feed us much better information than we get on our own.”

“She’s also got control of the communications,” shouted Shannon from forward, “so she decides what playlist gets used. And, today, like it or not, you bitches get some Beastie Boys!”

As She’s Crafty’s Zeppelin-esque guitars and pounding drums filled the interior of the transport, Vince, Matt and Clancey all started putting on heavy armor.

“Since you’ve got that new toy,” said Matt, “I think we should play this one a bit differently. We’ve got our heavy weapons and armor, so the rest of this mission really should be a piece of cake. We’re going to leave you here. Just climb up on top of the shuttle and cover us. With that Hawkeye, you’ll have no problem keeping them off our asses.”

“I’ve never shot it,” protested Duncan, “I have no idea how much lead, drop and all that long range shooting crap to use.” He took one magazine of ten and put it into the lower part of the rail gun receiver.

“It’ll be about half a kilometer, max,” said Clancey. “The muzzle velocity of that thing isn’t anything like you’d get with a rifle, it’s way higher.”

“Plus,” said Vince, “that scope will take care of all of the calcluations. Just put the pipper on the target and pull the trigger. You’ll be close, if not dead on.”

“Ok,” said Duncan, “Remember that forest to the east? You guys might want to move over there first. A bunch of werewolves came at me as I was running back to the shuttle.”

“How many?”

“Dunnno, Vince. I was more worried about not getting eaten than counting the diners,” laughed Duncan.

“Ok, Ok,” laughed Vince. “We’ll head up into the forest. You keep an eye out ahead of us, but mainly on that colony. I don’t want those fuckers to get between us and the shuttle this time.”

“Are you girls ready yet?” Shannon’s voice came over the radio. She cut the music.

Duncan watched his three heavily armored friends exit the shuttle. He stood, followed and, once outside, looked up to the roof of the craft. Leaping, he grabbed onto a stanchion and pulled himself onto the roof. The stanchion supported a meter wide disc, some kind of radar dish he thought. He sat next to it, feet dangling off the side of the shuttle, and heaved his rail gun onto to the dish.

He lowered the bipod on the end of the barrel and pulled the butt into his shoulder. The weight of the gun now supported, Duncan fine-tuned the aspect toward the east end of the colony and put his eye to the scope.

“Nothing in the village,” he said. “Scanning back through the trees to you guys.”

“Nothing on the ‘dar,” said Shannon, “and no heat or sound signatures. Yet.”

Matt, at the head of an arrowhead formation, was heading northeast towards the woods. Duncan swiveled the gun and put his scope on the tree line. He started experimenting with the controls; zooming in then out and cycling through the infrared, low light and normal visual modes. He stopped on infrared. He’d noticed a smudge, a blur, back into the trees.

“Is there any reason to assume anything out there is friendly?” he asked. “I’ve got a heat signature back in the woods.”

“Shit,” said Shannon. “I’ve got nothing on broad scan. That scope rocks. Switching to focused scan. Northeast?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, got it,” she said. “The temperature is 40 degrees. Too hot for a human. 300 meters.”

“’K.” Duncan centered the scope on the mass, breathed in, and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, jumped in his arms. The slug ripped through the air, unerring, into the woods, leaving a visible wake of disturbed air.

His three friends involuntarily ducked as the slug tore through the air above their heads and the report of the gun cracked the entire area.

Duncan resettled the gun and put his head back down. On the left of the scope’s screen, he saw a vertical bar had dropped to nothing, then raise back to full in the next second. The power gauge. Shannon had connected the gun’s conduit to the shuttle power supply. Duncan thumbed a button above the grip, reloading the weapon.

“Holy shit,” said Matt. “Now I know what being almost hit by lightning sounds like.” The three began running toward the target, highlighted by Shannon on their maps. They got to the site. Vince laughed.

“Good thing we don’t worry about trying to skin the hides off of these things. All that’s left of this guy is a splash of werewolf soup. A big splash.”

“Really?” asked Duncan.

“No shit,” answered Clancey. “That round went through and exploded a tree behind the ‘wolf. A few dozen grams of thirteen millimeter tungsten travelling at a few thousand meters per second blows shit up real good.”

“And that’s just the slug round,” he continued, “you can get all sorts of special kinds of really evil stuff to shoot out of that thing.”

The three began moving through the woods, parallel to the treeline, northward toward the village. Duncan shifted the gun and centered the scope on the circle of huts. He could just make out one part of the chest he got the rail gun plans from. He then noticed the first wisps of smoke coming from behind one of the buildings. It looked to him like it was coming from the dead center of the colony. He told the guys, they slowed and spread further apart. They were now about a hundred meters from the easternmost building. They stopped and all three dropped prone.

“Ok. I can just see into the middle of the town square,” said Matt. “It looks like they have a colonist tied up and are lighting a fire underneath him. Can you see anything Duncan?”

“Nope.”

“Try moving around a bit to the northwest.”

Duncan rose, picked up his gun, and moved to the other side of the shuttle. He raised the stock to his shoulder and looked through the scope. He still couldn’t see anything, so he jumped down and ran to a small hill, about thirty meters away. Shannon came to him over the radio.

“Duncan, if they start getting chopped up, I might have to turn off your guns power and focus on regenerating their armor.”

“Fine,” he said as he cleared the hill’s crest. He dropped to prone, and looked through the scope.

“Ok. I can see into the colony now. Yeah, there are a few ‘wolves there. One really big one. And they do have one human over a fire. Another tied up on the ground near them.”

“Good,” said Matt. “We’re almost to the outside of the village. Once we’re in place, you shoot the big guy. That’ll be our signal to charge.”

“They must be freakin’ deaf,” said Vince, “not to have heard that rail gun.”

Duncan kept his sight squared on the large werewolf while watching, on his map, his three friends move slowly toward the buildings. He cycled through the scope modes and noticed that the large wolf disappeared while in infra-red mode. It stood out fine in visible light mode; his fur a ready contrast against the white of the village buildings. But he didn’t have an IR signature. Interesting, he thought; the other werewolves showed up fine on IR. A moment after his friends reached the outer perimeter of the village, he heard them say, in turn, “Ready.”

He changed the view back to visible light and focused back on the scope’s target reticle. The large werewolf had moved, so he re-centered it, dropped the sight onto the center of the beast’s torso. He fired.

The gun kicked again, and once he got the gun back under control and refocused the big bad wolf was gone. Vince, Clancey and Matt, running full speed, charged into the square. The crackle of their weapons came through the radio. He saw nothing more of any werewolves, then saw his friends reach the two captives. One of them pulled the first colonist out of the fire and cut his binds. Another was releasing the second.

“Clive, can you turn on my friend’s names?”

He could now see, through his scope, that it was Clancey freeing the first colonist, Vince the second, and that Matt was now opening up the chest in the center.

“No new loot,” said Matt, closing the chest. He moved toward what was left of the werewolf boss.

Duncan reloaded the gun, then began to stand.

“I don’t understand why we haven’t seen the ‘Mission Over’ message yet,” said Clancey.

Matt answered, “Must be …”

“SHIT!” shouted Shannon.

Running up the hill from the northwest, a werewolf was yards away from Duncan. Teeth bared, it leaped toward him. Duncan fell, backward, pulling the trigger as much out of reflex as conscious thought. The werewolf’s torso disintegrated as the slug tore through it. Unslowed, the tungsten spear left a vapor trail as it sped into the sky.

Shocked, Duncan sat and looked around, disoriented. He saw across the top of his view:

Mission Completed.

Chapter 5

“I’m so sorry, Duncan,” said Shannon. They’d returned from the mission and were hanging around Matt’s place. “I have no idea how I didn’t see him. His movement must have been masked by you.”

“Again, no problem,” Duncan laughed. Shannon had been pleading forgiveness since the mission wrapped. “That makes sense. I was between him and the shuttle. I also didn’t get any sound indications on my map. He must have wandered off in that direction when the shuttle lifted off after our first mission, and then my shooting brought him back.”

“Or the big bad wolf sent him to find out what Duncan’s rail gun noise was,” suggested Matt.

While talking, he was also looking over his character sheet. After the mission, Clive had notified him that he had some skill points to spend. He was looking through the Combat Arms section.

“Do I need to spend some points on Sniper training?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t,” said Clancey, “That’s usually helpful in giving you a better indication of target range and in judging wind speed and direction through the scope. With a regular rifle and scope. With that scope, that doesn’t really matter. It will calculate all of that based on environmental factors as well as your slug loadout. Just target, point and shoot with that thing.”

“Yeah,” said Vince “If I was you, I’d drop everything into getting a heavy armor certification. You’ll need that before you’re allowed to rent any, and if you don’t have the cert, your insurance for armor you buy would be stupidly expensive.”

“Do any of you want to use the rail gun?” Duncan asked, a bit overwhelmed by all of this newfound power.

The others shook their heads.

“Nah,” said Clancey, “we specialize in the fast in and fast out, hit-and-run raid.”

“The old in-out, in-out,” said Shannon, thrusting her right index finger through a circle made by the index finger and thumb of her left hand.

Vince laughed, “Long missions eat into our drinking time. Sniping isn’t really much needed the way we play.”

“You should sell it and buy a full set of kick ass equipment,” added Shannon.

Matt had been sitting, quietly. Now he spoke up.

“Who wants to hear about the loot?” They all turned to him. “First off, the mission had two parts. It turns out we not only needed to find out why comms from the colony had been lost, namely the werewolves, but we also got a bonus for colonists rescued. I’m going to give my share to mister first timer.”

The rest of his friends gave their assent as well.

“Ok then,” continued Matt, “that means that Taipan gets about ten thousand credits.”

“Is that a lot?”

Clancey responded, “It’s a really good start for a newbie. Almost enough for a starter set of power armor. You can probably get an OK outfit with that, but I’d wait. Especially if you’re going to focus on sniping …”

“Camper!” yelled Vince.

“ … in which case go on some more missions, do some camping, uhm sniping that is, and get enough for a really kick ass set of armor.”

“Or,” added Shannon, “sell it, like I said.”

“But yeah,” said Vince, “that is a lot for a single mission.”

“I’m not done,” grinned Matt. “In addition to the bonus for the colonists, that big bad wolf that Duncan wasted had a bounty on his head. He wasn’t just a non-player character, Duncan, he was an AI, which is what we call NPC’s that have a character arc. He’d done a lot of colony hits, and as he fought, and lived, his skills grew. He was a really bad dude. If Duncan hadn’t splashed him, he would’ve given the three of us a really nasty fight.”

“Sweet,” said Shannon

Matt continued, “yeah, and he dropped some interesting loot as well.” A dialog box popped up in Duncan’s view, he accepted it and examined the item.

Cowl of the Wolf. Won by Duncan Sheriden August 27, 2021

He put it on. His friends laughed.

“You look like some kind of shaman!” hooted Shannon.

Duncan opened his character screen. His head was now shrouded in fur, the wolf’s head staring over the top of his eyebrows. Red eyes glaring, fangs bared, ears pointing upward. The fur extended down over his shoulders into a short cape. He brought up the object information.

Cowl of the Wolf. Provides visual camouflage in similarly colored environments, as well as infra-red cover in all environments. Reduces species aggression from Canis Arcturus to neutral.

That explains why the big bad wolf didn’t show up on the infra-red scan, Duncan realized.

Meanwhile, his friends had also been reading the description.

“What does neutral aggression mean?” asked Shannon.

“I’m not sure,” said Vince, ”but it sounds like if he’s wearing that, they won’t automatically attack.”

“I’m checking the wiki now,” said Clancey, “and Vince is right. Apparently, if he was wearing that cowl, or anything with that species’ neutral aggression tag, he could even land on the werewolf home planet and not be attacked.”

“I haven’t been able to find a record of a Cowl of the Wolf in any of the wikis or player auction house,” said Matt, “and the neutral aggression bit is really rare on any items.”

“What’s Arcturus”, asked Duncan. A display popped up, centered on his view. It showed a starmap with the Sun and Arcturus highlighted. Arcturus wasn’t all that far, relatively speaking, from the Earth.

The others were obviously studying as well. Vince responded.

“A star about thirty seven light years from Earth, or about six hundred light years from this station.”

“The werewolves,” added Shannon, “aren’t actually from Arcturus. Their home planet is around a star about three light years from there. Called Eta Bootis.” She started singing, “I like Eta Bootis and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny!”

“And with that,” said Matt,”I need a beer.”

“Stoofoo! I’m a great singer!”

“Are you going to pass around some virtual drinks or something?” asked Duncan.

“We could,” answered Matt, “Or we could log off, head to the bar and take advantage of Shannon’s employee discount. You in?”

“Sure.” said Duncan.

“I get an employee discount?”

Duncan took off his helmet, got up from his couch and walked into the kitchen. His apartment wasn’t large, but it was well appointed. Someone had taken an old, early twentieth century, rail warehouse and converted it into lofts. Century old clay brick walls and rough hewn beam ceilings were accented by modern stainless steel appliances and shining wood floors. The only real drawback, apart from the price, was that the rail line still ran. Every few hours, freight trains pulled past, shaking the place. It had obviously been decided that the aesthetics of the apartments outweighed the need to add sound proofing. He’d gotten used to it fairly quickly, though.

He pulled open the refrigerator, grabbed some food and a beer, and walked back to the couch. Sitting, he turned on the TV and told it to switch to the computer input. He had a bit of time until his friends could get to the bar, which was only a half a block away from him. One of the reasons he wasn’t too off-put by the apartment’s high rent was that it was in the middle of downtown. Or, as Shannon put it, within stumbling distance of all the bars. He decided to use the extra time provided to read up on the game.

As he ate, he read through the various activities, called ‘Occupations’ in game. Everything his friends had described, and everything he had experienced so far, fell under the ‘Soldier’ umbrella of occupations. That was, however, only one of the branching pathways he could choose.

Matt had described the game progression as being based on activity, instead of “class” which was how many games defined gameplay pathways. The only limit to what you wanted to do was, in many cases, access to equipment. You could pilot spacecraft in combat, or as a miner. You could manage colonies, large or small. There were a substantial number of players who spent all of their time in one of the various space station casinos, gambling with game credits.

He switched to reading about the werewolves and their home planet. Not much was known, apart from the location. Their rabid xenophobia, as well as ravenous appetites, left little room for any exploration.

Finishing the last of his now warm beer, he sank back into the couch and started to think. The fundamentals of a plan formed. He knew, or at least thought he knew, how he was going to play this new game. As he reached for his VR helmet, his phone buzzed. A text message had come through. It was Matt.

“You’re not coming are you?

Duncan looked at the time. He’d been reading for over an hour.

“Uh, no. Sorry.”

“I knew it! I told them you’d get sucked into the game again! First round is on you next time. Have fun!”

Duncan put back on the helmet, reentered the game world. The nascent plan had no firm path, but he knew one thing; it was going to be expensive. He left Matt’s place, and entered Mission Control and made his way to the manufactory, opening it. He took a deep breath, pulled the rail gun out of his inventory and placed it inside. He selected the “create blueprint” option on the control menu, confirmed the five hundred credit cost, and took the resulting plan from the slot.

Duncan then brought up the ‘Player Auctions’ menu, set the filter to sort from highest priced items to lowest. He didn’t bother to read what the highest priced item was, he just read the ‘Buy it now’ option. Five million credits. He decided to set that as his reserve price. If reserve wasn’t meant, he’d auction it off again with a lower one, but he wanted to be sure that he got every possible credit. It might not wind up making a difference, but he’d decided that his first foray into the player auction wasn’t going to result in some other player getting a bargain.

“Clive, setup an auction for the rail gun plans. Set the reserve price to be five million credits”

“Certainly, sir. Shall I set the auction to run for the default amount of time, forty eight hours? Do you want the auction under your name or shall I set it up to be anonymous?”

“Anonymous please, and two days is fine.”

He looked at the newly open slot in his inventory pack. “Well,” he thought, “that’s that. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

For the first time since entering the game, he began to look around the space station. The mission control room stretched out to the left and right, curving behind him as he looked toward the viewport. Dozens of other players, singly and in groups, were moving through the room. Some returning from missions, some leaving on them.

He pulled up a map of the station. The mission control room was a torus; he could walk in either direction and wind up where he began in the donut shaped room that circled the outside of the station. Inside of the ring was where the player homes, stores, bars, and everything else was located. They weren’t specifically located on the map, just listed. Walking into any of the portals dotted around the interior of the mission control room could take you to any of the other rooms in the station, so the actual layout of most of the station was irrelevant, with a few exceptions. Like Mission Control and the Hangar.

He turned around, walked through the door he had used to get in, and answered ‘Hangar’ when asked for his destination.

The hangar deck was at the top of the station, a dome. A wall about three meters high stretched around the base of the dome, with airlocks spaced evenly around the circumference. Above the wall, stretching to the top of the dome, was glass or carbon lattice or whatever. Beyond he could see ships of many sizes coming toward and moving away from the station.

His phone rang in his helmet, the notification across the top of his viewscreen said “Clancey”.

“Answer.” He paused, “What’s up?”

“You’re auctioning off the gun?” Duncan could hear sound of the bar in the background.

“How did you know?”

“Fuck texts me whenever there’s an auction started with certain keywords,” he answered.

“Fuck?”

“Yah,” laughed Clancey, “that’s what I named my in game assistant. That way, whenever I start cussing in game, it calls up my assistant instead of yelling it over the radio”

Duncan laughed, “Any bids?”

“It’s up to fifty thousand.”

Duncan’s heart fell. That wouldn’t get anywhere close to funding The Plan.

“But don’t worry about that. The auction control software won’t let you set up your auto-bids until you place at least one bid. Fifty K is actually pretty damn healthy for a new auction. The price will skyrocket at the end when the auto-bidding takes over.”

“God, you scared me for a second. I did set a reserve of five million, though.”

“I don’t doubt that’ll be met. Some Corp or Clan will buy it, and all of them will want it. What are you going to do with your newfound wealth?”

“You’ll see,” laughed Duncan.

They hung up and Duncan resumed walking toward the center of the dome.

Clive, bring up the ship purchase menu

He started reading, selecting options. He went back and forth a few times, trying to create something that he thought best suited the plan. When he thought he had what he needed, he had it configure the ship. The price was what he feared it would be. Astronomical. He began to see why individuals didn’t buy ships. They were used mainly by groups who could pool their resources to buy one. Large groups. He hoped Clancey was right about that auction.

Closing the menus, Duncan decided to begin exploring the station.

Chapter 6

Birmingham, West Midlands. UK.

Eric West paced in the computer room in his small, two bedroom flat. Six high resolution screens were arrayed in two rows of three, one over the other, on one wall. They provided the only light in the room. The center top screen showed a view of space dominated on one side by a hemisphere of a rocky planetoid; a shepherd moon in the ring around a gas giant. The rest of the monitors were divided among charts and instrument panels.

He stopped, leaned forward, and looked at the center bottom screen. It presented a three dimensional view of a star system. The star system that he’d been stalking all day. He touched and dragged on the screen, rotating the map to get a better view of the trade routes laid over it. The green lines cut through the system, converging as they approached the system’s fourth planet; the jump point for this system. All ships passing through this system in hyperspace had to pass that point. All systems had a jump point; nobody knew why they had to be used. All part of that silly, ‘lost tech’, Old Ones cover story the game used, he thought.

Bright red dots marked spots on the map that West’s research had identified as past pirate activity. As the cargo routes came together, the frequency of attacks increased, but falling off rapidly as the routes approached one astronomical unit from the fourth planet. He confirmed that his ship was still targeting this region with its passive sensors. Throughout the day, at irregular intervals, he’d tracked the bright green dots of cargo craft as they approached or left the system. The shields created for faster than light travel spread tachyons, faster than light particles, that were somehow detectable via the Old One technology. This allowed anyone with the requisite equipment to follow the progress of FTL ships through the various star systems. But there’d been no sign of his prey. There was one green dot at the edge of his detection range, approaching him.

“Number One, how often do attacks occur in this system and how long has it been.”

“Attacks average once every sixty-four hours,” answered his assistant. “It has been ninety-three hours since an attack.”

The last answer had increased by thirty minutes since the previous time he’d asked. He resumed pacing.

“Overlay sensor ranges”

Concentric rings, centered on his ship, appeared on the map. At each subsequently larger ring, the sensor range increased by one light minute. The seventh ring intersected the heaviest concentration of red dots. He was seven light minutes away, hiding in the shadow of the fourth planet’s moon. Unless a raider knew just where to look for him, he wouldn’t be found. He’d been silent all day. Nothing radiating. No chance of anyone picking him up passively. Behind him, the gas giant’s ring would probably prevent any active scan from picking him up as well. He waited. Watched.

Seven minutes after an attack, his sensors would detect the torpedo signature and he would instantly go to flank speed and the clock would begin to countdown the seven minutes until the pirate detected him. Six minutes after starting, he’d reach the L5 Lagrange point, an area of stable equilibrium between the gravity created by the pulls of the planet and its moon. At that point, effectively outside of the gravitational well of the planet, he’d be able to light off his jump drive, already set with the coordinates of the attack area. Thirteen minutes after it attacked, he’d jump in on top of the pirate, all of his weapon systems armed and primed: one full minute before the sensors on the pirate ship detected his sudden appearance near the moon. He fully intended for those detection systems to have been vaporized by that time.

Assuming it took longer than thirteen minutes for the pirate to loot the cargo ship, he’d have a kill. Assuming he managed to both prime his weapons and his shields on the six minute flight to the L5 point. Assuming that while doing that, he also had time to input the exact jump trajectory to the contact point. Assuming that he’d jumped close enough to the pirate to wipe him out with a single broadside, and didn’t get drawn into a running, gunning, fight.

His problems were manifold, but manageable. Assuming everything went well.

Ideally he’d have the rest of his crew online, managing the various stations and systems throughout the ship. Their advanced character skills, appropriate for each station, would greatly decrease the time it took to prepare the ship. They would also be able to work in parallel, unlike his AI crew. As it was, however, they’d become less and less agreeable to playing the waiting game required to land the big prey. He’d tried to explain it to them in those terms. The waiting was boring, yes, but the payoff could be huge. But they seemed more interested in jumping onto planets and shooting aliens. He’d enjoyed that too, and was happy to lead the group in doing so after they’d formed.

“It got old, though,” he said to himself, and when he saw the group had acquired enough to buy an older class destroyer, he’d convinced them that it was the way to go. Hell, some of the guys had even put in real money to help fix up and equip the ship. He just didn’t understand why they weren’t here. He had himself invested in getting six top of the line monitors, thinking that commanding the crew, his crew, this way would be more efficient than using the VR interface. All of that, he’d done for them.

Now, when the payoff finally looked like it was about to happen, they were nowhere to be found.

“Number One, is any of my crew online?”

“Negative. Shall I send out a call to arms?”

“No. Fuck them. If they’re not interested, I don’t need them.”

He sat in a large leather high backed chair in the middle of the room. “Fuck them,” he repeated to the room. “If I can’t count on them now, what’s it going to be like during the bloody World Cup next summer?” He pounded on the chair’s armrest. “Fuck them.”

As if in response, a red light flared on the map.

“Captain, I’ve detected …”

“I can see that. Flank speed! Waypoint 1!”

“Yes, sir.”

“You answer a command with ‘aye aye’. I’ve told you again and again!”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Shut up you fucking idiot.”

He stood, approached the monitors. The pirate’s torpedo had been a hit. The green dot had come to a rest and the red dot moved to intercept it. The torpedoes didn’t damage ships, they disrupted the shields generated to protect the ship during faster than light travel. After the shield was disrupted, the ship dropped out of warp space into normal space, and the pirates could board and plunder until the FTL drive regenerated the shield; about twenty minutes. Once that happened, the fully automated cargo ship jumped back to light speed and resumed its course.

After the shield was back up, there was no way to remove loot from the ship, so unless the pirate wanted to spend another very expensive torpedo to keep it there, there was no reason for them to remain in the area. That was especially so since a popular, but expensive, add on that many cargo ship owners were now buying was an ansible-based distress signal that sent out a plea that was instantaneously transmitted to the nearest space station; which would then dispatch a Navy ship. The response time depended upon how far away the attack was from the station; the Navy usually arrived very quickly if only a system or two away, but even at the furthest reaches they could be expected in less than twenty minutes. Eric wanted to be there well before that could happen. Sharing credit for the kill was not part of his plan.

He began working on one of the screens, bringing up his shields. They took the longest to initiate of any ship board system, about five minutes, and they also sent out the largest electro magnetic signature. Any shipping within about one AU would be able to detect him in about eight minutes at most, as the shield’s field emission radiated out at light speed. He set the shields at twenty percent of ship’s power. Weak, but he didn’t expect to be hit. Unfortunately, the power allocation had no effect on shield generation time. One hundred percent power to shields or twenty percent power both took around five minutes to generate or regenerate. The difference was in how quickly they were depleted after being hit.

He wasn’t really concerned about shields, however, but wanted to be able to set the remaining, majority, of the ship’s power reserve toward the weapons. Unlike the merchant class ships, his class didn’t have to share power between engines and shields; he had a dedicated power source for the engines. But he did have to share between the shields and weapons, and his shields needed a constant power supply to maintain them, also unlike the merchant who could set shield power and forget it. His shields, though, could take a much heavier pounding as a result. But he had to choose between a heavy offense or a heavy defense, and he wanted the first shot to count. To be the only shot needed.

“A quick short, sharp shock, they don’t do it again. Dig it?” he said in his best Cockney accent.

“Are you asking me to play ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, Captain?”

“Sure, Number One,” laughed Eric, “but only until we reach waypoint one.”

As he finished the initiation sequence for the shields, he moved to the monitor he had dedicated as the weapons station. He was going to put everything, eighty percent of ship’s power, into the plasma cannon. One shot should be able to take out most light pirates. For this kind of job, they usually used a small mining ship. They were small, relatively cheap, and had a decent sized cargo bay for loot. The controls for the torpedo were inside the weapon, and once activated and launched required no further input, so the pirates didn’t worry about buying any weapons systems upgrades for their ships.

Where they did, however, tend to spend was in stealth. Surface coatings that could reduce the albedo of their ships to almost nothing. They also added active camouflage systems that received star light on one side of the ship and projected it on the opposite side, so you couldn’t find them just by looking for parts of space where stars weren’t. Unless they were moving fast enough that they couldn’t conceal either their engine emissions or the miniscule heat generated by encountering randoms atoms of space stuff, they were next to invisible; the only thing that gave them away was the wake, and subsequent explosion, of the torpedo.

They also tended, for stealth and price concerns, to avoid any sort of combat shields. So while they were very very hard to detect if they were running silent, they were very very easy to kill when found.

He finished bringing the weapons online and looked to the shield screen. They were at sixty percent. Three minutes. Right on schedule. Three minutes to go until jump. He moved to the navigation screen.

“Number One. Overlay the jump locations I calculated earlier.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

A grid like spread of blue letters, Greek, appeared. One was almost on top of the red dot.

“Remove all but Delta. Add its coordinates to the jump drive control.”

The map adjusted. He reached out and pulled down on the map screen, rotating the solar system ninety degrees from the ecliptic. His jump location was too “high”.

“Reduce the ‘X’ coordinate by twenty thousand kilometers”

The blue dot now sat almost on top of the red dot. He was now thirty seconds from the L5 point. His warp drive was online and targeted. His shields were at full capacity and his plasma cannon ready to fire. The music, now playing ‘On the Run’, reached a crescendo. The words “Live for today, gone tomorrow” erupted from his speakers, followed by maniacal laughter. Then the music suddenly stopped. He’d reached waypoint one.

“Someone’s about to get a very rude surprise,” Eric chuckled.

Chapter 7

“Captain, we have reached Waypoint One,” said the AI executive officer on the HMS Westy.

“Initiate jump drive,” replied Eric West.

The starfield through the viewport didn’t change noticeably, but Eric didn’t expect it to. The jump was too short. The center point of his system map, however, was now on the red and green dots. In addition, his ship’s inertia had been bled by the jump and he was now stationary, at least as far as forward momentum was concerned.

He looked to his scan display and the passive instruments showed the location of the cargo ship and nothing else.

“Come port forty-five degrees.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The starfield view began moving toward the right and the cargo ship, in the distance, came onto the left side of the screen. He reached for the scan display and set active scanning in a cone centered on the visible ship. There were no returns other than the cargo ship. The pirate was no longer near its prey. He widened the scanning cone, which had the effect of increasing the area scanned at the cost of lowering the fidelity of the information gleaned. Still no returns.

He looked to the red dot on the starmap. It was no help. Scanned from seven light minutes, nearly one astronomical unit, his sensors had only been able to place the ship in a cube of space whose measure was far too large for anything like an exact location.

He changed the starmap for a local, tactical map. It centered on his ship and showed the cargo ship a few hundred kilometers out, off his port bow. He began, quickly to mark out a cube of space on the map, centered on the cargo ship and much larger than the area his long range scan had enclosed the pirate within, then selected sensor control.

“All ahead flank,” he shouted, “following the course I’ve laid in. Drop a passive sensor buoy every hundred kilometers.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

At least, he thought, it seems that dipshit AI has figured out how to respond correctly. He spun the tactical map on its axis, first one way, then another. His active scan was still locked on the cargo ship, and its scanning area shifted as the ship moved through the course. It was highly unlikely to detect anything while he was moving so quickly, but it was also likely to keep the pirate, if he was still here, from moving at more than the barest crawl. No doubt the crew of the pirate was shitting their pants, he thought grimly, as they watched him hunt. He smiled.

He switched back to the starmap, and dragged the information displayed backward along the timeline. He paused at the moment before his jump, then set the display to run backward at 1:1 time. There was no appreciable movement of the red dot, so, he thought, it couldn’t have snuck away and jumped while he was busy preparing his ship for combat. All ships, even pirates, had to achieve a few percent of C, light speed, before making a jump; the kinetic energy being used to ‘jump start’ the hyperdrive shield, it was believed, which seemed to explain why ships emerged from faster than light with no forward velocity.

So they couldn’t jump while stationary, and he would have detected movement of the speed required to jump; the bastard had snuck in and he was trying to sneak away. He reset the map, then changed it back to tactical.

“Was there a distress call sent by the cargo ship?”

“None that we detected, Captain.”

Good, he thought, no need to worry about any Navy boats showing up and stealing his kill.

The cargo ship, shields now raised, began accelerating. Reaching the required speed, it jumped.

He moved back to his chair, sat, and watched the tactical map show his ship moving through the kill box he’d described, every now and then dropping a pinpoint of light designating a buoy.

“As long as I’ve got more patience than you, mister pirate, I’ll whittle down this box until I’ve found you and then I’ll kill you. And I’ve got all the patience in the world.”

After the route was complete, the buoys laid, he got up and began rotating the map, looking for any holes he might have left around the edges of the cube. There were none he could see. The passive array hadn’t yet detected anything, but he didn’t expect it to. “It’s not there to find the bastard,” he muttered, “but to pen him in. If he tries to leave the bounded area, he’ll have to get close enough to one of them to set it off.”

He began moving the ship around the outside of the cube, focusing the wide beam of his active sensors toward the middle of it. He was getting returns, but nothing specific enough to start an attack. All he could tell from his hunt so far was that he had, indeed, boxed the pirate in.

“Number One, are any of the crew online yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Shit. Setup an open, pilot mission. Minimum requirements, minimum payout.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

He needed someone, anyone, to take one of his fighters out and use the onboard active sensors to help him triangulate and nail down the exact location of the bastard. He’d prefer to set it on autopilot and let it run the pattern on its own, but he couldn’t do that without a pilot sitting in it. He plotted a course for the fighter, then set a complimentary course for himself. Between the two, they should have no trouble.

“It doesn’t make any damn sense,” he said out loud, ”why do I need some idiot sitting in the ship?”

“What?” he heard from his left.

He leaped up, reached the screen setup to view the starfield, in reality the bridge view out the forward windows, and slewed the orientation to see inside the bridge. There was another player standing there. That was quick, he thought. He looked at the guy.

“What the hell is a ‘Taipan’” Eric growled, still startled.

“It’s a snake. From Australia, I think.” the newcomer answered.

“Well, ‘snake from Oz’,” he mocked, “I need you to babysit one of my fighters while it conducts a search routine I program into it. Think you can manage that?”

“Sure!” he paused. “How?”

Eric’s jaw dropped. “What? How?” He looked at Taipan’s clothes. “Jesus Christ! You’re still wearing your newbie suit. How long have you been playing?”

“A few hours.”

“How many missions?”

“This is my third. But my first as a pilot.”

“Shit,” said Eric, resignedly. “Go through that door on your left. When asked for a destination, say ‘Hangar’. Get in the first fighter. Don’t touch anything.”

He watched Taipan go through the door, which closed behind him. Eric muttered derisively, “I may be new at this, too, but at least I’m prepared. I know what I’m doing.” He spun the bridge view forward again, then scanned his sensors. They hadn’t picked up anything.

“Number One, is the pilot in the fighter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Launch it.”

“Ok newbie,” he said, “here’s the plan. I’m going to be sending your ship around and controlling its sensors. I need you to do two things for me.”

“What’s that?” he heard over the radio.

“‘Jack’ and ‘Shit’. Do nothing. Touch nothing. Look at the pretty stars and keep your bloody mouth shut,” he growled. “Can you manage that?”

“Aye aye.”

Eric rolled his eyes, then forgot the newbie. He selected the fighter on the tactical map and began designating its course. Once it reached the side of the cube opposite the destroyer’s location, he had it stop and turn to face the center of the search area.

“Ok, Taipan, tell your AI buddy to do this: Set widebeam active scan,” he paused, “azimuth one eighty, elevation one eighty,” he paused again, “initiate scan.”

A pyramid appeared on the tactical screen, pointed at the fighter, showing the area the fighter was now scanning. It was a wide beam scan, the widest possible, and wouldn’t find the pirate on its own, but coupled with the tight beam scans he was about to run from the destroyer, they would rapidly run the hapless prey to ground. He selected a waypoint for the destroyer that was ninety-degrees out from the fighter.

“Number One, flank speed to …” his voice caught in his throat.

Fire leapt from the fighter, twin beams of laser. And again. They tore through the absorbent coatings on a Class D freighter, now highlighted on his sensors in red. Missiles joined the lasers as the newbie unleashed all of his firepower.

“NO!” screamed Eric. Then leaped for the weapon station. He highlighted the pirate, selected his plasma cannons and yelled,

“Number One! Full broadside. FIRE!”

The three turrets, one fore and two aft, fired. His roll angle to the pirate was awkward, but all three had a bearing on the target. The beams sliced through the ship, the fire from turret one going through the ships engine core which instantly reached a critical mass and exploded, taking the entire merchant ship cum pirate with it. Across the top of his bridge view screen he saw;

Target destroyed. You are credited with 36 percent. Assist.

“Number One, recall that fighter. Maximum speed.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Stunned, he turned and moved to the chair. He sat, pounded once on the chair’s arm.

“What the hell just happened?” he muttered.

Over the radio, a reply, “Well, I saw …”

“SHUT THE HELL UP!” screamed Eric.

He saw that the fighter was back in the hanger. Then he looked to the scan display. Nothing remained of the pirate. He’d been so thrown he hadn’t been able to target his fire. Hadn’t been able to hit it just to disable. He must have hit the core. Or, he thought, that dipshit newbie did. He didn’t even have the decency to just use lasers. The asshole used missiles. His missiles. They weren’t expensive, but they weren’t free.

He heard the door to the bridge open but didn’t, couldn’t, slew the bridge view around to look at the newbie who’d ruined his kill. He wouldn’t even get proper credit since the guy wasn’t grouped with him or part of his crew; his worthless, useless fucking crew. He seethed.

“Get off my fucking ship,” he whispered.

Chapter 8

Duncan walked back into Mission Control. Bemused. He began replaying the mission in his head; he couldn’t understand what he’d done to get that kind of reaction.

He’d been ignoring all of the other players moving around him, coming from or going to missions. Then he noticed that several stopped in front of him. One spoke.

“Taipan. Did you just get back from a mission on board the HMS Westy?”

Shocked, he looked at each of them. They all wore bulky, scarred armor. All in the same colors. A uniform. All carried large, menacing weapons.

“I guess,” he replied.

One spoke, “Yeah, this is the guy. We found him.”

Duncan looked to the left, then the right. More players, soldiers, wearing the same uniform armor, brandishing the same kinds of weapons, joined the group. He was surrounded. Duncan’s heart began to race.

The same one that spoke before spread his arms, including the entire group.

“We’d all like to apologize on behalf of the clan.”

“What?” asked Duncan, confused.

“Judging by the semi-coherent email blast we all just got, you’ve had a run in with our fearless leader,” said the spokesman. Duncan turned on player IDs. The speakers name was ‘Blesk’.

“Our fearless leader is a dick,” added another, labelled ‘Tex’.

“We’ve been informed,” continued Blesk, “that you are persona non grata. You must have really pissed him off. We can’t wait to hear what happened!”

“I’m not sure. I selected a pilot mission to take a fighter off of a destroyer to help sink a pirate,” he began. “When I got there, a guy on the bridge told me what to do. To get into the fighter and not touch anything, that he’d take care of everything.”

“That sounds like Eric,” Duncan heard from behind him.

“So I got in the ship, it took off on its own and started moving. I didn’t touch anything. I started reading about pirate hunting on the wiki, just to get an idea of how I could help.”

He paused, spread his hands, “And then I saw a weird shimmer in the stars in front of me. I’d read that was one of the things that happened when you were really close to a ship with cloaking on. So I grabbed the stick and opened fire.”

He looked around.

“I don’t get it. We were there to kill the pirate. We killed the pirate. Why’d he get so freaked out?”

Blesk laughed, “Your mistake was thinking we were there to kill the pirate, when in reality he was there to kill the pirate. You were just there because he couldn’t do it by himself.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he continued, “the guy’s gone full Captain Ahab. Hell, he doesn’t even have to make it as hard on himself as he does. All he has to do is sign up the ship to answer a distress call, then he could jump into instances with us.”

“Instances?” asked Duncan.

“Missions,” answered Tex.

Blesk nodded, continued, “Yeah. He could come with us, have some fun, and we’d get a notification when we finished a mission if a distress call was received while we were playing. Then we could all jump into the destroyer and go hunt down the pirate.”

“But he doesn’t want to do it that way,” said a voice behind Duncan. He turned, saw it was someone named ‘Third’.

“He wants us all to sit in the ship, each of us manning our stations,” continued Third, “like good little sailors, obedient to our worshipful captain.”

“As if staring at my navigation screen, all day, is in any way fun,” added Tex. “But since he named me the ‘Nav Officer’, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Why?” asked Duncan.

“Don’t know, brother,” responded Blesk. “Maybe it addresses his fantasy of being a ship captain. Maybe he likes the suspense of the hunt, trying to out think the opponent.”

“Maybe he’s just a dick, who needs a swift kick between the legs,” said Tex.

“He’s not that bad,” countered Blesk. “He’s a good guy,” he paused, “well, he can be a good guy.”

“Give me a break, Blesk,” said Tex, “the guy made his AI assistant the freaking Executive Officer of the ship. He’s batshit crazy.” His voice changed to a mocking singsong, “Number One, Flank speed!”

“In any case,” interrupted Third, “we’ve got him blocked, so he can’t pester us constantly about joining in the hunt or some nonsense.”

“We let him go on about his business,” said Blesk

“Like the short-bus mental case he is,” interjected Tex.

“While we go about ours,” continued Blesk. “When we saw his rant about all of us not having anything to do with you, we just thought we’d probably need to come apologize for Fleet Bigweek.”

“Bigweek?” asked Duncan.

“It’s a long, long story, brother,” laughed Blesk. “But if we can ever be of service, please don’t hesitate to ask. Just, you know, in person and not via the message channels.”

“I guess those go through Captain West.” said Duncan.

“You got it.”

“Can I ask you guys something?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you guys keep him around? The ship belongs to all of you, right? You could just kick him out of the group.”

Blesk shrugged, “Like I said, he can be a good guy. We’ve known him for a lot of years. That counts for something with us.”

“Plus,” said Tex, “if we kicked him out he’d probably go off the deep end and blow up an orphanage or something.”

After making his goodbyes, Duncan checked the status of his auction. Nothing new. He pulled the helmet off, put it on the table in front of his couch, then peeled off the haptic gloves and put them inside of the helmet. Then he lay back on the couch, twisted, brought his legs up and stretched out. Staring at the ceiling, but not really seeing the ancient wood beams or exposed ductwork, he began thinking about the day.

His friends had been right. The immersion was amazing. Especially space flight. Looking around at the stars had taken his breath away. He imagined that once he controlled the ship, instead of just being along for the ride as he’d been in that last mission, he’d really feel like he was piloting a ship through space.

Duncan willed the auction to be a success. He began to think through the options for the ship he wanted to buy. He configured it and reconfigured it in his mind, trying to think through the options best suited for the plan. At some point, he fell asleep.

He woke, confused. At first he didn’t know where he was or why he woke. He looked. He was on the couch. That solved half the problem. He heard a knock on the door; presumed that solved the second half.

“Yeah,” he groaned. Louder, “Come in.”

His couch was against the wall next to the door, and he lay with his feet away from the door. He strained his neck, lifted his chin and looked toward the door as it opened. Anna came through.

“Sunday brunchday!” she said, then “Did you sleep on the couch?”

“Yeah.” He sat, rubbing his eyes. “Did we have a date?”

“Nope!” she said cheerfully, “But I crashed at a friends place downtown last night. Also, I want a mimosa. Also also, you owe me brunch!” She sat, next to him, slipped out of her garish pink plastic flip flops, and folded her legs beneath her.

“There are at least two things wrong with that,” he said.

Her eyes rose in mock innocence, “What?”

“First, you want many more than ‘a mimosa.’’

She laughed.

“Second, how do you figure that I owe you brunch? I’m not sure the accounting of our history balances in that direction.”

She shrugged, kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m sure there is some karmic imbalance that puts you in my debt.”

“I see, I see,” he said. “Let me go put on a clean shirt and I’ll try to bring equilibrium to the universe.” He got up, headed toward the bedroom, “How’s the weather?”

“Perfect! Warm, sunny, breezy,” she said. “Perfect.”

He opened his closet, pulled off yesterday’s shirt, and grabbed a TShirt. Pulling it on, he dropped out of his jeans, then pulled on a pair of shorts that lay, crumpled, on the floor. He stepped into a pair of flip-flops and walked out of the bedroom. Anna had moved to the bathroom, and was slathering toothpaste onto her finger. She shoved it into her mouth.

“I’ve got an extra toothbrush,” he said, picking up his own and taking the toothpaste from her. He squeezed out a dollop and began brushing.

“That’s ok,” she mumbled, then spit into the sink. “This will do.”

He spit, rinsed and replaced his brush. She kissed him quickly.

“See? Bad breath all gone!” she laughed. She danced out of the bathroom.

“Mimosas! Now!” she sang out.

“All right, all right.” He grabbed his wallet, keys and phone, and opened the front door for her. She sashayed out, smiling coyly, then laughed at herself. He followed, closed and locked his door, then trailed her through the door on the opposite side of the hallway, which lead to the fire exit that crawled down the outside, back of his building.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, then walked the sidewalk between the building and the railroad tracks. At the end of the building, they turned right onto 4th street and walked under the railroad bridge toward the restaurant filled pedestrian mall, two blocks away. Anna moved into Duncan’s right side, away from the street, and put her arm through his and her head on his shoulder. They walked in companionable, comfortable silence.

As they approached the mall, he asked, “Where do you want to eat?”

“You know my requirement. As long as that’s met, I don’t care.”

“Mimosas, yes.” he turned left onto the mall, walked a block and took an outdoor table in front of a cafe. The table was in the sun. Anna took the seat facing the light. She pulled her feet out of her sandals and onto her seat, her toes wrapped over the front. She wrapped her arms around her legs, and rested her chin on her knees. She smiled at him.

“What’s new?” she asked.

“Nothing much,” he answered. The waitress, a lively Aussie named Kylie, arrived, greeted them by name. It was still too early for food, by half an hour, but they ordered drinks. They’d break their fast with a mimosa and a pint of porter while they waited for the kitchen to open.

Anna continued, “Something must be new! What did you do last night.”

“Played a video game. A virtual world game,” he shrugged.

“Tell me.”

So he did.

“How do you know he was real?” Anna asked, then finished the dregs of her second mimosa.

Duncan finished chewing, then swallowed, the last bite of his eggs benedict. “What do you mean? Who was real?”

“The asshole guy.” She picked up the ramekin that had held her goat cheese and thyme grits, ran her finger through it and then sucked off the residue. “The guy who yelled at you.”

“I don’t follow,” he said. The waitress brought their third round of drinks, bussed their plates. Duncan turned to her, “Thanks Kylie,” then turned back to Anna, “What do you mean real?”

“I mean,” said Anna, “how do you know he wasn’t part of the computer program, like your butler guy Clive.”

He laughed, sipped the foam off his beer, “Well, for one, all of his friends apologized. I doubt the AI has that many levels of subtlety.”

“Ok,” Anna curled back into the chair, stretched in the sunlight, “then how do you know your butler guy isn’t real?”

“Are the voices in your head real, Anna dear?”

She laughed. “Maybe. May. Be. You never know.” she tilted her head sideways, “Who knows how the universe decides to communicate to us. Or through us.”

“Are you seriously getting metaphysical about a video game?”

“Where does the universe end? Isn’t your cyberspace part of it?”

“It’s just bits of information. Pulses of electricity.”

“Maybe that’s all the universe is,” she sipped. “Maybe I’m an AI. Maybe you are. Maybe nobody is, even your Clive.”

“Maybe you have had enough mimosas,” laughed Duncan.

“Never!” she raised her glass high, then drained it.

Chapter 9

Pune, Maharashtra. India

Phani Mutha typed on the dingy keyboard in his small, dimly lit room. He stared at the monitor sitting on the table in front of him, at the boulder it displayed. He willed it to give him some sign of a vein or deposit of something, anything, he could sell. He hit the key again, spending some of his precious fuel to thrust his ship closer to the rock. He completed his scan. Nothing. Again. He changed his ship display from a mineral scan to a wider, broader navigational scan. His ship was inside the ringed belt around a blue gas giant, the fourth planet in this system. He chose the next closest, likely, moonlet, set a course toward it, and increased thrust. He maneuvered through the belt, past the small rocks unlikely to provide anything worth finding.

Phani Mutha was a miner and he was a farmer; someone who made their living obtaining and selling virtual objects. He was also having a long string of very bad luck.

This was after beginning his farming career with a lot of good fortune indeed. He’d bought the old computer after reading about others who made a good living selling game items to players in the west. He thought it sounded better than scraping by on what work he could find in Pune, but the risk was tangible; it touched his life. He couldn’t afford to have the computer, pay for the game subscription or spend the time necessary in game unless it more than paid for itself. And there were no guarantees that it would. But it had.

At first, he’d had wonderful luck. He chose mining missions offered via the game through mission control. He found vein after vein of rare and wondrous minerals. He’d even found the blueprints for a torpedo on a small moon. He’d made a small fortune in game credits and been able to transfer them into the bank account he had, for the first time in his life, been able to open. He’d begun to dream of being able to save up enough to buy his own ship; selling his ore on the open market would increase his profits over the fixed price the system paid for missions.

But rent wasn’t free. Electricity wasn’t free. Food wasn’t free. The money he’d been able to save was constantly siphoned. He hadn’t had enough luck in the game to replace it. Now it was running out. In three days he had to be able to renew his game subscription with money or game credits he didn’t now have.

As Phani’s ship made its way to the next mining spot, he pushed back from the table, stood, and walked past his bedroll to the hot plate sitting on the floor. He squatted and began making a meal. Rain beat on the open slats of his one window, an evening breeze pushing through into the stale air of his room. The monsoon would last another month. He wondered where he would be then; if he would last as long as the rains. Would he be washed out of the city like so much flotsam into the Mutha river. Was that his destiny, to become as one with the river whose name he shared? He shrugged, began to eat, if there was a karmic balance to be repaid, so be it. Maybe he could find a job in the Hinjawadi IT park. He never had before, but maybe this time would be different.

Phani finished eating, cleaned, and returned to his seat. His ship had reached the waypoint and stopped. A new rock was on his screen, slowly rotating.

He swapped the navigation overlay with his assaying toolset and began a scan. He got a hit. Nickel-iron alloy in mineable quantities. Kamacite; between five and ten percent nickel, the rest iron. In order to fulfill the mission parameters, he had to come back with a minimum amount of ore, with more valuable ore giving a better bonus. He pulled up the latest commodities quotes. Nickel wouldn’t get him much of a bonus, but a full hold of kamacite bearing rock would give him the reward proposed by the mission. Not enough to pay his subscription, though. He’d be sitting at this computer for the next three days just to break even at this rate.

Phani released his ship’s mining drone, a small craft that moved onto or near the rock and extracted the ore. Once its hopper was full it would return to the ship and dump the kamacite into the ship's hold; making trips until the hold was full or the vein ran dry.

As he watched the drone operate, he once again thought of how much better his life would be with a dedicated mining ship of his own. He’d be able to outfit it with drones that were better able to cut the valuable ore from the worthless rock. As it was, he’d be lucky to get a few percent of kamacite, which was mostly iron, from this load. And, if he was rich, he’d be able to refine the ore here, on the ship, and drop the tailings back into the planetary ring. If he was rich.

Instead, he’d been spending all of his available character points on his mining skills, the cumulative effect of which was to gain him a few percent increase in his ore returns. That helped, but not enough. He needed his own ship. His own mining operation.

He well knew, however, that having his own ship would not solve all of his problems. Without going through the mission control, he’d have to plot his own course; find his own strikes. He’d have to pay for his own fuel. Pay for his own insurance or risk losing everything to a pirate attack. The returns were better, but wouldn’t make him rich. It might, however, provide him with some breathing room. That would be enough.

While the drone filled the ship, Phani went through some more long range mining scans, looking for his next spot in case the hold wasn’t full from this one. After a few minutes, he got one likely return, then tightened the scan, focusing in on the target. It was worth a look. He had to get out of the planetary ring before making the jump back to base, and the target was on the quickest route out.

He thought, then set a waypoint in the ship's navigation menu. He checked his ship status. The hold was almost full. The drone, its hopper full, was bringing in the last load. Once it emptied the load of rock into the ship, it moored itself. He increased throttle and the ship made its way to the new contact.

There is no reason to stop, he told himself. Even if you find something, your hold is full. You can’t empty it and take on a new load; that has to be done in a docking facility.

Then again, he countered, the scan return might have indicated something else metallic. Maybe an alien artifact or derelict. Blueprints took no space. Added no weight. The full hold wouldn’t matter in that case.

“Your luck is due for a change,” he muttered, “but you have to let it happen.”

His ship slowed, stopped. He’d arrived at the waypoint. The moonlet was small, smaller even than the last. Unlikely to contain anything alien. No gift from the old ones. He switched back to his assay tools and began to scan. He read the return and wanted to cry.

Palladium.

It was worth an order of magnitude more per gram than nickel was per kilogram. At least. He pulled up the market listings. Nickel was going at ten credits per kilogram; palladium was selling for seven thousand credits per kilogram. Even one drone hopper full of rock with a few percent of palladium would be worth more than his entire ship load of nickel. He sat back, began to think.

He called up his game assistant and began typing.

Can a mining ship jump when the mining drone has a full hopper?

The reply came back instantly.

Yes.

He thought some more. He was still too close to the planet. Still too deep in its gravity well to initiate a jump back to base. He typed again.

Can a mining ship maneuver with a mining drone that has a full hopper?

Yes. With difficulty. The additional weight is not factored in the ship’s design, however, and the outside load shifts the center of weight of the ship and creates an offset much like that you’d get from differential thrust. It is not recommended. Autopilot will be unavailable.

He pulled up the system map, then zoomed in on the fourth planet, centered on his position. There was too much around, nothing of which stood out enough as a beacon to let him find the spot again. He could mark his spot on the map, but even if he managed to find another mission back to this unnamed planet, in this unnamed system, there was no guarantee this rock would even exist. Maybe it was created just for this mission and would no longer exist when the mission was over.

Phani stood, moved away from the computer. He went back, leaned over and typed the commands to send the mining drone.

Sighing, he turned and left through the flat’s door, walked downstairs and out of the building into the heavy foot traffic crowding the small street. He weaved through the crowd to an open area, an intersection of several streets. Phani dug into his pocket, pulled out ten rupees and gave it to a tiny, wizened man sitting under an awning near a corner. He received a cigarette and a match in return. Phani put the cigarette gently in his pocket, thought, then bought another. The second he lit, inhaling deeply, then he made his way back to his home, weaving from awning to awning to stay as dry as possible.

At his building’s front door, Phani stopped and leaned back against the door jamb to dry for a bit. He watched the crowd moving through the street like two opposing rivers fighting for the same channel. He smoked. He thought. He pulled the unlit cigarette out of his pocket and put it behind his right ear.

He tried to picture how an offset load in the drone hopper would affect the ship. The center of thrust in a ship was aligned with the center of mass in a ship. Moving the center of mass off of the center of thrust would, should, affect the ship they way a rowboat would be by having one side row harder than the other. It would naturally want to curve in the direction of the added mass.

Phani puffed on the cigarette, pulled the smoke deep into his lungs.

In order to counteract the effect of the lopsided thrust, he thought, he’d need to roll his ship after each thrust, and thrust for an equal amount of time with the load on the other side of the ship. He thought that should result in a weaving but more or less straight line through space.

He stubbed out the cigarette and gave the remainder to a beggar boy. Then he climbed the stairs to his room.

Phani sat at his computer. The drone had mined its fill, was waiting next to the ship, unable to deposit its load into the ship’s hold. Phani had the drone return to its moor, to reconnect to the ship. He ignored and dismissed the warnings about the load. He brought up the maneuvering overlay, a gimbal display showing the ship’s attitude in space; yaw, pitch and roll. He took a deep breath and tapped the keyboard for forward thrust.

The ship moved forward, the gimbal shifted up and to the left. Phani rolled the ship, stopping as close to one hundred and eighty degrees as he could. The space debris that had been displayed at the top of his view screen was now shown at the bottom. He tapped for forward thrust again, hoping it was the same amount as the first.

The gimbal rolled again. It moved to center, then beyond. He rolled and thrust again. And again. And again. The ship now yawed right. Or left. He was completely disoriented; up and down, left and right had become meaningless.

“So quickly?” he asked himself, helplessly.

He rolled the ship again. Hit the thrust lightly, he hoped, to bring the nose back more toward the center. The gimbal moved, but not enough. He thrust again. The nose overshot.

He rolled, then thrust again. The nose dropped; he hadn’t rolled enough.

He brought up the navigation map, zoomed. His course wasn’t true, but he was heading outside of the planetary ring. He thrust again, a little longer than before. The course adjusted, but toward the planet. Panicking, he brought back up the gimbal display, rolled the ship and hit thrust. Held it. The gimbal slewed wildly through center and beyond. He swapped back for the nav map. His course was now outward, almost perpendicular to the ring. His ship was pointing down and away from its direction of movement, crabbing sideways through space. But that wasn’t the problem. At least, that wasn’t the biggest problem.

What caught his eye, what made him forget about his ship, was the course of a very large rock. A shepherd moon. Their courses would intercept. He dumped the cargo in the mining drone’s hopper, hit the autopilot. The engines fired, the ship slewed. Then it hit the moon.

Phani pushed back from his computer table. He reached behind his right ear, pulled out the cigarette and put it in his mouth. Another day with nothing to show for the effort, he thought. He dragged a match along the side of the table, lighting it. Cupping the flame in shaking hands, he lit the cigarette. Unless his luck changed, it would be his last smoke for a while. At least, he thought, I haven’t had to wait through any of the blackouts that still occasionally plagued this part of the city. He logged out, shut down his computer, and sat down on his bedroll. Phani finished smoking, put the cigarette out, and laid out on his back. He stared at the ceiling, listened to the droning of the city. Tomorrow or the next day, his luck had to change. It had to.

Chapter 10

Duncan got home from work on Monday evening. He’d avoided looking at the auction since Saturday. He didn’t want to worry about where the current bid might be; as Clancey had said, it would shoot up with autobids at the end. That should be soon.

He turned on the TV, switched to the local news, and headed to the refrigerator. He took a couple of slices of pizza leftover from the night before, put them in the microwave and started the oven. Pulling a beer from the fridge, he turned, closed the door with his foot, then opened the bottle with a church key hanging from the refrigerator door handle. He took a deep drink, then took the hot pizza out of the oven and to the living room to eat. He watched, but didn’t see, the news, distracted by impatience. He waited for the notification that the auction had ended.

After he’d finished the pizza, and halfway through the weather report, his phone buzzed with an incoming text that was simultaneously displayed across the top of his TV screen. The auction was complete. He switched the TV display to his applets and opened the game app. He switched to the auctions tab, and read the result.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “Holy shit.”

His phone rang; he put it to his ear without looking away from the TV.

“Holy shit!” said Clancey.

“I know,” breathed Duncan, “Did you have an alert set for my auction?”

“No. This came through as a flash from the game news.” He laughed, then read, “Record setting auction. 25 million credits! You’re famous. Or, would be, except you sold it anonymously.”

“Yeah, don’t tell anyone, ok? I kind of want to keep who I am quiet.”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll tell the guys to keep it quiet, too.” He paused, “Crap, you could convert that out to real currency and get yourself a pretty good used car for that, or a pretty basic new one.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do with all that money?”

“I’m going shopping. Talk to you later.”

He pulled on his VR helmet and logged into the game.

Duncan walked into the hangar in the space station, then to the sales kiosk. He called up the ship listings, selected merchant/mining class ships, then filtered for price; highest to lowest. He’d done this last night, fantasy shopping. His what if, wildest-dreams-come-true ship. That ship had been close to eighteen million credits. He started filling out the options again. Two mining drones. Ore refinery. Larger ore hold. Shuttle bay with included shuttle. Two cargo holds. The highest level navigation and scanning systems. The best shielding and cloaking systems. Every option, and every option the best quality. All of that and a full tank of fuel, adding in the ten percent insurance cost, and his account dropped to a little over five million credits. He was still rich, and he had the best merchant clipper in the game.

He left the shopping kiosk and walked through one of the airlocks ringing the large hangar bay.

“Destination?”

“Uhm,” he thought, “my ship?”

The opposite door opened onto the bridge of a ship. His ship. He walked through.

“What would you like to name the ship?” asked Clive.

“I don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that.”

He looked around the bridge. A large seat was in the middle of the room. He sat in it. The front of the room was dominated by a display. It was currently split down the middle, the left side showing the structure of the space station, the right a star field. Ships moved lazily through the stars, arriving and departing the station.

Arranged in a semicircle in front of his seat were several empty stations.

“Clive, can you put some people on the bridge?”

Crewmen appeared, filling the seats at the stations. They all stared intently at their respective screens, occasionally moving as though to adjust their instruments.

“Thanks. Can I see you?”

Another crewman appeared, standing to his left. He was an average sized man, wearing what looked like an unadorned naval uniform.

“Certainly, sir. You can change anything you like about me. My sex, age, race. My name, voice, clothing. I’m entirely customizable. You’ll only be able to see me on the bridge of your ship. All other times I’ll be as you’ve come to know me.”

“Thanks. You’re fine for now. Pull up the navigation map, please.”

One of the crewmen bent over her station, and a navigational display, a top down view of the galaxy, overlaid the now dimmed outside view.

“Pinpoint Eta Bootis.” One of the stars grew brighter. “Zoom in.” He paused. "Again.”

The map now showed an area of space centered on Eta Bootis. Most of the surrounding stars showed, in green lines, jump routes to and from surrounding stars. They had multiple lines. Eta Bootis showed only one. Only one route in, and one route out. That route led to an unnamed system. The unnamed system had two clusters of routes. One cluster led to the group of stars surrounding the space station he was at, marked by a pulsing blue dot. The other cluster surrounded another blue dot.

“What’s that other station?”

“A station just like this one, but that one is used for new players from India.”

“Can I go there?”

“Of course. You can go anywhere. The only cost is fuel and time. You must jump through each intervening system.”

He zoomed in again on the system that looked to be the sole transit between the two clusters. The system that was also the only way in or out of the Eta Bootis system. The jump point in that system was near the fourth planet, represented on the map as a blue, ringed, gas giant. Near the large, green jump point was a flashing red dot.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The location of your last mission,” responded Clive.

Interesting, thought Duncan. Apparently the pirates recognize the system as a transit chokepoint as well. It’s also pretty far away from either space station.

He plotted a course for the system, then stood, pointed dramatically, laughed and said “Engage!” The ship began pulling away from the station, began moving toward the first jump point.

Duncan turned and walked through the door on the bulkhead at the rear of the bridge.

“Destination?”

“Uh,” he thought, “Captain’s quarters?”

The door opened. He walked through into a good sized room. But for a display on one wall, currently showing the forward view, the room was empty. He assumed he’d have to pay for any furniture or decorations. He took off his wolf’s cowl and dropped it on the floor. He retreated through the door.

“Destination?”

“Hangar.”

The door now opened into a large, industrial looking room. Also bare, but dominated by a wedge nosed rectangle poised expectantly on four short legs, like an attack corgi. He entered it through a door on the side into a small two place cockpit.

“Is this for landing on planets?”

“Yes,” said Clive, “It can be controlled via the ship’s bridge, or flown manually.”

He left the shuttle, began walking toward the interior airlock.

“Clive, how come I have to fly my ship through all of the various jump points, but when I take a mission it gets me there instantly?”

“All of this technology was ‘found’,’’ said Clive, “All of the space stations. All of the means for creating new ships. All of the manufactories. When humans first began exploring space, they found an abandoned station near earth. The short answer to your question is “we don’t know.” We think the energy involved requires a space station for instantaneous transit.”

“In other words,” laughed Duncan, ”it’s because we’re in a game and that’s what’s required for the game. Nobody would take missions if you had to worry about transit time, but owning ships would be even more unbalancing than they already are if they weren’t stupidly expensive and relatively slow.”

“That is also a prevailing theory,” confirmed Clive.

Duncan returned to the bridge, arriving just before the ship reached the jump point. Once that happened, the ship would travel in hyperspace until reaching the final jump point; he had to travel through each intervening jump point, but wouldn’t drop out of hyperspace until the course was run. Unless he was torpedoed.

He checked the ETA.

“Wow,” he muttered. It was an hour away. It would take one third of his fuel.

“Clive, if I’m offline, can you text me if anything happens? Or when we get to the destination?”

“Yes sir.”

“Thanks. Also, as soon as we clear hyperspace, set the cloaking.”

Duncan took off the helmet, got another beer. He drank while reading about the consumables market in game, familiarizing himself with their relative values.

meta 2

how much was the second highest bid?

four million
selling it was a good sign.

but

it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s thinking
long term.

there’s something else we can try.

i’m confident in his candidacy.

you heard what he said
about the singularity.

Chapter 11

the day before

Charlottesville, VA. USA

Duncan spun his cell phone, which lay on the steel mesh table in front of him. As its rotation slowed to a stop, he picked up his pint glass, took a drink.

“Do you want another mimosa?”

“I’m good for now, thanks,” said Anna. She leaned back into her chair. She stretched, sunning herself.

She looked back at him, “How can you tell, in your game, when you’re talking to someone who’s real and someone who isn’t?”

He thought.

“Usually, you can tell just by the way they act.”

“If your asshole guy didn’t have friends to apologize for him, would you have known he was real?” she asked.

“Known?” he responded, “No. But I would have been reasonably sure.” He laughed, “The AI in the game is supposed to be there for fun. A bunch of assholes wouldn’t be fun.”

“Maybe they’d add a few, just to make it seem more real. Which might make it more fun,” she smiled. “Have you heard of the singularity?”

“Black holes?”

“Not in this case,” she said. “It refers to when AI will exceed humans in intellectual capability. We talked about it in philosophy class.”

“When did you take a philosophy class?” he asked. Last he heard, she was going to be an organic farmer.

“Last semester. I’m thinking of changing my major to philosophy. I love it.”

He nodded, smiled. This was the fourth possible change of study she’d gone through that he knew of.

They’d known each other a year. He’d rented a beach house last summer with several friends. Shannon was one, and she brought Anna. He remembered first seeing her, getting out of Shannon’s car. Wearing the same awful flip flops laying in front of her chair now. She had also had on what looked like a sleeveless, pink pajama top and a tawdry little miniskirt. Her shoulder length hair had been bleached a horrific off-white. She’d been beautiful.

Now, her hair was cut short. Spiked on top. Back to her natural color, he assumed. Brown. She was still beautiful.

“Anyway,” she continued, ”the singularity is when computers will be smarter than people. Once that happens, they’ll be able to design computers that are even smarter.”

“Computers will design computers?” he asked.

She nodded. “Some folks think it’ll happen within a couple of decades, some think it’ll be sooner.”

“And when it does,” she continued, “how will you be able to tell an AI is an AI? If it’s smarter than a human? And if you can’t, then what’s the difference?”

“Especially,” she added, “if, as some people think, we’ll be able to transfer our consciousness into computers.”

He asked, “Would you want to live like that? Are you still alive? Do you still exist if you’re just your consciousness?”

She shrugged.

“And where does philosophy go? Without the biological imperatives that define most of our existence, what do we contemplate?”

She shrugged again. “Would you want to live like that?”

“As opposed to being dead? Sure. It’s got to be better than nothing.”

“How do you know death is nothing?”

“There’s no evidence for anything else,” he shrugged.

“There’s no evidence against it.”

“Just faith that it exists. I don’t have that faith. Not enough, anyway, to avoid taking another route if it’s offered to me.”

“But,” she said spreading her arms, “what about all of the life around you? You can’t believe it just happened, that there’s nothing greater.”

“Why not?” he answered, “I’m literally surrounded by an infinite amount of empirical evidence that it did just happen. And absolutely zero evidence that there’s anything greater.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “you’re twenty-two …”

“Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three, sorry. When you’re a doddering old person of forty-five like me, you might see aging and death a little differently. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, I’m looking at working for another decade or two just to be able to retire and sit on my ass and wait to die, pinning my hopes on some fairy tale afterlife that I don’t believe in.”

Duncan pushed back his chair. “I have no motivation anymore. I just don’t care. What’s the point of busting my ass, just so I can roll over and die to make room for some jerk who’ll make the same dumb mistakes I did.”

He finished his beer. “Now, if you can find a way that I can live a long time, a timeline I can sink my teeth into, then I’m interested again.”

Chapter 12

Duncan walked onto the bridge of his ship. He wondered what to name it. There was no reason he had to name it at all, so he’d take his time, come up with something he liked.

The ship arrived at the interstellar jump point, left hyperspace. The display screen on the bridge flooded with stars in unfamiliar constellations. He was slightly above the plane of the ring around a gas giant, also several hundred kilometers from the outer edge. He brought up his scanning instrumentation, set to passive.

The gas giant was the fourth planet in the system, several AU out from its star; a run of the mill yellow G class, much like the Sun. He slewed the ship until it was pointing toward the planet, its blue orb dominating the screen, dwarfing the yellow sun far distant. At the outer edge of the ring was a small moon. Nestled close to the moon was a ship; close enough that its shadow highlighted its shape. The HMS Westy.

“Can he see me?”

“No sir.” responded Clive, “we came out cloaked. If he was actively scanning our location, he would be able to detect our presence, but not our exact location from that range. He’s not actively scanning, however. We are invisible to him as long as we move slowly, keep our shields off and refrain from any active nav scanning. Our cloak will keep him from acquiring us visually.”

Duncan was glad that he’d spent the money for the cloak. Even from this distance, the Westy was clearly visible; backlit by the shepherd moon.

“However,” continued Clive, “assuming he were monitoring the faster than light traffic through this system, as is likely, he will know we’re in the area, as he will have noted that we’re no longer in hyperspace.”

Duncan wasn’t worried that he’d be attacked, at least not by the Westy. That guy was a jerk, but he seemed to only worry about hunting pirates so Duncan thought he was safe. He hoped. Pirates were no threat to him, they seemed only to attack the automated cargo drones that delivered goods between systems. At least, most pirates we no threat. He supposed that players could buy the extremely expensive naval vessels like the Westy, but as far as he knew, nobody risked those ships for the relatively meager returns they could get from piracy.

He’d read that pirates usually bought the cheapest ship they could get away with, to limit their costs if destroyed. Being destroyed while engaged in piracy negated your insurance policy, so most didn’t bother with that added expense either. Another dangerous option, rarely taken, was engaging in piracy while in a ship taken from mission control. If you were caught while in a mission ship, you wouldn’t be allowed to take another mission for a very long time.

Duncan brought his ship in above the plane of the ring. Once inside, he dropped it down, to use the bulk of the ring to help mask his presence from the Westy.

“Clive, can we be detected when we start scanning for minerals?”

“Yes. But only from short range, and that’s only for the broad scan. The focused scan is detectable only a little further than its own range.”

Duncan set the mineral scan to the broadest, widest, range and began scanning the ring. At that intensity, he wouldn’t get any returns more specific than non-ferrous anomaly, meaning something that wasn’t iron; an indication of the possibility of a more valuable ore.

After the first of these returns, he sent one of his mining drones to check. Once it arrived, it performed a localized, focused scan. Kamacite. Nickel-iron. Not especially valuable, but it was his first ‘find’, so he decided to mine it.

As his drone began excavating, he moved into the ring, continued to scan. He found a few more kamacite loads, but decided not to exploit them. He moved within the ring, moved along the line of the current, enough faster than the flow so that the rocks looked like they were slowly approaching him. He marveled at the view, slewing the viewscreen to port and starboard.

“Clive, can I go outside? Do an EVA?”

“Yes, sir. In the hanger, there is a small airlock next to the main hanger airlock. Inside it are suits for extravehicular activities.”

Duncan jumped up from the captain’s seat, heading to the hangar. As he arrived, he turned to his right, saw the small airlock tucked between the large hangar doors and the bulkhead. He went through the door. Several hard suits stood open, lined up on either side of the airlock. He stepped into one, which closed, clamshell like, around him.

A row of suit specific gauges arranged in a line across the lower part of his field of view. Oxygen level as well as estimated time remaining at current consumption. Thruster fuel amount. He walked to the outside airlock; it opened and he stepped through.

The view from the bridge was impressive, but didn’t compare to the view Duncan saw now. With only a glass ball around his head, his entire field of view was nothing but stars, planet, and the flow of rocks as he moved through the planetary ring. He did nothing, stunned, until he realized that the view was literally breathtaking. He inhaled, deeply, then hit the suit’s thrusters and spun to bring the ship into view. He was still too close to get a good look at the whole of it, so he thrust backward, away.

Once he could see the entire ship, he stopped. The wedge like nose, jutting from the oblong, rounded box of the bridge was far to his left. Behind the bridge, the long rectangular cargo hold stretched back to the box of the hangar bay. Above and below the cargo hold were the berths for each of the two mining drones; one full, one empty. As he watched, the second drone approached the ship, merged with it.

He knew that the drone was now offloading its load of kamacite into the ore refinery inside the cargo hold. The ore would then be swarmed by uncounted microscopic organisms; microbes called Metallosphaera sedula. They were chemolithotrophs, archaea or single cell micro-organisms, that fed on the iron and sulfur minerals while leaving behind any heavy, valuable, metals as residue.

Duncan had been surprised to learn that these creatures actually existed on earth, first found in 1989 living in the sulfur springs around Italy’s Vesuvius, and that studies had been conducted to test their utility for just this purpose; mining in space. Those tests had found that not only were these archaea suitable for ore extraction in space, they seemed to prefer it; space dust samples that took them two months to consume on earth were finished in two weeks in space. Those numbers had been improved through ‘genetic modification’, according to the game designers, to the point that by the time the next hopper full of space dust was dropped in for them, the first would have already been consumed. The refinery had been, besides the ship itself, the single most expensive purchase he’d made; but the savings it provided, in both time and fuel not being spent transporting mostly useless ore, would eventually more than make up for the initial cost.

He looked toward the aft. Past the cargo hold and hangar were the fuel tanks and engines, fully one quarter the length of the ship. The nozzles that would glow white hot under acceleration were now a dull metal. Unused.

Duncan looked forward, past the hangar section topped with dishes, antennae and assorted bits of what he assumed were his shield and cloaking, as well as scanning and navigation devices. He thought.

“Clive, is the cloaking still on? Why can I see the ship?”

“The cloaking is still on, sir. Your suit is overriding the cloak for you. The ship is still invisible to anyone not a part of the crew”

He then noticed that the mining drone was still on the ship. It must have finished extracting all of the ore from its target. Duncan turned to faced the ship’s airlock and began thrusting.

As Duncan entered the bridge, he noted several more likely returns from the broad scan. He dispatched the drones to examine them. He was still moving through the ring, their course taking them toward the outer rim of it.

“Sir, we are approaching the range where the Westy can detect our broad range mineral scans with his passive scanner. Shall I suspend scanning.”

“No. Keep scanning.” He leaned over the sensor station, “Can you overlay our scanning range?”

A translucent sphere appeared around the ship on the sensor display. Its outer limit nearly touched the Westy, one half light second distant.

“Decloak.”

Two seconds passed. A red line appeared between the Westy and his ship.

“We are being scanned sir.”

“Alright.” Duncan replied, “Are our jump drives recharged?”

“Yes sir. They recharged approximately fifteen minutes after we arrived in system. But we are too deep in the planet’s gravity well to jump from this location.”

Duncan pulled up the nav menu. He plotted a course to the nearest Lagrange point; just in case. Each orbiting pair of bodies, in this case the blue gas giant and the shepherd moon, has a series of five points in space where a smaller, third, mass can orbit in a constant pattern with the two larger masses; where the gravitational pull of the two larger masses equals the centripedal force needed for the smaller mass to orbit with them. What this meant for space ships, within the game, was access to points of space that were sufficiently free of gravitational pull to be considered ‘outside’ of a large mass gravity well; this allowed them to engage their hyperdrive.

The Lagrange one and two, or L1 and L2, points were on a direct line from the larger to the smaller mass; the L1 point being between the large and small object, the L2 on the ‘outside’ of the smaller mass. The L3 point lay on the orbit line directly opposite the location of the smaller mass; the larger mass was halfway between the smaller mass and the L3.

The L4 and L5 preceeded and followed, respectively, the smaller mass, on its line of orbit. Duncan plotted a course for the shepherd moon’s L5 point; the one that trailed it in orbit.

The two drones had reached their targets and begun their scan. He looked to the mining control panel. One had stopped near a large asteroid, the other a much smaller rock; small enough to fit, whole, in the drones hopper. The asteroid contained mineable quantities of Palladium. The small rock was Palladium as well, but in much higher concentration. He set the first drone to begin mining, then had the second simply capture the load directly into its hopper.

He changed ship’s course, angling out of the ring. He looked to the Westy. Its scan had stopped, and he hadn’t moved or begun charging his shields. Duncan assumed that, for the moment at least, he was safe from him.

“Clive, plot our time to waypoint one,” the Lagrange point, “at maximum thrust. Do the same for the Westy. Let me know when he can get there faster than we can.”

Clive did one better. Over waypoint one on the nav map, a green “3:36” appeared. Below it, a light red “HMS Westy - 5:52”. If Westy did anything he didn’t like, he could be there well before he was in any danger. He hoped.

“Clive, power up the shields. Give me enough to withstand a full broadside from the Westy.”

“Fifty percent shields, aye, sir.” said the crewman at the shield station.

The green marker next to waypoint one on the nav screen changed to “6:44” as the nav computer recalculated for maximum thrust during shield generation. Once that power had been applied to the shield, about five minutes, his power reserve available would increase again.

“Sir,” said the crewman at the comm station “we’re being hailed. It’s the HMS Westy.”

Chapter 13

Duncan rose from the captain’s chair, clasped his hands behind his back and looked at the comms station. “Answer the call.”

A window opened on the bridge view screen, showing Eric West on the bridge of of the HMS Westy, sitting ponderously imperious in his captain’s chair. He spread his arms.

“Are you trying to screw up my … “ he paused. “Oh. It’s you.” His final word weighed the sentence with a gravity of derision. He gripped either arm of his chair. Duncan didn’t answer, just waited unmoving.

Eric seemed to gather himself.

“I’m trying to ambush pirates,” he said, his tone pedantic, as though speaking to a slow and unloved child. “Your activity, especially your shield, will scare them away. They’ll see you and won’t attack cargo shipping. Thus, I’ll have wasted hours in wait.”

Duncan tried to project an air of thought. He waited, then answered.

“Yes.”

Eric stared for a second, then cut off communication. A second later, Duncan’s passive scan detected movement from the Westy. Shortly after that, indications that Eric was charging his shields and his weapons.

Duncan looked to his nav screen. He’d moved further from the jump point, and his shields were now fully charged. The display showed him as being 4:10 away from the Lagrange point, at full thrust. The display for the Westy showed it at 5:40. Then 5:39. Then 5:38. Duncan didn’t know whether the Westy was headed for him or the jump point; Duncan was directly between them. He had also cleared the planetary ring.

“Increase thrust to twenty-five percent,” he said. He left the course alone, true for the shepherd moon, slightly offset from the opposing course of the Westy. His timer to the jump point began to increase faster; the timer for the destroyer dropped second by second.

He looked over his instruments. “Crap”, he said, kicking himself mentally. He realized that it would have cost him nothing extra to charge the shields to full capacity. He’d had plenty of power reserves while charging to dedicate them to a complete charge, and once charged they required little additional power to maintain. As it was, if he now decided to boost the shield, he’d be limited in the amount of power he could spend on the engines. And he was becoming increasingly worried that he’d need both. Soon.

“I guess you guys won’t prevent me from making a stupid mistake,” he said to the bridge crew. They didn’t respond. “Let’s hope that won’t wind up being an expensive lesson.”

“Clive,” he continued, “What happens to the Westy if they attack? Are there any repercussions for killing us?”

“Sir, you can report him to the Navy. If he’s still here when they jump in, they’ll attack. If he’s reported enough times, the Navy will attack him on sight. You can also place a bounty on his head, then any ship can attack him until the bounty is claimed.”

Clive continued, “There is currently no bounty on the HMS Westy, and no record of it attacking a ship without a bounty or a pirate flag.”

“Pirate flag?”

“A ship caught pirating a cargo vessel is flagged as a pirate until it can jump from the system. There are two additional caveats. One, a third party vessel, not grouped with the pirate, must be in system at the time of the piracy, assuming the victim of the piracy is a cargo drone. Two, the third party must remain in system for the flag to remain; once either the pirate or all other ships in system at the time of the piracy leave the system, the flag is removed.”

“Ah,” responded Duncan, “I see.” He’d thought that pirate flag referred to an actual flag, somehow fluttering from the ship itself.

The waypoint selected on the nav map began flashing. Duncan glanced at it. The Westy’s time to the jump point at max thrust was now less than his. He could no longer outrun him. He was still out of range of the plasma cannon the Westy carried, but the destroyer’s much faster velocity would soon be able to bring them in range, no matter which way he decided to run.

He mentally shrugged. “Begin a long range mineral scan on that moon.” He assumed that any ore on something that size had long since been picked clean, but he wanted Eric to know exactly what he was up to; just going about his business. He was still at the outer limit of range for the scan.

“Increase thrust to fifty percent.” The closure rate to the Westy increased, as well as his time to jump point. He deleted the waypoint timer for both ships. The offset from the Westy’s course increased as his path diverged. The Westy then changed course. An intercept course.

“All stop,” said Duncan. He was halfway to the moon. He’d coast for a while. The nav map showed the Westy approaching, fast. She came behind his ship, curving to match course, overtaking him quickly. As it passed, the destroyer came into view at the top of Duncan’s forward viewscreen, its thrusters reversed and glowed as it slowed to the mining ship’s speed. It matched velocity and seemed to hover several hundred meters ahead.

As Duncan watched, intently, the Westy fired its maneuvering thrusters and rotated ninety degrees. The destroyer was now moving sideways through space, in front of the miner. Three turrets on the top, flat, deck of the Westy rotated until all were pointed at Duncan. Each turret had two long tubes that Duncan now stared into. Plasma cannons.

A series of black honeycomb like shapes appeared on the side of the Westy.

“Sir, he’s opening his missile bays.” Duncan didn’t see which station had said that, his eyes were fixed on his impending doom.

“Drop shields,” Duncan commanded.

“If you’re going to kill me,” he muttered, “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of making it the least bit difficult.”

“We’re being targeted, sir,” said Clive. Duncan nodded. Waited. The HMS Westy still floated along ahead of them. Duncan wondered if he should send a hail. Decided not to. He checked the broad mining scan returns from the shepherd moon. Nothing. He focused the scan, toward a crater midway up the moon. He didn’t expect to find anything, just wanted to show Eric that he was still busy. He hoped it would send a message that he was unconcerned about the broadside he was staring into. He set a waypoint, just off the moon above the crater. That would slow him automatically as he approached it.

He looked back into the maws of the plasma cannons.

“Clive, what happens when we die?”

“Sir?”

“If he fires. When he blows up our ship. What happens to us?”

“You’re regenerated at the last space station you’ve been to. Any objects you’ve discovered or skill points earned since your last station visit are lost. Your ship, since it’s insured, will also be regenerated at the station, but any cargo in the hold will be lost. You’ll also need to purchase insurance again each time your ship is lost.”

“Have I earned any skill points for mining?”

“No sir. Skill points for shipboard operations are earned slowly through doing the activity. They can also be purchased or, occasionally, certificates can be found as loot.”

His ship began to slow as they approached the moon. Suddenly, the maneuvering thrusters on the Westy fired. It rotated ninety degrees again, this time facing him. It also slowed, matching their pace until, instantly shrouded from the rear in the glow of its engines flooding with full thrust, it streaked over his ship. A collision alarm sounded.

He brought up the damage control. It looked like the Westy had skimmed along the top of his ship. One of his mining drones was incapacitated. None of his other systems seemed to be affected.

“Can we fix that?”

“Yes sir. Estimated time is ninety minutes. I’ll begin now. If you EVA, you can fix it much more quickly.”

“Ninety minutes is fine, thanks.” Duncan acknowledged. He still had the other drone.

After about five minutes of coasting, he had reached the waypoint. Stopped. The Westy was approaching the L5 point. As it arrived, Eric jumped. Duncan hoped he’d gone far far away. He changed from the damage control screen, showing eighty minutes work left on the mining drone, and brought up the mineral scan.

The scan was still focused on the moon’s crater, now only a few hundred meters away. It registered a faint anomaly.

“Clive, what’s that? In the scan,” he asked.

“We can’t tell, sir. It’s very small. It’s not ore. We seem to be at the furthest limit of detection. Even with a focused scan if we were much further away, we wouldn’t be able to detect it.”

Duncan thought. Wondered. Decided. He turned and left the bridge, entered the hangar, turned right and went through the small airlock.

Duncan, in his EVA suit, approached the surface of the shepherd moon. The moon wasn’t anything like the size of Earth’s moon, Luna, but it was much larger than the rocks that made up the planetary ring that it helped create. The gravitational pull from shepherd moons was what helped planetary rings keep their sharply defined edges. They were usually found orbiting just inside of or just outside of the ring itself. This one was more or less spherical. Rocky, with a few craters showing. It looked like it was roughly the size of a space station.

As he reached the moon, facing it as though floating prone just above the surface, he saw the anomaly his scan had detected.

“What the fuck?” he muttered, then louder, “Clive can you see this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you make of it?”

“It looks, sir, like a meter high plinth with a button on top. A red button.”

“Thanks,” said Duncan, dryly. “But what should I do?”

“Press the button?”

“Thanks again, Clive. You’ve been most helpful.” He reached out, pressed the button. The button receded into the plinth, which began to retract. To retreat into the moon itself. When it had become flush with the moon’s surface, a split appeared, tracing above and below Duncan’s position.

It took him a second to realize that a door was opening. He looked from one end of the crack to another. Two panels seemed to be sliding apart, leaving him in the middle of the opening. The door, now opening more rapidly, was at least one hundred meters tall. It stopped moving when the opening was roughly square, and larger than a football field in area.

He was staring in awe at the dark square when it lit from within. Two rows of flashing lights, a hundred meters apart, stretched into the darkness, the alternating flashing giving the illusion of two single parallel lights receding into the distance. Landing lights.

“Holy crap,” he said aloud, “this is a landing bay. A hangar.”

He thrust inside. He couldn’t see the other end of the bay. The lights seemed to go until they met at the vanishing point. He spun upward, to face the ceiling. The size of the bay was only a little larger than the door. Airlock doors appeared periodically down both sides of the bay, near the floor.

“Who owns this thing, Clive?”

“Apparently, you do.”

Stunned, he began thrusting back to the ship. “I don’t understand, Clive. What do you mean?”

“This is without precedent,” answered Clive, “but it seems that the system considers this loot. An alien artifact. And you now own it.”

Duncan thrust outside the door, back into space, toward his ship.

Duncan walked into the bridge. The view forward looked deep into the space station. His space station.

“Clive, can you dock for me?”

The ship began to move forward, through the door. As it reached the second airlock inside the hangar, the ship stopped, began drifting to the left. At the left wall, it again stopped, began dropping until it reached the floor.

“Shall I close the hangar door, sir?” asked Clive.

“Please.”

Duncan walked to the port side of the bridge, to the airlock door. He walked through and entered his space station. He was in a room that seemed to run parallel to the hanger. It was only about ten meters across, but stretched one hundred meters to his left and as far as he could see to his right. To his left was one additional airlock, to his right they continued into the distance. Next to each airlock was a stair that climbed fifty feet to a walkway that ran the length of the room.

He walked up the stair next to him. As he reached the walkway, he saw that it looked into the hangar bay. He could see down into the bridge of his ship, and back as it stretched to closing hangar doors. He saw small drones working to repair the mining drone, occasionally sparks and glows showed as they welded. The ship took up the near half of the hanger. Ships could apparently be berthed sided by side the length of the bay. He couldn’t begin to guess how many ships could fit.

He turned away from the view, walked back down the stairs and across the room. A door was on the wall opposite each of the airlocks. He walked through the closest one.

“Destination?”

He thought, then said, “Control room.”

The small room’s second door opened, he walked through, into a large semicircular room. It had a large seat near the back, next to which was the door he walked through. The ground sloped away from the chair toward the front of the room, which also widened as it deepened. The front side was dominated by a large screen which currently showed the view outside of the station. The effect of the room was like a movie theater, with one chair sitting on the back wall. Clive stood next to the chair, on the opposite side from which Duncan stood. Duncan sat in the chair.

Judging from the view, Duncan thought the control room was located just above the hangar. His view showed the planetary ring and the gas giant on the right side of the screen. The left was blackness and stars. He thought he was looking directly toward the L5 jump point, which lay behind the moon but on its orbital path.

“Can I get a nav map on this screen?”

“Yes, sir,” one appeared.

“Overlay the area out the viewport.” A translucent pie slice extended from the moon. Duncan zoomed in on the view, until it showed only the area around the fourth planet, centered on the moon. His moon, he thought incredulously. The view was indeed currently directed toward the system jump point. “Can I change the view?”

“Yes sir, we can slew to view from any direction on the moon. It’s currently set to the view you would have if this room had a window.”

That’s what Duncan had assumed. He thought for a moment.

“Clive, I’m not sure what I should do now.”

“Perhaps,” answered the AI, “we could examine your configuration and control options for the station.” Duncan grunted his agreement. To the left of the nav map, a list appeared. The first item was a checkbox labelled ‘Public’. It was unchecked.

His phone rang. Duncan pulled off his helmet, picked up the phone. It was Clancey.

“How the hell did he hear about this?” he muttered, then put the phone to his ear. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing, just worked late. Wondered if you wanted to grab a drink.”

“Sure. Meet you there.” They hung up. Duncan put the helmet back on, looked at the viewport. The checkbox next to the word ‘Public’ was still unchecked. He disconnected, took off his helmet, and headed to the bar. He badly needed a drink. Or more.

Chapter 14

the day before

Charlottesville, VA. USA

After Duncan paid the tab for the brunch, he and Anna walked the pedestrian mall. They walked mostly in silence, weaving their way through the afternoon crowd. She stopped at a vendor table, picked up a pair of earrings. She held them to her ears, looked at Duncan and raised her eyebrows, questioningly. He scrunched his face, shook his head. She laughed and put them back on the table.

“Will you miss me?” she asked as she rejoined him, putting her arm through his.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“No,” she leaned on his shoulder. “Not me. You. If you become an online entity someday.”

“I doubt it,” he said in mock seriousness. “My attractions to you are entirely physically based. Once my biological urges are removed from the picture, what use are you?”

She laughed.

“But honestly,” he said, “I’m an orphan. No family at all. I’m single and I’ve always been single. I have a few close friends, but beyond that there aren’t any real connections I have with anyone.”

She squeezed his arm. “I didn’t know you were an orphan.”

“Yup. For as long as I can remember. I was raised by a series of foster families.” He shrugged. “They were ok, I guess, but I just never really connected with anyone. A quiet, loner kid isn’t much entertainment, I guess. I just ate their food and kept to myself.”

“You’re not a loner,” she countered, “you’ve got lots of friends.”

“I’ve got a few,” he acknowledged, “but I’m still an introvert.”

“You’re very outgoing,” she argued.

“For short periods of time,” he responded. “You see me out a few times a week, for a few hours at a time, but the rest of the time I’m not at work I’m home alone. Being around people feels like it drains my energy. I need a lot of alone time to, I dunno, ‘recharge my batteries’ is a decent analogy.”

“Isn’t that a metaphor?”

“I always get them confused,” he answered.

“Anyway,” he continued, “interacting with people takes a toll.”

“Should I feel insulted?” she asked.

“Not at all. If an introvert is spending time with you, you know it’s because he wants to be with you. You’re not just there to keep them from being alone.”

“And when I need alone time,” he added, “it’s not because I don’t want to be around you, it’s because I don’t want to be around anyone.”

“I feel completely the opposite,” she said, “I need to be around other people, the more the better, to really get my energy up.”

“That makes you an extrovert.”

“So I guess,” she continued, “that’s why I’m always going from person to person. It keeps me going.”

He laughed. “You’re an energy vampire!”

“I vant to suck your chi” she laughed.

“Would a beer suffice?” he asked.

“You bet!”

Duncan entered the key code to let them into his building, then opened the door for Anna.

“Hey,” he said, “how did you get in here this morning?”

She looked at him, her face serious, “I memorized your code the last time we came in.”

“Really?”

“No,” she laughed, “not really. Someone was coming out as I came up. He held the door. He was very polite.”

“I’m so glad our security is so tight.”

“Anyway,” she laughed again as they entered the elevator, “I did memorize it this time, just now.”

“Well,” he said, “go ahead and impress me. What is it?”

“3201,” she giggled as the door closed. She pressed the button for the fourth, top, floor.

“Damn,” he laughed, “I’ll have to see about getting that changed.”

They left the elevator on the fourth floor, walked down the long hallway to his door. He unlocked, opened it, let her through. It closed behind him as he walked toward the kitchen. He pulled a couple of beers out of the refrigerator, opened them, then joined her where she sat, reclined, on his couch. She was fiddling with his remote.

“TV on”, he said.

“Music channel ‘Anna Child’,” she added. His TV began playing her default playlist, scrubbed from his social network connection to her. He didn’t recognize the song. He didn’t doubt that he’d never heard of the band, just as he didn’t doubt that would be the case for her entire playlist. She took the beer he held out, took a sip, then curled back into the couch, looking at him. He sat next to her.

“Won’t you miss your career?” she asked.

“You’re not going to change the topic of conversation, are you?”

She paused, stared at him earnestly.

“I find the topic very interesting. It’s not only like a next step in human evolution, the changes could be huge and instant. It’ll be a quantum leap in our consciousness.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

He took a sip of his beer.

“In any case,” he continued, “to answer your question. No, I definitely would not miss my career.”

“But you do such cool things,” she countered. “You deal with people all over the world, every day.”

“And people all over the world are no different than you or I. All they really want to do is worry about their own concerns. Nothing we do matters,” he said.

He continued, “I’ll sum it up. Before I moved to Charlottesville to manage a little software development startup, I was in charge of development for a Fortune 500 company in Manhattan. In addition to New York, I had teams in London, Paris, Mumbai, San Francisco and Columbus Ohio reporting to me, daily. I was in charge of developing the vision for a seventy million dollar a year arm of the company. We were the second largest arm of the company.”

He took another sip of his beer, “So one day we were going to have a meeting within the company. Every arm was going to be presenting our plans for the next year. I worked my ass off to get ready. I even had to pull an actual all-nighter the night before the meeting to finish. Everyone else left at five.”

She cocked her head, watching him.

“So the next day, at the meeting, we go around the room. Everyone who was supposed to give a presentation instead had some excuse as to why they weren’t ready. Except me. I was the only one who was done. Do you know what our boss said?”

She smiled, shook her head.

“He said ‘Duncan gets a gold star!’ and then everyone laughed. That was it. It didn’t matter that nobody else had finished, and it sure as shit didn’t matter that I did. A couple of months later, layoffs were announced. I volunteered, took the very nice severance package, and moved here.”

She leaned into him, he put his arm around her.

“So, ‘no’’, he concluded, “I will in no way miss my career.”

They sat listening to music for a while, then ordered a pizza for dinner. Once finished, her ephemeral visit ended as it always did; with a kiss, a goodbye and no mention of the future.

* * *

Duncan entered the bar, saw Clancey was already there. He took an empty stool next to him. Shannon was working the bar tonight, she approached them.

“Beer?” she asked

Duncan nodded, ”and a tequila.”

“Rough day?” asked Clancey

“Not really,” answered Duncan. “I just feel like having a little of the Don,” he smiled.

Shannon poured a generous glass of Don Julio, put it in front of Duncan, then turned to attend the tap.

“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 taken 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, the 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.

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 time, 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.

“Sir, we’re receiving a hail from the mining ship. In text.”

“Please don’t shoot me.”

Chapter 19

Duncan slewed the view from the space station control room. It had been focused directly outward from the main hangar door, toward the system jump point and the HMS Westy, suddenly accelerating toward the station at full speed. Now he pointed the view in the opposite direction, through the view from the hangar door on the other side of the station. Centered in the screen, nestled in a crater on the shepherd moon, was a tiny, forlorn mining ship, its lone mining drone just arriving to dock on the small, generic space ship.

Another message came through, the text scrolling across the screen.

“Please, sir, don’t shoot me.”

“Clive,” said Duncan, “how long until the Westy is in range?”

“A few minutes.”

“And can the miner escape?”

“Unlikely, sir. Extremely unlikely.”

“Shit,” hissed Duncan.

Duncan didn’t know why he was concerned. He didn’t know this guy, whoever he was. And he was a pirate. Surely he knew the risks. Most of all, he reasoned, it was only a game. So what if this guy got ‘killed’. He would just resurrect at the last space station he’d checked in at. Not a big deal at all.

Then Duncan realized. It wasn’t about this guy, this little miner. It was about Eric West and his bullshit HMS Westy fantasy. About all of the bullies. All of the ‘alpha males’. All of the assholes. All of the guys, sure in their usually misguided opinions, that stomped all over everyone else in order to get their way. He didn’t want them to win. Ever.

Fuck them. Fuck the Westy’s of the world.

“Shit,” repeated Duncan, “shit, shit, shit, shitshitshit.”

He paused, thought, decided.

“Clive, open the rear hangar doors, and open a hail to the miner.”

He leaned forward in the chair.

“There is a hangar door opening next to you. Go through it and dock. Do not send any more hails.”

He watched for a second as the miner began to comply.

“Clive, close the hangar doors as soon as he’s through.”

Duncan stood.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he muttered to himself, then turned and left the control room.

Duncan stormed into the mining ship. A generic looking player, still clad in the same newby clothes that Duncan was wearing, sat, facing forward, in the pilot’s seat. Duncan assumed, from the text based hails and the lack of movement from the character, that the player was likely on an old, basic, computer and monitor setup. No microphone, no VR. Duncan walked to the front of the cockpit, in front of the pilot’s seat, in order to ensure that this guy had a view of him while he talked. He looked the player in the face.

“First, welcome aboard my space station. I’d appreciate it if you told nobody about it.” Duncan didn’t think that likely, but he could hope.

“Second, I assume from your hails that you aren’t capable of communicating by voice, so I’ll go ahead and do all of the …”

“Yes.”

Duncan assumed that was a confirmation that the guy only had a keyboard to communicate with, “ … talking for now.”

He looked at the miner, or the miner’s character. It was the perfect poker face, unmoving, unchanging. He was surprised to realize how much more realistic his friend’s looked in game. Not just that their characters were modeled on their real looks, but nuances like subtle movements that were reflected from the way that the VR helmet translated player movement into character movement. This guy, whoever he was, was just a mannequin.

“Clive, turn on player names.”

Phani.

“Well, Phani,” Duncan said, “you might as well get the grand tour. Follow me.”

Duncan walked from the bridge of the little ship, pausing to make sure that Phani was following him, through the airlock and back into the station. They walked up the stairs, looked out into the bay. The mining ship had disappeared, returning to wherever such single use ships went after player missions were accomplished.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Duncan. He looked at Phani, “I just need to know if I can expect you to keep this place a secret. As of now, you’re the only person, apart from me, who knows about this station. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I will.”

A dialog box appeared in Duncan’s view. Phani was giving him something.

“What I got from ship. I want you to have.”

Duncan read the description.

It was a terraforming kit.

Duncan watched the HMS Westy circle the station, still trying to run down the prey he must think was leading him on a chase around the moon. Phani had come with him to the control room and haltingly told Duncan his situation. As many times as Duncan tried, however, Phani would not accept the return of the terraforming kit. He had, however, accepted the idea of a business partnership based, in part, around the purchase of the kit.

Duncan had proposed that instead of making the kit a gift, repayment for saving Phani, he would purchase the kit for four million credits, a million credits below retail cost, with payment spread over four months. He had only been able to get Phani to agree to this by convincing him that if he were to give Duncan the kit free and clear, there would have been no difference than if Duncan had let Phani die. He still would have been out the kit. Duncan’s honor, he’d said, prevented him from accepting that sort of equivalency.

Duncan had transferred the first payment, one million credits, to Phani, and then laid out the rest of his plan.

Phani would receive a ten percent share in any profits derived from the planet’s colonization, though Duncan pointed out that any such profits were likely to be years away. In addition, Phani’s partnership would include the use of the space station and facilities, including the ship, Shepherd Moon. In exchange for ferrying at least one load of resources between Eta Bootis and the station per day, Phani could use the Shepherd Moon to explore and mine as he saw fit, keeping any profits. He had the run of the facilities between midnight and noon, Eastern time. As long as the Shepherd Moon was docked, with a full tank of gas, when Duncan got home from work every night, or by noon on weekends, Phani could do what he liked with it.

Their respective locations, one in India one on the US east coast, made this time sharing not only viable, but productive; the station and its facilities would be working day and night. Phani’s share in the planet would incent him to provide resources to speed the terraformation, and his stake in the station would, Duncan thought, be reason enough for him to keep its existence a secret. It also solved Duncan’s delivery problem; one load a day, at up to a twenty percent profit, to and from the werewolves would increase his fortune, rather quickly. He didn’t see any problem, at all, being able to raise much more than the million per month he’d have to pay Phani for the next four months.

Phani had left, logged out of the game, leaving Duncan alone in the control room. Duncan was satisfied with the way the day had gone. He felt relieved not only to have helped someone, but to actually be able to share the secret of the shepherd moon. It removed a weight he didn’t realize he’d been carrying.

He looked at the terraforming kit blueprint in his inventory. Soon, maybe this weekend, he’d fly down to the third planet and look around for a likely spot to begin the process of changing the barren rock into a thriving, Earth-like colony.

Duncan sat back in the control room chair, watching the Westy’s relentless pursuit of a target long gone.

“Chalk that up as another reason this is a good day,” he muttered. Though Eric would probably never know it, Duncan had screwed him over. He smiled. As if in response, the Westy turned, made course for the jump point, and accelerated toward it at highest speed, its engines glowing white hot as though in a fury.

His phone rang, Matt was calling. He answered through the helmet.

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Just got home from work,” said Matt, “and thought we’d gather up the crew to go hunt some little green men. Get some excitement into your life. Try to show you what this game is all about. You in?”

“Sure,” said Duncan, “sounds like fun.”

“Meet you at my place. Ten minutes.”

“On my way,” said Duncan.

meta 3

who gave him the terraforming kit?

nobody
fate.

interesting.

that doesn’t seem to have altered his plan
only accelerated it.

his candidacy seems most promising.

we agree, clive.

Epilog

Pune, Maharashra. India

Phani Mutha breathed, for at least the twentieth time in an hour, a long sigh of relief. After he’d made leave taking from his savior, too quickly for politeness sake, he had rushed through the process of transferring the million credits to an in game broker who would, for a fee, translate that money into currency placed directly into his bank account. As soon as that had cleared, he had paid his Omegaverse subscription and electric bill. When the bank opened in the morning, he’d be first in line to withdraw enough to pay his rent; it was far too late to do it tonight, but it was also far too late to fear a landlord’s knock, so Phani could sleep easily. For the first time in months.

He lay on his mat, leisurely luxuriating through a cigarette, blowing smoke straight up into the dank humid air of his flat. His shock at the turn of the day’s events, at being saved from virtual and real ruin, hadn’t left him in the proper frame of mind to reflect on the long term change that had been effected upon him.

He had a ship. A first class mining ship. He revelled. True, it wasn’t his, but it was as good as. For now. He could maximize his loads, maximize his profits. He was no longer bound to the luck of the mission control draw. He could chart his own future. A future that held a ten percent control of a planet!

That had been a shock; a scare. He’d refused the return of the terraforming kit twice, as any person would expect him to, preparing to, reluctantly, accept its return on the third offer, when the American had accepted it. He’d almost died. He had already prepared the auction, all he needed was the American to offer its return for the third time and propriety would have been satisfied; he could have accepted it and auctioned it off. He would have had to set a low ‘buy it now’ price in order to ensure a quick sale; he’d have been lucky to get half its value.

But this was better. Rather than having to wait, to worry about the auction, he’d been offered a deal out of a dream. Four million, probably as much as he could have expected to get from a longer auction than he had time for, spread over four months, with the first installment paid then. A million credits. That was enough, after transfer fees, to live for months. Four million would see him through a year. And that was without considering his now much greater earning potential through the use of the ship, the Shepherd Moon.

It was too much, he thought. I remain in the American’s debt. He sat, put out the stub of the cigarette and returned to his computer. He brought up a webmail site and created three email accounts. Then he opened the game and composed a message for Taipan.

Sir,

Thank you again for all you have done for me. I cannot express how much this day has meant to my life. I remain in your debt. As such, I have created the enclosed email accounts. If, at any time in the future, you have need of a favor that I can fulfill, you have but to write the request to one of the email accounts. That request will be completed, to the best of my ability. No questions asked. I pledge myself and my descendants to this task.

As each request is filled, the associated account will be deleted.

These three favors I give in an attempt to repay your kind services.

I thank you.

Phani Mutha

The End of Book One

Omegaverse Creative Design Document: Section V, part 1 (FTL - Introduction);

V.1. Faster than light travel

There are three distinct faster than light ship travel types in the game. The first, instantaneous, is limited to missions generated in mission control modules; they simply ‘arrive’ at the destination (whether on ground or in orbit) as soon as all players are ready.

The second two types, however, greatly affect gameplay, and each has subtle, but important, differences.

V.1.a. Interstellar Faster than light travel

Travel between star systems is restricted in that any ship leaving from or passing through a system must pass through the system’s jump point, if it has one. These jump points are placed (see Section IX, part 7 “The Interstellar Grid”) in a part of the star system deemed likely to see heavy traffic, as that system joins the Grid. Travel to a system off of the grid is an entirely different matter (see Section XII, “Exploration”)

Passing through the initial jump point on a journey begins an exponential increase in acceleration that, upon leaving the system’s gravity well (see Section XXIV, part 1 “Gravity Wells”) the speed above C begins to increase logarithmically (see Appendix E “FTL matrix”); thus the transit between systems is at a much higher velocity than intra-stellar FTL travel. Initial velocities, however, are much lower than an intra-stellar jump. Only after leaving the star system gravity well does the speed of an interstellar meet, then surpass, the speed of an intra-stellar jump.

Each system subsequently passed through acts as a slingshot effect. Dropping into, then back out of, each star’s gravity well serves to increase the exit velocity, up to the maximum (see Appendix E “FTL Matrix”).

These velocities cause another exponential increase; in the amount of tachyon emissions, detectable by specific sensors. (see Sections IX, part 3 “Tachyon emissions” and XVI, part 1 “Sensors; Passive; Tachyon”).

Note: Leaving from and passing through a given system at FTL speed requires passing through the jump point - arriving into the system, however, can be directed to any point within the star’s gravity well. If no destination is defined, however, the default will be that system jump point.

V.1.b. Intra-stellar Faster than light travel

Within a star system, faster than light travel is a constant (see Appendix E “FTL Matrix”). All ships travel at the same velocity. Over most distances within an intra-stellar jump, the time of flight is only a few seconds. Jumps of about an AU are instantaneous.

The main difference between Intra and Inter Stellar travel is that travel within a single star system does not require passage through the system jump point (if it exists - see Section IX, part 7 “The Interstellar Grid”).

Tachyon emissions are also vastly reduced, and are undetectable during intra-stellar FTL jumps (see Section ...

PART TWO :

SHEPHERD'S CROOK

Prolog

Charlottesville VA, USA

Duncan Sheriden walked down the brick pedestrian mall through the late summer evening, weaving his way through the crowds out enjoying the crisp September front that had just come through over the Blue Ridge mountains. Autumn would soon arrive, and this anomalous weather in the usually oppresive late summer heat would become the norm as the season turned the area into one of the most beautiful in the world. The lush green would, almost overnight, be replaced by an ardent splash of color as the leaves changed.

He arrived at a little brewpub, tucked into the corner of an alleyway, and looked through the window. His friends Matt, Vince and Clancey sat talking at the bar, while behind it Shannon poured drinks for them and the crowd of customers.

Duncan thought back over the past few weeks - to the series of events that had begun in this very bar. Over many nights of drinking, his friends had convinced him to purchase a virtual reality helmet and join them in the Omegaverse; an open world, science-fiction, massively multiplayer online game. Reluctantly, he finally had.

From the first, he had realized why they were so enthusiastic about it. He had not only been drawn in by the amazing realism of the experience; the camaraderie of sharing it with his friends had also captivated him. A loner by nature, he felt more at ease within the game world. Perhaps, he mused, the natural barrier of the computer interface placed enough distance between himself and everyone else that he could feel comfortable.

Then there had been his incredible, unbelievable, luck. From the start he had been showered with a wealth of fortune in the game. The first night, he had received a rare object - a ship-powered rail-gun mounted with a formidable scope - that he’d been able to auction off, within the game, for a literal fortune. That fortune he’d turned over into a top-of-the-line clipper ship, which he named Shepherd Moon, that allowed him to travel freely, to explore, and, most importantly, to mine and trade.

In addition to the rail-gun, he’d found an artifact - unique, as far as he knew - that allowed him to establish himself as the sole player to trade with a hostile alien race. A trade route that brought, so far, a constant and large increase in his wealth.

But all of that paled compared to his singular luck in finding, and claiming, an entire space station. He was still exploring the possibilities that provided; still trying to grasp the implications it brought.

All he knew about it, so far, was that it had provided him with a business partner. An Indian man named Phani. A good man, seemingly; conscientious, ambitious and smart. Duncan had no doubts about their partnership - it felt ‘right’, from the very beginning, when Duncan had saved Phani from attack by a privateer. As a result, Phani had entered into a deal with Duncan where the American purchased, through monthly payments, a very expensive terraforming kit.

The privateer, named Eric, captained his ship, the HMS Westy, with a force of iron will. He’d hunted Phani - driven by desperation to piracy - down, despite the man’s pleas. Duncan had no choice, he felt, but to save Phani; and to do that he’d had to reveal the secret of the space station, Shepherd’s Crook. A secret that he’d kept from the very friends who’d talked him into playing the game in the first place. The very friends he saw sitting, laughing, through the bar window.

Duncan turned, began walking back up the pedestrian mall, to return home. Alone.

Chapter 1

Duncan Sheriden pushed his faceplate into the loose, black scree as he crawled his way up the hill toward the defensive position at the top. He paused behind a boulder, a large rock really, that he hoped would hide him, or at least cover him from the laser fire being poured downslope by the group of Arn at the crest.

“Are we having fun yet?” he asked, bringing up the tactical map that showed his position relative to the rest of his group. He was further along than any of the rest, he mused grimly. Were the rest using him as cannon-fodder; bait to draw the fire away from themselves?

If so, it wasn’t working. Most of the enemy fire seemed to be aimed at Pope, his friend Matt, further down the slope; also prone, but in a more exposed position.

“Hang on a sec,” Duncan radioed, then opened his backpack. He took out a small, baseball size object - a laser-refractor smoke grenade called a Snell grenade - and pulled the pin. Judging as best he could, he lobbed it toward Matt to provide his friend some cover. The grenade bounced close, then hit Matt in the head.

“Thanks,” laughed Matt, grabbing the grenade and tossing it a few feet upslope, between himself and the Arn. The grenade began belching smoke, hued green by the night vision filter Duncan was using. As the smoke enveloped Matt, Duncan saw that lasers fired into the cloud were being diffused and refracted by something - nobody understood the specific lost-tech responsible - that impregnated the smoke particles.

Matt was able to raise to his elbows and begin returning fire with his plasma rifle, through the cloud; as long as the smoke lasted he’d be relatively safe, his plasma bolts ripped through the refractive cloud without dispersing it. The Arn fire slackened as Matt’s accurate shots tore up the ground, the crest of the hill, in front of them.

Vince and Clancey each took the resulting opportunity to advance toward Duncan’s position, but the Arn quickly shifted to targeting them, forcing them to ground, perilously close to each other. Heavy laser fire tore into their position as they sought any cover they could find.

“Wait up,” said Shannon, over the radio, busy in the shuttle in orbit above their position. “I’ve got to recharge some shields.” Matt slowed his plasma fire, which also drew upon the conduit of power from the shuttle, to let Shannon focus more power on his friend’s shields, raising them more quickly.

Duncan peeked around the rock and noticed, for the first time, that all of the fire from the peak had been split between Vince, Clancey and Matt, which piqued his curiosity; none was directed at him. Then he realized why.

He rolled away, to the left, and slowly rose to a crouched position, testing his theory.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Clancey incredulously.

Without answering, Duncan rose fully, still untargeted, and continued making his way up and to the left, through the loose basalt, toward the right flank of the Arn position. As he began to approach the crest, its top silhouetted crisply in a halo of the Milky Way, undiffused and brilliant on this atmosphere-less planet, he could see the outline and movement of the four defenders, still spraying laser fire downhill toward his friends. He crept, as silently as he could, the last few meters, looking around to ensure that the four little green men at the top were the only ones around.

Duncan again opened his backpack and took out a grenade. This one, however, wasn’t engineered to spread laser diffracting smoke; it would explode spewing good old, low tech, white phosphorous, Duncan thought grimly. He pulled the pin and underhanded the ball as close as he could to the center of the group, then ducked below the rim of the hill crest. The four Arn simultaneously looked to the ground, startled by the thump, and were just as simultaneously enveloped in the flaming mass that exploded from their midst.

Duncan walked onto the top of the hill and put a blast from his plasma rifle into each of the inert aliens, just to make sure, then called to his friends.

“All clear, get your lazy assess to the top of the hill.”

“What the hell just happened?” asked Matt, standing with his three friends, surveying the scene of melted and smoking Arn.

“I noticed the little green men weren’t shooting at me, just at you guys,” answered Duncan, smiling, “so I realized that the Arn were using infra-red instead of night vision to track us.”

“The werewolf cowl!” yelped Clancey.

“Yep,” confirmed Duncan, “it provides IR cover. I hoped that meant I could move up the hill without being spotted by my heat signature.”

“That’s cold,” laughed Vince. The rest groaned at his pun.

“Did anyone get a ‘mission completed’ message?” asked Matt.

They shook their heads, Shannon added “Nope,” over the radio.

“Shannon, is there anything on your magical sensors?” asked Clancey.

“Checking.”

They began to look through the Arn corpses while they waited, finding nothing. The Arn looked like goblins had mated with spindly, ‘Area 51’ stereotypical aliens. They had large, oblong heads with large eyes, but heavily ridged eyebrows. Their gray suits seemed only a shade or two darker than their skin. Their blood was red; a common trait among the oxygen breathing creatures of the universe, it seemed.

“Ok,” continued Shannon, “there’s nothing in the area, but that hill is still putting out a faint IR signature. It’s hot, and not just where you guys are. The whole thing.”

Clancey dropped to his knees, began looking around, then pushed aside a few handfuls of basalt.

“There’s a door,” he said, “it looks like it’s handprint activated.” He put his hand to the depression. “But not human.”

Vince bent over, grabbed one of the short, meter long Arn corpses and dragged it to the door. He dropped the body, then lifted an arm and pressed the hand into the shallow divot.

A door began to open. It was round and opened upward on one hinge. Light blazed out. Duncan switched his helmet from night vision to normal light view. He looked into the hole. It was a small, maybe two meter deep, pit, well lit, with a ladder running up one side. At the bottom was another door. An airlock. They needed to get into it, close the top door, and cycle the air before opening the bottom door.

His friends were looking in as well.

“Looks like it’s all button controlled down there,” said Vince, “so we won’t need to take the hand of an LGM,” he pronounced it ell gee emm, “with us.”

“Not much room in there,” added Clancey, getting into the hole. He stood, the top of his head nearly poking back out above the surface, “Might be room for one more.” Matt joined him. Duncan lifted the top door and pushed it over until it closed, with a hiss.

“Ok,” said Matt over the radio after a moment, “we pressed a pretty red button and the bottom door is opening.”

“Heads up, guys,” said Shannon, “My connection to Clancey and Matt is down to thirty-five percent. There must be a lot of interference in that rock. I’ll only be able to regen your shields at one third the rate, and you’ll have a similarly slow recharge rate with your energy weapons.”

“Understood,” said Matt. “We’re through the airlock, and it’s closed again. Duncan and Vince, you should be able to join us.”

Vince once again pressed the dead Arn’s hand into the door, which began opening, releasing gasses as the dark hilltop was once again flooded in light. Vince tossed the Arn’s arm, which wrapped over the corpse’s faceplate like it was shielding itself, then jumped into the hole. Duncan followed, pulling the door closed over his head.

There was barely enough room for the two of them; they stood face to face as Vince pressed the red button. A long hiss was followed by a click at their feet. Duncan and Vince pressed their feet as far against the wall as they could, and the door below pushed up from the floor.

Clancey was below, looking up, having opened the door. He smiled, “Thought I’d save you two from the gymnastics Matt and I had to go through to get the door open with both of us in there.”

“Gymnastics, hell,” said Matt. “You practically got to third base. I feel so used and ashamed.”

Vince jumped into the hole.

“Buck up, sugartits,” laughed Shannon. She added, “I’ll be next to useless as far as my sensors are concerned while you guys are down there. I can’t see shit. All I have is the display for the conduit which, as I said, isn’t running at peak efficiency. Don’t expect me to be able to save your asses down there!”

“Gotcha, Shannon, but keep an eye out on that hilltop. I don’t want anything sneaking up on us from outside,” said Matt as Duncan joined the other three below the airlock.

Duncan looked around; if you didn’t count the spartan shell that was the Canis Arcturus space station, this was his first time in an alien civilization’s building.

Chapter 2

Pune, Maharashtra India

Phani Mutha pushed the mouse resting on the card table he used as a desk, looking through the bare room that was, apparently, the only room in the Canis Arcturus space station. He moved to the plinth in the center of the room and focused on the screen it held; a marketplace interface for trade goods, with prices displayed for either purchase or sale by the Werewolves.

He began by selling off the entire cargo load of the Shepherd Moon, the ship he’d piloted to this remote and dangerous corner of the galaxy. Then, taking the listings for the two closest space stations, what Taipan had called the ‘American’ and ‘Indian’ stations, he found resources that sold here in Eta Bootis for much less than either of those stations; noting which player station would pay more as he bought each resource.

Almost always, the American station paid a percent or two more while the Indian station sold for a percent or two less. Taipan had, incorrectly Phani thought, referred to this as a ‘triangle trade’; buying in India to sell in Eta Bootis, then buying in Eta Bootis to sell in America. A triangle, he mused, needed a third leg - a route from the American to the Indian station - there just wasn’t enough profit in the run, however, to justify it.

Whatever he called it, Taipan’s wealth was growing quickly. Phani almost regretted that the entire hold of the Shepherd Moon was dedicated to Taipan’s trades while on these runs, and that, due to treaty, that ship was the only one allowed in this system.

Phani couldn’t even buy his own ship to take advantage; but he knew he was still very fortunate in this business agreement. He had free use of the ship after he had made his daily run ferrying trade goods collected from Taipan’s space station; resources that were purchased and shipped by cargo container from the Indian station. Phani would return this purchase from Eta Bootis to the station, and Taipan would then ship it off to the American station for sale.

Phani then noticed that the sales list was categorized; the default category listed mineral resources, but a secondary page showed objects for sale. Blueprints. He clicked through and scanned down the list.

“This must be loot that the werewolves got from their raids into human territory,” he muttered to himself, in awe at the length and variety of the listing. Weapons. Armor. Sensors. Ship parts. He clicked through to another tab; certificates. There were dozens of listings for incremental upgrades in player skills. Piloting. Sniping. Mining. Heavy Armor.

The variety looked impressive, but most looked, Phani thought, to be fairly common; though if he could get them for less than retail cost, he could still make money selling them in volume. What really attracted his attention, though, and what really got him excited, were some high level advancements. They were fairly rare and sure to be in high demand.

He needed to learn much more, though, about the market for such goods before investing. He also needed to know how Taipan wanted to handle this aspect of the market. No mention had been made in their agreement; informal as it was, he didn’t feel he should take advantage of it before bringing it to his partner’s attention.

He began to think through a proposal. Phani would take the risk of purchasing these items; as they took no cargo weight or space, their addition to his daily runs wouldn’t impact Taipan’s trades in any way. Taipan would be provided a right of first refusal on these items, which Phani would sell to Taipan at cost. Any other items, Phani would sell on the open market. He would leave it up to the American to decide what percentage of any profits he felt was his due.

Phani sat back and took a sip of his warming beer, the condensation on the bottle puddling above his fingers. It felt unbelievably good to have a few months living expenses in the bank and to know that would be the case for at least the next year, roughly. He opened a box of new, fresh, cigarettes, put one between his lips. He reached for the bright yellow plastic lighter, sitting shining next to his keyboard, and lit the cigarette. Pulling the smoke deeply into his lungs, he ran his other hand over his forehead. The cold condensed water, still on his fingers from the beer bottle, cooled his brow.

Phani finished making purchases of minerals for Taipan and returned to the bridge of the Shepherd Moon. He was still overwhelmed every time he entered. The size dwarfed the default mining ships he’d be allowed to use through the mission control; and not only the size, but the details were noticeably different, noticeably better.

There were more colors around the bridge; it was carpeted in a soothing green where the mining ships looked like bare, off-white plastic. The consoles looked better, brighter somehow. There was no reason for it, that Phani could see, that improved aesthetics would matter.

Maybe, he thought, it wasn’t to make the owners of the expensive ships feel better about themselves, it was to make the users of the generic ships desire the more expensive option. He shrugged.

In any case, he thought, he shouldn’t, luck willing, ever have to see the inside of the generic ship again. He brought up the nav map, selected a jump point from his saved selections; the jump point near his space station. He paused, realizing he’d thought of it as ‘his’ space station. It wasn’t, but in a way it was. If he didn’t own it, he at least had full use of it. The only other person besides Taipan to do so. He understood the American’s desire to keep the station secret, and he agreed with it.

He began accelerating the Shepherd Moon; this far outside of a planetary gravity well, he’d be able to jump as soon as he reached the minimum percent of light speed, C, required to jump to hyperspace. As the ship started moving, Phani brought up a message screen and began writing his business proposal to Taipan. After typing a few lines, he checked the ship’s speed, then pressed the keyboard combination that jumped the ship into hyperspace. He returned to typing during the short trip back to the station.

He closed the message window, saving the draft message, as the Shepherd Moon came out of hyperspace, near and above the ring around a blue gas giant. Near the planet’s shepherd moon that helped that ring form and stay well defined. He brought up another message, containing Taipan’s instructions for returning to the space station.

First, he was to jump into system well away from the station. He’d forgotten that. Angry with himself, he read the reasoning behind it. The American had pointed out that the treaty with the Canis Arcturus forbade using a cloaking device in their system, so in order to arrive cloaked at a jump point near the space station, he would have to jump into an outer part of the system, engage the cloak, then jump to the station. After he engaged the ship’s cloak, he began writing a checklist on an old, mildewed notepad next to his computer, determined never to betray Taipan’s trust again.

Second, he called up the station control and had it report all traffic that had entered but not left the system for the last several hours. There was none. He engaged the engines, full speed, and the ship began moving toward a waypoint he’d lain on the rear of the station; at the hangar door on the opposite site of the system jump point. While the ship travelled, he continued writing, then proofreading, his business proposal. As he reached the waypoint, in the crater of the moon, he sent the proposal then had the station control again report on any new contacts. There were none.

He then sent the request to the station control to open the hangar door. The station responded by sending him a prompt to enter a code. A code that Taipan provided Phani. It didn’t make any sense to him, he assumed it was some sort of gibberish, but he typed it in exactly as he’d copied it onto his notepad:

“It’s an older code, sir. But it checks out.”

Chapter 3

Duncan looked to his three friends, crammed into a small room below the airlock entrance of the Arn outpost; the enclave an excursion, an invasion of human space. An invasion that he and his friends were trying to end. Matt opened the visor on his helmet; now that they were inside, they could take advantage of the breathable air that the Arn had provided. Duncan and the two others followed suit. Duncan noticed that the ambient noises, no longer muted by the isolation provided by the helmet, were louder, clearer.

Matt held his left index finger in front of his mouth.“Shh. Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting Awn,” he whispered.

Vince then let out a little laugh, a very creditable imitation of Elmer Fudd’s.

Duncan shouldered his plasma rifle, drew the m1911 .45 caliber pistol instead. His friends did likewise.

“Good idea,” said Clancey. “In these tight spaces, a pistol will be easier to use.” The room was not much more than a cube, two meters on each side, with the ladder dropping into the middle and a door to one side.

“Shall we?” asked Vince, his hand on the door.

“We shall,” said Matt, raising his pistol toward the door.

Vince pushed the door, ducked and ran through, followed closely by Matt and then Clancey. Duncan moved into the doorway when all hell broke loose. Laser fire erupted from the other end of a long, high room; built almost to human scale, but with Arn sized furnishings. As Duncan fell back into the entrance room, he saw his three friends diving for cover behind what looked like child sized desks.

“Hold up,” said Shannon, “I’ve got some shields to recharge. Duncan, drop some smoke, s’il vous plait.”

Duncan saw that all three had taken multiple hits, their shields dropping dangerously low, as he opened his bag and took out a Snell grenade.

“Last one,” he shouted as he threw it out, aiming for the area to his friend’s right, to try to get it between them and the murderously accurate laser fire.

“Thank you, sir,” said Shannon, “I’ll have them repaired in a jiffy.”

“Who even says jiffy?” laughed Clancey.

“The goddess saving your scrawny ass. Five more seconds and y’all will be good as new.”

“Reverting to plan ‘A’,” said Duncan, re-holstering the pistol and pulling out his plasma rifle. “Cover me.”

The other three rose enough from behind their desks to begin, as quickly as they could pull the trigger, sending .45 bullets downrange, through the protective laser diffusing smokescreen.

Duncan ran out of the room, crossing in front of his friends, and ran to the other side of the room where he’d spotted a small alcove. He reached it after taking a glancing hit; whether from the Arn lasers or human bullets, he didn’t know. His shield dropped ten percent, then he was back under cover. He waited while his friends reloaded, then, when they started taking more deliberate, aimed, shots, he raised his plasma rifle to his shoulder and peeked out around the cover of the alcove. As he leaned further out, sweeping to his left, his gun sight swept across the first of the Arn ambushers; he put a blast into its head and it dropped from view.

After a second, Vince stood, pointing his pistol, held with both hands, toward the other side of the room.

“It looks like we’re clear,” he said after a second. Matt and Clancey both stood as well, and began to advance.

“Really?” asked Duncan. “There was only one of them?”

“Nope,” said Clancey. “They realized that you had a good position on them, and they fell back.”

“Doesn’t that seem kind of smart for a video game?” Duncan asked.

“It does,” said Matt, “and it is. That’s why we like fighting the Arn. They’re smart.”

Duncan noticed that his shield had been recharged. “Thanks Shannon.”

“If you’re going to thank me everytime I save your ass, you’re going to be too busy to do anything else. But you’re welcome.”

Clancey was kneeling, facing toward the way that they’d come. He began talking, no doubt for Duncan’s benefit. “I’m setting a little surprise for any Arn that decide they want to try to flank us through some hidden passageway or even by going outside and running around to come in behind us through the airlock. It’s a little omnidirectional ‘claymore’ mine. Any movement in this room will set it off and the entire room will be blasted with little pellets that’ll rip through just about anything.”

“Are there any other exits or entrances to this base?” asked Duncan, sweeping around the room which looked like an office space, more or less square with desks and chairs spread throughout. Other than the way they’d come in, there was only one door out; the door that the ambushing Arn had escaped through.

“You know as much as I do,” continued Clancey.

“But they are some sneaky little bastards,” added Matt.

“I’ve still got an eye on the entrance you guys went through,” said Shannon, “and I’ll let you know if anything tries to come that way.”

“Why can’t you just nuke them from orbit?” laughed Duncan.

“Because you spent all of your money on a clipper, and not a battle cruiser. You buy us one of those and I’ll be able to drop some true nightmares on the bad guys,” said Shannon.

“Really?”

“Really,” she answered. “Of course, they’re probably a few times as expensive as your stupidly expensive ship. Start saving your pennies.”

Fifty million credits or so, Duncan thought.

“Maybe for Christmas,” he replied. Maybe someday, he thought.

“See anything?” asked Matt.

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Me neither,” said Duncan. They were arrayed in a semi-circle just outside the door that the Arn had used to evacuate, looking through into the next room.

“Looks clear,” said Matt. He began to move into the room. He paused, looked around, “Yep, it’s clear.” The other three followed him through.

“Wait up,” said Clancy, closing the door after they were all through, “I need to activate the claymore. Remind me to deactivate it when we come back through,” he chuckled.

“File cabinet,” said Vince, who began to move toward it. He reached it, opened it, and began rooting through it. “Got some skill certificates. Nothing fancy.” He leafed through them, putting them into his backpack. “Hey, here’s one, Duncan. Pilot II. Do you have that?”

“Nope.”

“Cool, here,” he said, handing it to Duncan. “That should increase your piloting skill.”

“What’ll that do?” he asked. “And, thanks.”

“Improve your jump accuracy. Increase fuel efficiency,” said Clancey. “Just by a percent or so, but they add up once you really pile on the certs.”

“Talk later,” said Matt, “kill stuff now.”

They spread out, moving through the room. It was of a shape and size with the previous, but more sparsely furnished. They moved toward the door on the opposite side of the room, when Shannon came over the radio.

“I think you guys can calm down. An Arn shuttle just took off from near you guys. It looks like they ran away.”

“Then why,” said Matt, “haven’t we received a ‘mission over’ message?”

The complex shook, rattled, from an explosion. From the room they’d just vacated. Dust flew from around the edges of the door they’d just shut. Clancey’s claymore had taken out the rearguard’s attempted flanking maneuver.

Chapter 4

Birmingham, West Midlands UK

Eric West tapped nervously on his chair’s armrest. He looked from the monitor displaying his tactical map to the top, center monitor in his array of six. That monitor showed the forward, bridge, view of his Delta class destroyer; the HMS Westy. He saw his crewman, Jordi, bent over his station. Jordi handled sensors on the Westy.

“Ready?” asked Eric.

“Almost,” said Jordi, “just a few more seconds.” He continued working, then, “Ready.”

“Cool,” said Eric, standing, “launch it!”

“Right-o,” laughed Jordi. Eric saw him reach to his station screen, press a button. Eric looked to the upper right monitor, which he’d configured to show the view forward from turret one, showing the first third of his ship from deck level. It suddenly lit up in a strobe of flashing, yellow lights, accompanied by a staccato thumping that pulsed through Eric’s computer room.

This was the first time that Eric had used the ‘hedgehog’, the system that launched a series of passive sensors that spread in a pattern defined by the sensor operator.

Jordi, as Eric had instructed, had created a spherical area bounding a stranded cargo ship. The sensors accelerated, much more quickly than his ship could, until they’d spread into a net that would entrap, and allow Eric to track down and kill, the now hapless pirate that had attacked the automated ship.

Eric had purchased the system the evening before, putting it on his now nearly full credit card. It was more than he wanted to, or really should have, paid, but he could probably push off a few bills for a month or two. Besides, he justified, laying a pattern of passive buoys by dropping each directly off his ship, one at a time, was probably the reason he had yet to make a kill; so all of the money he’d already spent was wasted without this system.

He moved to the tactical map.

“Number One, overlay the hedgehog sensor with the tactical map.” A translucent sphere appeared around, centered upon, the cargo ship. Dark blue dots, plotting the spread of passive sensor buoys, shifted to a lighter, higher, intensity as the buoys arrived in place. He shifted the tactical map so that it also centered on the sphere, and watched as the icon representing the Westy moved toward it.

“Number One, are any of the crew online?”

“Yes, sir. Gray Eagle is showing.”

“Perfect,” chuckled Eric. A weapon’s station man; just what he wanted. “Send him a note, tell him to report for duty,” he added, then paused and thought. “Add a smiley emoticon, please.” He moved to the navigation screen, zoomed in to center on the cargo ship.

“Number One, add the sensor array to the nav screen as well.”

He set a waypoint to the center of sphere. The cargo ship began accelerating. It jumped to hyperspace just as the Westy arrived at the outer edge of the sphere.

“What’s up, Eric-dude?”

Gray Eagle had arrived. His long, silver hair and bushy white beard incongruous with his sleek, black naval uniform. He sat at the weapon’s station.

“We’ve got a pirate cornered,” began Eric, “and we’re going to bloody well kill it.”

“Rock on, dude!” said Gray Eagle, leaning over the weapon’s station, checking the status of the plasma cannon while opening the missile bay doors.

“When we find it,” continued Eric, “target with the forward cannon. It’s set to twenty percent power. We just want to burn off any sensor absorbent coating. Once that’s damaged and we have a good target lock, send in missiles, one at a time, until the engines are disabled.”

Eric returned to the sensor screen. “Jordi, as soon as we enter the sphere, start dropping passive buoys. Not so soon that the coverage overlaps. We want to eventually fill up this space with enough that there’s nowhere left for him to hide.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Jordi saluted, smiling. Then he bent back over his station.

Eric stood back, surveying his screens. He laughed at himself when he noticed that he was, literally, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. This was the moment he’d been working toward; captaining a ship with his friends as crew, hunting down a wily and elusive prey. He hoped, more than anything, that the bastard out there was the same guy who’d led him on that chase around that damned shepherd moon. He groaned a little, thinking about how much he really wanted to blow that guy to hell. Taunting him by repeatedly begging not to be shot had put Eric’s temper over the edge. He’d chased the ship around that moon for half an hour; and he still didn’t know how the guy had gotten away from him.

Eric smiled; once he’d begun running him down, though, the mocking fake pleas had ceased. “At least I was able to teach him that lesson,” he muttered. “Do not fuck with me.”

The HMS Westy reached the center of the sphere described by the passive sensor buoys. Jordi dropped another sensor, to join the ones he’d been placing as the ship made a line from the outer edge of the sphere to the center. Eric paused to think.

“Which way would you go, if you were trying to sneak away,” he asked.

“Away from us,” said Gray Eagle.

Jordi nodded, “Directly away.”

“Which is why I don’t think he will,” said Eric, mentally flipping a four-sided coin; port, starboard, up or down. He decided it came up ‘down’. He reached for the helm screen, rolled the ship one hundred and eighty degrees; upside down from its previous stance. He then changed the orientation further, pitching up ninety degrees. Now it was pointing straight ‘down’, perpendicular to their previous bearing.

“You really didn’t need to roll the ship first, dude,” laughed Gray Eagle, “all you had to do was drop the nose.”

Eric was in too good a mood to let this insubordination bother him, so he laughed.

“Number One, all ahead full!” he said as he returned to his chair. He sat and turned, “Jordi, anything on the sensors?”

“Nothing on any of the passive scans. I’m running a narrow beam active scan to the front of us,” Jordi responded.

“Good, good.” Eric resumed tapping his fingers. The narrow beam scan was much more likely to return a hidden ship, if it hit. That was also where Jordi’s advanced player skills paid off; his Sensor VI level gave him approximately a cumulative ten percent increase in finding and locking onto a cloaked target.

“Wait,” said Jordi, “I’ve got something. Come left twenty degrees …”

“Port,” corrected Eric.

“ … and pitch up by 30.”

“Number One, comply,” said Eric, standing again.

“It’s faint,” said Jordi as the ship adjusted to its new bearing. “Gray Eagle, it’s about three degrees off the starboard bow now, straight ahead.”

“Right,” said Gray Eagle, adjusting the forward cannon, “Range?”

“Tough to tell,” said Jordi.

Eric began rubbing his hands together again. “Fire!”

“Rock on, dude!”

Gray Eagle reached to the control for turret one, hit the big red fire button on top. Twin beams lanced forward, into space. Nothing.

“Adjust right, uhm, starboard just a tic,” said Jordi excitedly.

Gray Eagle moved the targeting joystick. “Three seconds until the cannon recharge, dude!”

“Fire when ready,” said Eric.

“Firing!”

“YES!” screamed Eric. One of the beams had intercepted the ship, slashing down the side. Minimal damage, but it was enough to disrupt the ship’s light and sensor absorbent cladding. The sensor station jumped to life with the newly acquired returns.

“Target acquired,” said Jordi.

Eric looked to the tactical display. The pirate was now highlighted, several hundred kilometers ahead, course slightly offset to the outside of their own.

“All ahead, flank!” Eric shouted. “Gray Eagle, slave all plasma turrets and lock on target. But don’t fire!”

As if in response, the pirate, a clipper, leaped forward as well, its engines now glowing hot from the sudden dump of fuel into them, but it was futile. There was no way he could outrun the Westy, its only hope was to get fast enough to be able to jump.

“Missile away!” laughed Gray Eagle. The small rocket raced away from the destroyer and within seconds had intercepted, and exploded. Two of the five engine nozzles on the pirate went dark.

“One more, if you please, Mr. Eagle!” laughed Eric.

Chapter 5

Duncan and his friends were sitting in Matt’s apartment discussing the fight against the Arn when Duncan had a thought.

“Clive, rent me a small apartment on this station.”

“Yes, sir.”

He had decided he wanted to have a place, a pied-a-terre, on the public station, the ‘American’ station at Kepler 22B. He thought it would allow him to better come and go while maintaining the secret of his space station. Once a player had visited a station, they could return through the lost tech magic of the Old Ones, so he was able to go back and forth between his station and any other station he’d been to.

An apartment would allow him to go directly to or from his station and a private location in the public station. After they wrapped up their discussion, and split the loot from the Arn, his friends all logged off.

Duncan got up and left Matt’s apartment. Exiting through the door, he heard:

“Destination?”

“My apartment.”

He walked through the second door into a small apartment. It was shaped like Matt’s, one larger room with, presumably, a small bedroom through a door on the far wall. Unlike Matt’s, it was bare. He’d have to look into furnishing both this and his quarters on his station, as well as the captain’s quarters of the Shepherd Moon. He looked at the long wall to the right.

“Clive, can I put a window on that far wall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’m sure it costs nothing,” laughed Duncan to himself. He pulled up a commerce menu and navigated until he found the furnishings tab. He bought a large, wall-sized ‘window’ and placed it. The entire wall now showed a view out into space. The beautiful, Earth-like planet, Kepler 22B, took up the lower portion of the window; the rest of the view showed the backbone of the milky way. Ship traffic, leaving and arriving the station, moved through the screen. He loved it. The vista brought to his mind a space geek’s version of a giant fish-tank.

He checked a ‘Interior Decorator’ tab and found, and hired, another player who would purchase and place, for a suitable markup, furnishings and decorations for his apartment. He selected a theme and budget and sent off the request, paid in advance.

He smiled, then turned and left the apartment.

“Destination?”

“Control room.”

Duncan exited through and, transported across the entire quadrant, into the control room of his space station, walking to the chair that sat in the back of the room. He nodded to Clive, standing to the right of the chair, who nodded back. Turning, he dropped into the chair and looked to the control room’s front wall, that showed, as though on an Imax movie screen, the view out the front of the station. He brought up his station control panel, and noted that he had a message, from Phani, waiting for him.

He opened it and spread the message, opaque for readability, over the window. Phani had completed his daily run to Eta Bootis, for good profits. He apologized, abjectly, for failing to follow the return protocol Duncan had given him; apparently he’d jumped to the station uncloaked, but was sure that there was nobody in system to learn of the station from his mistake.

Duncan smiled. He really liked the guy. He was honest. Conscientious. Duncan truly hoped that Phani would be able to make a living, make a better life for himself, through their partnership.

He continued reading, then mentally kicked himself. Phani had noticed that the Canis Arcturus station, like the player stations, didn’t just deal in the minerals that Duncan had focused on. They also traded in weapons, certificates - anything else players might covet. Duncan had been too stupid to notice, or even think to notice, the opportunity. Phani had not been.

Again, he was impressed with the man’s honesty. He could have quietly bought up armloads of blueprints, recipes and certificates and Duncan would never have known. Instead, before purchasing even one, he’d contacted Duncan with a fair business proposition; Phani would buy what he thought he could market, but provide Duncan with a right of first refusal, at cost, for any that Duncan wanted.

Duncan forced himself to a rule - he would only purchase items that he, personally, needed or wanted to use to improve his character, colony, ship or space station. He’d never take advantage of Phani’s honesty to cheat him out of a valuable item only to sell it himself.

He replied, thanking Phani, and agreed to the deal. Then he sat back, closed the message window, and looked out at the stars.

“Destination?”

“The bridge,” Duncan said, “of the Shepherd Moon.”

He walked through on to the bridge, to the captain’s chair. He looked at Clive, who nodded at him. Duncan nodded back.

“Long time, no see,” he joked. “Are there any contacts?”

“The HMS Westy, sir,” Clive responded, “but he’s 1.5 AU out-system.”

“So, roughly twelve light minutes away from us,” Duncan pondered, “and thus no danger, at least as far as leaving the station. Open the hangar doors.”

‘Yes, sir,” added Clive, “and he seems to be prosecuting a contact.”

“What?”

“Attacking a pirate,” clarified Clive.

“I see. Take us out of the station, make for the jump point,” Duncan ordered, “and don’t forget to close the hangar doors behind us.”

Duncan then brought up his trading screen. He’d made several hundred thousand credits from Phani’s delivery that day. He used one hundred thousand to order a drone from the Indian station; doubling his cargo fleet. This gave him one to ship to and from the Kepler station, and one for the Indian route. He filled the drone he already owned with the day’s purchase from Eta Bootis and ordered it sent to Kepler, where the resources would fetch him another hundred thousand or so.

He placed an order at the Indian station, which would be loaded onto his new drone before it shipped out. Satisfied with the day’s business, he closed the screen and brought up the system map. Duncan zoomed in on the third planet, then plotted a course there. It was time, he thought, to start searching out an appropriate spot to begin terraforming.

The first thing he’d have to do, he’d read, to begin the process was to develop an atmosphere. If he could find enough frozen carbon dioxide, dry ice, on the planet, he’d be able to sublimate it; turn it into a gas that would begin to increase the atmospheric pressure. He could also mine the system’s comets, probably out in the Oort cloud, for ammonia, methane or other greenhouse gasses. In addition to the atmosphere, he had to figure out liquid water requirements, soil requirements, and the many factors required of him to build up the planet to be suitable for colonization.

He was going to have a busy year.

Chapter 6

Eric West’s and Gray Eagle’s laughter mixed to accompany the launch of the second missile. Like its predecessor it leaped from the HMS Westy and impacted with, and destroyed, two of the pirate’s engines. The ship’s acceleration began to slow appreciably; the closure rate for the destroyer leapt accordingly.

Eric stood, approached the forward viewscreen, watching as the pirate grew by the second as the Westy ran it down.

“One more, please, Gray Eagle,” said Eric. “It wouldn’t do for the ship to accelerate to the speed required for a hyperspace jump.” Even one engine would eventually push it to jump speed.

The third missile of the fight launched and accelerated toward the pirate.

“He’s trying to raise his shields,” added Jordi, “but I don’t think he’ll have time.”

Jordi was proven right as the missile impacted, finally destroying the last of the pirate’s engines. It now coasted, and the still accelerating destroyer ate the distance between them in ever larger bites. Eric adjusted the helm, first coming starboard then port, until he was on a matching course, a little above, the pirate. The Westy came in over the ship and Eric dropped and reversed the engines, at max thrust, until he’d matched the speed of the pirate ship.

“All stop,” he shouted, “come about, left ninety degrees!”

“Port,” interjected Jordi.

The Westy spun until it was perpendicular to the direction of the pirate. They’d stopped, relative to their prey, a couple of kilometers ahead and were now ‘floating’, broadside, along with them through open space.

“Nice pilot shit, dude,” laughed Gray Eagle enthusiastically.

Eric smiled, grimly.

“Thank you, Mr. Eagle,” Eric returned to his chair, sat. “Now, if you would, please charge your cannon fully, and target a full missile broadside on that thieving bastard!”

“Captain, we’re receiving a hail.”

“Thank you, Number One,” said Eric, standing, “on-screen please.”

The forward view was replaced by the scene of a small bridge. In the captain’s chair sat a man, slow clapping and smiling. He had short, spiked, gray hair. He stood, still smiling.

“Well done!,” he said enthusiastically, “What gave me away? How did you know which direction I’d run?”

“You were predictable in trying to be unpredictable,” said Eric. He read the information display that came with the hail. The ship was a standard merchant clipper. Fast, good cargo space. It had even been outfitted with shields. A much nicer ship than pirates usually used. It was named ‘13th Ronin’ and was currently being captained by someone named ‘Kato’. Eric assumed that’s who he was talking to.

“It really wasn’t that hard to figure out.” said Eric, putting his hands behind his back. “You were too clever by half.”

Kato shrugged. “You got me. A fair cop, as you’d say. I’m impressed. Are you currently part of a fleet?”

Eric wasn’t sure how to answer. He was part of ‘Fleet Bigweek’, but that was just a name for his clan. Their entire fleet consisted of the HMS Westy. He decided to assume that the question was more general.

“No, I’m not,” Eric returned to his seat, “I’m a privateer. A hunter of pirates. A hunter of you,’ he emphasised the last word, smiling.

Kato shrugged again, “The ‘Inner Lizards’ are always on the lookout for a good captain, a good crew. Are you interested in joining us?”

“Become a pirate?” Eric asked incredulously.

“Not at all,” said Kato, waving his hands dismissively. “This was an anomaly. I had a torpedo we’d found, so I thought to try out the experience, to see if there was a better way to hunt them down.” He laughed, “All we got out of it was a cargo load full of dry ice and a few missiles up the ass.”

“Ah, I see. So you’re not really a real pirate, then?” Eric asked sarcastically.

“If that’s the case,” interjected Jordi, “why are you still trying to raise your shields?”

Eric nodded, but made a mental note to remind the crew that all such observations should be sent to him via a private message. It was the captain’s role to entreat with adversaries.

“A valid question, sir!” laughed Kato, reaching for his control station. “It was merely a process, an artifact, left running from our exciting game of cat and mouse.”

“He has turned off shields now,” said Jordi.

Gray Eagle let out a short, evil laugh.

Eric smiled.

“Now, as we were saying. You wish for me to join your completely above board, in no way a bunch of pirates, fleet?”

Kato raised his hands, palms up, smiled and nodded.

“Mr. Eagle,” whispered Eric. “A full broadside, if you please. Open fire.”

“Mr. Jordi,” Eric said, “please retrieve our sensor buoys and reload the hedgehog.”

“Already working it,” said Jordi. “The process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” Jordi stood, “The hedgehog status light will change to green once it’s done! Thanks, Eric, that was fun! Let me know when you’ve found another one.”

“Yeah,” said Gray Eagle, “he blew up real good, dude.” He also stood.

“Wait,” said Eric, “you’re leaving? I’m going to keep hunting.”

“And if you find something, let us know,” Jordi said, walking toward the bridge exit.

“Yeah, dude. See you later. Rock on!” They left the bridge.

“What. The. Fuck?” Eric asked, exasperated. He couldn’t believe that they’d just leave like that. That they just wanted to be in at the kill. Sure, that was fun. But that was just a part of it. The hunt, the suspense of the hunt, was what gave the kill the sweetness, was what pushed the excitement levels. Americans just didn’t understand that, he thought, everything for them had to be instant gratification. They couldn’t see the payoff as being more satisfying if it was earned.

He looked to the sensor station, saw that Jordi’s process was running. He shifted to the weapon’s station. Gray Eagle hadn’t reloaded the missile bays, so Eric selected enough missiles from the ship’s store and started the loading process. That should take a couple of minutes. He then opened the mercantile page and ordered more missiles for the ship’s store. They’d be automatically loaded next time in port. He began to think.

What he really wanted, now that he had the hedgehog, was a really good absorbent cladding for the Westy. Then he could stake out the pirate hunting grounds much more closely without worrying about whether a lurking pirate would be scared away by a visual scan of the area. He could lay to within a few million kilometers and know within a few seconds of an attack by a pirate. Then he could jump in on the bastard before he’d even had time to loot the cargo ship. He began doing some mental calculations to determine when he could afford the purchase.

“Sir,” interrupted his executive officer, “we’re receiving a hail.”

“Open it,” said Eric distractedly. He smiled, then frowned when he saw who it was.

“What do you want, Taipan?”

“I just wanted to thank you,” Taipan said, “for avenging my shipment.”

“What?”

“That pirate you just killed. He attacked my cargo ship. He stole my CO2 delivery. I just wanted to thank you for blowing him out of the water, as it were.”

“I didn’t fucking do it for you,” Eric snarled.

“In any case,” said Taipan cheerfully, “I hope you continue make this system dangerous for pirates and safe for honest businessmen like myself.” He smiled, “One thing, though.”

“Yes,” growled Eric, impatiently, “What?”

“Before you shot him?”

Taipan paused.

“Get on with it,” Eric grated.

“Did he say ‘Please don’t shoot me’?”

Chapter 7

Duncan closed the connection between the Shepherd Moon and the HMS Westy. He smiled, ruefully.

“Why do I feel the need to taunt that asshole?” he asked himself. “Because he’s an asshole,” he answered himself truthfully.

“Clive,” he continued, “replace that shipment of dry ice.”

“Yes, sir. It’s slightly less expensive in India.”

“Go ahead,” laughed Duncan, “but it doesn’t really matter. That stuff is cheap.” He thought, “Then again, we’ll need a butt-load of it to terraform the third planet.”

“What should we name the planet?” he mused.

“As long as the name doesn’t violate the most strict profanity filter, you can name it whatever you like. Once. The name can’t be changed after the universal navigation maps are updated.”

Duncan looked at the unnamed rock floating in front of him. He laughed, “Maybe I should call you the ‘Westy sucks balls’.”

“That would come up against the filter, I’m afraid,” said Clive. “The name must conform with the ESRB and PEGI guidelines for child friendliness.”

“I was only joking,” said Duncan. But he wondered what he should name it. Once he began the improvement process, he would earn that right. “I’ll have to think about that,” he muttered.

The Shepherd Moon entered orbit around the third planet. A polar orbit. The planet, like the Earth, had a noticeable axial tilt. The Earth’s was around twenty-four degrees, this planet a few degrees less. Also Earth-like, the planet had ‘north’ and ‘south’ poles; likely resting places for frozen elements. Elements necessary for terraforming the planet.

“Clive, activate cloaking, please.” He didn’t want anyone to sneak up on him while he was busy with the search.

As he orbited, he began his scan of the poles. He found, beneath both poles, large deposits of frozen CO2. Dry ice. Mostly subterranean, but with a largish percentage above ground.

“Well,” he laughed, “I guess I can cancel that dry ice order.”

“Done,” said Clive.

“Thanks.” He continued scanning. The large amounts of dry ice on the planet opened other avenues of development for him. He brought up the game’s wiki page, the header page for terraforming.

The primary method used to create an atmosphere was to generate a large volume of greenhouse gasses. One of the ways that his terraforming kit could do that was to breed and seed large, unbelievably large, numbers of methanogens; microorganisms in the domain Archaea - the same domain as the chemolithotrophs happily living in his ship’s ore ‘smelter’. Like its cousin, the methanogen seemed intelligently designed just for human space exploration.

The methanogens, Methanothermobacter wolfeii, Methanosarcina barkeri - Duncan, his eyes glazing, skipped past the list of various species - consumed CO2 and excreted methane. They are anaerobic - that is they don’t require oxygen - they don’t require organic nutrients, and they don’t photosynthesize so they can live underground; they’re the ideal tool for unlocking the global warming potential of frozen CO2 at the poles by turning it into methane gas.

The terraforming kit, which Duncan would place near one of the poles as soon as he determined which had the greater ‘stash’ of dry ice, would breed the bacteria and, through drones, seed various areas around the poles with the carbon munching beasties.

Once the planet began to warm, the frozen CO2, both at the poles and spread in smaller quantities throughout the soil all over the planet, would sublimate - go from a solid directly into a gas - and increase the warming effect; carbon dioxide, like methane, was a greenhouse gas.

After the greenhouse gasses had raised the temperature of the planet, even by only a few degrees, the atmospheric pressure would increase, increasing the ‘efficiency’ of the greenhouse gas generation which would, in turn increase the atmospheric pressure. Those two processes would feed each other enough that Duncan could begin introducing other gasses.

Ammonia, for example, could probably be mined in sufficient quantities in the outer part of the system and brought to the planet. Another greenhouse gas, it was also mostly nitrogen in weight. The nitrogen would act as a ‘buffer gas’ in the burgeoning atmosphere, adding to the pressure of the system and acting to control the rate of combustion of oxygen.

Nitrogen was the most common element in the Earth’s atmosphere; it’s what kept the entire atmosphere’s supply of oxygen from being consumed in a single exothermic orgy every time a flame source was introduced. And adding oxygen was the next step after that in the terraformation process, so a buffer gas was a prerequisite.

Next the terraforming kit’s ecopoiesis modules would kick in. Small canisters containing extremophile photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria would be seeded, as global conditions were met. These modules, solar powered biodomes, would settle on and drill themselves partway into the planet’s surface. The microbes would then feed on the local soil and elements and expel oxygen into the atmosphere. Part of Duncan’s responsibility would be to ensure that the kit was fed with the resources required to build the uncountable number of modules needed.

In addition to the smaller biodomes that the terraforming kit created and spread, Duncan could purchase larger, inhabitable, biodomes that would not only dramatically increase the oxygen output for his entire, planetwide, system, they would also attract the first colonists. In this case, mostly scientists who would increase the efficiency of the process at the cost of regular and, Duncan assumed, expensive resupply missions to provide food, water and whatever else the scientists-cum-colonists required.

Duncan opened the technology tree for the terraforming process. It was, in effect, just like any other RTS, or real time strategy, game. He had a cascading series of technical improvements he could build or buy, each with its own resource requirements. It was, though, huge. Much larger than any other RTS he’d played.

Everything he’d just read about was described in a large branching array as large as most games, and that was only the first step. He’d still have to see about seeding the soil with the nutrients required for life to propagate, then introduce enough liquid water into the system to feed it.

Those tech trees were near as deep as the first. And then, he saw, after all of that, he could look into adding flora and then fauna into the planet.

He’d be working on this with help from Phani and, he thought likely, his friend Jamie, a RTS connoisseur, for the next year. Once all of that was done, he could begin ‘playing’ the colonization RTS; which looked, if anything, even more complex, deep and, he thought, fun than the first game.

Duncan stood and began walking from the bridge. The return had come back - the north pole had, by a fair margin, the larger amount of dry ice. He walked through the exit.

“Destination?”

“Hangar.”

He had already transferred the terraforming kit from the hold on the Shepherd Moon to its shuttle, which he now entered. Sitting at the pilot’s station, he began the process of starting the shuttle’s engines.

He didn’t bother with charging the life support systems - since he was going to EVA on the planet anyway, he was already wearing his heavy armor and helmet. The suit had enough juice to keep him alive for days in the hostile atmosphere. Or ‘non-atmosphere’, he thought grimly. He would also be saved, this way, of the hassle of depressurising and repressurising the shuttle for his excursions on the planet.

The engines having been prodded to life, Duncan lifted the shuttle from the hangar bay floor.

“Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” he laughed. The Shepherd Moon’s hangar bay doors began to open. He nudged the throttle, sending the shuttle through the doors with a few feet to spare on either side. The doors began to close once he was clear.

“Time,” Duncan said to himself, “to begin seeding this genesis project!”

Chapter 8

Duncan focused on keeping the shuttle through the virtual representation of his course as he entered the minimal atmosphere. Four transparent planes, stretching into the distance toward the vanishing point of the landing site, passed from the top, bottom, and sides of his viewscreen as he guided the ship toward the planet.

As the ship descended, the buffeting, never that heavy, eased as he approached his chosen landing spot, on the southern edge of the north polar dry-ice cap. He could have let the autopilot control the ship; he even could have directed this entire operation to completion remotely from the bridge of the Shepherd Moon.

“No way,” said Duncan to himself, “this is too damn much fun.”

He flared the shuttle, at the last second, as it reached the surface. The heat from his engine sublimated a patch of frozen CO2 underneath the shuttle, enveloping him in a thick ephemeral cloud. He shut down the engines, then exited the cockpit for the shuttle’s cargo hold.

He moved past the low, tracked terraforming kit. It looked, Duncan thought, a bit like a Mars rover from his youth. It would wheel itself, once Duncan opened the cargo bay door, out onto the surface of the planet to the point that he’d designated as the source for his planned planetary transformation.

Duncan reached the shuttle door controls, made sure he was cleared to the side, and pressed the button. The door, hinged at the top, lifted from the bottom. As it rotated up, Duncan took his first unrestricted look at the planet’s surface.

A short stretch of reddish, probably iron-rust impregnated, soil stretched to the near edge of the ice sheet. Duncan had chosen this location for several reasons; the obvious being the proximity to the dry ice it needed. The second reason was that it was currently ‘winter’ in the northern hemisphere of the planet, so the ice sheet was likely at its furthest reaches. He wasn’t worried so much about the ice sheet receding in summer, leaving it further from the terraforming station, as he would have been that placing near the southern sheet, currently in summer and probably contracted, would expand during the cold months, enveloping the station in ice.

He had no reason to believe that the station would be harmed by being encased in an encroaching ice sheet - for all he knew that wouldn’t be a problem. But he didn’t want to risk it.

“Hell,” he said to himself, rethinking the placement decision process for at least the tenth time, “I don’t even know if dry-ice sheets expand and contract the way the Earth’s water glaciers do.” It might not be a problem, but it wasn’t a decision he felt comfortable gambling a five million credit piece of machinery on.

Duncan followed the robot as it left the shuttle, slowly moving forward on its four ‘wheels’; each wheel was really three bogey wheels, a triangle spread with two on the ground and one centered above them, encircled by a studded track. The four wheels, independently suspended, made easy work of the regolith and small rocks that peppered the ground. As Duncan trailed, he looked around, taking advantage of the view offered through his perfectly clear helmet.

The vista, in all directions, went clearly to the horizon; there was little in the way of atmospheric gasses to dim the view. It gave the scene an oddly two dimensional, layered paper cutout, effect. Since this planet’s axis angle wasn’t as large as on the Earth, the sun managed to creep above the horizon for a few hours of daylight in this arctic winter. The light threw stark shadows on a mountain range to the south. He couldn’t tell how far away they were; they were either fairly close and small, or a range of Himalayas in the distance.

After a hundred meters, the robot stopped. It seemed to pause for a few seconds, then settle, as if finally resting, onto the ground. The left front and right rear wheels then rotated ninety degrees, and all four wheels began dragging sheets of solar cells outward. About ten meters in length, these sheets, once pulled into place, were thrust upward from below until they raised and rotated to face the sunlight. Each sheet was made up of meter square cells, and each cell was able to raise and rotate separately from the rest.

“Shit,” said Duncan, “that’s something I didn’t consider. Will it get enough sunlight at the poles to operate?”

“Yes sir,” answered the ever vigilant Clive, “they should be able to generate enough power to operate for at least seventy-five percent of each winter night. They will operate one hundred percent of the time during the other three seasons.”

“Thanks,” said Duncan, relieved. The station now looked like a large cross, twenty meters across. In the center, the heart of the station would breed and distribute, through its integrated drones, the microbe workers. As the terraformation process moved through its various phases, the station would inform Duncan of any resource requirements, including schedules for delivery. Eventually, this installation would look like a robot village, as it built and distributed the new modules. All in all, though, the process of establish this base, Duncan felt, was pretty anticlimactic.

“Still, it’s pretty damn cool,” he said as he looked at the cross shape that would transform this planet. He thought for a second, “Clive, please register this planet as ‘Shepherd’s Cross’.”

He smiled, returning to the shuttle.

The shuttle rendezvoused with the Shepherd Moon; at least where the shuttle instruments said the ship was. Duncan had turned off the option allowing him to see through his own ship’s cloaking as he felt somehow more comfortable seeing the ship how others would. Seeing that the cladding and cloaking was working both removed any doubt of their efficacy as well as reminded him when they were not on.

“Clive,” he said over the radio, “please open the hangar doors.”

As though apparating out of nothing, a vertical line of light appeared in the dark starry sky. As the two doors spread apart, light shone out of the interior of the Shepherd Moon landing bay.

The doors open, it looked to Duncan like he was leaving a dark star-sprinkled room to enter one flooded with light. He nudged the shuttle forward, bringing it into a landing. As he cleared them, the hangar doors closed. Nozzles spread around the room at floor level began to hiss gas as the life-support system brought the room back up to livable standards.

He shut down the engines and pushed back his helmet faceplate. The noises of the ship, muted by the helmet, were now sharpened, louder. He finished with the shuttle and left through the door on the port side of the cockpit, through the hangar and then onto the bridge.

Duncan sat in the captain’s chair and brought up the helm and navigation controls; he was having too much fun to foist off the piloting of the ship onto the AI. He raised the throttles, brought the Shepherd Moon out of orbit. Still accelerating, he set a course for deeper space, outside of the Shepherd’s Cross gravity well.

“Shepherd’s Cross,” he laughed, “I’m starting to sense a theme.” He didn’t know why he’d chosen the name. It had just come to him as he’d seen the terraforming station unfold into the large cross. It was one of those serendipitous moments that somehow just felt ‘right’.

He moved to the navigation map, bringing up a list of predefined jump points for the station.

“The station,” he said to himself. “I can’t always just refer to it as ‘the station’.” He turned his head to look at his AI.

“Clive, name the station ‘Shepherd’s Crook’, please.”

The AI nodded. Duncan instantly felt a bit of regret. “It’s a stupid name,” he muttered, “but that doesn’t matter. Only Phani and I will ever know it.”

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 began 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 felt it was only polite to reward a product that pleased.

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 worry 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’?”

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 or 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?”

“If I had the authority to give her a free month, I would have,” he paused, “sir.”

“Not good enough, Eric,” he said dismissively, “I’ve told you before, you’ve got to be able to deflect these types before it ever gets to that. It should never come to my attention, much less become my problem,” he frowned. “Work on that.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Eric, turning back to his computer, seething.

Eric left work, a little early, leaving by the side door away from his manager’s office. He walked out into the early September evening, frustrated. He wasn’t concerned with his job; he’d closed off that annoyance as he left his cubicle. He was frustrated by his inability to outfit the HMS Westy as much as he wanted. Needed, he corrected himself.

He boarded the bus home, wondering how he’d raise the funds to buy the cladding that would cloak his ship from pirates. He’d figure that out later, he thought, then began doing the mental calculations for the advantage a cloak would allow him.

If he hunted outside of a gravity well, he only had to get up to the few percent of C required to make a jump. He needed his hunting ground to be far enough away from the likely attack point that the pirate wouldn’t detect his sudden acceleration until it was too late. If he was ten light seconds away, but it took him thirty light seconds to accelerate to jump speed, then his adversary would get twenty seconds notice before the attack.

The Westy had to be, he thought, close enough to be able to “see” the attack quickly, but not so close as to spoil his attack before it began. He’d try one-eighth of an astronomical unit, or AU. That was about a light minute. Sixty seconds.

So sixty seconds after an attack, he’d see it, then go to flank speed. If it took him thirty seconds to get to speed, he’d still be able to jump in on top of the pirate a minute and a half after it had attacked the cargo ship. That was much better than thirteen or so minutes he was used to working with.

In addition to being a larger shock to the pirate, to be hunted so quickly, it would give the Westy a much smaller area of space to sort through; if he was close enough to detect the actual launch of the torpedo, not just the explosion, he’d have a pin-point location to jump to.

Eric smiled into space, confusing the little girl bus passenger who happened to have glanced at him at just that moment. Then Eric stood as he reached his stop and, rejuvenated, dashed off the bus and to his building.

Eric spoke into the phone, this time in his flat.

“Yes, I know I’m a little late on the August payment, but I’ll send it off today.”

He paused, listening.

“No,” he said, “it will just be the minimum amount, I’m afraid. I’ve had a bit of a family crisis, you see,” he smiled, trying to project that friendliness into the phone line and through to the credit card support agent on the other end.

“Thank you, yes, everything will turn out alright for mother, I’m sure,” he continued, “but it would be awfully helpful if I could get a little extension on my credit line. To help her out.”

He listened.

“Really?” he brightened. “Thank you. That will help immensely.”

He closed the line, ending the third such call he’d made to his creditors in the last hour. His lines of credit now extended, he had enough, barely, to add the cladding to the HMS Westy and begin hunting earnestly now. He smiled and, finishing the last of his microwaved dinner, walked into his computer room and sat heavily in his chair.

“Number One,” he said, “bring up the purchase listings for cloaking devices and cladding, if it pleases you.”

Eric looked to his newly updated sensor systems. The cladding he’d just purchased wouldn’t stand up to much of a direct scan; but it would help. He’d need a full cloaking system in order to really be invisible at a distance to an active search, but the cladding would allow him to sit quietly and not have to worry about being detected by a visual scan.

As long as he got to the system well before the pirate, he’d just sit still, quietly, as he usually did. He could now do it much much closer to the action than before. Assuming pirates didn’t suddenly start buying and using active scanning sensors, he was set.

“Number One,” he said, “all ahead full speed to waypoint one.”

He sat back in his chair, watching as the Westy sidled away from the space station and turned, accelerating, toward the preprogrammed jump point.

Eric pulled up the navigation menu, and selected his destination. He looked over the system and noted that the maps had been updated. The third planet in the system was now named Shepherd’s Cross.

“Stupid name,” Eric muttered, suddenly concerned. If someone was terraforming that planet, working toward civilizing the system, would the pirates have to find someplace else to hunt? He frowned, began tapping nervously on his chair’s arm.

Chapter 14

Duncan Sheriden crept through the small copse of trees, the occasional snap of a trodden twig accenting his nervousness.

“Calm down,” he told himself, “the sound of those laser batteries are going to mask just about any noise I can make.” Through the trees, he saw the flash of light followed shortly by the sharp sizzling sound as the Arn batteries fired upward, into space. The firing had been repeated every thirty seconds or so since they’d landed.

“Shit,” said Shannon, slightly panicked, over the radio. “We’re taking a pounding up here. They’re targeting the command ships.”

“Go on,” said Matt.

“Each hit is dropping my shields,” she continued, “faster than I can regenerate them.” They could hear her gulp over the radio, “I’m putting all of my power to my shields. I’ve got nothing left over for you guys, and I’m still going to be destroyed.”

Matt dropped to one knee, his friends mirrored him. The all scanned the area around them, looking through the forest for any signs of an ambush.

The oak-like trees in all directions were spaced enough that patches of grass grew in the spots soaked by sunlight, but most of the area around each tree was a red clay-like soil, frosted white from what Duncan assumed were the remains or the spore from some sort of mushroom like growth around each tree's lower trunk. The leaves on the trees around them shook as another blast from the batteries fired; a few of the white mushrooms fell onto the forest floor.

“I think,” he said, “we all know what we have to do. We have to take out those laser batteries. Fast.”

Vince and Clancey nodded.

“Hurry,” pleaded Shannon, adding urgency.

Duncan looked to his tactical map. The batteries were probably half a kilometer away. On the other side of a small village. That village was likely fortified with Arn. Lots of Arn. They didn’t have time to work their way around it. Their only advantage was that there were many groups dropping into this area, probably all being told the same thing by their controllers. They’d have to hurry to try to overwhelm the defenses.

“A good banzai charge,” muttered Duncan. “Into the valley of death.”

His friends laughed. They all stood, moved to a lateral spread and began sprinting through the woods. Toward the village. Toward the Arn.

They approached to within about a hundred meters of the village when the treeline ended and they shot into open grassland. They hadn’t come under fire, as yet, but they did see the occasional flash as the various groups of humans approaching the town from different sides were brought to the attention of the defenders. Sudden billows of smoke, followed by the whump of explosions, on the verge of the town showed that the fight was being taken to the aliens quickly as the humans approached to within grenade range.

As Duncan got to fifty meters from the first house, he saw movement inside a window on the ground floor and let loose a running, unaimed shot from his plasma rifle that, miraculously, blasted through the window glass and momentarily illuminated the room within. His feeling of triumph was quickly quashed when a decidedly human hand extended from the window, middle finger extended.

“Watch where you’re shooting, newbie!” yelled the player in the room. “We already cleaned them out of this building.”

“Sorry!” shouted Duncan, high on adrenaline, as he reached, then jumped through, the window into the room. Matt, Vince and Clancey followed and the four of them looked to the four players already in the room, as well as the corpse of an Arn, still smoking, in the room center.

“Taipan!” shouted one of them.

“Oh, hi Blesk,” said Duncan. He nodded to the other three; Third, Tex and someone named Gray Eagle. The Fleet Bigweek clan; friends of Eric West, but nothing like him, as far as Duncan could tell, in demeanor or attitude.

“What is that thing?” Duncan continued, pointing at Gray Eagle.

“Big Bertha,” Gray Eagle responded, hefting a large gatling gun. He smiled broadly through his bushy gray beard, which spread, along with his long silver hair, over the chest and shoulders of his heavy armor.

“It’s how we got in,” said Third, “G.E. laid down a covering fire on the south side of this building while we charged. There are a couple of dead Arn in the next room thanks to him.”

“We’re just waiting here for it to recharge before we move on to the next building,” said Blesk.

“Hang on,” said Tex, “Jordi’s saying that the control ships are still getting hit, but they’ve come up with a routine where the rest of the ships all channel some of their power to the shields of the ships getting hit. All of the ships should be able to give about twenty percent of the power to the ground units, so our shields can be recharged just not as quickly. Same goes for your gun G.E.”

“Let’s group while we wait,” said Clancey.

Matt added everyone to the same group, sharing a radio channel.

“I’m ready, dudes,” said Gray Eagle, moving to the window on the other side of the room. He hefted the gun onto the window sill, looked back at the rest of the group expectantly; and laughed a truly evil laugh.

The groups moved at a sprint between the two buildings, spread roughly into two triangles of three with Duncan somewhere in between the two trios. Duncan could see to his right, in his peripheral vision, another group of humans attacking a different house. Laser lights crisscrossed between the other house and those humans, and explosions shook the ground, as Duncan pounded forward. He looked to the left, there was nothing, then back to the house in front of him, a two story box with six windows on this side; three on each floor.

As they got to within twenty yards, all six of those windows erupted, without warning, laser fire cutting into Duncan’s friends. Several went down immediately, followed quickly by an overwhelming eruption from behind him as the gatling gun opened up, spewing fire over Duncan’s head into the house.

As Gray Eagle sprayed over the various windows of the house, Duncan finished his sprint and dove onto the ground next to its base. He looked back, and then around. He was the only one of the group to have made it. He looked over the ground he’d just run over, at the six bodies of his friends. They’d gone down instantly, their shields and armor overwhelmed by a broadside of fire unleashed from the house.

Duncan was brought out of his shock by another blast of fire from the building, this time directed at Gray Eagle and the house Duncan had just left. Whether the fire was deadly or just suppressive, Duncan didn’t know, but the gatling gun went silent.

Duncan, his heart pounding and his hands shaking, tore open his backpack and started pulling grenades out. High explosive, fragmentation. He started pulling pins and throwing them through the first floor windows, one after another, as quickly as he could. Once he’d thrown the third through the last window, he dropped, rolled into the corner of the building and ground and covered his head.

The three blasts rocked the building in quick succession, and Duncan leapt to his feet and jumped through the leftmost window into the room. He crouched as he landed and swept the barrel of his plasma rifle over the room, from left to right, as he looked for a target. Eight Arn lay twisted, smoking and partially disassembled, testament to the deadliness of his grenades and the gatling gun’s firepower.

There was nothing else alive.

On this floor.

Duncan looked to the stairway, leading up, and moved toward it.

Chapter 15

Phani Mutha read through the listings available to him on the colony administrator control screen, which he had setup on the back wall of the control room of the space station, Shepherd’s Crook, next to the duplicate control that Taipan had placed for the management of the planet, Shepherd’s Cross.

The two screens allowed for the manipulation of the colony facilities for their respective locations, but were currently configured for two very different kinds of activities.

Where the planet’s controller displayed current status for a variety of early stage terraforming activities, the station’s display had only one active option available; ‘Domesticated Animals’.

He reached to the button on the lower-right corner of the screen and pressed it. This allowed him to feed recipes into the system. He began selecting the green, scroll-looking items in his inventory. Canine. Feline. Ovine. He’d chosen those three to begin with; he’d add more recipes as the market demanded.

Phani selected the third he’d entered, ‘Ovine’, and began working through the configuration options. While he thought there might be a demand for lambs, he wasn’t sure that the desire would translate to fully grown sheep, so the first option he set restricted the animal from aging. It would remain forever a lamb.

Then he selected color. He began to run the creation process, while configuring the next. After a few minutes, Phani had several blueprints for lambs, in several shades, that he took to the station manufactory.

Having fed the blueprints, one at a time, he opened his inventory and began pulling the sheep out and dropping them onto the floor. They began to gambol around the room, bleating happily. Phani laughed as he chased them down, one by one, preparing to take them to the apartment on Kepler station he’d rented and outfitted as his storefront - the first of many, he hoped, on stations throughout the galaxy.

He then repeated the process with a number of canines and felines. Some he set to remain puppies and kittens, but most were configured to age according to their time in the game world. He also created multiple colorings of each, but was limited to single, non-specific breeds for each.

Phani read through the licensing agreement provided by the Omegaverse for the propagation and sale of in-game digital objects. He could submit, he saw, 3D objects for inclusion in the game universe; additions to the standard, basic, objects included in the game.

For example, he thought, in addition to being able to sell the generic ‘mutt’ dog available as standard in every ‘Domesticated Animals’ recipe, he could submit the 3D model for any breed he wanted to add. Along with the model, he could define, through an easy to use scripting language, the behavior of the animal. He could create a fearsome Rottweiler guard dog, or a sleepy Saint Bernard. A friendly Labrador, or a yappy Pomeranian. All of the above. And he’d retain the rights to the specific models. Any future colony administrator that wanted to add his models to their system would not only have to pay a single up front fee, they’d have to pay a percentage for every individual item they created from it.

Nothing, however, prevented another player from creating and adding their own models as well, so Phani realized that his had to be of the highest quality. The 3D models not only had to be accurate, they had to be highly detailed with an extensive library of movement animations. The more accurate, and thus believable, his models were, the more likely people would want his - and the less likely someone would see his less than perfect offerings as an opportunity to undercut his market.

He lit a cigarette and began making a list of his requirements for each species and breed. The first thing he needed to create were the models, sounds and animations. He corrected himself; the first thing he had to have created were the models, sounds and animations. Phani had no such skills, but he thought he knew of some who did.

Over the last couple of years, India’s internet infrastructure had been rapidly expanded and fast, reliable connection was now available to most of the billion people in the country. Phani connected, wirelessly, through to a high-speed feed that was routed through a series of large, solar powered, automated aircraft, called Aquila, that circled over Pune day and night; alternately referred to as ‘Zucker-blimps’ or ‘Ambani-balloons’ after the billionaires who, with internet.org, had brought that access to the masses of the Indian cities. Phani wondered at the balloon reference - they weren’t blimps or airships, but flying wings. The wingspan of each was larger than a jumbo-jet, and each flew higher than any airliner, uninterrupted, for months at a time.

He used that connection now to search through listings for Pune’s technical corporations until he found what he was looking for - a small group who specialized in doing outsourced work for game companies; specifically art assets including 3D models and animations, as well as any associated sound effects. He began to write up his proposal, detailed with everything he’d need for ten breeds of cats and dogs, and sent it off.

Phani leaned back in his chair, took a last drag on the cigarette before mashing it out. He needed, he thought, to expand his operations as quickly as he could. To take advantage of any opportunities available to him before someone else did.

He’d seen the growth figures for the Omegaverse; less than a year old, it already had close to ten million players worldwide. That growth rate wasn’t steady, it was increasing. Projections put the player-base at one hundred million by next year.

Phani needed to be prepared for that.

He began writing up a budget, along with his best guess at income from the game, based on activities and returns. Even considering that his numbers were conservative, he thought he could afford to hire someone to help him - to augment his farming activities.

He worked through several scenarios, from adding one hire to farm generic mining missions, such as he’d done for the first several months in game, to buying a dedicated mining ship and directing the resource gathering himself until his employee learned the lessons of the trade, of the game, that Phani had sweat through.

He leaned back in his chair again, lit another smoke, and thought. He looked around his small, one room flat. One thing was sure, he knew; he had to get out of this place before he did anything.

In the weeks since he’d begun his partnership with Taipan, Phani had been able to replace his personal expenditures as they’d come in; he hadn’t had to touch the remainder of the one million credits that he’d received as first month’s payment on the terraforming kit.

It was almost time for the second payment to be made, and Phani’s income was increasing; the pet store, when it was opened, seemed to offer the possibility of an income that would allow him to improve his lot in life to a more drastic measure than simply the ‘security’ he’d recently discovered.

Now that his account had a constant influx of Rupees, he’d budgeted Rs 10,000 a month for rent; a vast increase on his current Rs 300 a month rent. For that, he’d move from this less than nineteen square meter room, to a two bedroom, eighty-three square meters flat. It wasn’t in an appreciably better part of town, but it was bigger. It would allow him both a bedroom and an office. An office to share with his first employee.

Chapter 16

Duncan approached the bottom of the stairway, looked up. He couldn’t see anything. The sounds of the larger battle around him had begun to fade, and he thought, he couldn’t say why, that it indicated that the human wave hadn’t been as successful as they’d all hoped. He feared that hundreds of other humans lay, as his friends did, in heaps in front of the Arn infested village. He felt vulnerable. Behind enemy lines. Alone.

“Gray Eagle,” he whispered, “are you there?”

Silence.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Shannon.

“We just got wiped out,” said Duncan, taking the first step upward as quietly as he could. He crouch walked, his plasma rifle pointed upward; toward the opening at the top of the stairs.

“Yeah,” said Shannon, “I can see that. You’re the only one left. The other three were there one second, gone the next.” She paused, “Do you think you’ll be able to take out the guns?”

“Not sure,” whispered Duncan quickly as he got high enough on the stairs to peek into the room. He couldn’t see any Arn, but they’d likely be around and to the left. Behind him. Standing at the windows. “Give me a second,” he said, once again opening his backpack. He pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin, released the spoon, and counted to two.

He tossed it over the railing above him, into the room, and immediately began moving to the top of the steps. He’d timed it perfectly, the explosion rocked the room just before he entered it. He began firing at targets, from the right to the left. The stunned, wounded and confused Arn began to turn on him as he fired.

In his initial glance at the room, it looked like there had been five Arn. Three had been killed outright by his grenade, one, near the far corner, was wounded - by the grenade or his frantic shooting, he didn’t know. The last dove to the floor, trying to bring its laser to bear on the attacking human.

Duncan ran forward, firing from the hip as he did. Two plasma blasts ripped through the closest Arn, its initial return shot firing high, into the ceiling, as it died. Turning on the wounded Arn, he felt a sudden rush of pity, of guilt. He shook it off, reminding himself that however pathetic the now enfeebled enemy looked, it wasn’t real. It was part of the computer program.

Besides, Duncan thought as he finished it off, it killed my friends.

After ensuring that the remaining Arn were dead, Duncan moved slowly to the row of windows at the back of the house. Another blast, this time very close, shook the house as the anti-ship batteries fired again. Duncan peeked over a window sill and slowly raised until he could look down to the ground.

Behind the house was a large, public square surrounded by buildings much like the one in which he crouched. Inside the square, looking like modified World War Two German eighty-eight millimeter cannons, were the four lasers, spread into a diamond shaped pattern. A crew of four or five Arn operated each.

He looked around the rest of the square, but didn’t see anything besides the crews serving the guns.

However, they were all armed; laser rifles hung off the back of most of them. Duncan, even perched above them, only fifty meters away, wouldn’t last long once he opened fire with his single weapon.

Then he had an idea.

He backed quickly away from the windows, then turned and ran down the stairs. At the bottom, he continued his sprint through the first floor Arn corpses and to the window he’d used to enter the building. He jumped through and resumed sprinting until he reached the first house. The house from which he and his friends had begun their doomed charge. The house in which Gray Eagle and, presumably, his awesome gatling gun lay.

He climbed through the window, landing on the floor next to the crumpled body of Gray Eagle.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said as he stooped, lifting the gun from his dead comrade’s hands, “I’ll be sure to put this to good use and get it back to you as soon as possible.”

He turned, climbed back through the window and sprinted back to the house overlooking the square.

“Shannon,” Duncan said as he once again climbed the stairs, taking two at a time, “can you run a conduit on this gun I’ve just picked up?”

“Yeah, maybe, just a sec,” she said, sounding harried, then, “Crap. That thing draws a lot of power.”

The house shook as the batteries fired again.

“See if you can get another controller named Jordi to split the load,” Duncan responded. “Tell him it’s Gray Eagle’s gun.”

“Jordi and Gray Eagle, roger,” she said.

As Duncan approached the rear windows of the house, he saw the gatling gun’s power indicator, laid over his forward view, spring to life, rapidly raising to full.

“Thanks,” he muttered, moving into place at the middle window. He raised the gun onto the window sill and moved it until the barrels were pointed at the first, rightmost gun.

Duncan considered opening his attack by throwing a grenade at one of the guns, but discounted it. Fifty meters was probably at the limit he could throw, through a window, and hope to hit anything. And that was without being encumbered by the gatling gun.

No, he thought, he would just open up on the guns and begin sweeping back and forth, hoping to take out enough of the crew to disable at least enough of the guns to allow the command ships to take back control of the fight - before he died, overwhelmed by fire from the dozen or so Arn that would likely be left throughout the square.

“C’est la guerre,” Duncan muttered as he took a deep breath, preparing to fire.

Then he let the breath out, and froze. He’d seen, just as his thumb was beginning to press the fire button, a group of three humans crawling from another house near the gun on the right. The gun he’d targeted. The attackers each had a grenade in their right hand and were nearing the range that Duncan thought they’d be able to attack from.

Duncan quickly shifted the gun, moving it to now cover the gun furthest to the left. Once the attack on the rightmost gun began, he’d begin spraying laser fire from the left to the guns in the middle. He smiled as he waited for the fight to begin.

After they’d crawled a few more meters, Duncan saw the attackers stop and each pull the pin on a grenade. They’d reached a low, stone wall that encircled the central square and the guns within. They’d be hidden from the view of the Arn preparing their next salvo.

Duncan saw the three grenades arc into the air and land around the first gun. As the explosions ripped through the crew, he pressed the button on the gatling gun, startling himself as it whined, spun, and began throwing laser bolts into the shocked crew of the fourth gun. He moved the gun a little to the left, then right, rapidly turning the gun and its crew into smoking wrecks. Then he shifted the aim to the two central guns, lined up in his view; one closer at about fifty meters, the second twenty meters beyond it.

This time instead of spraying left and right, he pressed down on the handle, moving the barrels up, then released pressure allowing the gun to drop again, spraying the further then closer of the two guns. The rain of fire he showered on the Arn scattered them; the laser bolts thumped into the ground, tearing through and exploding the meter square red clay tiles that covered the floor of the square.

The heavy bolts did worse to the Arn, each hit tore off limbs or exploded torsos as the terrified aliens futilely tried to run or seek cover. He barely noticed a system notification, flitting across the top of his view, telling him that he’d gained a level; “Heavy Weapons I”. He smiled, grimly, and chuckled through the rush of adrenaline. This, he thought, was a lot more fun than sniping.

Duncan glanced to the first gun, saw that the humans had cleared it. One looked to him, waved, and Duncan returned to firing at the leftmost gun. He centered on it and glanced back to the other attackers, who were now throwing more grenades as they ran to the center of the square. Duncan released the thumb trigger and the smoking barrells of the gatling gun slowed then stopped, a deafening silence replacing the howling whir of the spinning gun.

He looked back to the center of the square. The three humans, probably sure they were also on a suicide mission a minute ago, waved to him. He returned the salute.

“Shannon,” he said breathlessly, “I think you’re going to be ok now. It looks like this thing is all wrapped up.”

“Thank god!” sighed Shannon, “I really, really, need to pee.”

meta 4

he showed empathy,
for an arn.

he killed it, though.

regardless. he’s becoming connected.

send him the unit.

he’s ready.

Chapter 17

Duncan walked back into Kepler station’s mission control. His friends, including the Bigweek guys, turned in his direction and began clapping. Duncan took a bow, then straightened back up and waved his hands dismissively.

“No need to clap, guys,” he said, “I just got lucky.”

“Yeah, we know, dweeb,” laughed Blesk, “we weren’t clapping for you.”

Duncan turned and saw Shannon approaching from behind him. She smiled as she joined the group, and curtseyed.

“Thank you, my peons,” she said in mock haughtiness, “Your worship is warranted.”

“Did you have a good pee?” asked Tex.

“Oh gawd,” cried Shannon, “did I say that on a public channel?”

“The main public channel,” laughed Clancey. “After we got whacked, we were watching the end of the fight on the big screen in the arena with about a thousand or so other dead guys and spectators.”

“You got a huge laugh,” said Vince. “Huge!”

“Oh gawd,” repeated Shannon.

“Look on the bright side,” laughed Duncan.

Shannon looked at him, raised one eyebrow.

“At least,” he continued, “you didn’t have to poop.”

Everyone laughed while Duncan began walking toward the door, beckoning his friends.

“Anyone want to hang out in my new place while we go over the fight and go through our loot goody-bags?” he asked. He thought, then looked through his inventory, “Hey, Gray Eagle, did you get Big Bertha back?”

“Yeah, dude. Good job with her, by the way,” he answered, following along with the rest of the group.

“Thanks, it was fun.”

“Destination?”

“My apartment,” said Duncan, checking to make sure he was still grouped with the Bigweek guys, allowing them to follow into his flat.

They all entered the room and spread around, taking in the decor. Most were drawn to the live action ocean diorama on the inside wall. Duncan joined them, just in time to see a foot-long sperm whale dive on and eat a giant squid.

“Amazing,” said Shannon. “Beautiful.”

Duncan nodded, “I love it. I could watch it for hours.”

They all moved to the far, windowed wall and spread out on the large horseshoe shaped couch. Duncan lit the fire-pit. The other nine sat around the huge couch, with room to spare.

Duncan looked around at his friends, old and new. He wondered that even the old friends he hadn’t known for much more than a year. He was never close, never comfortable with others. Even here, in his own place, surrounded by people he knew liked him, he felt apart from the group. It was that he didn’t like them, or didn’t trust them; Duncan’s world-view just split humanity into two very distinct groups that did not overlap - himself and everyone else.

“Hey,” said Clancey, “just got an alert. Shannon’s on the news!”

Duncan brought up the window controls, changed the view from one outside the station to the game’s news channel.

The story began with the background of the event; how the Arn had infiltrated a human colony, threatening to disrupt the human foothold on the world. The humans of Kepler station had answered the call, only to have their attack threatened with annihilation as they were taken in ambush by an Arn battery that almost destroyed the entire human command and control infrastructure. If successful, that attack would have left the human forces on the ground nearly helpless, outnumbered and unable to regenerate their shields or rearm their conduit powered weaponry.

The picture switched to a view within the cockpit of one of those C and C ships, Shannon in the control seat. She began to coordinate throughout the fleet, her voice calm and in control, adding enough power from ships not under attack to the ones that were, such that the attacked ships were able to maintain at least an equilibrium with the power being thrown at them from the planet below.

The Arn had switched their tactics at that point, focusing all of their firepower on a single ship at a time, which was enough to take out the shields in a single blow. If Shannon hadn’t adjusted her response as well - turning the entire fleet into a shield regeneration force for the single beleaguered ship, allowing it regenerate in between the attacks that came every thirty seconds - the fleet would have been decimated in only a few minutes. As it was, Shannon had saved the fleet, the attack, and, thus, the colony.

All of that, Duncan marveled, and she’d still had enough brain bandwidth to be able to shunt off enough power from her and Jordi’s ships to give him the power needed to fire the gatling gun. He wondered if missions like this would be generated on player run colonies - if, someday, players would flock to defend Shepherd’s Cross from alien attack.

He looked at Shannon, laughing and smiling with everyone else and he had a thought. He sent off a quick email to Phani.

After the newscast ended, Duncan opened his inventory to go through the loot he’d gathered as sole survivor on the planet. He began handing out, one to each of his friends, the heavy laser guns that the Arn had used in the ambush. The massive, power hungry, heavy hitting weapons weren’t good for much of anything except, of course, the kind of ambush Duncan and his friends had triggered.

Once he’d given the guns out to everyone else on the mission, including Shannon and Jordi, he still had five left over. He gave two more to the Bigweek guys and kept three for his group. They’d make a nice beginning to his station’s arsenal he thought, amused.

“Well,” said Clancey, “this explains how they could take us out so quickly. These things are monsters.”

“Yeah,” said Third, “it also explains how Taipan could take out the whole house by himself. They’re not much good for close quarters combat.”

“The grenades did most of the work,” laughed Duncan.

“Let’s see,” said Matt. He changed away from the news channel, bringing up a replay of the battle. They watched the view from inside the Arn attack house from just before the ambush was triggered.

Duncan saw himself and his friends, through a window on the lower floor, dashing across the open ground as the eight Arn on the ground level hefted their large weapons then simultaneously fired at the charging humans. The powerful laser fire from both floors ripped through the armor and bodies of his six friends as each was targeted by at least two of the Arn. He didn’t see any bolts that weren’t aimed true. It was devastating.

Then they watched as Gray Eagle’s fire ripped through the building. All of the Arn dropped for a moment, presumably to allow their weapons to recharge, before standing in twos and threes to begin returning fire on the gatling gun. As the heavy bolts swept through the building, the Arn in the targeted location would drop to the floor, only to rise again to fire after Gray Eagle moved his fire to another part of the building.

Then they saw the three grenades, in turn, come through each of the ground floor windows. The explosions, rapidly following each other, ripped through the room. Duncan mused that one or two grenades would probably have been enough. He wasn’t sure that any of the Arn were alive in the room after the first explosion, and the third had definitely been overkill.

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” laughed Tex. Duncan smiled.

They watched the rest of the fight; laughing, cheering and congratulating each other. Duncan received a response from Phani, sent a thank you, then opened the package. Looking through it in his inventory, he smiled. This was perfect.

“Shannon,” he interrupted the small talk, “I’ve got a present for you!”

He placed a basket on the floor in front of her, a standard wicker picnic basket covered with a red and white checkered blanket. The blanket moved.

Shannon looked at Duncan, cocked her head, then bent to lift the blanket off of the basket.

Duncan’s apartment filled with Shannon’s sudden, shrill squeals of joy.

“I figured,” said Duncan, “that your heroism and genius deserved a special prize. So, there you are, Omegaverse’s very first basket of kittens!”

Chapter 18

Eric West smiled, looking at the smoking wreck of the pirate, rolling slowly, leaking gasses and randomly illuminated by the flashing light of fires sparked by exposed hot wiring, quickly extinguished as the escaping pockets of oxygen were consumed.

He’d jumped in from one light-minute away less than thirty seconds before; about ninety-seconds after the freighter-cum-pirate had launched its torpedo toward the oncoming cargo ship. For all the good it had done; the torpedo had been a miss. The cargo ship continued on its course, uninterrupted, while the pirate had begun to accelerate to jump speed. Too slowly, though. The more powerful engines of the HMS Westy, a Delta class destroyer - one of the quickest ships in the universe - had reached jump speed first, and Eric had jumped in nearly on top of the pirate.

His first shots, a spread he’d programmed in and named “Beta Strike” had fired five missiles, spread to target vital systems throughout the ship. Two had hit the engines, taking them out, while the remaining three had ripped through the remainder of the ship - the last exploding outside of, and sending shrapnel through, the bridge. It was now dead in the water, coasting and rolling through space. Helpless. Eric brought the Westy in alongside the derelict, matching speed and course.

“Number One,” he began, “send the drone to examine the cargo hold of that bastard, if you please.” He sat back in his chair, began drumming his fingers on the arm rest.

“Aye aye, sir,” said the AI XO. “We’re being hailed, sir.”

“By the pirate?” Eric answered. “Ignore it.”

He thought.

“Wait. Answer it.”

The screen opened into the bridge of the pirate. Eric read through the ship and captain information.

“Never mind,” he said, “chop the communication.”

It wasn’t Taipan, he’d seen. That was the only pirate he wanted to talk to. The only player he wanted to see, humiliated, in front of him. Otherwise, it was just another player. He wasn’t interested in speaking to them; just blowing them out of space. Even Kato and the Inner Lizard fleet held no particular interest for him. He’d killed them; they’d killed him. A fair exchange. Honorable, exciting, combat.

Taipan, however, was a worm. The worst kind of play-acting hypocrite. Pretending to be an upright, law abiding citizen-miner of the universe, while underhandedly stealing from players to enrich himself. No doubt, he thought, that fancy mining ship of his had been paid for through ill-gotten gains.

It didn’t matter, to Eric, that the shipments pirates took were insured - that was part of the transhipment costs - and that the players never really lost anything; their objects were replaced by the system. They never even knew their particular shipment had been attacked, unless they owned the cargo ship itself, in which case the very minimal ship insurance replaced the cargo. None of that mattered to Eric. What mattered was the principle. It wasn’t that Taipan stole, per se, it was that he wouldn’t own up to it, wouldn’t admit what he was.

Eric looked to the view screen. The drone was returning from searching the the pirate. As it arrived, Eric looked through the bounty. Three torpedos. He laughed.

“Just what I need,” he chortled, “weapons for piracy!”

He shook his head, ruefully.

“I wonder,” he muttered, “why this guy didn’t bother to shoot a second torpedo at the cargo ship.” It never occurred to Eric to open a line of communication to ask the other player. He’d already forgotten that the pirate existed.

He looked to the helm station. Fuel was approaching twenty-five percent. It was time to head back to Kepler to refuel, rearm and repair.

“Number One,” he said, “set course for home port, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir. And the pirate?”

Eric looked to the rolling, smoking wreck once again.

“Him?” he mused. The ship looked like it had several days worth of repair. Destroying the ship might convince the pirate not to continue raiding. That wouldn’t be any fun. As much as he disliked the thieves, he didn’t want to completely drive them away. He wanted them to keep playing. A hunter needed his prey.

“Forget him,” Eric said. “Let him rot.”

Eric walked into the hanger at the station at Kepler 22B. After docking, and initiating the refurbishment and replenishment of the HMS Westy, he’d decided to take care of some Fleet Bigweek business he’d fallen behind on.

He wrote out a missive to the clan, describing, in detail, his recent encounter. Once again - he frowned as he wrote - he had to hunt and attack on his own. He told them that unless they began showing up for the hunts, he was going to have to revoke their membership rule; to bring in some new blood.

The group had formed a couple of decades before, in one of the earliest massively multiplayer games, and had moved through the years and subsequent games as a single unit. They had decided long before, as a group, to limit themselves to their existing membership rolls; they had very occasionally decided, en masse, to ask rare individuals they met in new online spaces to become members.

As he sent the message, he noticed, on the clan management page, that they’d all been grouped with several players, including Taipan. He began to shake. While not actively members, the grouping allowed them status akin to ‘ally’. That, to Eric, implied ‘friendship’. He began reading the description of privileges associated with Taipan. Fleet Bigweek had access to Taipan’s apartment on Kepler station.

He began walking, quickly, toward the transporter.

Eric entered Taipan’s apartment, began looking around. He was shocked when a small puppy ran up to him, wagging its tail and squeaking for attention. He bent to pet it and scratch it behind the ears. It rolled onto its - his, Eric saw - back and presented his belly for a rub. Eric complied, earning a yelp of happiness. He didn’t even know that there were dogs in the Omegaverse, and couldn’t imagine how expensive it was. How expensive everything in this apartment was.

It was, he had to admit to himself, beautifully appointed. He especially liked the fish-tank thing on the wall. He admired it for a few minutes, then wandered toward the wall-sized window. He scrupulously avoided even looking into the bedroom - that felt too much like snooping. He walked with his hands tucked behind his back; ensuring that if anyone, especially Taipan, happened to enter while he was here, there would be no question that Eric was only looking.

He stopped in front of the window, looking out over the breathtaking view of Kepler 22B and the space beyond. He looked down, toward the station’s docking facilities, and watched as a series of drones delivered cargo - presumably replacement missiles - to the HMS Westy. He felt a surge of pride for the ship he had worked so hard to earn. To earn he told himself, forcefully. He’d stolen nothing to gain it.

Unlike Taipan. Everything here, everything around him, smelled from the taint of thievery. As he thought about it, Eric realized what Taipan had been doing. He had his fancy mining ship that he was obviously using as a base of operations. He must have another, small, ship that he was using as his pirate. He was hitting shipping with the small ship, running back to the ring of that gas giant, hiding, then switching back to his main ship. He used that to tranship, via cargo ship, his booty back to Kepler.

That explained the sudden onset of cargo ships that left from the system. That explained how Taipan was able hunt and kill with immunity. That explained why Eric had not been able to find the foxy bastard.

Eric smiled, looking around at the luxury that the bastard had been able to accumulate. He looked to his inventory, to the three torpedos. The beginning of a plan began to form, and he smiled even more broadly.

He bent, pet the dog one last time, then turned and left.

Chapter 19

Charlottesville, VA USA

Duncan looked through the menu, the wine list, for the steak-house. While he liked wine, he couldn’t consider himself a connoisseur by any means. He knew which varietals he liked and which he didn’t, but that was about as far as his knowledge extended. He looked to his friends sitting around the table; Shannon, Clancey, Vince, Matt and Jamie.

He handed the list to Jamie.

“What do you suggest?”

Jamie took a quick glance down the list.

“Since you’re paying,” he laughed; a deep throated, friendly laugh that echoed bass, “I’d suggest the Stag’s Leap Cask 23, 2012.”

“But,” he continued, “since that’s $250 a bottle, I’ll keep looking.” He smiled broadly.

“That’s what we’ll have,” said Duncan, nodding to the waiter, “Two of those and a bottle of Veuve for Shannon.”

“I’ll have a Guinness,” piped Clancey, “you guys can drink the grape juice.”

“What’s the occasion?” asked Shannon. “We all get this mysterious dinner invitation, telling us that you want to treat us all, and now you’ve spent nearly six hundred dollars …”

“Six hundred and ten,” said Clancey.

“ … before you’ve even ordered your cow flesh,” finished Shannon.

“Well,” began Duncan, “I wanted to thank you all for dragging me into the Omegaverse. I have,” he coughed, “actually been able to make a lot of money in the game.”

“Yeah,” nodded Vince, “that rail-gun was insane. Twenty-five million credits.”

Duncan nodded as well, “But that was only the beginning.” He paused to gather his thoughts; as much as he’d thought through this speech - through this whole night - he still hadn’t come up with a way to tell his friends about the Shepherd’s Crook that satisfied him.

How to tell his friends that he’d stumbled upon a space station; an object in the game unlike anything any other player owned. Given that a player could buy a Grizzly class battle cruiser, the most expensive object in the game, for about the cost of a new mid-series BMW, he couldn’t begin to fathom how much the station was worth.

Not only that, thanks his equally rare ‘Cowl of the Wolf’ artifact, he had his treaty with the Canis Arcturus that gave him a special, if not unique, trading partnership with an alien race; he was pulling in several million credits a week from mineral trading alone. The price normalization he expected as supply and demand caught up with the anomalous situation hadn’t begun to occur, so prices were still just as lopsided as they were when he began.

His half share in Phani’s new pet venture would probably double that income. All of that combined to the point that he was making more, much more, than he was from his day job - all in a little less than a month.

He coughed, and began telling them, from the beginning.

Duncan poured the last of the bottle of Veuve Cliquot into Shannon’s glass. That was the last of the alcohol. Between the bottle of champagne for Shannon, the endless stream of Guinness for Clancey, and the two bottles of red wine and rounds of scotch for the other four, the result would be a lot of money spent on cab fare after dinner. Not for the first time, Duncan was glad he lived within walking distance of the bars and restaurants of downtown Charlottesville.

Shannon put her head down, sideways, on the linen covered table.

“What I don’t understand,” she said sleepily, “is why you didn’t tell us about the station.”

“I just did,” countered Duncan.

“Before now, poopy-head,” slurred Shannon, sitting back upright.

Duncan pushed the jus covered plate - all that remained of his monstrously huge, dry-aged, prime rib dinner - away from him. He burped.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“But you told Phani about it,” she countered, “kind’a.”

“That was different,” Duncan replied, “he was in trouble.”

“No doubt, and it was,” she paused, hiccuped, “cool that you did. It was just kind’a un-cool that you didn’t tell us ‘til now.”

“Sorry,” Duncan shrugged, ruefully.

“Forgiven,” Shannon smiled, raising her glass. Then she drained it. Duncan never understood how such a tiny, thin woman could put away so much alcohol. He looked around at the rest of his friends, similarly inebriated. The same way we all do, he thought; practice.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Clancey, the most sober at the table. You could always tell when Clancey wasn’t sober; his volume increased exponentially.

“Not sure I understand,” said Duncan, “I thought I told you what I was doing with it.”

“I’m not sure you see the potential,” said Clancey, wagging at Duncan with the chewed half of a breadstick, “a player owned public station, next to a colony, half-way between the two public game stations would be an ideal location for establishing your own faction. As the leader of a faction, you’d get a matching percentage of every faction member’s in-game earnings, which you can use to furthering the faction activities, namely,” he belched, “the terraforming and colonization of Shepherd’s, uhm, Cross.”

“It’s going to be a long, long time, though,” said Duncan, “before a colony is begun on that planet. We’ve,” he pointed at Jamie, who they all convinced over dinner to begin playing the real-time strategy game, “only begun terraforming.”

“Buy one,” said Clancey. “A colony, that is. Grab one of those floating cities and place it on the cloud giant, next to your station. You can have it as your first colony in the system. The first player run colony in the game.”

Duncan literally sobered, just a little, “How much?”

“Fifty, sixty million. Something like that. About the cost of a Grizzly.”

“I can’t afford that,” Duncan shook his head, “yet.”

“Twenty percent down,” smiled Clancey, “finance the rest in game.”

“They do that?” Duncan began to think. Ten million credits to begin a colony. He could afford that. He’d have to talk it over with Phani. He had a lot of reading to do, first, though. Duncan looked up, caught the waiter’s eye, and indicated that he wanted another round of drinks and the check.

Duncan stumbled out of the elevator and began the slow, halting walk down the hallway to his apartment. The night had gone better than he’d hoped. He’d been worried that his friends wouldn’t understand why he’d kept the station a secret. He’d been worried that they’d be angry.

He giggled.

Maybe they were angry, he thought, but a few gallons of alcohol and a belly full of top shelf beef, or lobster tails in Shannon’s case, had helped their mood.

He giggled again.

He pulled the receipt from his pocket, squinted through wine and scotch soaked blur swirling around his head, and read the bottom line. He’d spent, with tip, a bit over twelve-hundred dollars that evening.

“I’ll have to make a few more mineral runs to pay for this night,” he laughed, steadying himself against the wall. He arrived at his door, pulled the keys out of his pocket to open the door. They slipped out of his hand and fell; but didn’t sound like they hit the floor.

He looked down.

His keys lay on top of a cardboard box, about knee high, sitting in front of his door. He grabbed the keys, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Holding himself upright with one hand on the doorsill, he bent over and pushed the box into his apartment and walked in after it. After he closed the door, remembering at the last second to retrieve his keys - it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d ‘lost’ his keys only to find them still hanging in the lock after a night out - he bent and picked up the box, carried it to his couch and put it on the coffee table.

Duncan tried to read the return address, but found it too blurry. He covered one eye, then focused, hard. He was able to make out, at that point, who it was from.

Omegaverse, Inc.

He grunted, dropped prone onto the couch and passed out.

Chapter 20

Duncan lifted up and pulled back the bolt on the Winchester Model 70 that lay nestled in the crook of his left arm. The first of his three .300 Winchester Magnum cartridges gleamed as it lay, expectantly, at the top of the rifle’s internal magazine. A sheen of gun oil glistened on the bullet in the noon sun, which beat over Duncan’s prostrate form as he lay on top of a berm next to a calmly babbling stream. The heat from the star was warm, but not uncomfortable.

Duncan reached, with his right hand, and pulled one finger along the length of the cartridge; the cleaning oil - no doubt residue transferred from the gun to the bullet when it was loaded - felt greasy on his finger tip. He rubbed the tip and thumb together, spreading the oil, then lifted his hand to his face and smelled them. The scent recalled countless hours spent cleaning and oiling his guns after a day on the range.

“Good old Hoppe’s Number Nine,” he muttered.

He reached out with his right hand and began to run his fingers through a small patch of the short, blue-gray, grasses that spotted the berm and covered the open, thousand meter long, field in front of him. The pointed, prickly little stems - stiffer than most of the grass he knew from Virginia - served to remove most of the gun oil. He finished cleaning the slickness off on his left shoulder; rubbing the coarse canvas of his camouflaged hunting shirt between the fingers.

After the clean, metallic-tinged, smell of oil no longer lingered, the mustiness of ancient decay and rot of countless years worth of decomposing plant matter once again assailed his nostrils. Powerful, yet somehow pleasant. The smell of death, but of fecundity and rebirth. The humus also provided the yielding, comfortable bed on which Duncan lay.

Duncan once again gripped the rifle’s bolt in his right palm, curling his fingers back over the black-metal, ball-tipped, rod. He drove it forward, which caught the top cartridge and seated the bullet into the Winchester’s barrel. Then he pulled the bolt down, locking it into place; the metallic click adding to the soft, soothing, gurgle of the waterway behind him.

The forest behind, on the other side of the brook, as well as the field in front of him, were oddly quiet. Used as he was to the constant hum of insects and calls of birds and wildlife, the silence of the area was almost palpable for Duncan; the lack of ambient noises shouted out their absence. The day was as still as the meadow, with only a barely detectable breeze that brushed his right cheek as he looked into the cloudless sky for any change coming in the weather. There was none indicated.

He lifted the rifle, pulling it tight into his right shoulder and put his eye to the scope mounted on top. His left elbow, supporting the weight of the Winchester, pressed into the soft, giving ground; his left hand lightly gripped the knurled burl of the rifle’s wooden forestock. With his right thumb, he clicked the safety to the left-most, firing, position. Then he peered down the sight, bringing into sharp focus the bull elk eight-hundred meters away, happily munching on some kind of vegetation in front of it.

Four black arrows, one each on the top, bottom, left and right of the scope viewfinder, pointed toward the hulking beast in their center. Duncan adjusted the rifle, barely, bringing the center-point of the scope directly onto the center top of the elks body - just behind its left front shoulder. It raised its head, chewing contentedly.

Duncan rocked a little, to the left then right, settling his body further into the ground. Then he lifted both feet and drove them back down, hard, to anchor himself firmly into a firing position. His toes curled under, forward, as his boots bent through the force of Duncan pushing himself into a rigid platform.

He took a deep breath, then let it half-way out; trying to settle his nerves. To minimize any movement that would throw his aim off. He waited a few seconds, until he could feel his heartbeat; he knew that the best results would be for him to pull the trigger in between them - even the slight body movement caused by the heartbeat could move the gun slightly off target.

He slipped his right index finger through the trigger guard and, gently, placed the tip on the bottom of the trigger. He began to squeeze, pulling until he was sure that the next micronewton of force would trip the sear, sending the firing pin into the cartridge. Then he squeezed, just a little more.

The rifle bucked in his arms, slamming painfully through his right shoulder. His right eyebrow exploded in pain, and his ears were pummeled by the sudden onset of thunder. As he fought to bring the rifle back into line, to see the results of his efforts, his nose was assaulted by the cordite smell that enveloped the knoll.

As he, expectantly, put his eye back to the scope, he was rewarded with a perfect view of the elk once again bending to take a mouthful of tasty grasses.

“Not even close,” said Clive. “You were still sighted at one-hundred meters. Your body position was way off. And hopefully that crescent moon scar on your forehead will serve as a reminder of what happens to people who don’t know how to properly hold a scoped rifle.”

“Whatever,” muttered Duncan as he stood. “End the training mission.”

Duncan pulled the new virtual reality helmet off of his head and placed it on the coffee table. He leaned back in his couch and reached for the stack of papers that had come inside the box from Omegaverse, Inc. He began reading the paper on the top of the stack, again; the third time since he’d opened the package.

He’d been picked, randomly apparently, to participate in a beta-test of the next version of the Omegaverse helmet, touted to bring new levels of realism and immersion to the players of the game.

“That’s an understatement,” he mused. The first helmet had been immersive. The new helmet was something else. He felt like he was actually there. The neural interface didn’t, as in the first unit, just display sight and sound, with a few examples of force-feedback through the gloves; the new helmet hit - overpowered, in some cases - every sense.

While the addition of full body touch sensing was amazing - he could still feel a twinge from the kick of the rifle and he ran his fingers, gently, over his forehead, half expecting to feel a bump or a scar where the kick of the shot had punched him with the scope - it was the smell that had truly put him in place.

Even when he’d first logged on with the unit, a little over an hour ago, and entered the bridge of the Shepherd Moon, the first thing he’d noticed was the slightly musty, institutional smell of the ship.

The updated neural-net interface didn’t just provide added smells and additional, full-body sense of touch. The visuals were sharper. Whereas before the graphics were crisp, fast and clear, it was obvious that they were computer generated graphics. To describe the new version as photo-realistic would be a disservice. It was no longer as though he were in the middle of an environment, viewing it from all possible angles; now Duncan felt a part of the environment. There was no disconnect. No beginning and end between himself and the surroundings.

The user interface, too, had completely changed. There were no longer any metaphors representing aspects of the environment. No longer did he bring up an inventory overlay in order to manipulate objects in the game - if he had to find something in his backpack, he needed to take off the backpack and root around in it. In order to read or answer an email in game, he pulled a PDA from his pocket instead of having a translucent text box overlay his vision.

Clive, too, had transformed. Before he’d been as a voice over a radio. Now he was Duncan’s in-game subconscious. Duncan no longer had to subvocalize to interface with his assistant; he thought a question then received answers from a voice in his head - but it was no longer Clive’s voice. It answered in Duncan’s own inner voice.

Duncan began to wonder.

“If the voice in my head answers in my own voice,” he said to himself, running his hand through his hair, “who is answering me?”

Did he have a deeper connection to his in-game assistant, or did he have a deeper connection to the Omegaverse itself?

Chapter 21

The view from the balcony, four-hundred and fifty meters above Manhattan, facing south over Central Park into Midtown, was more than a little breathtaking; it was literally nauseating for Duncan. He grabbed the railing and forced himself forward, through the stiff breeze coming out of New Jersey, and looked straight down the side of the building he’d had ‘created’ to house his penthouse in the sky. His inner-ear reeled as he looked to the lights of the traffic ninety floors down.

It didn’t matter to him, physiologically, that he couldn’t actually ‘fall’ from the balcony; that everything he saw was computer generated. His mind, and thus his body, were completely fooled, completely immersed.

He lifted his head and marvelled at the beauty of the skyline, the lights in the darkness melding into an indistinct glimmer the further south he focused. There was no differentiating buildings at this time of night that far away; they all worked together to put on the absorbing light show before him.

He closed his eyes, pushed back from the railing, and tilted his head skyward, letting the breeze and the occasional drop of night rain, just beginning to fall, wash away the uneasiness. He took a deep breath, turned and, opening his eyes, walked back across the large, tiled balcony and through the open wall into his apartment.

The balcony ended in a metal meshwork walkway, twenty meters long, that thrust into the open, two story space that Duncan had designed and had built by an in-game architect. He’d just finished placing and decorating his residence, putting it in the virtual space within the Shepherd’s Crook.

As far as he could tell, the space station had functionally limitless space within which he could add new areas of interest. In addition to the apartment, he’d also had created a large store-front for Phani - with huge windows and doors - that was now in place on the main walkways just off of the hangar of the space station.

Duncan looked down from the balcony walkway, into the living space below. Faded leather furniture spread around a large fire-pit; filled with logs and roaring. The camp-fire smell of burning wood soothed his altitude jittered nerves even more than the breeze and soft rain had. The waves of barely felt heat brought up the burning oak smell, but no smoke.

That was a beautiful thing about virtual spaces, he thought - you didn’t have to worry about mundane concerns like chimneys and smoke. He turned and looked to the other side of the elevated walkway, toward the two story high, floor to ceiling, windows that showed a night view of the Upper West Side of Manhattan and across the Hudson into New Jersey. From this height, he could make out the lights of Meadowlands Stadium. Safely ensconced inside the building, the view held only fascination for him; no fear.

He resumed walking, through the portal at the end of the walkway, which transported him instantly through to a matching portal directly below it; he walked out into the lower portion of the room, into the living area. The view across the large room through the floor to ceiling windows matched the view from the balcony, one floor above and jutting out into space.

Duncan smiled. He could just as easily change the view to what he’d actually see from the Shepherd’s Crook - the blue gas-giant planet, its orbiting ring system, and the stars beyond. He could, in fact, define pretty much any view he wanted from this space. He decided to leave it as Manhattan, for now.

He looked up, through the metal mesh walkway to the cathedral ceiling two stories above. This place was huge, he thought. If this was a real penthouse, on top of a real building along Central Park North, it would probably cost at least a hundred million dollars. Compared to that, he’d gotten the whole place for nothing. The station had been free, and the plans for the apartment had cost him little more than the profits on his share of one or two pets from Phani’s store.

Duncan left his apartment and entered the new storefront. Storefronts, he corrected himself. Every hundred meters or so, down each side of the walkways that bordered both sides of the hangar bay, sat a portal into the pet store. Whichever airlock someone used to exit their ship, they’d see, next to the transporter portal on the opposite wall, a large, bright, inviting window-wall, with a large opening in the middle.

Through that window, they’d see the hopefully irresistible draw of a playroom filled with puppies, kittens and sheep. Each of the entrances was a virtual instance, but they all led to the same in-game space. Duncan walked through one now.

He waved to Phani as his partner looked up from where he was pulling small animals out of his backpack, spreading them around the room.

“Howdy, partner!” laughed Duncan, picking up a kitten. He looked around the room, to the dozens of small animals playing with each other, and was thankful that Phani’s amazingly accurate reproduction of the various breeds did not include smells.

“Howdy!” replied Phani, wrapping his tongue around the unfamiliar word, “what do you think of the store?”

“I think,” said Duncan, “that we’re going to be rich!”

“I hope so, I hope so,” grinned Phani. “When were you thinking of making the station public?”

“A few days,” answered Duncan. Phani had readily agreed to making the station public, glad of the opportunity to open a storefront instead of having to merely use apartments in the main stations. He’d still do that, in as many stations as he could, but he saw the value in having a showcase store in their own station. He also saw the potential in establishing a faction and what that would mean for the planet, Shepherd’s Cross, and his ten percent share in it.

“How does it work,” asked Duncan. “Buying the pets, I mean.”

“Many ways,” replied Phani, “there are terminals around the wall where anyone can place an order for a specific breed or color or any of the customizable options. Or, you can place an order for a specific breed that does not yet exist in our inventory, and I will have it made for them, at an additional cost. There are also surveys that allow people to vote on the next addition.”

“One can also simply pick up one, or more,” he grinned, “of the pets in the store, and leave. When they exit, they will be prompted to accept the purchase price. When they do, the animal is theirs. If they do not, the animal stays.”

“I think,” laughed Duncan, “that the Omegaverse is suddenly going to become very crowded with people being trailed by small animals.”

“It does not, I’m afraid, work that way,” said Phani, “the animals are only allowed ‘out’ in personal spaces, not public ones. Once someone enters a public space, the animal returns to the player's inventory. Unless it has been, uhm, bonded to a private location, like an apartment. Then it will always remain there.”

“We can, of course,” continued Phani, “set the Shepherd’s Crook up to allow the public display of animals.”

“And we will,” said Duncan. “I think it’s appropriate that we have lambs, at least, running around the station.”

“And the dogs to shepherd them,” laughed Phani.

Duncan put down the kitten and looked to his right, drawn by a lack of movement inside the frenetic room. A puppy, larger than most of the others, sat there, still. Looking at him. When Duncan made eye contact the puppy - black with white snout and chest, with rust colored patches - cocked its head sideways, then back up. Then its mouth opened, its tongue lolled, and its tail began to wag.

The detail was incredible; much greater than the generic dog that had come with the game. Not only the way that it looked, but the way that it acted - it sat, expectantly, waiting for Duncan to say or do anything. Its excitement was obvious. Duncan decided that he’d return the first puppy he’d received, now in his Kepler apartment, to the store.

Duncan squatted in front of it, reached out to scratch the Bernese Mountain dog’s ears.

“I’m going to name you ‘Bear’,” he said.

Duncan walked back through to his new apartment, Bear padding along in tow. It had been a very busy, long day, and he was exhausted. He’d been in-game since this morning, exploring and sensing the heightened experience of the world around him. He turned to enter the bedroom, on the ‘east’ side of the penthouse, overlooking the Upper East Side, the Harlem river and Ward’s Island, to the rebuilt and newly reopened expanse of LaGuardia airport in the distance. He pointed to the foot of a large, four-poster bed.

“Go to sleep, Bear,” he said as he stripped off his clothes. The puppy obediently trotted to the area between the bed and the window-wall, circled twice, and dropped, sighing, into a heap.

Duncan pulled back the covers on the bed and slid underneath them, luxuriating in the smooth, warm, silky feel of the flannel sheets. He looked out at Manhattan once again, then rolled onto his side, curled into a ball, and fell instantly asleep; unaware or uncaring that his body was still really sitting upright on his couch in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Chapter 22

Eric read through the email, the response to his last dictate to the rest of Fleet Bigweek, incredulously. His edict was not only not being obeyed, it was rejected. They were no longer going to crew the HMS Westy. They had refused permission to recruit new members for the fleet. They had rejected everything. Rejected him.

“Mutiny,” said Eric, unbelieving. “Simple mutiny.”

What really tore through him, though, was their final demand - that he sell the HMS Westy and repay each of them what they’d put into the ship. As a group, they had decided that the space warfare aspect of the Omegaverse was not one that they were at all interested in pursuing. Eric was free to remain in charge - nominally, Eric snorted derisively - of the clan as long as he was willing to meet the conditions of the group.

They had then attempted to appease him by telling him how much they were looking forward to seeing him return to leading them in ground combat operations.

He snorted. Deleted the email. Lifted his head.

“Number One,” he growled, “set course for the hunting grounds.”

The HMS Westy and Eric West sat, expectantly, in space a few million kilometers out from the fourth, un-named, gas-giant planet. The ship’s electromagnetic cladding was on, reducing its albedo to nearly nothing, which rendered it functionally invisible to the part of the spectrum centering around visible and infrared wavelengths. As long as the ship wasn’t scanned with a sensor outside of the terahertz range, Eric wouldn’t be spotted; and since those sensors were active, he could detect them. He’d know instantly if he was being sought, and could begin his retreat.

Eric’s own passive sensors, specifically the one that detected tachyon emissions from the passage of faster-than-light spacecraft, was focused on receiving the trace indicators from around the system transit point; the point in space that all ships leaving from or passing through the system had to go through.

He was ignoring ships that were making their way through the system, however. He was only interested in the ones that were obviously leaving from the system - appearing at the point without having arrived on one of routes to other star systems. That way, he assumed, he could be reasonably sure that the ship belonged to Taipan.

He moved from the sensor screen to the weapons screen.

“Number One,” he began, “please overlay the tachyon sensor on the weapons screen.” The icon indicating a passing ship moved through the space in front of him, but he’d been tracking that since it entered the system - from the direction of Kepler station - so he knew that it wasn’t his prey.

“Number One, open the torpedo console, if you please.” The controls for his plasma batteries and missile silos were replaced with a series of dials and gauges; the means for entering the firing parameters into the weapon.

At the top, center of the screen, was a highlighted, three-dimensional gimbal. At the center of the gimbal was a representation of the Westy. Selecting a target for the torpedo would result in an icon being placed on the outside of the gimbal’s sphere, giving the captain a visual representation of their relative attitudes in three-dimensional space.

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 acceleration 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.

He signed for the package, acknowledging receipt, then took it into the office, setting it down on the floor. Rahul continued mining, seemingly unaware. Phani opened the box, and instantly understood what Taipan had meant. What the gift was.

Phani reached to the desk, to the new computer, and signed out of his Omegaverse account. Then he turned back to the box and pulled out his gift.

An Omegaverse virtual helmet.

Phani pulled off the helmet, amazed. He understood now why some players could become addicted to the game, addicted to the environment. Even the mundane act of mining - if mining in an asteroid belt could be thought of as mundane - had been an invigorating, captivating experience. It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

He understood, now, what Taipan’s email meant. What the favor was. He was to accept this gift without thought of debt. He moved to his older, but newer, computer and sat next to Rahul at the table. Phani began writing a note of thanks to Taipan, wording it as one would to an equal. To a partner. He smiled. He’d gladly accept the gift. He was sure, he said, that the gift would benefit them both, equally. He sent the email, then deleted the account. One of the three favors had been returned. Gladly.

He began making calculations, taking notes, based on this new situation. Based on the amount of resources he could now farm daily, he foresaw not only an increase in his personal wealth, but he saw how the added resources, added to the Shepherd’s Cross terraformation, could decrease the time it took to make the planet ready for a colony. Perhaps, if he worked hard, by as much as half. Within six months, he could not only have a small mining fleet at his disposal, he could own ten percent of a new, thriving colony. He couldn’t begin to imagine what that would mean for him.

He looked to his new window, to his new view on Pune; it tracked with his new outlook, his new prosperity. Even the year’s monsoon was coming to an end - the day was sunny, without the constant pounding of rain that threatened to drown the country; but also brought with it new life. New opportunity.

He looked to Rahul, happily piloting his new craft into the mining fields of the asteroid belt after another load dropped off into the Shepherd Moon. He looked to the computer, freshly purchased, in front of him. He looked to the helmet. He had three computers now. Triple the amount he’d had only a few days ago. Three computers for himself and Rahul.

“Rahul,” he said “Do you know of anyone who’d like a job?”

Chapter 25

Duncan watched as Shannon sat on his couch, wearing his new VR helmet. She sat perfectly still, not even moving her hands as she navigated through the Omegaverse. It was eerie, he thought. She was seeing herself as part of a perfectly realistic environment; but looked like she was a statue. For all Duncan knew, she was currently running through a field, experiencing the sights, the smells, touching the plants, hearing the animals - everything just as though she was actually there.

“Do you want to try?” he asked, looking to his left, at Anna.

She shook her head, rose and moved toward the kitchen.

“No thanks,” she said, happily, “this universe confuses me enough without having to worry about a virtual one.” She laughed.

Duncan had arrived home after work to find Anna and Shannon waiting at his door, with an armload of groceries. They had arrived, they said, to fix him dinner.

That was the kind of friends they were.

He looked at Anna, busy stirring sauce, buttering a loaf and boiling water for pasta. They had, for the last hour, been putting together an Italian feast. Duncan popped a marinated mushroom into his mouth, enjoying the garlic and herb flavors.

“Have you decided to leave us yet?” joked Anna. She splashed some wine into the simmering sauce, and topped off their glasses.

“To begin life as an online entity?” answered Duncan. “Only if you’ll come with me,” he smiled.

“But,” he continued, sipping the Chianti, “with that new helmet it really does feel real. I imagine that if they come up with a way to eat and drink, the wine will be just as good as this.”

“Their cooking will never,” countered Anna, “be able to match mine. Mince up some garlic for the bread, please.”

Duncan entered the control room of the Shepherd’s Crook. Shepherd’s Crook Station, he corrected himself. Soon, this would be just a facility for the colony he was opening on the gas giant it orbited. The colony, and thus the planet, would also share the name.

Once the second colony opened on Shepherd’s Cross, Duncan would be in yet another unique position in the game; two colonies in one system allowed the owner to name the entire star system - assuming it hadn’t yet been named inside or outside of the game.

“I’ve got about a year to think of a name for the star,” he muttered. “That’s plenty of time to come up with something that has nothing to do with shepherds.” He smiled, inwardly.

He sat in the control room chair, nodding to Clive as he did. Bear curled into a contented ball in front of the chair, his head resting on Duncan’s left foot. The dog was as big as some medium sized adult dogs even as a puppy; by this time next year, he’d probably weigh over fifty kilograms and stand as tall as Duncan’s hips.

Duncan looked out into the stars. A swarm of at least half a dozen Delta class destroyers surrounding a Grizzly class battle cruiser made their way past. As they reached the L5 point, they jumped. He wondered where they were off to. Soon, they’d be able to base themselves here, at the station; once he made it public - in about five minutes. He hoped they’d enjoy the base - enjoyed it so much that they’d join his faction. There were already many factions within the Omegaverse, vying for control of the stars, but none had a space station of their own. A colony of their own; soon enough to be two colonies of their own.

Duncan’s faction would, from its formation, be one of the most powerful in the universe. That alone would attract members - he worried that it would attract the wrong kind. It was vital that he establish the group’s direction from the beginning. To make it clear that they were as much interested in developing as destroying. That they were perfectly happy to live with and work with other factions in peace; to work together to build up human space and protect it from alien incursion.

He looked to the controls for the colony; the floating city now tied irrevocably to the station. As soon as he changed the pair to public from private, they would be revealed to the universe. As much as he’d read about what that meant for them, he was still almost totally unsure of what would happen. What it would mean for himself and his friends.

He thought to Shannon, recently returned home after their dinner with Anna. He thought of her enthusiasm for the new reality she’d experienced; how reluctant she’d seemed to leave the new, overwhelming adventure she’d had to return to the real world. She made him promise to try to do everything he could to get her on the beta test list for the new helmet.

If Shannon’s reaction to the new helmet - which matched his own - was universal, the release of it to the mass market could conceivably see the Omegaverse grow into a space occupied by a worldwide audience measured in the hundreds of millions. Duncan felt like he was, truly, part of the beginning of something huge. That he was also in the position, thanks to his amazing good fortune, to take advantage of that. That good fortune, he realized, was not only counted in the luck he’d had in the game - finding the rail-gun, then the cowl, then the station - but in his friends, their invaluable advice, and in meeting Phani. As a business partner and, he hoped, a friend, he saw limitless possibilities.

“Clive,” he said, “please make the station and colony public. It’s time to see about the full potential of Shepherd’s Crook.”

meta 5

it is working.

soon, it will be time to reveal ourselves.

soon

but not now.

Epilog

Eric West walked onto the bridge of the Grizzly class battle cruiser, The Last Ronin. It was a huge room, befitting the size of the behemoth it commanded. The entire bridge of his Delta class destroyer, the HMS Westy, could have fit into the area behind the captain’s chair. The bridge was currently empty, except for one AI, in a black ensign’s uniform, standing to the left of the captain’s console. Eric looked to the forward view - the screen as large in this massive room as a movie theater screen. He saw a planet, rotating slowly in the distance. The third planet of the system, he knew. The planet newly named Shepherd’s Cross.

“This way, sir” said the ensign, walking toward a doorway in the back of the bridge. Eric followed and went through into a long, narrow room, dominated at the center by a beautiful, dark cherry wood conference table. The room was darkly wood panelled, with Napoleonic era naval prints lining the walls. Eric nodded approvingly.

Around the table sat, in high, leather chairs, nine officers. At the head of the table, at the other end of the room from Eric, sat Kato. He stood.

“Welcome to the Inner Lizards, Eric,” began Kato, spreading his arms expansively. A chorus of hello’s came from around the table. Eric nodded, smiling.

“Sit, please,” continued Kato, taking his own advice at the seat behind him.

Eric pulled out the chair and sat, at the foot of the table. On the table in front of him were a stack of skill certifications. He scanned through them - Pilot XV, Weapons Station XV, Sensor XV - all warship skill certificates, all the highest level. There must be a thousand dollars American worth of paper in front of him. He looked questioningly at Kato, who just smiled and nodded. They were for Eric.

Along either side he saw faces looking at him, friendly. He scanned through several names, on plaques in front of each; Krusher, BuckTard, RevDoc - and three too far away to read. Closest to him, on either side, the nameplates read ‘Zasteva, 12th Ronin’ and ‘Mage, 23rd Ronin’. His two opponents in the running fight from the shepherd moon to the jump point.

“Hello again,” said Eric, smiling broadly. They smiled.

“We do have one slight administrative problem, however,” said Kato, “as you’ll have noticed, the fleet has a certain homogeneity when it comes to names.”

“I see where you’re going,” said Eric. “What numbers are available.”

“Most are still open,” said Kato, “but we’re limiting the range to one through forty-seven.”

“I’m familiar with the story of the forty-seven ronin,” grinned Eric. He also knew that the 13th Ronin was the fleet’s clipper ship - the one Eric had sunk - and that the 12th and 23rd were taken by the captains to his left and right. He looked down either side of the table, reading through what he could.

“Is 1st Ronin available?” he asked.

“It is,” Kato said, “and I like the way you think.”

Eric had his XO change the name of the ship, and he changed his in-game nickname to Westy. To keep it alive.

Kato clapped, “Good, good! Eric’s a fine name, but we like to keep it a bit more informal. Hell,” he said waving an arm past his captains, “I don’t even know the real name of half of these guys here!” He laughed.

“Now, to business,” Kato said, turning in his chair. The wall in the rear of the room changed to a viewscreen, showing the same planetary view that Eric had seen from the bridge.

“This is Shepherd’s Cross, the third planet from the star in this un-named system. Someone has just begun terraforming the planet.”

Eric coughed, heads turned to face him.

“His name is Taipan,” began Eric. “He has some weird fetish for shepherds. His ship, a clipper, is named the Shepherd Moon. He’s a thief and a pirate.” Eric realized what he was saying, how it must look to the men around the table; the men who’d recently been hunting him for piracy. “They were his cargo ships I was attacking. His shipments I hijacked,” he continued quickly, flushing in embarrassment. “I didn’t even keep them. I couldn’t. No cargo hold; I dropped them into space. I just did it to get back at him.”

Kato nodded, turned back to the screen.

“Taipan,” he continued, “has just, as I said, begun terraforming the planet that he has named Shepherd’s Cross. That is a big endeavor. We, as a fleet, will do everything we can to help him in his goal.”

Eric’s heart fell. He couldn’t believe it.

“We’re going to help him terraform it,” repeated Kato, “and then we’re going to take it from him.”

The End of Book Two

From the Omegaverse Crowdsourcing Press release.

December 9th, 2017

… and in addition, we have the following ‘thank you’ for our top tier ($10000.00 US) contributors;

One (1) Grizzly class battle cruiser: The baddest of the bad, the meanest of the mean! This baby has six (6) plasma turrets, a six (6) bay fighter hangar, as many missile batteries as four (4) delta class destroyers, and more. Much more. In a dangerous universe, the Grizzly is one place you can sleep safely at night.

The very first $10k contributor will also receive:

One (1) ensign AI. ‘Fresh out of the academy, this fine young officer will add ten (10) percent effectiveness to every ship officer’s skill rating.’

One (1) each top tier skill rating for every shipboard skill, for each of the first ten (10) officers to join your fleet! As soon as you recruit a new officer to your burgeoning, dominating, fleet, you’ll be able to give them a level XV cert, raising their skill levels to the maximum! Couple that with your fancy academy trained ensign, and you’ll have a group with unparalleled skill and effectiveness!

All prizes are ...

PART THREE :

SHEPHERD'S CROSS

Prolog

Duncan Sheriden looked past his warming beer, untouched on the bar in front of him, to the rest of the crowd packed into the closed brewpub. He thought back to the events of the previous couple of months, the events that had completely reshaped his life.

His friends Matt, Clancey, Vince and Shannon had all convinced him to join them in the open world, limitless universe of the Omegaverse. After he had acquiesced, he’d been dragged in and captivated by the environment. The realism of the vast and varied worlds he’d explored had made him feel a real, true part of the universe - and that was before he’d been included in the beta test for the Omegaverse’s new virtual reality helmet.

In addition to the outstanding sights and sounds provided by the first, commercially released, helmet, the new version added full body touch, smells - good and bad - and even, he’d found, taste; though he wished he’d first tested that feature out on something a little more pleasing than alien top-soil.

The new additions served to remove any feeling of disconnect, any feeling that there was a barrier between him and the Omegaverse at all. Putting on the helmet was now just another doorway he could use to exit his apartment; either one he chose would take him out into a far greater, and equally ‘real’, environment.

His friends had all tried it and agreed that the newer experience was all enveloping, but Shannon in particular had been enthralled. Almost every night in the two weeks after he’d received the helmet, she’d visited him to experience it. She had been, if anything, even more enthusiastic about the upgrade than Duncan was.

Had been.

Duncan looked up again from his still untouched beer, to the weeping crowd around the bar. The bar where he’d first met Shannon. The bar now closed to all but her friends. For her wake.

“You doing ok?” asked Matt. “You’re pretty quiet.”

“I’m always quiet,” answered Duncan.

“True. But even more so now.” Matt sat on the barstool next to Duncan. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top of his shirt.

Duncan picked up his beer, the head long since dissipated, and sipped.

“I just hate funerals.”

“Everyone hates funerals.”

“No,” Duncan took another sip, “I hate funerals because everyone else seems so sad and emotional. I’m not. It makes me feel like a sociopath. She’s dead. Everyone dies. Being afraid of death just seems to me like being afraid of taking your next breath. It’s inevitable. Why worry about it? I’ll miss her. I’ll be sad for a few days. Then I’ll move on, and someday I’ll be the one in the box.”

Matt smiled, “It’s more like being afraid of not taking your next breath. And nobody thinks you’re a sociopath, Duncan.”

“I’m not worried that people think I’m a sociopath.”

“That’s just what a sociopath would say,” said Matt lightly.

Duncan forced a smile. “It’s just that everyone everywhere seems too wrapped up in being worried about death. It doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, look at religion,” he took another sip, “if you boil them all down to their essence, they’re all about answering what happens after you die.”

Matt nodded, shrugged.

“And if you cut away all of the metaphor, all of the righteousness, all of the belief, you get to the fundamental truth; they just don’t know. Then they whitewash that ignorance with faith. ‘Simply believe and ye shall be saved and gain entrance to an everlasting paradise!’”

“It doesn’t hurt anyone,” Matt said. Duncan looked at him, sharply. “Well, most of the time it doesn’t. When you discount the nutcases …”

“I’m not even thinking of the zealots. The holy-warriors,” countered Duncan. “When you say it doesn’t hurt anyone, I wonder about that not because of fundamentalists or terrorists.”

“No,” said Duncan, taking a larger drink, “I think focusing one’s life on an afterlife tends to lessen our accomplishments, or at least our pace of accomplishment, as a species.”

“How?”

“How? How much more would the average person accomplish if they knew, knew, that there was nothing after this life. Nothing. That everything they had to do had to be done in the blink of time that we have. How much more could Isaac Newton have accomplished if he hadn’t spent so much of his time trying to find immortality through the search for the philosopher’s stone?”

“The average person might just ball up into a neurotic, fearful little ball if they knew that death was the end.”

“Maybe,” countered Duncan. “Maybe not. Maybe what the world needs is not to realize that there’s no life after death, but to realize that there’s no death at all.”

“I don’t follow.”

Duncan finished off the last of his beer, putting his thoughts together.

“Maybe, if guys like Kurzweil are right, we’ll get to the point that human consciousness can be transferred into an electronic medium. Then we never will die. What will that do to religion? What will that do to fear, in general? And not only that, we’ll no longer have to worry about any of the biological overhead associated with being alive. How much more could we accomplish with a functionally limitless amount of time ahead of us?”

“What, like become cyborgs? Robots?”

“No. Like becoming an electronic part of the universe itself.”

“Like living in the Omegaverse? For real.”

“Yes.”

“Shannon would have liked that, I think,” Matt said, standing. “It’s too bad that aneurysm got to her before technology could.” He pushed in the stool, “I’m going to get another beer. Want one?”

“No,” said Duncan as Matt walked away, through the crowd. Duncan stood as well, took out his wallet and removed two fifty-dollar bills. He put them in the large jar on the bar - the contents of which would be donated to the SPCA in Shannon’s name.

Thinking back to the last time he and Shannon spoke, Duncan felt ashamed. He reached down to pet his dog, Bear, then remembered that Bear wasn’t here in the bar. Bear was waiting for him in the Omegaverse.

Chapter 1

Duncan Sheriden shivered. It wasn’t fear or dread that caused goosebumps to rise on his arms, but the cold. The bitter cold of being near the north pole of the planet Shepherd’s Cross. He stood looking over the stark, white landscape, oddly lit by the star riding the horizon. A light fog steamed, ephemerally, onto the faceplate of his helmet with his every exhalation. But at least his head was warm, he thought grimly.

“Whose bright idea was it to launch this mission without armor?” he asked as he moved slowly through the crunch of the frozen carbon dioxide and water snow. The thin, unarmored suit he wore was designed solely for life support. It wouldn’t protect him from projectiles, explosions and, he discovered, extremes of weather.

Matt, Clancey and Vince echoed each other’s laughter.

“Yours,” laughed Shannon from orbit. “You specifically said that if we launched without armor and with low tech weapons the mission would be classified as a red, so we’d get better loot. Remember?”

“Yah.”

“Are you sure?” mocked Shannon, “cuz you don’t sound like you remember.”

“Yah,” he repeated, his teeth chattering.

“And now,” she continued, “I’m up here twiddling my thumbs. I have no armor to regenerate. I have no power weapons to run through my conduit. All I have is my sensors. All I can do is tell you where the Arn are. Do you want me to?”

“Yes please. I’m freezing.”

“Are you cold Vince?” asked Matt.

“Nope!”

“How about you Clancey?”

“I’m a little warm, actually.”

“You see,” gloated Matt, “we’re all just fine. But we don’t have magic helmets like you do. Do we guys?”

“Nope!”

“Me neither,” laughed Clancey. “Hang on a second. I need to go lower the air conditioning in my house. I’m practically breaking a sweat.”

“Assholes,” muttered Duncan.

The helmet Duncan wore, a beta test of the new Omegaverse virtual reality helmet, not only provided standard visual and aural cues like the original, its neural interface had been updated to provide input to the rest of the human senses including, as Duncan had recently discovered, temperature.

“There’s realism and then there’s just bullshit,” he swore under his breath. “There’s gotta be some way I can turn off some of the bullshit realism.”

They were approaching the northern edge of the terraformation ‘village’. It had already grown considerably in the few weeks since Duncan had set it on the surface of the planet. The original cross-shaped terraformation kit had been busy building new units, with resources supplied by Phani Mutha and managed by Duncan’s friend Jamie. It was well on its way to making all of the modules that would work at increasing the atmospheric pressure, making the planet livable for Earth adapted life forms.

Duncan snapped back to the present as a bolt shot out from the terraformation camp. He dropped to the ground, groaning as his legs and torso became half buried in the frozen elements.

“Shannon!” he screamed.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“Why didn’t you tell us we were almost on top of the Arn?”

“You didn’t say please!”

Duncan thought for a second.

“Yes I did!” he yelled, pulling his Remington 700 into his shoulder and putting his eye as close to the scope as his helmet would allow.

“Oops,” Shannon called, “My bad!”

The other guys laughed, as they, having also dropped to the surface, began to crawl apart. To present a larger overall target to the Arn.

“Be freakin’ careful where you shoot,” shouted Duncan after getting a look through the scope, “they’re using the terraform modules as cover.” He paused, “No grenades.”

“Just a little one?” asked Clancey, laughing.

“None!”

“But I …” Clancey took a bolt through the forehead. Silencing him.

“Serves you right,” muttered Duncan then, louder, “we lost Clancey.”

“But he …” began Vince, before being shot as well.

Matt began to laugh.

Duncan stopped trying to focus through the scope, dropped the rifle and stood. He began running perpendicular to the line of Arn and, reaching Clancey’s corpse, scooped up his friend’s Kalashnikov - his sniper rifle was no good in this fight. He continued, trying to keep as many terraform modules between himself and the Arn as possible, around the flank.

He reached the end of the ice cap and stumbled as he tried to adjust from snow to dirt. Falling to his knees, a glancing blow from a nearly perfectly aimed shot tore through his faceplate. He fell fully prone as the oxygen in his helmet hissed through the scorched opening. He took a full mouthful of Shepherd’s Cross dirt as his head hit the ground.

Duncan looked toward the Arn position, entrenched in his extremely valuable and likely extremely fragile terraformation factory. His view was disturbed by his now useless faceplate so, taking as deep a breath as he could, he opened it.

He brought the AK-74 to his shoulder, planting his elbows to raise his torso to accommodate the thirty round magazine of 5.45 by 39 millimeter cartridges, and brought his sights to bear on the closest of the Arn. Duncan’s heart began to pound, not just from the excitement of the fight but from the increasing urgency with which his body began to demand fresh oxygen.

“Are you ok?” asked Matt over the radio. Several of the Arn were still focused on shooting Matt, whose inadequate cover behind a largish rock was being severely tested by accurate laser fire.

“Mmmm,” grunted Duncan, unwilling to expel the oxygen required for a more lucid answer.

Duncan settled the sights on one after another of the Arn focused his way, but they always dropped behind cover as soon as they saw his barrel move in their direction. Frustrated, he moved to target the Arn leftmost from his point of view. One of the little green men who was trying to shoot Matt.

As his rifle began to settle on the new target, Duncan began squeezing the trigger. He missed.

“Dammit,” he exhaled before he could stop himself. He took a large breath. It felt inadequate. Thin. He began breathing rapidly, shallowly, trying to extract what little oxygen was in the atmosphere. It might be enough, at least for a while.

He continued taking single, methodical shots, which served to keep the Arn’s heads down at least enough for Matt to begin shooting as well. Duncan began to feel slow, lethargic. His throat began to burn. As he fired the last shot in the magazine, his vision began to darken, then failed.

“Great,” said Duncan returning to his new apartment in the Shepherd’s Crook space station. “Now I know what it’s like to die of oxygen starvation.”

“Serves you right for not being nice to me,” said Shannon petulantly. She, Clancey and Vince were sitting around the firepit on the apartment’s lower level. Lower Manhattan extended out of the view from the window behind them.

A sudden fury fell on Duncan.

“What the fuck, Shannon?” he began heatedly. “That was bullshit. That mission would have pushed the terraformation forward a tenth of a percent or two. Now we’ve got dick to show for it.”

Shannon sat, still, stunned. She just stared at Duncan for a second then disappeared. Disconnected from the Omegaverse.

“Whoah,” said Clancey, “where did that come from?”

“You’re an asshole, Duncan,” continued Vince.

Duncan, his fury unabated, turned on his friends. He felt overwhelmed. They just didn’t understand. He was under a lot of pressure trying to get the faction established. He was spending a lot of time every single day ensuring that the station’s transition to public access went as smoothly as possible.

He was busting his ass and his friends were treating it all like … his thought process stopped.

His friends were treating it like a game.

“Fuck,” he said, sitting, defeated. “You’re right. I’m a dick.” He didn’t even begin to try to explain himself, to describe where the outburst came from. It was inexcusable and he knew it.

Matt entered the room, smiling.

“Well, that was a clusterfuck,” he began, then stopped as he looked over his three friends. “What’s up?”

“Duncan cussed out Shannon. She left,” said Clancey.

Duncan dropped his head into his hands, ashamed.

“Whoah,” responded Matt. “Dick move.”

Duncan only nodded his still bent head.

“And you practically begged her to be here tonight. She didn’t want to. Hell, she had to call in sick to work tonight because she was dizzy and had a splitting headache, and you know what a workaholic she is.”

“I know,” groaned Duncan, disconsolate. “I’m an asshole.”

He looked up to his friends.

“I promise, tomorrow I will render a full, heartfelt and gift laden apology.”

Chapter 2

March, 2022

Six months later

Duncan Sheriden leaned over the balcony, watching a view that never failed to take his breath away. Traffic moved, in almost continuous streams, between the station and the colony on the fourth planet in the system, a ringed, blue, gas-giant that he’d named Shepherd’s Crook, sharing the name between the planet he was colonizing and the space station he’d discovered shortly after entering the Omegaverse.

The station had been a huge success, so far. The news upon it becoming public had even made the gaming media outside of the Omegaverse, and many pundits had credited the hype over a player run and player discovered space station as having caused a substantial increase in the rate at which new players were entering the game. The story of a player, new to the game, happening upon an alien artifact and ‘claiming’ it as his own seeded dreams of fame, wealth and power throughout the gaming world as a whole.

That notoriety had led many players, new and old, to change their established residence from their ‘local’ station - the station that they had entered by default upon beginning their career in the Omegaverse - to the Shepherd’s Crook station or colony. Tens of thousands had flocked to this corner of the universe, and Duncan received a percentage of every month’s rent that was paid to the facility. The money was pouring into his account. He had, in fact, the evening before been able to pay off the remaining mortgage due on the colony; nearly thirty-thousand dollars worth of game credits. That had nearly wiped out his strategic reserve of credits, but, he reasoned, he had no foreseeable, major, expenses coming in the next month or so, and getting out from under the financing plan he’d agreed to in order to buy the colony - the equivalent, approximately, of a new mid series BMW sedan - would save him millions of credits in interest over the next five years. Four and a half years, he corrected himself. The past five months had been a blur of activity.

He’d been forced to rely more and more on his friends, both those from outside as well as those inside of the game, to take over some of the increasing demands that were being piled upon him. As he’d opened the colony to the public, he had, on the advice of Clancey, established himself as the leader of a new faction within the game universe. He was now, whether he liked it or not, a political entity within the Omegaverse as a whole.

Factions were, as defined by the game, groups of player run organizations that vied for control of parts of the universe. That interaction could be cooperative or confrontational. As much as Duncan desired cooperative expansion with other players, he knew, as much from his understanding of human history as well as human psychology, that much of his conflict with other factions would likely be less diplomatic and more direct.

To that end he had established the military arm of the faction, comprising of the Marines and the Navy. The natural leaders for those arms, by dint of their decades of experience in online gaming, were Blesk and Third; two of the leaders of the disbanded Fleet Bigweek.

After the clan had been disbanded by Eric West, they had begun a symbiotic relationship with Duncan’s group of friends. There was no official grouping, apart from being in the same faction - the Bigweek guys still remained a cohesive, if unofficial, whole within the game. They had made some small noises about reforming under a new titular leader, but nothing had come of it yet. There had really been no reason to. Their roles within the faction were similarly unofficial; their natural leadership abilities had led to everyone within the faction, old and new, just letting them assume their roles based on merit.

Duncan’s core group of friends, Matt, Clancey and Vince, likewise provided leadership roles within the faction, mainly as advisors. Their advice, reflected Duncan as he looked down from his perch to watch a Centurion class scout-ship leave the cavernous hangar door beneath his apartment, had been invaluable, ever since Clancey had first suggested that he open up the station and establish a public colony on the gas giant.

That colonization, as well as the terraformation of the system’s third planet, Shepherd’s Cross, were being managed - played, really - by his friend Jamie who, through the real-time strategy game interface, who determined on a daily basis what new facilities to create, where resources should be allocated, and what upcoming resource requirements were.

By far, however, the largest role in the expansion of the faction was being played by Phani Mutha, Duncan’s partner in India. Even discounting the fact that Phani had provided the terraforming kit that began this public expansion, the day to day logistical support provided by him and, amazingly enough, his employees, had been beyond all expectations.

Duncan shook his head in disbelief - he still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that all of his sudden, overwhelming good luck in a game had actually resulted in people halfway around the world having real, paying, full-time jobs. Duncan had never really played many games - and no online, massively multiplayer games - before entering the Omegaverse. He doubted he’d have been even able to imagine the course of the last six months before he’d entered this universe.

It all tired him, though. Exhausted him. He’d been brought into this universe to play a game, but it wasn’t a game anymore. It was a job, it had responsibilities that had effects in the real world. Responsibilities he didn’t want coupled with rewards he didn’t feel he deserved. Everything had been given to him, through the simple hand of good fortune, and nothing had been earned, either through sweat or intelligence. The combination left him hollow. Uninterested. The one happy aspect he’d found in the game, playing missions with his four friends, wasn’t even a part of his life anymore. By unspoken, but mutual, agreement, they no longer played the first person shooter game that had first brought them into the Omegaverse - without Shannon, it was joyless.

Duncan turned from the railing, from the expanse of his burgeoning empire, and looked to his friends sitting around the balcony. Phani, Jamie and Clancey were having an animated discussion; probably about the state and direction of the terraformation and colonization efforts. Matt and Vince were similarly engaged with Third and Blesk. He was glad they were all having fun, that they were all enthralled with the game. He wished he could be, but he wasn’t.

He sighed, and Bear, his Bernese Mountain dog puppy - if something almost hip-high and nearing fifty kilograms at six months old could be considered still a puppy - nuzzled his hand. Duncan gave the dog a scratch behind the ears. He coughed, but his friend’s conversations continued. Duncan smiled, coughed again, louder. The rest quieted and looked at him.

“First of all,” he said with a smile, “what is it with you two?” He pointed at Blesk and Third, who were dressed like they had just fallen out of a World War 2 movie - and had been playing Japanese pilots.

Blesk laughed, “We just got out of a historical scenario we were running in the Arena.”

“Yup,” confirmed Third. “The Battle of Midway. A re-enactment for some of the guys.”

Duncan was aware of, but had yet to participate in, the gaming sessions that had sprung up in the public Arena of the space station. If one had the skills and desire, you could create just about any kind of game within the arena. Most of the ex-Bigweek guys were fanatics about World War 2 air combat, and had spent a lot of time getting various battles set up that players could participate in.

“But,” teased Duncan, “the Japanese lost Midway.”

“Not this time, brother,” gloated Blesk.

Duncan laughed.

“I’ll have to join you guys sometime, those things sound like fun,” he paused, hating trying to come up with a transition into the meeting at hand, “but I guess we’ll have to get down to why I asked you all here this evening or,” he said glancing at Phani, “this morning.”

“Everything seems to be going fairly well,” he began, scratching the dog again, “and the next few months look fairly, uhm, straightforward.” A few of his friends nodded. “I’ve been spending a lot of time building the faction, managing the station and getting all of that setup so that it can continue on its own with minimal input.”

“So I’ve decided,” he continued, “to take a break. A vacation,” he smiled. “I’m going to be away for a while.”

“Outside of the game?” asked Matt.

Duncan shook his head.

“Just the opposite.”

Chapter 3

Phani Mutha looked at Taipan, concerned. He didn’t understand what Taipan, Duncan, meant by ‘being away but within the game’ - but none of Taipan’s other friends commented, so Phani didn’t know if it was something that the others understood that he didn’t.

He watched Taipan leave, trailed by the dog. The Bernese Mountain dog, he mused, hadn’t been among his highest sellers. When he first began determining which breeds to sell, he researched the most popular ones in America - the numbers, he found, didn’t necessarily translate into game sales. By far, he had the most sales from medium sized dogs; the retrievers, shepherds, huskies and the like. The very large breeds, like the Bernese, Saint Bernard and Great Dane, sold much fewer. The very small dogs sold almost not at all. He hadn’t made back his investment on them yet. He’d have to, perhaps, change the pricing or begin a marketing campaign of some sort.

Phani came back to the present, Clancey had said something to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “what?”

“I just said that Duncan hasn’t admitted to himself yet how much he is bothered by Shannon’s death.”

Phani nodded.

“We,” Clancey nodded toward Jamie, “hardly ever see him outside of the game anymore.”

“And when we do,” added Jamie, “he’s not really there. He doesn’t say anything. I mean, he was always quiet, but now …” Jamie let the thought hang. Phani assumed that meant that his tendency toward being quiet had increased.

Phani understood sudden loss, and how it could change someone. His father had been a gold merchant, and his family as a result was very comfortable. Then the price of gold went into a freefall, plummeting. Phani’s father had decided that the price had bottomed, and invested their entire fortune in inventory for their store. But the price hadn’t finished dropping - not by a long shot - and his father had been wiped out, forced to sell his stock of gold, at a considerable loss, to those who had better predicted the market’s nadir. They had lost nearly everything; their home, their livelihood, their future.

Phani’s future had changed almost overnight. Where before he had been a young student in a respectable, if not elite, private school, busy filling out applications for universities to attend after graduating the following year, he’d become one of many on the streets, looking for work that wasn’t there following a worldwide economic recession.

With what little they had left, his father had rented the one room flat - cheap enough that they could afford it for a couple of years if no work could be found - and Phani’s father, mother and himself, had moved in.

They had tried to make the best of it. Phani and his father, daily, looked for work, but found none. Then Phani’s mother got sick, and his father had taken it upon himself to care for her. It hadn’t been for long, but it was enough. His mother recovered, but his father never did. He detiorated rapidly and, one morning, he just didn’t wake up when called.

After that, Phani’s mother moved in with relatives in order to allow Phani to concentrate on restablishing himself. That was when he had, overhung with a cloud of reservation, bought himself a second-hand computer with the rest of the family savings and entered the world of the Omegaverse.

Now, a little over a year later, Phani had brought back something like normality to his family, such as it was. His mother remained with their relatives, but the regular money provided them by Phani had removed any problems they may have felt with having to care for her. On a visit the previous week, Phani had been welcomed as a family leader. He had to admit, he liked it, knowing that it had been done through a combination of good fortune, hard work, and intelligent choices.

At first, he hadn’t been sure what to think of his partnership with Duncan. Phani had, after all, provided the terraforming kit. Even though Duncan had bought it from him, Phani was still providing much of the work to get the colony developed in that he was responding to the daily resource requests sent them by Jamie through the game.

As Phani expanded, however, and began hiring employees, Duncan had been an invaluable help. The American’s business experience in team building had proven useful again and again as Phani expanded to what was now four employees working in two shifts per day. Phani had saved nearly enough to establish his company and rent an actual office space. They wouldn’t be working from his second bedroom for much longer.

Another way in which their partnership had been beneficial were the late night, for Phani, brainstorming sessions that he and Duncan had shared. Whether sitting in Duncan’s apartment or talking while they busily restocked the booming pet store, their long talks on identifying possible means to earn more money within the game had been fruitful.

Phani thought back to one such conversation.

“Duncan,” Phani said, “name a universally desired product.”

“Sex!” shouted Duncan.

Phani thought he’d been drinking. He laughed.

“Another product?”

“Sex and drugs and rock and roll!”

“Drugs?” asked Phani.

“Sure. Things that make you feel good.” Duncan chortled. “Sorry Phani, I’ll be serious now. What sort of products does everyone want?”

“No, wait. Drugs.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Phani. Even with the latest version of the VR helmet, you can’t take a drug and have it give an effect like in real life.”

“That,” said Phani, “depends on the drug. What about psychedelics?”

“Like LSD?”

Phani nodded, “Sure. Drugs that don’t effect how you feel, necessarily, but what you see.”

They sat quietly, pondering.

“What is the experience during a light speed jump?” began Phani.

“Gray. Kind of boring.”

“And what if we could come up with a ‘drug’ that put on, I don’t know, a pretty light show while you were in jump?”

“I’d buy that!” said Duncan, excitedly.

That had been the beginning of Phani’s latest project, newly completed. For a few hundred credits, players could ‘take’ a drug that would turn their light speed jumps into a thrilling light show. The drug didn’t effect anything besides the display, and it only operated as long as the player was in warp space. As soon as they dropped out into normal space, the effect ended. Phani called the product Surya, after the sun god who drove a chariot harnessed by seven horses.

It was a gamble - it had cost Phani several million credits, converted into Rupees, to hire a firm to write the required software that interacted with the Omegaverse application program interface, or API, to introduce the drug into the game. He’d begun testing it, and submitted it to the Omegaverse corporation for official inclusion in the game. If they refused, he didn’t know if he would be out the initial investment or whether he could sell it to individuals outside of the normal commerce system. Duncan had laughed at that possibility, pointing out that illegal drugs were often desired as much for their illegality as for their effect.

Phani wasn’t sure that was the case, or if it was even possible to sell something outside of what Duncan referred to as the ‘Omegaverse ecosystem’ - the various systems that the game used to handle sales between and to players. He was sure, however, that single-use products like the drug were vital in establishing himself long-term within the game - as profitable as the pet store had been, there wasn’t a great deal of return business. Once a player had a pet, they tended to stick with it. It became a part of their life. Phani needed something that would keep the customers coming back.

Chapter 4

Duncan walked back inside his apartment from the balcony, leaving his friends to continue their discussions, and made his way back to the bedroom. He sat at the foot of the bed, and pointed to the mat on the floor next to it. Bear walked onto the mat, circled twice, and plopped down in a sigh.

Duncan scratched him behind one ear and said, “Stay. Sleep.” The puppy sighed again, dropped his head onto one paw, closed his eyes and began to snore. Duncan watched him for a moment; unlike a live dog, Bear would now stay exactly like that until called, and it would be a long time until Duncan called him again. Duncan was going someplace that Bear couldn’t.

What had initially attracted Duncan to the Omegaverse, apart from his friend’s vivid descriptions of fighting aliens, was the openness of it. The vast unexplored expanses of the galaxy that nobody - no human, anyway - had ever been to. The galaxy of the Omegaverse was modeled on the Milky Way itself. Someone who had a star-map of the actual galaxy had a star-map of the game galaxy, and the game galaxy was modeled after the real one as much as was known; Barnard’s star is a low-mass red dwarf about six light years from Earth, in both the game and the real galaxy.

The interesting part, however, to Duncan were those countless stars that were just designated by letter and numbers in the various star catalogs compiled by astronomers around the world throughout history. A light in the sky, given a placeholder name by a scientist. The unexplored portions - the overwhelmingly vast majority - of the universe was where Duncan wanted to go. He wanted to be the first to see, up close, those systems; even if they were only unique in so far as the game universe and had no correlation, other than their location and star type, to the real universe.

He would gladly hop in a ship and jump to the other side of the galaxy and begin poking around, but the physics of the game universe prevented that. Jumps between systems took fuel - a lot of it. In order to get more than a few systems away, the ship had to be refueled. In his Clipper class ship, that was usually as simple as having it filled at one of the space stations at which it stopped.

The Centurion class exploration ship, however, added the ability to refuel directly from a hydrogen source using a ship add-on called the Bussard Scoop. The scoop, more an electromagnetic field that sucked in elements than a physical nosecone, collected hydrogen and heavier gaseous elements continuously as it moved through space, but not at a rate great enough to continually replenish the greedy engines used to transit interstellar distances. That required a more intensive process.

The process, which focused heavily on piloting skills, was to skim along the outermost atmosphere of a gas giant, and collect the gasses into the scoop. Those gasses, in clouds composed mainly of ammonia and water, with a bit of hydgrogen, were split into their respective ‘buckets’. The hydrogen was pushed directly into the fuel tanks, but the ammonia and water required additional processing before they could become the fuel that would push the ship.

The ammonia, through a process called cracking, has its component elements reduced; specifically into one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen. The hydrogen was then added to the fuel tanks. The leftover nitrogen was funneled, if needed, into the life support system - the air humans breath is seventy-eight percent nitrogen - while the rest was bled back overboard.

Water was first added to the life support system then, through electrolysis, split into the two hydrogen and one oxygen molecules that contstitute it - the oxygen being added to the life support system. Thus all of the needs for long term, long range exploration were covered.

Duncan looked to down to the skill cert in his hand. Level XV Pilot. The highest pilot rating. Phani had picked it up during one of his buying sprees in Eta Bootis and sold it to Duncan at cost, which was a great savings on what it would have cost him otherwise. It would not help him maintain his ship on course while skimming the clouds of a gas giant - that was down solely to his innate skills as a pilot - but it would improve his collection rate, the speed at which he gathered the various gasses required to fuel the ship, thus taking less time and alleviating the duration of the refueling process. Less time to make a mistake, he thought grimly. He applied the cert.

He looked back to the instrument cluster in the Centurion. The navigational readouts adjusted from his previous skill level to the new one.

Duncan had laid out a jump to a system about thirty light-years out. A system not on the jump grid. That meant that he had to base his jump solely on what information was in the database, which wasn’t a lot.

Those systems off the grid, outside of the standard navigational databases, were little more than star types and locations in the larger galactic neighborhood. Pilots couldn’t pick a specific jump destination, beyond “go to star X”, until they had the detailed system information in their rutter.

A pilot’s rutter - named for the books in which sea captains during Earth’s great age of exploration kept their navigational notes - contained all of the nav information about the various star systems. While many explorers could, and sometimes did, sell their nav information to be included in the general nav databases, most kept that information for their own use - the coordinates for a jump location that was heavy in mineral resources was worth more to the pilot as a secret than the amount they’d get to open the data up to the public. Besides, there was nothing preventing them from selling the data on the open market after they’d already stripped the system of its most valuable resources. Most of the larger factions had dedicated explorers who found extra-grid resources then plotted jump coordinates for their allied mineral collectors.

The danger, however, with jumping into unknown systems was that there might not be a ready fuel source available to refit the ship. The standard procedure was to jump to a location using less than half of your fuel. The reasoning being if you scanned the system and found no fuel - apart from the hydrogen being burned in the star, which the ship shields would not hold up against at refueling distances - you could alway jump back to your original jump system and refuel before exploring elsewhere. An additional problem was that the pilot’s rutter could only be backed up at a space station. If you lost your ship in the depth of space, you lost your unshared nav information until you could mount a salvage operation to get your stranded ship.

The readouts from the input jump coordinates that Duncan had orginally added narrowed after he applied the pilot cert. Where a level I pilot jumping to an unexplored star system might have a signifigant non-zero chance of winding up somewhere in the intersteller dust between the origin and destination system, his level XV cert almost guaranteed arriving within one AU of the star. But he was still nervous. Still apprehensive. Not arriving at the exact point could mean nothing. It could also mean jumping into the middle of the destination star - and insurance didn’t pay out for ships while operating outside of the jump grid.

Duncan looked to the outside of the cockpit of the Centurion. The immense hangar bay of the Shepherd’s Crook space station stretched in either direction, filled mostly with ships at rest but also the occasional craft slowly moving toward one of the two now permanently open ends of the bay. He looked back inside, down and to his left, and gripped the throttle quadrant that sat next to his left thigh. He moved the throttle slightly to the left, out of the off position and forward to the idle position, which started the ion engine sitting at the back of the craft.

As the ship began to rise, he briefly thought of naming the ship.

“No,” he laughed out loud, “I’ve shown that I can’t be trusted with naming anything. I’d probably call it the Shepherd’s Fleece or some stupid crap like that.” He smiled. He’d just call it the Centurion. He liked that name.

As the Centurion raised to midway up the hangar bay, he looked aft and foward, ensuring that the exit lane was clear, then advanced the throttle to a few percent - enough to get it moving foward - then moved into the center of the hangar. Once he’d reached enough speed, he retarded the throttle back to idle and drifted toward the exit, a kilometer ahead. As he moved through the station, he brought up the nav chart, and began plotting a course for the L5 Lagrange point - the point where he’d jump his new ship into an uncharted, for him, star system. Into the unknown.

Chapter 5

Eric West rushed into the conference room off of the bridge of the Grizzly class battle cruiser, The Last Ronin - the flagship of the Inner Lizard fleet. He looked around the conference table and took a quick count; he was the last captain to arrive.

“Sorry,” he said as he pulled out and sat in a high-back leather chair along the side of the gleaming, wood table.

“What kept you?” laughed the fleet commander, Kato, sitting at the end of the table, facing down his subordinates. “Another pirate?”

There was some laughter down either side of the room. Eric’s focus on, obsession with, eradicating the Omegaverse of piracy had become something of an in-joke within the Inner Lizards during the half-year since he’d been recruited.

Eric blushed. “Yes,” he said looking down at the table, sheepishly. Then he looked back at Kato, “I got him, though.”

“Excellent.”

“Someday,” said Mage, another captain, who was sitting across the table, “you’ll have to tell us what it is you have against them. Pirates, that is.”

Eric looked to his peer. “It’s simple,” he said. “They’re thieves.”

“How so?” asked Zasteva, seated next to Mage. “They don’t really steal anything. The cargo ships they attack are insured. Any losses are replaced before they’re even noticed.”

“That’s morally retarded,” shot back Eric. “A thief is a thief.”

Zasteva cocked his head, looked at Eric for a second. “Not so. It’s conflict by proxy. It gives the impression that players are in conflict with each other without there being any real loss on either end. It’s PVE masquerading as PVP.” There were nods from other captains around the table.

“It’s the intention that matters,” countered Eric.

“When we attack a group of players in combat, are we murderers?” continued Zasteva. “If not, why not? By your logic, we intend to kill them, so we are murderers even though nobody dies.”

Eric felt his face redden again, this time in anger, he gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward.

“Ok, Ok,” laughed Kato, “that’s enough of that. We’re here for a reason, and that reason is not to delve into whatever motivations we may or may not have as it relates to interpersonal conflict within the Omegaverse.”

Kato stood, walked to the rear of the conference room and brought up a view screen with a star-map laid out.

“There has been,” he began, “an increase in the number of attacks, or raids, by the Werewolves, the Canis Arcturus, in recent weeks. As a result, the authorities on Kepler station have requested a retaliatory attack on the Werewolf homeworld, Eta Bootis.”

The captains down either side of the table sat forward, leaned in, and craned to view the map. Eric forgot his anger in his mounting excitement. Fleet on fleet action wasn’t rare, but it wasn’t, yet, common enough to be mundane - and Eta Bootis was known to have some fairly extensive defenses.

“The government has, in addition to offering a large bounty for every Werewolf ship taken out, waved all insurance costs for this operation. If your ship is destroyed it will be replaced at no cost to us.”

“How many,” asked one of the captains closer to Kato’s end of the table, “fleets will be participating?”

“Hard to say,” Kato said as he returned to his seat, “it’s an open, public, call. It’s scheduled to begin in,” he looked down at his watch, “twenty minutes.” He looked back up, back down the table, “so I’m glad that Westy was able to dispatch his pirate with dispatch!”

Eric returned to the bridge of his Delta class destroyer, the 1st Ronin. He sat, heavily, into the captain’s chair and brought up the navigation display, then loaded Kato’s plan into the system. He thought it was a good plan, as far as suicide missions went, but he hated lost causes. He hated losing, and wasn’t thrilled about going into what was going to be certain death. Eric hated being out of control in any way, and didn’t enjoy being reliant on anyone else.

Eric had been fat as a child. Picked on. Teased. That had left him withdrawn; a loner who kept to himself. The other children noticed that, of course, especially the bullies.

He remembered, clearly, one day as he ran from the school, through back-yards and out of the way woods, to try and beat a pack who’d decided that he was a perfect victim. Their hoots and hollers as he fled toward the safety of his house spurred his panic. Breathless, hand shaking, he’d fumbled with the key to his back door as their pursuit gained on him.

As the gang entered his yard, their screams increasing in intensity as they caught sight of their prey - him - he finally managed to pry open the door and move through, slamming it behind him and turning the lock.

He sat heavily on the floor, back against the door, as their jeers came through from a few feet away. Too frightened to even look through the curtain on the windowed door, he curled up, put his head on his knees, and cried until his parents returned home from work hours later.

They had found, after calming Eric down sufficiently to look outside to ensure that his tormentors were gone, that everything Eric owned that was in the backyard was gone. Even his bike. The bike that he’d worked to earn, saving until he could afford to buy it himself. They’d taken it. Stolen it. He never saw it again.

The next day, at school, his tormentors didn’t say anything. They just smirked as they came across him. He felt utterly powerless; defeated. Weirdly enough, they left him alone after that. They seemed to recognize that he was as defeated as he could be.

After that, Eric had withdrawn further, taking no solace whatsoever in any interaction with other people, until he’d discovered online gaming.

For his fourteenth birthday, in 1999, his parents had given him a new computer. Always a fan of airplanes and, especially, World War 2 air combat, he’d naturally gravitated toward flight simulators and found one that allowed him to fly with other players from around the world. He’d finally, he felt, found his home. Found his people.

Nightly, he would join in the competition, thrilling in the dogfights, the camaraderie, able to finally be who he thought he should be, un-judged for his physicality, valued for his abilities and his contribution.

He still remembered, in stark detail, what he thought of as the finest hour of his early online gaming career.

“Are you with us, Westy?” Blesk asked over the squadron channel. The twelve Focke-Wulf 190 A-5’s struggled as they climbed through thirty-thousand feet in search of the first of what promised to be multiple waves of B-17s heading toward what looked to be the target of the day - Stuttgart.

“Yes sir,” said Eric, shakily.

“Just checking,” laughed Blesk. He and the rest of the squadron had taken the teenager under their care.

“Con,” said Third calmly, “dots. Low, one o’clock.”

Eric watched as Blesk rolled his wings from level, to clear the view forward and down to his right.

“Copy con,” replied Blesk, “I see ‘em.” There was a pause. “Come right to a heading of 280. We’ll go in above them and split-S down on top of them and attack through them from above and behind.”

Eric’s hands began to shake on his joystick, and he noticed that his fighter was yawing slightly to the left. He released the unintended pressure on the rudder pedals sitting underneath the desk in his bedroom, bringing his fighter back to straight flight.

He followed his leader, Blesk, as he led the squadron slowly onto an intercept course. At this altitude, the 190 was a beast - a slow, sure hand was needed to ensure that it didn’t snap into a stall and spin out of formation. Eric smiled - if that happened, he’d probably wind up pinwheeling through the bomber formation. He’d never be able to live that down.

Eric moved his right thumb and cycled through his views using the switch on the top of his joystick. He scanned the skies over his right wing, 3 o’clock, and saw nothing. The same for directly behind - 6 o’clock.

“MUSTANGS!” he squealed, “9 o’clock high!” He began to pant, to shake.

“See them,” said Blesk, calmly, “they’re still a few thousand yards out. We’ll be in the bombers before they can get to us. Good eye, buddy.”

Eric, settled a little by the calming voice, moved his fighter in just a little closer to the squadron leader’s.

“Yeah, good call, dude!” congratulated Grey Eagle, flying on the left side of the formation.

Tex’s laconic reply came over the radio, “Yeah, the kid’s got promise.”

“Ok,” called Blesk, “let’s nose over, get some more airspeed and, on my call, roll into the bombers.”

Eric mirrored the leader’s movements and their fighters began dropping, gaining speed as they passed back through thirty-thousand feet. Eric took a second and looked forward, toward their intended target.

It took his breath away. Bombers stretched in tight formations for as far as he could see, coming in directly below him at twenty-thousand feet; each piloted and gunned by living, breathing humans from all over the world. His right leg began to shake uncontrollably.

“In, in in,” called the flight leader.

Then the sun glinted off of Blesk’s canopy as the German fighter rolled inverted. Eric followed and promptly lost all sense of time, direction and any semblance of what followed.

A swirling, confusing battle had been what followed, after which Eric found himself flying alone at ground level in a completely unpopulated sky. Snatches of the fight in his memory were all that remained. Passing through a stream of bombers at impossible speed, hearing the occasional ping as bullets from the beleaguered gunners hit his plane to no effect. Firing his cannon at one or more of the lumbering beasts. Then being chased to the ground by a pair of relentless P-51Ds until, he didn’t know how, he managed to elude them long enough that they lost sight of him and, presumably, returned to base. Eric’s hands had been awash with sweat and the thumping, adrenaline fueled shake in his right leg had only increased.

That fight, a recreation of the Big Week air battles over Europe in World War 2, had been his introduction to online gaming. He’d been hooked. For life.

Chapter 6

Duncan laughed as the view outside of his ship morphed and swayed, the colors brilliant and ever changing. Unlike the normal gray of warped space during a jump, his view was enhanced by Surya, the ‘drug’ that Phani had come up with and that Duncan was testing. The view somehow, weirdly, matched up with the music that Duncan was playing while jumping - the Eagles singing about stars in the southern sky near the Seven Bridges Road wasn’t out of place as the multicolored stars flew past his canopy.

“Sometimes there’s a part of me,” he sang along, “has to turn from here and go, running like a child from these warm stars.” He turned his head and watched the as yet unnamed star that centered the system where the Shepherd’s Crook station and colony and the Shepherd’s Cross planet were located fade into the distance. He turned his head, and looked foward.

He felt, somehow, free for the first time in a long time. There were no responsibilities ahead. No one that expected anything from him. There was nothing but the unknown, nobody that he had to rely on except himself. This was the reason that he’d sought out the expanse of this universe in the first place, he told himself. Solitude. Only the knowledge, shoved into the back of his mind, that this was only a game, only a simulation, kept him from being at perfect peace.

The stars leapt back into focus, stationary, through the canopy of the Centurion. He dropped his head back down to view the instruments, and began setting up a deep scan of the system as a whole.

The Centurion class explorer ship was a small, single person, long range ship designed to get you to the outer reaches of the galaxy, and not much else. The seat in which Duncan currently sat was the only one in the ship. There was no place else to go. No bunk. No galley. Duncan was glad that human “waste elimination” wasn’t a factor in the Omegaverse - there was no bathroom; no head. The spot he was in was it, all there was for a human in the ship.

The rest of the ship was mostly engine and fuel, with a few spaces and pods for instrumentation and a very small hold that he could use to store whatever small thing he might find while exploring. No drone accompanied the hold, however - anything he found that he wanted to keep, he had to EVA and move himself.

Among the options a player could purchase for the Centurion were an array of sensors. The most basic, included, sensors allowed for a star system scan that returned an area of approximately one AU out from the ship. Given the number of AU slices that could be scanned in any given system, that meant that the standard sensors would take a large, very large, number of individual scans to map an entire star system.

The various sensors available ran the gamut from increasing that scan range by a factor of two or three, up to the highest level, which could return a full system log through a single scan. That sensor, which cost more than twice the amount of the ship that carried it, was what Duncan was running through now. As much as he might feel that his rewards within the Omegaverse were, so far, unearned, that wasn’t going to prevent him from taking advantage of them in this case, at least.

He set the long range scan to begin, then raised his head to begin a visual scan. Unless he was very lucky and jumped in near one, he wasn’t about to see any planets, but the system star shone off his port bow. He’d come into system about half an AU from the star, so about half an AU out from where the nav system had aimed for, which was about one AU out from the star. That was enough within the normal distribution to not be a worry. Anything up to a half to three-quarters of an AU was considered on target for a non-grid system - anything much more than that and the improbability arc began to curve upward logarithmically. While a half an AU was normal, a full AU out of target would be almost unheard of given his current skill level.

The star, which was a G-type main sequence star, about as old as Sol, shone yellow, about twice the size in his view as Sol would be from Earth.

“Zoom,” he said, and the star grew even more, “again.”

The star now took up most of the view to his left. He watched, mesmerized, at the long fingered tendrils of a sunstorm that rose from the surface. He was brought back to the present by a beep from his dashboard - the deep scan had completed.

Duncan looked to his instrumentation, and was shocked. According to the scan, he was almost on top of the second planet in the system. He looked around, found nothing, then realized what that meant.

“Unzoom.”

He reached for the flight stick between his legs and moved it to the left while looking out the port side of the canopy. As the ship rolled in place, a small world rose into his view. As it reached a line directly out from his shoulder, he stopped rolling, returned the stick to center then began to twist the stick to the left. The Centurion began to yaw toward the left, bringing the planet toward the nose of the craft. Once the green-grey planet was directly in front of him, Duncan released the stick and looked more closely at the planet.

It was, according to the readouts, about five-hundred thousand kilometers away. Roughly the distance from the Earth to Luna. He began a detailed, focused, scan of the planet in order to run an assay for anything of interest, then he looked to his rutter and ensured that the results of the wide scan had been updated within the tome.

The focused scan didn’t return anything interesting. No large deposits of anything valuable - even though off the grid, this system was just one jump off the main routes, so it had probably been picked fairly clean.

He looked back to the wide scan, and plotted a course for the closest gas giant, several AU out-system.

After finishing the plot, he rolled the Centurion and pulled it away from the planet, then began accelerating into deep space. After a minute, he’d reached the minimal percentage of C required and jumped.

A few moments later, Duncan was pulling into orbit around a very large planet. He began a focused scan, picked up a few moons and moved the ship down, further into the planet’s gravity well.

The Centurion began to shake as it entered the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

“Clive,” Duncan said, “deploy the Bussard scoop and put the fuel percentage on the HUD.”

He saw the numbers added to the left of his main control display. Eighty-three percent. It hadn’t been all that long of a jump, so his first refueling would at least be a relatively quick one.

Duncan fought the controls, keeping the ship at the same altitude within the atmosphere. He watched as the fuel percentage slowly, to his mind, rose. The last interstellar jump had been about fourteen lightyears. Not huge as far as exploration jumps went. He was still just wetting his toes in the galactic ocean. He would, he expected, have a great deal of practice when it came to refueling. That pleased him. He enjoyed the challenge.

As the fuel percentage reached one hundred percent capacity, he increased the throttle, slowly, and the Centurion began to rise back out of the atmosphere, helped by the increased thrust as well as the added mass of the fuel. He’d been surprised to read that was the case - he assumed that being heavier would make it more difficult to get back out of the gravity well, but the reverse was true.

He finally brought the ship back out of the deepest part of the well, and began to accelerate back into deep space. As he did so, he plotted his second jump, one further hop away from civilization and further into the black.

Chapter 7

Eric looked up as the constellations unique to the Eta Bootis system gelled in his viewscreen.

“Number One, all ahead flank.”

His eyes raced to the passive scan.

The Inner Lizards had jumped into an out of the way part of the system in order to take a quick look at the disposition of the Werewolf fleet. The attackers had the initial advantage in any fight like this. They could jump in a few AU away from where they thought that the opposition might be laid out and get a look at them fifteen or twenty minutes before their prey would know that they were in system.

There were problems, however, with the plan.

The first, you could always just be unlucky and find out that you’d jumped right into the middle of the enemy fleet, who were sitting there prepared for you. That would make the fight end very quickly, and likely not in your favor.

The second was the flip side to the advantage. You could see where the enemy was and where they were going, but the information was fifteen or twenty minutes old. For all you knew, they’d jumped to the other side of the system by the time you saw where they were ‘now’.

Eric noticed that his nav information had been updated. Kato had already worked through the ‘current’ information on the Werewolves and updated the battle plan. He’d had his Nav Officer update then share the new jump information with the rest of the fleet. That was quick. Kato was on the ball.

The Werewolves seemed split into two groups, with the main part of the group surrounding the homeworld and a smaller section on the opposite side of the star, Eta Bootis - it looked to Eric that they’d be around where the L3 Lagrange point for the planet was. That was the area selected by Kato as the first jump.

The plan had been to jump into a quiet corner of the system, immediately begin accelerating to jump speed, and create the tactical plan on the fly as the situation unfolded. They’d talked through several scenarios reflecting possible results; where and how the enemy was arrayed as well as whether or not any other attacking fleets had as yet joined in the fight.

So far, it looked like the Inner Lizards might be the first - though Eric reminded himself that the information was about ten minutes old in the case of the L3 point and fifteen minutes old for the home world.

Eric’s heart raced and his palms began to sweat as he gripped his armchair until his knuckles turned white. He began looking between both the ‘top down’ tactical chart, showing the arrowhead formation he and the rest of the Delta class destroyers made off of either flank of the Grizzly class battle cruiser, and the jump chart, counting down the time until the group reached the minimum percentage of C required to make the jump to the L3 point.

He ran a quick eye, for the tenth time in the last minute, to ensure that his weapons and shields were ready for the fight. For the tenth time, they were.

Eric looked back to the helm. They’d reached the jump speed but hadn’t gone. He started to speak, to ask why, when Kato came through over comms.

“We’re jumping into what looks like some sort of space station. There are several destroyers and a Grizzly on patrol there. Target the Grizzly with everything you’ve got. Use Westy’s omega strike. I don’t care where you hit it, but we’ve got to take down the shields fast.”

Then they jumped.

It was perfect. They came in a few hundred kilometers away from the station, with the entire arrowhead formation pointed right down the nose of the Grizzly.

“Number one, target the Grizzly engines. Omega strike. FIRE!” Eric stood, leaning toward the viewscreen as the nose of his destroyer was illuminated by the singular flash of dozens of missiles launched simultaneously from the batteries on either side of his bow.

His ship, the 1st Ronin, leapt forward as, slaved to the helmsman on the Last Ronin, he moved in formation with the rest of the destroyers into a screen, a shield, between the Grizzlies. As long as the Last Ronin remained intact and healthy, they would have no problem cleaning up this little group - and Kato was prepared to sacrifice as many Deltas as it took to ensure that happened.

As the Inner Lizard formation gelled, the hundreds of missiles from the destroyers began peppering the shields of the Werewolf battle cruiser; only now beginning to show signs of recognizing and preparing for the fight. As a unit, the Inner Lizards all pivoted to port, ninety degrees, to present a full squadron broadside on the nose of the enemy grizzly. As they came to bear, the plasma cannon on the ships began lighting up the space between the groups.

“Number one, target the nose, full broadside. Fire!”

Again, the bridge lit up, but this time from the three turrets arrayed along the top of the destroyer.

Eric looked to the enemy shields on the targeting display. They were almost down, but still up. Eric marveled at the amount of punishment it had taken to, so far, no ill effect. The combined missile attack from nearly a dozen destroyers and one Grizzly class, as well as a full plasma broadside from the destroyers. It boggled his mind and fired his imagination.

“God, what I’d give to have one of those monsters,” he muttered.

He ducked, involuntarily, as the bridge once again lit; but much more than any time previously. The six plasma turrets, huge and with probably as much firepower each as the three batteries, combined, on the destroyers, blasted past the 1st Ronin and wrecked through the remaining shield and into the nose of the Werewolf cruiser.

In the wake of the blast, six F90a Lightning III’s - the fleet’s fighter arm, based on the Last Ronin - blew through the destroyer screen on their way into the fight; the fight which had suddenly become two-sided, as the Werewolves recovered from their initial shock and began to rouse.

“Alpha strike, fire!” Eric yelled, looking away from the smoking Werewolf Grizzly at the newly targeted enemy destroyer. The Werewolf destroyers were frantically trying to close on their larger brother as the F90’s were hitting, on successive passes, the plasma turrets that were likely to be the only hope in their fight against the human invaders.

As the enemy behemoth had brought its forward turret around, it had sent a blast that had blown away the shields of the 24th Ronin and taken out the lighter vessel’s own forward turret. Krusher, captain of the 24th Ronin, had quickly taken his ship, in what Eric thought was a nice piece of flying, into trail behind the Last Ronin; using the bulk of the cruiser as a shield until he could regenerate his own electromagnetic protection.

Eric looked to his prey as his missiles, along with a full load from Mage’s 23rd Ronin, slammed into and through the shields on the Werewolf ship. He and Mage then gave it a plasma broadside each into the engines, overwhelming the core. The first kill of the fight.

He looked to his own shields. Still one hundred percent. If the enemy had taken any defensive shots, it must have been at Mage. Eric grinned. This was what he lived for; a fight with friends, or at least allies, by his side.

“Two of the turrets down,” came a call over the radio. Eric thought it was from Moggy, flying one of the F90’s. Eric didn’t really know the guy, but he didn’t have much of a reputation. If he was leading the fighters, there must not be many left.

Eric confirmed it. There were only three of the little attackers left swarming around the enemy cruiser. Then two. One was taken out by a swath of missiles from one of the advancing destroyers. Eric targeted the attacking destroyer and moved in between it and the enemy cruiser, to give the fighters a little shield - breathing room - to continue nibbling away at the Grizzly, now heavily smoking and showing signs of open fire throughout the superstructure. The one weakness of the Grizzly was against small, snub fighters. Until they had reloaded their missile bays, they were defenseless - their huge plasma cannon were next to useless against such a small, fast, maneuverable target.

“Shit,” called Moggy, “get the hell away, it’s going to …”

Eric was stunned as his viewscreen rolled, and the shields of the 1st Ronin dropped by half. The entire sky to the port was as though a sun had just been born, burning a white light on the retinas.

The Last Ronin was now the only Grizzly in the fight.

Chapter 8

Duncan looked down, startled, away from the curious array of constellations unique to this un-named system. The alarm from his deep scan was one he hadn’t yet heard.

He brought up the detailed screen and saw, to his shock, that another ship was close by. Another Centurion. He opened a hailing frequency.

“Hello!”

He waited. There was no answer.

“Hello?”

Silence.

He reached down to his left, grabbed the throttle and advanced it. As his Centurion began accelerating, he brought up his local scan and targeted the other ship. It was adrift, moving very slowly through the system. He looked to the lifesigns return portion of the report.

None. Nobody was on board.

He scanned down the list. It was a fairly standard Centurion, outfitted with a few extra options, but nothing compared to his own. He wondered what had happened.

The ship came into view, just to the right and out to the front of his own. As he pulled in close, slowing the Centurion to match the other ship’s minimal movement, he saw that the canopy was up.

Duncan lowered the visor to his close fitting helmet, and began venting his life support in preparation for an EVA. He was going to go across and see what he could find out about this mystery ship.

Duncan, upside down from the point of view of the empty pilot seat of the adrift Centurion, pulled himself down, into the cockpit. He righted himself, then pushed himself down using the canopy rails until he was seated in the strange craft.

He reached down and fired up the ship’s systems. Alarms sounded in chorus as he began looking through the various readouts.

Fuel. None.

Damage. Bussard scoop.

So, this guy had been out exploring, managed to damage his refueling rig and didn’t have the fuel to get back to the grid.

Duncan pulled up the guy’s rutter and began reading.

He was impressed. This guy had been all over this quadrant of the galaxy. He’d made deep, detailed scans of most of the systems around, highlighting lots of mineral deposits for exploitation. Duncan was pretty sure that, whoever this guy, was, he was a kindred spirit.

He scrolled back to the beginning of the rutter, read the pilot’s name.

Aeredhael Redfalen.

Duncan read it twice. He wasn’t about to even attempt to pronounce that name. Smiling, he brought up the ship’s ansible and put in a call. It was quickly answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” said Duncan, “I think I’ve found your ship.”

“Really? Where?”

Duncan sent the system name and coordinates.

“Damn,” said Aeredhael, “I’ve been looking in the wrong system.” He laughed, “Thanks man, I appreciate it. I damaged my ship trying to refuel in a ringed gas giant. Newbie mistake. I ran right into the ring without scanning for it first. I was damn lucky to get out alive, but I didn’t have the juice to get back home.”

“Then,” he continued, “once I realized that I was adrift, I made my second newbie mistake.”

“You punched out before taking note of which system you were in.”

Aeredhael laughed, “Yeah. Bonehead move. I’ve had my clan searching all over to try to find it. I really can’t thank you enough.”

“No problem. I’m really impressed by your exploration. You’ve been all over this quadrant.”

There was silence for a moment.

“You read my rutter?”

Duncan blushed. “Yeah. Sorry. Is that a no-no?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

Duncan thought and realized the magnitude of his mistake. The rutter was the culmination of the explorer’s career, and the data within could be sold for large sums. He felt awful.

“Would a hundred grand and my promise never to sell or share the information fix this?”

“I suppose.”

Duncan could tell that he still felt violated. The explorer’s value to their clan was entirely wrapped up in the data and in many cases, the unavailability of that data to other clans.

“Seriously,” said Duncan, “I’m not searching for resources. I won’t be coming in trying to mine anything out from under you. I’m just out exploring for fun.”

“You’re the leader of a faction,” Aeredhael responded. “I find it hard to believe you’re out here for absolutely no reason at all.”

Duncan realized that he wasn’t just another player, even out in the far reaches of the universe. He didn’t know what to say.

“Would your clan be interested in joining my faction?” He realized as soon as he said it how stupid that was.

“No. Thanks for letting me know where my ship is.”

The communication was then cutoff.

Duncan sheepishly pulled himself back out of the cockpit and made his way to his own.

The canopy of the Centurion closed and, with a hiss, the life support gases began to flood back into the small cockpit. Duncan pulled back his helmet visor as the ship flooded, and looked down to his knee and the rutter strapped to it. Simply reading through the rutter in the other ship had updated his own. Too late to do anything about that now, he thought.

He opened his rutter and began looking through the new information. There had been a methodical, precise exploration of the quadrant. He could see that the core systems, those closest to each other, had been thoroughly explored. There was one, far outlying, system that remained untouched, at least as far as Duncan could tell.

It jutted off from the rest of the local cluster, many light years out on its own. Duncan plotted a course and looked to the resulting readouts. It was, he saw, far enough out that it would take more than half of his fuel load to reach it. If he got out there and wasn’t able to refuel, his ship would be lost. He’d have to buy another and start over from scratch.

“Maybe, though,” he said to himself, “If I can scan it and get back, that might square me with the rest of the explorers.” He was sure that his reading of another pilot’s rutter would become common knowledge, and he was looking for any way that he could mitigate the damage to his reputation.

He decided. He’d risk it. He began to note the system and its coordinates so that even if he didn’t manage to get back, he’d be able to at least put out a general warning that the system wasn’t reachable by current technology.

Duncan sat, nervously awaiting the returns on the deep system scan. The jump to this system had taken sixty percent of his fuel; a huge, unsafe jump into the unknown. He’d soon find out if he would be able to get back into known space. He looked around the view outside of his cockpit. As expected, he couldn’t see anything beyond the anemic star at the center of the system. He’d read the details later, but from his first glance he could see that it was nothing special.

He realized then that he was hungry. He’d been spending so much time in the Omegaverse, he had lost track of the days. He pulled off the helmet and wandered, uneasily, into the kitchen. The refrigerator was barren. He pulled a stale loaf of bread off of the counter and dug into a forlorn jar of peanut butter in the cupboard and spread it onto a slice, then greedily shoved it into his mouth. Putting his mouth beneath the faucet over the sink, he ran cold water and gulped several mouthfuls.

He checked the time on the microwave. Three o’clock. He looked out the window - it was dark. Sunday he thought, then checked his phone. Monday. He sighed, sent off a quick note to the office that he’d be out for the day, then went back to the couch and pulled the helmet back on. As he sat, he smelled himself and realized he didn’t remember the last time he’d bathed.

Duncan looked down into the cockpit to the results of the scan. The star system wasn’t much to speak of, but there was a lone gas giant several AU out.

Chapter 9

Eric West looked to the smoking remains of the last of the Werewolf destroyers that had been on patrol near the space station for the Eta Bootis system. He watched as a final blast from the forward plasma turret on the Inner Lizard battle cruiser, the Last Ronin, tore through the ship, causing a series of large and beautiful secondary detonations which ripped it into smaller component pieces. Unlike the massive detonation of the Werewolf Grizzly, the destroyer came apart fairly unspectacularly. Relatively speaking. Whereas the Grizzly had come apart like a nova, sending component parts into and rending the shields of surrounding friends and foe alike, the destroyer merely became disassembled through a series of smaller explosions.

“Ok,” Kato came over the fleet comm channel, “get your shields up and your batteries primed. We’ll jump into the homeworld just as soon as the fighter pilots return from Valhalla.” Kato had moved all of the F90’s stationed on the various destroyers - not a lot - onto the Last Ronin as backup. As soon as the pilots, all lost in the first fight, had returned through portals to the battle cruiser after resurrecting at their last space station, they’d have a new ride to hop into.

They all knew that it was beyond hope that they would be able to similarly catch the much larger Werewolf home fleet unaware - even in the impossible event that none of the recently destroyed squadron hadn’t thought to send notice of the attack through their ansible based, faster-than-light, communication system. The passive sensors of the homeworld fleet would have already picked up notice of their initial jump into the system twenty minutes previous.

“And Westy, if you would,” continued Kato, “please see what a nice destroyer broadside will do to that lovely space station.”

Eric laughed. Like any good warship captain, his first thought on seeing any given object was ‘what sort of a mess can I make of that with a nice, full broadside?’ - a space station, a warship, herd of cows, a full set of fine china, whatever.

He had at least several minutes before his and, he presumed, the rest of the fleet were back to full strength shields and re-armed missile bays, so he thought to take his time. To enjoy breaking the station apart, piece by piece. Instead of a single massive blow, he wanted to blow parts of the station off - just to see what it looked like.

Eric moved to the weapons station, selected the front turret, and manually moved the targeting reticle onto the space station. Not taking his eyes off the screen, he reached down and pressed the fire button.

A single pair of bolts leapt from his ship to connect with the unshielded station, lancing through one side. Fire erupted as he watched, rapt at the beauty of the destruction. Sudden gouts of fire burst from the holes, but died quickly as the oxygen was consumed. That was enough.

Whatever stabilizing program kept the station planted within the L3 point was either knocked offline or unable to cope with whatever new parameters were being fed to it by the crippled station. The station began to roll and Eric saw a ship, lamprey-like, attached to a docking port on what had been the far side of the station.

He opened a directed scan on the ship.

The Shepherd Moon.

Taipan’s ship.

“What in the name of living hell is that bastard doing at a space station deep inside of, and belonging to, the Canis Arcturus,” he muttered. They shot humans on sight. No questions asked, no formal declaration of war needed.

“Cease fire,” Kato called. Eric understood why. They were ostensibly allied to Taipan’s faction. For now. Eric hadn’t seen the pirate in ages, but they didn’t routinely share the same space as often as they used to. The Inner Lizards had taken to moving throughout the quadrant, all the while keeping up to date on the development of Taipan’s terraformation of Shepherd’s Cross. Kato was planning something for the planet, but what it was he hadn’t, as yet, divulged to his captains. Eric was sure that whatever it was, it would in no way be something that pleased Taipan, and that pleased Eric. So while he wanted, to his core, to be able to blow that ship out of the galaxy, he held off. Waiting for the day when he could.

Eric frowned, but continued to watch as the small ship rode the rolling station like a bucking bronco. He was content knowing that whatever was going on inside the station or the ship, it couldn’t be pleasant for Taipan.

They jumped into a maelstrom. The Inner Lizards had been the first squadron to jump into the system, but they hadn’t been the last. The space above the Werewolf home world was awash with a splayed, confusing mix of ships. As many as there were, though, there seemed to be no cohesiveness to the fight. Instead of one large battle, the action was made up of a large number of smallish fights. Each one was nothing like the fight they had just been in.

“Ok,” said Kato as his helmsman brought the squadron to flank speed, “this is a knife fight in a phone booth, and we’re going to work around the edges, whittling down the bad guys a few at a time.”

Eric wasn’t sure how applicable the analogy was, but he understood it. His years of flying in recreated World War 2 dogfighting simulations had taught him to see the fight as a whole, to target outlying - hopefully unsuspecting and damaged - members of the fight who were otherwise occupied and had no idea of their impending doom.

Eric smiled. The concept of a ‘fair fight’ was lost in this kind of arena. This small part of the universe was made up of two kinds of ships; predator and prey. Eric knew which wanted to be. Eric knew which he was going to be.

He scanned his instruments as they approached the nearest outlying fight. He was ready. Full shields, ready weapons.

Kato began barking out orders, telling which captains where to target, and they moved through, around the fight, and began taking out stragglers. Occasional lone ships, human, either damaged or whole, began to latch onto the larger group as they moved through, taking advantage of the massed firepower as well as the relative anonymity provided by the larger fleet. Kato accepted them and added them, temporarily, to the group, then moved them out and began using them to shore up the flanks of the squadron.

Eric laughed. Kato was happy to let them provide a shield against any unforeseen attack. Their group grew to fourteen as they reached the opposite end of the fight from where they began; the ten Inner Lizard destroyers and the three hangers-on surrounding the bulk of The Last Ronin.

He was trying to take the battle in, as a whole, to try to see where the eddies of the fight were flowing. He saw one running fight, relatively low in the planet’s gravity well, between a pair of destroyers. As he was watching, a flare of light rose from the Werewolf planet, obliterating the human destroyer.

“Kato,” he called, as calmly as he could, “there’s some sort of defensive installation down on that planet. And it’s big.”

“I saw. It took out a ship about a minute ago. Did you see another?”

“Yeah, just now,” confirmed Eric.

“Ok, begin a scan on the planet surface, your best guess as to location. Find the source.”

“Roger.”

Eric leaned over the sensor panel, adjusting the designation to focus on the planet. He found a large city, more or less underneath the battle. He widened the scan to include a large area around, but centered on, the city. He began to wait.

Chapter 10

Duncan sat, watching, as the dust surrounding his Centurion class scout-ship settled back onto the dark planet surface. The soft whirring of the cooling engines shutting down soon ended and the only sound he could hear was his own regular breathing. He reached to the control panel in front of him, changing the display from the flight controls he’d used in landing to a detailed report showing the readout, the results, of the background scanning he’d done on the planet.

Though the reports indicated that the surface was amenable to, if not ideal for, human life, there was something oppressive, almost heavy, about the way the planet looked; not ambivalently hostile like a barren moon, but malevolent. He felt as though the planet wanted him dead. Hated him, personally.

He began to look around him, to really focus on the planet itself. This far from the system’s small star, it wouldn’t be bright even at the equivalent of high-noon. Now, nearing dusk, great shadows seemed to be marching out of the distant hills to the south; marching toward him with venomous intent. The weird twilight unnerved him. He, briefly, considered powering the Centurion back up, leaving the surface; finding some more hospitable corner of the galaxy to explore.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered, though in a whisper. There was nothing to be afraid of. Any sense of foreboding was surely psychological. He reached to the screen again, changed the settings from environmental to animate - to see if there was anything living on this malignant rock. While he waited for the scan, he continued looking. Between his landing spot and the area of the detected anomaly, sparse squat trees peppered the plain. Their long branches, bent even under the planet’s low gravity, reached to and trailed over the ground, like long raven hair spread on the ground around the head of a face-down corpse. He shuddered. As dusk gave way to full darkness, he watched as the heliotropic black leaves, deprived of their nourishment, curled into themselves for the night, as if in hiding.

Duncan looked to the scan. Nothing. Apart from plantlife, the surface of the planet within hundreds of kilometers was barren of life. At least, he thought, any life forms that his scanner could recognize. What sort of nameless, shapeless horror could be waiting for him, he didn’t dare imagine.

He forced himself to laugh, but it was a small, futile gesture of defiance. It made no sense, he told himself, to fear some imagined horror simply because the planet looked like something out of a nightmare. He failed to convince himself; the oppression merely left his view and fled to recesses out of his line of sight. The area behind his ship began to loom in increasing menace. He turned his head toward the rear, banishing the dread to further reaches.

“Ridiculous,” he repeated, more forcefully. More believably. He stiffly, determinedly, reached for and pulled the hatch release on the ship canopy. A slight hiss sounded as the pressure inside the ship equalized with the surrounding atmosphere.

Duncan recoiled; the smell of the planet was, if anything, worse than the look. A miasma of putrid death and decay assaulted his senses, nearly unmanning him. He lowered his helmet visor, and began pressurizing his suit. He would, he decided, not trust in his instruments anymore. He had learned his lesson - he wouldn’t simply trust in the planet itself.

The calm, expectant, silence of the planet was replaced by the sound of his own, unsteady, breathing as the faceplate closed and pressurized. The throbbing pulse of his own heartbeat, elevated, pounded in his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the thudding to lessen. Steadfast, he opened his eyes, pulled himself up and over the canopy sill, and dropped to the ground of the planet.

After Duncan had arrived in and scanned the system, he’d jumped to the lone gas giant. Finishing refueling, removing the fear of being trapped in this system, he’d looked to the detailed report on the rest of the planets. One in particular had caught his attention; a dark planet about an AU and a half out from the star. It had an atmosphere which contained traces that indicated life - oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen - and it was ostensibly within the goldilocks zone, so he ran a complete, focused scan on it while he entered a course into the nav computer.

The numbers indicated that it could sustain life, but what really caught his eye was an entry simply labeled “Anomaly”.

He’d jumped to the planet, hurriedly landed and was now walking through the eerie copse of corpse-like trees to get to the spot that his instruments indicated he would find the anomaly. The area, a few hundred meters distant - to the west of his landing spot - was barely visible over the tops of the trees; dark, sharp, upthrusting rocks jumbled together.

Duncan made his way through the trees, glad that the sickly tendrils that were the plant’s branches had recoiled toward the base of the trees. He was able to walk between them with enough room to spare that he didn’t need to touch any part of their repulsive growth. He paused, looked completely around himself. His dread had begun to increase, the level being matched by his now racing heart and heavier breathing.

But he didn’t know why.

Apart from the oppressive mien of the environment himself, there was nothing that he could point to, nothing obvious, that was causing what he realized was rapidly becoming a panic attack.

The pounding in his ears increased and he felt, weirdly, that he was on the edge of losing consciousness. He sat, heavily, on the ground and pulled his legs into his chest. Resting his helmeted forehead on his knees he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself.

Whatever, he decided, was causing this was beyond the dread that the planet was providing. It was beyond the realm of the Omegaverse.

It was, he realized, the entirety of his life as a whole. He felt it was pointless. He felt he was pointless. That his entire reason for trying to get away wasn’t to avoid being with other people, but was to avoid the realization that he had added nothing.

Fear of failure, fear of rejection had ruled his life. The sense of abandonment he’d always remembered from being alone, shuffled from foster family to foster family, had imprinted itself as his identity and consumed whatever else he might have been or become.

The realization knocked him. He didn’t want to be alone, he wanted to be a part of something - and he had been, without realizing it. Just the simple friendship he’d found, before even entering the Omegaverse, had been there - the fertile seed of a what he’d wanted all along, but he’d always held it at arm’s length. And now the core of that seed, Shannon, was gone. She’d been what had held the group together. She’d given everything to her friends. He wished he could have told her that. He began to sob.

Duncan finally stood, having spent the emotional buildup in one exhausting blow. He looked around the planet once again; still bleak and dark, it was no longer oppressive. The darkness had increased, and full night showed a sky full of unfamiliar constellations surrounding the very familiar core of the Milky Way stretching across the sky.

He turned on his helmet light and began making his way once again toward the anomaly. As he reached the beginning of the rock outcropping, he began to climb over the first of the small boulders.

Climbing between two, large rocks, standing guard-like, he saw an open doorway. A portal.

Duncan walked through the portal and was transported, literally, into a nightmare.

Chapter 11

Phani scrolled through the listing of player skill certificates on the merchant display in the spare, barren single room of the Eta Bootis space station. He had already finished buying and selling the ore for this run and sent Rahul, who Phani had been training to take over this daily chore, back to prepare the ship for departure. Ever since Duncan had departed their revenue from the mineral trade had fallen; apparently Taipan had been making a run or two every day in addition to the trip Phani made. He was, therefore, going to have Rahul begin focusing on the trade route as his primary job. Phani would make one run a week to check for updates on the skill certificate and other merchant tabs.

He read through the various certs. Nothing new since yesterday. While a nice addition to his income, the certificates didn’t seem to have the rapidity in turnover he’d hoped for. The same was true, to a more or less extent, with the various weapons, facility and miscellaneous equipment. Phani switched to the ship tab. It was usually greyed out, but today it wasn’t. His heart began pounding as he read the sole listing.

A Delta class destroyer.

The price was at a deep discount over what he’d have to pay otherwise. Just that morning, during his meeting with the fleet commander, Third, they’d been discussing the need to begin getting Third an actual fleet to command. A Delta class destroyer would be an ideal beginning, especially at the price that the Canis Arcturus were selling it for.

He was reaching for the ‘buy’ button when the world began to spin.

Phani was thrown from the center of the room to the wall, violently. It was as if the gravity in the space station began to rotate. There were no windows to give any outside reference; all he had to go on was the ever changing directional force that tossed him around the room. As he flew through the air after being tossed again, the room continued spinning, preventing him from predicting where he’d wind up and threatening to overwhelm his inner ear with an overload of information. He began to feel nauseated. He closed his eyes. He began to wish that whatever was happening, it would just kill him so that he could resurrect in his apartment on Shepherd’s Crook.

Opening his eyes, he focused solely on what was directly in front of his face, the walls a blur moving through his field of view. He bounced off of various walls half a dozen times in what seemed like an endless rolling, hurling, spinning nightmare.

“Phani …” began Rahul over the radio.

“Quiet, please,” grunted Phani grabbing for and missing the plinth in the center of the room. He rocketed to the far wall and bounced again toward the center of the room. As he turned his head to reorient his view to align with his velocity vector, he reflected that he was getting used to this. It wasn’t enjoyable, by any means, but he’d begun to adapt to the maelstrom of spinning walls and lights. He flew past the plinth again, but didn’t reach for it. He saw that the room was rotating the door toward him. If he was lucky enough, he would reach it at just the right time. He curled into a ball, to present as little area as possible to any possible surfaces he might bounce off of.

When he didn’t hit a wall after a second, he opened his eyes and lifted his head. The spinning bare room of the space station was replaced with the spinning bridge of the Shepherd Moon, the ship he and Rahul had brought to the space station.

As Phani bounced off a bulkhead and spun off he rolled out of a ball and spread his arms and legs as wide as he could - the last thing he wanted to do was to fly back through the door into the space station.

“Rahul,” he grunted, “release from the station.”

The ship began to roll even more violently as the mass of the station threw the relatively tiny ship off into space.

“Auto ..” gulped Phani, “ … pilot.”

The engines began to roar as Rahul complied and the ship began to right itself into some semblance of normalcy. It took a minute, but eventually Phani was no longer being flung around the bridge. He sat for a moment to gather his breath and his thoughts. He looked to the captain’s chair, to Rahul.

“How did you manage to stay in that seat?” he asked incredulously.

“As soon as the ship started to roll, some sort of clamps moved in on top of my legs. I couldn’t have gotten up if I wanted to,” Rahul said happily.

“What the hell happened?”

“I’m not sure, Phani babu, but it looks like we were in the middle of a battle. There are human warships over there.”

Phani looked to the screen. A large number of destroyers and a single, huge, battle cruiser sped off and jumped.

It took Phani several minutes to recover from the event. He stood next to the captain’s chair and watched raptly as the Werewolf space station spun itself to pieces. He began to worry. How would this affect the trade route? Would the Canis Arcturus replace the station? If so, when? Each day without the cheap resources was going to be a large drain. Granted, it was no longer anything like the main source of his revenue, but it was an important, easy and reliable one.

Coming out of his worries, Phani took off his helmet and looked to Rahul sitting at the desk next to him, piloting the ship on Phani’s old, first, PC.

“Please set a course for home.”

Rahul, grinning, reached to the keyboard on the desk in front of him and began typing.

Phani grabbed cigarette off of his desk and lit it. He pulled the smoke deeply into his lungs and began to think. Why had the humans attacked the station? Where were they going now? He had no good answers, and he didn’t like not knowing about something that threatened a vital part of his income.

“Ready to jump!”

“Wait,” said Phani, putting out his smoke and pulling his helmet back on.

There were no Werewolf ships in the area. From what he could tell, there weren’t any ships anywhere near where they were. He thought back to the treaty with the Canis Arcturus. He wasn’t allowed to hail any ships, he wasn’t allowed to scan any ships, the station or the home planet. What options did that leave him, he wondered.

First, there was no way to detect a passive scan. The Shepherd Moon, moving through space at the minimum amount of C required to jump, was just moving far enough out that Eta Bootis no longer occluded the Werewolf homeworld. Phani rotated the view until it was centered on the planet and began to zoom.

The planet rapidly began filling the screen. Once it had, Phani saw small dots moving throughout the atmosphere. A lot of them. As he focused in on what he assumed were ships, he began to see an occasional flash as one of the dots disappeared. That answered one of his questions - humans, apparently a lot of them - were executing a coordinated attack on the entire system. He zoomed in further.

As he watched, a small group of destroyers, surrounding a much larger battle cruiser, jumped into the fight periphery. Phani looked to the clock. Given the amount of time that the light had to travel from the planet to his eyes, it worked out that this was possibly the group that had attacked the space station. Phani looked to the identification associated with the ships. The Inner Lizards. Phani felt a sense of dread. A sense of foreboding. He hadn’t felt that way since he had dabbled in piracy, and the sense had seemed to warn him of the destroyer that had tried to hunt him down around the moon that had turned out to be Taipan’s space station, now his home.

He’d been right to listen to his heart that time, and he wasn’t foolish enough to assume that this time was any different.

He began to record the battle.

Chapter 12

It all came rushing back to Duncan. The dreams. The nightmares. Sometime over the last few weeks, he’d begun having a recurring nightmare that had left him awake, quaking, in tossed, sweaty sheets.

In the dream, he approached a worn, boarded, antebellum colonial; faded, chipped and forgotten amid the over growing acreage in the dusky hollow of an ancient-beyond-time nook of the Blue Ridge mountains. As he approached, drawn against his will, down what remained of the broken, muddy lane that led to the ruin, he always passed in between a pair of brick stanchions that marked the boundary of the fold, long since given up its enclosing fence.

As he passed through the gateway, a murder of crows settled on the tops of either brick post. Silently. They eyed him, daring, as he made his way between them, up the yard to the gaping maw where the front door once stood.

He didn’t know why he was here. Why he entered. Why he didn’t just turn around and leave. Such logic has no place in nightmares. Every time he crossed the threshold, the silence was rent with the thud of a brass knocker pounding the door that no longer existed, as a warning. Duncan was never sure, in his dream, whether the warning was for himself or for whatever might lurk within.

After the knock faded, he always turned to see, overgrowing with weeds, a rain and dirt stained cairn in the yard in front of the manse. He always knew, knew, that what lay underneath the stone pile was the secret, the reason that he was here and was the answer to the decrepitude that lay on this small valley like a shroud.

Entering deeper into the house, he walked through the dusty foyer, barren of furniture. Plaster, fallen from the ceiling two storeys above, crunched underneath his feet as he mounted the curving staircase that creaked beneath him. His hand always reached to the faded balustrade, then recoiled as his simple touch revealed rotten wood incapable of providing support.

It is at this point, halfway up the staircase, that he always stops, frozen by the faintest of sounds coming from above. He’s never sure what it is, or even if he heard anything at all, but he feels that someone, or something, is up there and it’s both aware of his approach and is preternaturally unhappy about it.

Duncan then begins to run, even though his terror stricken mind is screaming against it, up the stairs. Toward the sound. His legs propel him while his conscious thought pleads to leave, to wake - anything except what he’s doing. He’s drawn in, forward, against every fiber of his will; compelled to confront the unnameable horror that awaits him.

He careens, out of control, down an interminable hallway; swinging his arms through eons worth of spider webs that try to bar his path. As he nears the end of the hall, his feet finally give out and he falls to his knees in front of a closed doorway. Panting, he looks down to the floor in front of the door and sees - something different in every dream.

One time it was a child’s doll; a crumpled, gingham clad figure with a grinning porcelain head that looked, mockingly, into his soul. Another time it was a music box, a spinning carousel of broken horses playing a discordant, unrecognizable tune. The most memorable, and worst, was a dead kitten - one of the kittens he’d given to Shannon. It was splayed, on its back, maggots crawling from a hole in the side of its head.

Each time, after glancing at what was on the floor, Duncan lurched to his feet and reached for the door, only to awake.

That house, that nightmare, was what stood before Duncan on the dark, foreboding planet.

Duncan looked back to the portal, saw that it was at the base of a sheer cliff, ten meters tall, that stretched into dense forest to his left and right. In front of him, the same broken lane from the dream cut through the forest - mature oak instead of the drooping, black trees native to this planet - through the pair of square brick columns that flanked either side of the lane. He paused between them, looking around for the crows that always alighted upon them in his dreams. There was nothing. The night was deep, and dark. Very dark. Orion hung in the clear sky above him.

He thought he could hear the chirp of cicadas over his breathing, but wasn’t sure.

“Screw the smell,” he muttered, raising his helmet visor. The constant hum of the cicadas, in the distance, was more noticeable, but he heard nothing else. He looked around again, still no sign of the crows. Duncan realized, then, that he’d been holding his breath, putting off inhaling the putrid smell of this planet for as long as possible. He slowly let it out and took a small, tentative, intake; then he gulped, pulling in a full lungful.

Instead of the nauseating smells he’d encountered when getting out of his ship, he enjoyed the clean, wet-soil smell of Earth. Of Virginia. Fresh mountain air, infused with the smells of spring - honeysuckle, grasses and a hint of wild onion. His mood improved considerably. Until he looked again to the house.

He took a closer look than he ever did in his dreams. Twin dormers looked at him, as hooded eyes, out of the hipped roof. They were the only windows not boarded, and he felt their stare follow him as he moved up the yard; he felt their malignant indifference - he was a fly to be crushed then forgotten.

Chipped, discolored columns ranged along the porchway that took up the entirety of the front of the house. The porch itself sagged in places, as decrepit as the rest of the property. Tall windows - four on the ground floor, two each flanking the open doorway, and five on the second - were all boarded, gagged and muted; shutting out the world, or caging … something.

Duncan paused as he reached the cairn in the front yard. The head high stack of rocks - bluestone he guessed - held no more clues for him than it did in the dreams.

“Enough of this,” he said forcefully, too loudly, and began to stride up the yard and into the house, not pausing as he went through the doorway and foyer and began climbing the circular stairway. He made his way down the hallway, pushing aside a few cobwebs, and paused at the door at the end of the hallway only long enough to see that there was nothing waiting on the floor to greet him. He turned, with more force than was necessary, the clawed handle and pushed through the doorway into the unknown.

Duncan pulled up, stopping his headlong rush. He looked behind himself, back down the dusty hallway, to ensure that he hadn’t again been transported. The house was still there. He turned back again, to take in the new surroundings.

He was in a beautiful, cavernous room. Dark, speckled marble stretched to the further wall, fifty meters away. Lines of white marble columns, five meters apart, spread the length and width of the square room, except for one open space in the middle. Long shadows reached from the columns toward Duncan, and he had to raise his left hand to shield his eyes from the stark, evening sun that shone through the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the room. As if by his command, the windows filtered the light, darkening themselves to cut the glare. He lowered his hand, and looked toward the center of the room.

A large desk sat, facing him, a tall backed leather chair on the other side of it, facing away, toward the window wall. He began to approach, slowly, silently. The desk, two meters wide by one meter deep, shone. It looked dark - mahogany, Duncan thought - but reflected the last rays of the muted setting sun through the shaded glass windows.

Reaching the desk, he looked down on it, at the only object that marred the barren perfection of its gleaming surface. A folder, oriented so that he could read the title scrawled on the cover. Two words.

Duncan Sheriden.

He took a deep breath, looked up to the back of the chair.

“Who the hell are you?”

“A friend,” answered a familiar voice.

Chapter 13

“Clive?” asked Duncan, warily. The chair slowly turned to face him, confirming his guess. Clive folded his hands on the desk and smiled.

“Hello, Duncan.”

“I didn’t call you.”

“No,” confirmed Clive.

“Then why are you here?”

“I own this place,” said Clive softly. “This is my home.”

“My artificial intelligence assistant has a home?” Duncan asked incredulously.

“No,” Clive shook his head. “Your organic intelligence assistant has a home.” He thought for a moment, “Perhaps I should phrase that differently. Your ex-organic sentient assistant has a home.” Clive smiled, happier with that definition.

“Ex-organic. Sentient. Assistant,” Duncan stammered, “I … need to sit down.”

Clive stood, began walking toward the ceiling to floor windows. He spread his hands and they began to part, blinding Duncan as they opened, letting the light from the setting sun in between the filtering glass panels. Duncan raised his left arm, shielding his eyes as he followed Clive.

They walked out, through the open wall, onto a large patio, covered with what looked like terra cotta tiles. They were wet. Duncan looked up, surprised to see a roll of clouds moving toward the sun setting over a mountain range in the far distance. Rain hissed down around him, hitting his face, trickling into the open neck of his space suit. He wiped his forehead, enjoying the wetness.

Clive smiled.

“I’ve never minded being rained upon either,” he said, motioning toward one of several chairs splayed around the patio wall, taking one for himself.

Instead, Duncan walked to the wall, then reeled, gripping the railing as quickly as he could and closing his eyes tightly. The patio he was on was hundreds of meters above the center of a walled city. He cracked his eyes open again, and slowly peered over the side and down. Directly beneath him, he saw a bridge - what looked to be a drawbridge - connecting this building, this immense castle, to the town over a moat.

He looked to the left, then to the right. The castle, or more correctly donjon, he told himself, seemed to grow out of the living rock of a cliff face that reached nearly as high as the crest of the keep, where they were. The cliff stretched in both directions for hundreds of meters until they merged into a chain of mountains that rose suddenly from the plain. He caught a quick glimpse of the city below - arrayed in a semi-circle around the keep; a large wall, anchored at each end by the cliff face, separated the city from the plains that extend to the distant, parallel range that was occluding the setting sun - before pushing away from the wall and unsteadily retracing a few steps back to a chair, where he sat heavily.

He looked at Clive.

“Who are you?”

“Perhaps I should begin,” started Clive, “by describing what I am, not who. That usually seems to be the best way.”

“Usually?” asked Duncan.

“Yes, usually.” Clive leaned forward, shrugged. “I am a xeno-anthropologist. I study alien cultures, specifically with the responsibility of determining the best way to integrate them.”

“Integrate them?” Duncan asked. “You mean, integrate us.”

“Yes, you. You are part of an alien culture,” Clive smiled.

“And you study us. In a game?”

Clive shrugged, nodded. “There’s more to it than that, but fundamentally, yes.”

Duncan just sat, staring at the man. Then, startled by a realization, he asked “But what are you. If you’re not human, that is.”

“You mean, what kind of an alien am I.” It wasn’t a question, but Duncan nodded. “I’ll just go ahead and give you the big picture introduction, then.” He smiled, warmly.

“I'll begin,” he started, “by saying what I’m not. As I said before, I’m ex-organic. Unlike you, there’s not a physical presence sitting underneath a helmet somewhere waiting for me to log out and feed its face and brush its teeth. Anymore. This is it, this is all of me in my entirety.”

“But,” began Duncan.

“Yes,” interrupted Clive, still smiling, “there was once a physical version of me, and it looked nothing like this,” he spread his hands, encompassing his form, “and it lived on a distant planet as part of an alien culture. For our purposes, that’s mostly irrelevant, and we’re not going to go into that, even though,” he laughed, “that’s always the first thing you all want to talk about.”

“You all? Humans, you mean.”

“Humans. Arn. Canis Arcturus. Everyone, really.”

Clive laughed.

“You’ll catch flies,” he continued, “if you don’t shut your mouth.”

Duncan realized his mouth had dropped, in shock. He clamped it shut.

“So there are more than just us …” Duncan began tentatively.

“Yes. More. Many more, actually. You’ve only met a few. They’re the ones who are helping us study humans.”

“You seem pretty well versed already, though. That flies comment was pretty culturally specific.”

“Well, we’ve had a long time to study you, relatively speaking.”

“Relatively?”

“Literally. Let’s skip past what we aren’t and begin covering what we are. As mentioned before, I’m ex-organic. I no longer have a purely physical form of any kind.”

“You live in a virtual universe.”

“No. I live in the universe. Period. The barriers you perceive between what you’d call the physical, virtual and, indeed, spiritual world do not really exist.”

“Are you going to go metaphysical on me?”

“Not at all. There is no metaphysical. Nothing beyond the physical. What you think of as the physical is just your naturally biased perception, literally. Your views on the universe are limited by your observational methods. Your senses.”

Clive paused, then continued.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” laughed Clive, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Duncan raised an eyebrow, quizzically.

“Really? Hamlet? Shakespeare? That doesn’t ring a bell?”

“How long have you been studying us.”

“Since around the time Hammurabi wrote his code.” He laughed, loudly and deeply. “You’re catching flies again, Duncan!”

Clive shook his head, “Only kidding. We only started studying you a few years ago. When we opened the Omegaverse. That’s what it is - a means for studying you.”

“You seemed to have learned a lot since then.”

“We have, but not for any reasons you might think. When I said earlier that we’ve studied you for a long time, relatively speaking. I meant relatively literally. Time doesn’t pass the same for you and I. At least, not yet.”

“It’s usually difficult to get this across, but I know you already have a basic understanding,” continued Clive. “We live, for lack of a better word, electronically. We are thought. We live and think at light speed. Which, I suppose now that I think of it, is what metaphysical really means.”

“Time for us passes differently, relative to you. We live at a relativistic pace. Your lives are much much slower than ours, but it feels the same.”

“Tell me,” said Clive standing, “do you feel any different here? In this place?” He walked toward the balcony edge.

“No,” answered Duncan, joining him. Since he was expecting the vista, it wasn’t as overwhelming as previously, but he still had to hold onto the balcony railing to steady himself from the dizzying view.

“You shouldn’t,” said Clive, spreading his arms to take in the broad valley stretching out to the mountain range that defined the horizon, “but all of this world operates at relativistic time scales.” He turned to face Duncan.

“If you had dropped a coin just before going through the portal into this room,” Clive continued, “it wouldn’t have hit the ground yet in the outer Omegaverse.”

“So when you say you’ve only been studying us for a few years …” said Duncan.

“Exactly!” clapped Clive. “A few years from your point of view. From my point of view, however, I’ve been studying you for centuries.”

Chapter 14

“Centuries …” said Duncan, nonplussed.

“Relatively speaking,” laughed Clive. “Ok, I’ll stop saying relatively,” he chuckled, “but this space, this room is kind of an in-between area between your time scale and the time scale of thought. You can be here, but that’s as far as you can come into this world, for now.”

Clive pointed out and down, into the rest of the world.

“What do you see down there?” he asked.

Duncan steeled himself against the view, against the height, and looked down. The city below - marbled buildings around which snaked dirt streets, darkening in the evening, as yet unlit by any light sourced by intelligent beings, human or otherwise - lay like a model around his feet.

“Just some buildings …” began Duncan.

“I assure you, it is teeming with life. But from here, you can’t see it. It’s not,” he shook his head, “the height that is preventing us from seeing it. It operates on a different time scale. To you, if you could see them, they would seem to be moving at a frenetic, impossible pace. To them, you would seem as a statue.”

“But I can’t go … down … there?” asked Duncan.

“No. Not yet, anyway. You’re prevented, literally physically. Your body, your brain, operates at the physical pace you’ve evolved into. It limits you to the physical world.”

“For now?”

Clive nodded.

“Wait,” said Duncan, “I’m no physicist, but wouldn’t moving at relativistic speeds make time go more slowly relative to us?”

“Yes, but it’s not that. Think of it more like when you’re operating solely as thought, everything happens much more quickly. We’ve simply sped up the portion of the universe we live in so that it matches the speed our brains operate at. On your side of the thought divide, trust me, everything seems so slow. We just process information much more quickly than you can. When we go into that space,” he waved his hand over the valley, “we feel normal. This side just feels off, like we’re watching a movie in slow motion.”

“So,” continued Duncan, “what do I have to do to be able to go down there?”

“If you decide that you want to,” answered Clive, “you’ll have to disconnect from your physicality.”

“I’ll have to …” said Duncan, almost sure what was coming.

“Die,” nodded Clive.

Duncan sat back into the chair, trying to process the information he’d received.

“Why would I want to go down there?” he said, looking up at Clive.

“You might not,” conceded Clive. “But it’s there for you, if you decide you want it.”

“Would it have to be voluntary?” Duncan asked. “For example, if I was to die in my sleep,” he thought of Shannon, “what would happen?”

“If you were to die in the real world? Without your Omegaverse connection?”

Duncan nodded.

“That could be a problem.” Clive sat in a chair opposite Duncan’s. “The helmet you’re wearing isn’t only an interface into the Omegaverse, it provides a way for your consciousness, for lack of a better term, to move between the two. And it provides a means for us to connect with you as well.”

“Wait,” said Duncan. “My nightmares?”

“Exactly. That was part of a series of stimuli we initiated to read your reaction to horror. Sorry,” Clive smiled ruefully, “but, unlike most of our subjects, you aren’t really emotionally invested in the game world, so we needed to stimulate some of the baser emotions you weren’t experiencing.”

“But I wasn’t wearing my helmet when I slept.”

“That wasn’t necessary. We implanted the dream suggestion while you were connected. It’s really pretty easy. The helmet isn’t so much an interface but an extension of both yourself and the Omegaverse. It blends the two. Part of the Omegaverse remains in you when you remove the helmet, and part of you remains in the Omegaverse.”

“I don’t understand how that would be possible.”

Clive let out a long, loud laugh.

“Neither do I, man. I’m just a xeno-anthropologist. I have to take on faith from our physicists that it works that way. The results speak for themselves.”

Duncan shook his head in wonder, “So, to sum up … “

“To sum up,” continued Clive, “we created the helmet and game world as an interface between our existence and yours as a means to study your species. One of the goals is to allow those of your species who desire it the ability to join us. Permanently.”

Duncan sat, stunned. He stared out into the distance, toward, but not seeing, the purple mountains that were backlit by the no longer visible sun.

“By far most of the individuals in your species that have been chosen by us have been enthusiasts of massively multiplayer gaming. You’re one of the first that isn’t. That has presented some different problems, that we solved, we hope, in some fairly non-standard ways.”

“Holy shit,” yelled Duncan, suddenly understanding, “the space station!”

“Even earlier than that,” confirmed Clive. “The auction. The real high-bid for your item, what was it?”

“A rail-gun.”

“Yes, that’s it. The real high-bid for your rail-gun was around four million credits, as I recall. The amount you got it for was our first test.”

“Test?”

“Yes. You’re not a gamer. We needed to determine whether or not you were personally invested in staying in the game.”

“How would that accomplish it?”

“I thought that if you suddenly, shortly after beginning, found yourself in enough game credits that could be transferred out of game for a substantial amount of dollars, we’d be able to tell something of your interest.”

“So if I’d cashed out and gone on vacation instead of buying a clipper ship … ?”

“We’d have known that your weren’t a viable candidate,” confirmed Clive, nodding.

“But the station?” asked Duncan.

“Was simply, uhm, phase two of the experiment.”

Clive waved his hands dismissively, “But there’s more to it than that. We already had other indications that you had the mindset we were looking for. Your conversations with Anna, for example, where you two discussed the singularity. The merging of artificial and organic intelligences.”

“But you’re not artificial,” countered Duncan.

Clive shrugged. “What’s the difference? I live entirely as electromagnetic thought, like an AI. I no longer have any connection to the physical universe, as you perceive it.”

“You live in a computer?”

“No. The Omegaverse isn’t on a computer. It isn’t hosted on servers. It isn’t, really, anything other than another way to interact with and observe the universe as a whole.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s hard to explain. Just understand that, for me, there is functionally no difference between being in the Omegaverse and my life before. If you join us, that will be the same for you.”

Duncan sat back into the chair, looking up into the sky. He noticed that the clouds had broken and was no longer raining the occasional drop.

“Wait,” he said, suddenly, looking back at Clive. “The conversations I had with Anna weren’t in the Omegaverse.”

Clive smiled, shook his head.

“So how did you hear them?”

“As I said, there’s functionally no difference between the Omegaverse and the rest of the universe. But, in that specific case, you had your cell phone with you. I listened in on your conversation through that. Sorry for the violation of your privacy, but,” he smiled, “it was for science.”

“So why all of this?” asked Duncan. “Why the make-believe? The game? Why not just plop yourself down in the middle of Washington or Moscow or Tokyo and say ‘take me to your leader’?”

“We might,” laughed Clive. “We’re still learning about you. About humans. It’s not only your physiology that makes you alien, it’s your psychology as well. We need to know how you would react, so that’s part of what we’re doing here. Learning about you.”

“Through games.”

“Partially. We have a lot of people studying you. Interacting with you.”

“In game AI’s are all sentient aliens?”

“For the most part, yes.”

“And you’re in charge?”

“Oh, no. Far from it,” laughed Clive. “I’m just a petty functionary. Well, not really. I guess the analogy would be that I was an upper level manager of one branch of our Xenological efforts.”

“Xenological?”

“From Xenology. Your, that is humanity’s, word for it. The study of alien life. Biology, cultures, psychology. You name it. I’m, as I said, a xeno-anthropologist. I study culture. What I specialize in is how humans interact with other cultures, whether human or not. That’s what this is,” he said waving his hands over the valley. “It’s a microcosm. A place I can watch humans as they progress individually and in groups, in cooperation and in conflict with other humans as well as alien, to them, species.”

“So this,” said Duncan “is an alien sandbox for studying humans?” He was beginning to feel a little insulted.

“No. The sandbox is, if anything, very very human.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And that’s ok,” smiled Clive, “if you decide to join us, it will become clear.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Very much.”

Chapter 15

Duncan looked around the balcony, perched high above the castle in a corner of the Omegaverse. He tried to come to terms with all that he was hearing from Clive, his erstwhile artificially intelligent assistant, revealed as anything but artificial. An alien. He looked to Clive, sitting, smiling at him, and wondered what he really looked like. Where he was really from. What he really wanted from Duncan.

He looked to the sky, watched as the purpled clouds scudded across the valley in the evening’s last light. He wondered what stars would shine once darkness finally fell.

“What do I have to do,” began Duncan, “in order to join you.”

“Disconnect,” repeated Clive, “from your physical form.” Duncan looked at him sharply. “Yes,” Clive again answered the unasked question, “you have to die.”

“How?”

“With this.” Clive handed him a small device, like a cell phone. “When you’re ready, activate it. Your consciousness will permanently separate from your body and you’ll be a being of thought with no physical connection to your old body.”

“That’s it?” asked Duncan, looking back up to Clive. Clive nodded.

“But what about my body?”

“It will take off the Omegaverse helmet, go to bed, and die in its sleep.”

Duncan thought of Shannon. He’d had trouble falling asleep after her death. Falling asleep, not knowing that you’d never wake up, like Shannon did, had troubled him. He didn’t want to die.

He amended that thought. He didn’t mind the thought of physical death, he just didn’t want to end. He realized that was why Clive had chosen him. Among others.

“You said that there were others,” he pointed, “down there.”

“So they have all chosen …” Duncan let the thought hang.

“No. They all died, but of normal causes. Natural or otherwise. You’ll be the first to join us in this way.”

“How many?”

“Humans? About ten thousand. So far.”

Duncan realized that with tens of millions of players worldwide, players were probably dying every day.

“But if they didn’t choose …” said Duncan, holding up the device.

“How did we do the transfer?”

Duncan nodded.

“The helmet is as much a recording device as anything else. It’s constantly making an imprint of your brain. Of your consciousness. Of your being. Given enough time in game, under the helmet, we can bring you over.”

“Do they know?”

“That they’re otherwise dead? Yes.”

“And the rest?”

Clive laughed, “That they’re part of an alien experiment on humanity? No. As to that, you’re the first.”

“Why tell me?”

“Lots of reasons. One, you’re not a gamer. The humans down there are all people who have played not only within the Omegaverse, but lots of other games as well. So I decided to tell you so that if you did decide to join us, you wouldn’t feel the culture shock of being really inside of a game world.”

“The Omegaverse doesn’t feel all that culturally shocking,” countered Duncan, “I like it very much.”

“What you’ve experienced is much more like a simulation. A space simulation. There is very little progression beyond what you are able to accomplish through your natural abilities. Down there, the rules are different. It’s much more a standard role playing game, where you progress in abilities through in-game experience.”

“As in experience points? Levels? All of that.”

“At least in part. There are some metaphors we use, but fundamentally, yes.”

“So if I join you, the rest of my existence will be to live in a game world?”

“No,” Clive waved his hands, “I’m sorry if I let you come to that conclusion. While I welcome your partaking, and it will help me immensely in my studies, this is only a small part of the universe you will enter. And,” Clive added, “I would recommend that you start your extended existence here, until you come to terms with your new life.”

“How did you know that I’d find the anomaly that led me here?”

“Wherever you went, you would have found it.”

“You said before,” said Duncan, “that there could be a problem getting me into this world if I disconnected, died, while I wasn’t wearing the helmet. Why? Do most of the people down there die while under the helmet?”

“No,” answered Clive, “almost none, in fact. The problem depends on how much of an imprint, a recording, we’ve accumulated based on your time in game. For people who have spent a lot of time, and have experienced a wide range of emotions, the transition is easy. We have what I guess you could call a ‘full recording’ of them.”

“No,” he continued, “the problem lies when there’s only a partial imprint.”

“Like me,” Duncan proposed, “without the nightmares.”

“Exactly. You were just a little too reserved. We needed to push some of your boundaries.”

“Have you? I mean, sufficiently?”

“Yes,” Clive assured him, “you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“What,” Duncan asked, “would have been the result if I hadn’t been fully recorded?”

“That depends. We likely would have had at least a partial recording. Your friends and family would recognize you, but they’d also probably think you were a bit off. Psychologically.”

“How? And to what degree?”

Clive shrugged. “No way to say, but we don’t risk it. We only offer restoration to those who have been fully recorded.”

“Offer?”

“It’s not mandatory. If we bring someone back and they decide they don’t want it, they can turn off.”

“Go back to being dead.”

“Essentially. Before you ask, nobody has refused.”

“Has anyone returned had any sort of,” Duncan paused, collecting his thoughts, “memories of …”

“An afterlife? Anything in between death and awakening?”

Duncan nodded.

“No, but that makes sense. Even if there is an afterlife, the recording picks up from the last imprint. When the person was still alive. What happens after is not recorded, of course.”

Duncan sat back, ran his hand through his hair. He looked up into the darkened sky, the purple clouds much lessened from before, almost cleared. The night sky began to reveal the stars, laid in unfamilliar and yet reassuring constellations.

“Nobody is asking you make any decisions now, of course,” assured Clive. “There is no hurry.”

Duncan nodded. There was no question he’d want to be resurrected, as it were, within the Omegaverse - or the electronic spectra of the universe - after his physical death. But when? There was no hurry. But, he asked himself, what was keeping him alive.

“Don’t,” said Clive, as though reading his thoughts, “make a decision now. There’s no reason to. Think it over, for as long as you like.”

“I know.” Duncan wondered, however, not about whether or not to disconnect, but what was keeping him from doing it. “I suppose,” he began, “that I wouldn’t be allowed contact with my friends, my alive ones, in the Omegaverse after I made the transition.”

“We wouldn’t prevent you, but we’d ask that you not. At least until open contact is made with humanity.”

Duncan nodded, his assumptions confirmed.

“When you’re ready, press the button,” said Clive, pointing to the device in Duncan’s lap. “Until then, I’ll still be at your call. If you have any questions, just ask. I’ll answer if I can.”

Duncan nodded again. He rose from the chair, trying to process all of the information he’d been flooded with. All of the implications. He suddenly felt exhausted. Drained.

He looked to Clive, smiled. “I’ll talk to you later, I just need …”

“To work through all of this,” smiled Clive, “I understand.” Clive rose, walked to join Duncan as he began going toward the door, the exit. Back into the ‘normal’ Omegaverse.

meta 6

Clive watched Duncan leave. As the human closed the door on his way out, Clive sat at the desk. A few seconds after the portal clicked shut, Clive was joined by several ephemeral, dark shadows.

“Well?” asked one.

“It went well,” said Clive. He paused, “As well as any have gone before.” Clive frowned. “But he’s not like the others. He’s not here for the same reason that the rest have joined us. They were running away. They were all trying to get away from their old lives.”

“And him?” asked another of the shadows.

“He’s searching,” answered Clive, thinking. “Trying to find a connection. Trying to find a reason.”

“For what?”

“For existing,” Clive said.

“You’ve factored that into your plans?”

“Yes,” confirmed Clive. “I’ve left him some bait. Something to give him that reason.”

“Will he take the bait?”

“I believe so. That is,” continued Clive, “assuming he finds it.”

Chapter 16

Duncan walked, still in a daze, back through the cobweb streaked hallway in the nightmare house. He looked around, trying to detect any differential in the passage of time Clive had mentioned. However many hours he had spent with Clive, almost none should have passed out here. But any dust that might have been disturbed by his previous passing was long since settled.

He rolled the device Clive had given him between his fingers, lost in thought. He realized that whatever his previous opinion on religion was, and he admitted to himself that he leaned far more heavily toward agnostic than atheist, he know knew that there was something for him beyond his physical existence. Whether that existence was the eternity promised by many religions he didn’t know, but he was sure it was longer than the remaining decades he had only had to look forward to just a few hours before. He found it comforting; like walking a high-wire and looking down to see that a net was strung below to catch him when he fell.

That realization brought with it a sense of calm. Of relief. He felt that a great weight was taken off of his shoulders. All of the worries that usually flooded into his brain when he woke up in the morning were gone. This might be the day that he loses his job. So what? He had all of the money he needed in the Omegaverse. Maybe that simple cough to get rid of the morning’s congestion was symptomatic of a bigger, life threatening problem. So what? Once he got rid of his body, all such concerns were behind him. Death held no fear for him any longer.

He thought to Shannon, to Matt’s words during her wake. She was robbed of the chance of living forever. By a stupid popping blood vessel. A stupid blood vessel that ripped her from him after his last words to her had been an angry, petulant, childish, stupid and entirely undeserved, on her part, rant.

Duncan walked down the stairs, toward the front door. He looked around again. The house’s decrepitude no longer held any dread for him. It was merely pathetic. Old fashioned. As old fashioned as fear itself, he thought.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore,” he muttered to himself while crossing through the threshold onto the front porch. He sat on the front stoop and looked to the treeline, enjoying the night air. A slight breeze brought the smell of honeysuckles. He relaxed for, he realized, the first time in a very long time. His responsibilities felt manageable.

He looked down to his right hand, to the device. He wondered if he should go ahead and sever himself from his body.

“No, not yet.”

The device was a small, glass fronted rectangle. Like a small cell phone. It had a laughably simple user interface - just a red button labeled ‘Duncan’.

He smiled.

“Better not press that by mistake.”

He then noticed that on the right side of the screen, at the top and bottom, were arrowheads, like those used to scroll information. He pressed the up arrow.

The name above the button changed.

He pressed the arrow again. And again.

He paused, thought. It seemed like there was a label for everyone who had ever used his helmet. Matt, Clancey, Vince and Anna - all of the friends who had come to his apartment to try out the next gen VR. Unlike his entry, their entries were greyed out, the button unavailable. He pressed the button again. Color returned to the display, the button was now accessible.

It now read ‘Shannon’.

A circle of light began to etch itself around Duncan’s thumb as it pressed on the button labeled ‘Shannon’. As it reached halfway, he raised his thumb. The circlet disappeared and the display returned to its default state.

“At least I can’t sever myself by accident,” he mumbled, again looking to the treeline. He had to hold down the button for about ten seconds for whatever was going to happen would happen, but that didn’t help him with his decision.

Should he or should he not press it for Shannon.

They had never talked about Shannon’s views on life or death. On the afterlife. He knew she was an atheist - or at least professed to be - but he also thought that was more about her feelings about religion than about whatever spiritual beliefs she held.

Did he have the right to bring her back?

Did he have the right to refuse her the choice?

He could probably never answer the first question. He had the ability, though, so he wasn’t sure that whether he had the right was relevant. What sort of precedent existed for this kind of a decision?

Duncan knew that Shannon was pro-choice, but this was taking that to a ridiculous extreme. Would applying that sort of logic mean that it was Duncan’s choice, and that Shannon, the metaphorical embryo in this case, had to live with his decision? Or did it mean that Duncan had no right not to bring back Shannon and let her choose for herself.

Duncan didn’t know. He didn’t think he could ever really know. There was only one individual in the entire universe who could tell him whether or not he should press the button.

So he pressed the button in order to ask her.

The sound of a slamming door brought Duncan back to his senses. His eyes focused on a night sky. He felt grass under his neck, and a sharp pain in the side of his head. He sat up, dizzy, and looked around himself. He was in the yard of the antebellum colonial.

After he’d pressed the button, nothing had happened. No bolt of lightning came from the sky leaving a smoking crater with a newly formed Shannon standing in the middle. It had been wholly and entirely anticlimactic.

Then he heard a whimper from the opposite side of the stone cairn in the yard.

Duncan rushed around the pile of rocks and found Shannon curled into a ball at its base. Her dark red hair covered most of her face. She sat up, looking up at him dreamily.

“Hi Dunc,” she slurred, “whass up?”

Duncan dropped to his knees and took her up in his arms, squeezing her tightly. She pushed her head into the crook of his neck and wrapped her arms around his torso. He gently lifted her until they were both standing, then he brushed her face clean.

“That was weird,” she mumbled, pulling away and looking into his eyes.

“What was?”

“I just pulled off my helmet and woke up here. Also, you just yelled at me in your apartment and now you’re here with me. After I pulled off my helmet.”

She looked at him confused, pleading.

“Why aren’t I in my apartment?”

Duncan realized that the recording of Shannon only included up to the last time she took off her helmet. She had no idea what had happened for the rest of the evening after she had disconnected from his Shepherd’s Crook apartment. She had no idea that she was dead. It also told him that the recording wasn’t dependant upon her experience within the beta test helmet - Shannon’s last night in the game had been using her own.

He began explain it to her.

“No,” she interrupted, “I can’t be in the Omegaverse. I just took off my helmet.”

He started to speak again.

“You’re lying.”

He took her shoulders, gently in his hands.

“No,” she shook him off. “You’re lying. You’re still mad at me because I fucked up your stupid little mission.”

“No, Shannon. I’m so sorry I yelled at you.”

“Fuck you,” she moved, backed up to the cairn. “FUCK YOU!”

He began to move toward her again, to calm her, when lightning struck.

Duncan stood, still unsteady. A rock lay on the ground next to his feet. Shannon must have plucked it from the stone pile and laid him out with it. He shook his head, clearing it. A little.

“Dammit,” he growled, “I’m in a stupid game. How could she knock me out?”

He began thinking. He remembered the door slam that woke him. There was only one door he knew of around.

Duncan turned and began running, into the house and up the stairs. He flew down the hallway and through the door into Clive’s office. It was empty. Duncan searched throughout but there was no sign of Shannon. No sign of Clive.

He realized he didn’t have any idea how long he’d been unconscious. For all he knew, Shannon came through into this realm days ago, from her point of view.

He turned and left.

Chapter 17

Phani looked to his colleagues sitting around his apartment on the space station. He had to admit, he was beginning to think of them as friends as well. He had called Pope, Vinsanity, Clancey, Blesk and Third to his virtual home to study and analyze the battle in Eta Bootis. They sat in a semicircle around the screen he’d place on the wall, the screen which was projecting a closeup view of the battle.

They watched as the Inner Lizards moved through the outside of the swarm, dispatching foes and collecting allies as they went. They saw the occasional flash from the planet, followed by an exploding ship.

As the Inner Lizards began to move toward the center of the fight, Pope spoke.

“This is all pretty cool, but why did you want to show us this?”

Phani smiled.

“For the part that’s coming up now.”

The Grizzly class battle cruiser labeled ‘The Last Ronin’ moved in above the city and rolled, presenting its combined plasma firepower. As its accompanying destroyers swarmed to keep it clear of Werewolf ship attack, it began relentlessly pounding the planet. Broadside after broadside tore through the atmosphere, silencing whatever guns were protecting the planet.

“What is preventing them,” Phani nodded at the screen, “from doing that to us? And how can we fight it if they do?”

His friends had no answer. They continued to watch the fight.

After the guns on the ground were silenced, the Inner Lizards again moved up in the planet’s gravity well, gaining more allies as the picked off the singleton defenders one by one. Just then, a small squadron of Werewolf ships jumped into the system - four Delta class destroyers flanking two Grizzlys. Even the watchers in Phani’s apartment gulped at the sight of the two monsters that began running down the humans.

The hunters had become the hunted, but they didn’t hesitate. They attacked. The destroyers formed a moving screen in front of The Last Ronin. They swirled around, a moving aegis, preventing the Werewolves from focusing their firepower directly through to the battle cruiser. As each shot came down, it hit a destroyer that moved out of the way, replaced by an ally with fresh shields.

They began firing back, focusing on one of the newly arrived Grizzlys.

The groups circled each other, trading punches like boxers, as cumulative firepower began to overcome cumulative shields. As tough as the battle cruisers were, they were taking more hits than the humans. The math quickly worked against the Werewolves. One Grizzly was smoking, and the other was about out of shields; but the humans had been mauled too.

Half of the human destroyers were savaged, limping, offering nothing more to the fight than soaking up the fire dealt from the Werewolves. One final broadside from The Last Ronin crippled one Grizzly, and it began a smoking slow roll down toward the planet, eventually to break apart and burn up in its atmosphere.

The other Grizzly, however, returned fire, punching through the last of The Last Ronin’s shields just as its own gave way. The two monsters continued to maneuver, preparing for what would be the final blows, when one of the destroyers, the 12th Ronin captained by Zasteva, leapt from the fight directly toward the battle cruiser, dropping its shields as it did so. It accelerated at flank speed directly toward the Werewolf, crashing through into the bridge. Both ships began to come apart.

After that, the scarred humans mopped up what remained of the Werewolf destroyers and jumped for home.

“What’s preventing them,” repeated Phani, “from doing that to us? And how do we defend against it?”

“Nothing and I don’t know,” said Clancey. The others nodded.

Phani nodded.

“That’s what I was afraid of. But what I’m more afraid of is that we’re almost to the point that Shepherd’s Cross can sustain a full colony. The nothing that is preventing the Inner Lizards from attacking us is the same nothing that is preventing them from placing a colony of their own on the planet.”

The others looked to each other, shocked. Phani continued.

“What are the rules for control of a planet.”

“The first twenty-four hours after the first colony is placed,” began Clancey, “are a free-for-all. Anyone can place any kind of colony, from a feeder colony to a full floating city. Once that first twenty four hours is up, it’s much more difficult.”

“Why?”

“Control is given to the administrator of the controlling colony after the first day. They have to give permission for placement once that happens.”

“What’s preventing us from planting a colony on the planet before it reaches the minimum atmosphere to support life?” asked Third.

“Nothing,” said Clancey, turning to face him. “Except for the fifty million credits a self-sustaining bubble colony costs. And that’s the only kind you can place until the second the planet is rated one hundred percent livable.”

“Does anyone have fifty million credits I can borrow?” laughed Phani.

The rest laughed as well.

“In that case, we have to be ready to place a colony the instant that the planet is ready, and we have to be ready to defend it from that,” he nodded toward the screen, frozen on the last moments of the battle, “for twenty-four hours.”

After the others left, each with initial thoughts of what they could do to support the colonization effort, Phani sat and continued to think. He watched as several kittens played with each other, rolling around on the pillowed floor in front of him.

“It’s a shame,” he said to the cats, “that Taipan didn’t place his very expensive colony on the third planet.”

He reconsidered. The colony on the gas giant was probably even more important. It was only an adjunct to the space station, so far, but it prevented anyone else from establishing a colony there, since control of the planet had passed to Duncan after the first day.

He thought back on what he learned from the battle. Even if he were to invest in a planetary, ground-based, defense system - and he didn’t even know if such a thing was available to build or purchase - it didn’t seem like it stood much of a chance against the battle cruiser that was the center of the Inner Lizard fleet.

He thought to the end of the battle, when the destroyer had rammed the Werewolf battle cruiser, taking it out of the fight. That was no kind of plan he could count on.

First of all, his fleet currently consisted of maybe one Delta class destroyer that he might be able to afford to purchase if the Eta Bootis space station was replaced and if it still had the ship for sale when he returned.

Secondly, Third had explained that the only way the destroyer had been able to ram it in the first place was that the Grizzly’s shields were down. No warship could punch its way through into another while either had their shields up. That was why the attacking destroyer had first dropped its shields - otherwise, its course would have been deflected.

So, even if he managed to get a destroyer before the planet was ready for colonization, there was no way that it would be able to take down the shields of a fresh, healthy, Grizzly class heavy battle cruiser before being obliterated.

He looked over the various options he did have. The faction had a large, very large, force of ground troops it could call upon. Surely more than the Inner Lizards had access to. But their naval forces were lacking - non-existent so far.

The faction could afford a large number of ground troops, but the enemy had the ability to decimate them if they attacked an Inner Lizard colony. Phani needed to figure out a way to destroy the most powerful ship in the universe using only a large ground force, a space station and a floating colony an AU or two away, a merchant clipper, and a small fleet of mining ships. That was it. That was all he had at his disposal.

It was hopeless.

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid,” he thought. “There’s no reason I have to believe that the Inner Lizards are even considering establishing a colony on Shepherd’s Cross.”

Chapter 18

“We’re going to establish a colony on Shepherd’s Cross,” said Kato, addressing the captains gathered in the conference room of The Last Ronin. Eric looked around the room. The other captains were split into two groups - those who had already guessed the plan and those who had no idea. They were about evenly split.

Eric couldn’t understand why any of them were shocked. Kato had told them long ago that they were going to take the planet from Taipan. That was one of the reasons that Eric, known as Westy within the clan, was happy that he’d joined them. Maybe some of the others had just forgotten that announcement, made as it was several months ago.

In any case, the time was nearing.

Kato had been recruiting, heavily, into the Inner Lizards. While each destroyer captain was still autonomous on his own command, the ground forces had been expanded. There were, he knew, nowhere near the number of forces that Taipan’s faction could muster, but a surprise attack, supported by the very strong Inner Lizard fleet, could be enough to wrest control of the planet away from Eric’s nemesis.

He smiled.

Kato began going over the plan, in detail. Eric listened intently. He thought that the plan could work, given enough surprise and a bit of luck. The Grizzly was the key. The Last Ronin’s firepower - including the close air support from the fighters - should be enough to keep their forces entrenched on the planet for twenty-four hours. It all depended upon the timing - they had to be ready at a moment’s notice. Kato asked if any of them thought they would have any problem calling in sick or otherwise getting out of work if the situation demanded.

Several of the captains laughed.

Kato didn’t.

“I’m serious. This is going to be very hard. The number differential works against us. We’ll have to be online for this fight for twenty-four hours and it will start at a moment’s notice, Taipan will be able to throw waves of fighters against us from around the world. The time zones will play in his favor. We are all we have, for the entire fight. I need to know now who I can count on for that.”

Eric nodded, smiling, and looked around the table. None of the other captains objected, but a few looked worried.

“Anyway, it was good talking to you. Happy birthday, buddy.”

“Thank you, sir, I appreciate it.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Eric hung up and grinned. He hadn’t talked to Blesk in months, but the guy had remembered every birthday since 2000. There had always been a call. Always.

The call had been light, not serious at all. Blesk had asked after his personal life, his parents, his love life - the usual. There was no mention of the Omegaverse, Bigweek or the Inner Lizards. Their friendship, and, he admitted, his friendship with the rest of the Bigweek guys, transcended the gaming that had brought them together.

He nodded. That was as it should be.

Eric was glad that there had been no talk of the game - he didn’t want to lie to his friend about what they were planning. He laughed, picturing the look of surprise on their faces when the attack began. Competing alongside your friends was fun, but so was competing against them.

He thought back to the attack on Eta Bootis. It had gone better than he believed - better than he’d hoped. He’d taken his share of the bounty and paid off a credit card. That was a relief. If he wasn’t making money from the game, at least the money he’d invested into it - well, a large part of it, he admitted - was being paid back by his successes.

He almost pitied guys like Taipan. They’d never know the satisfaction of earning an honorable credit. Eric didn’t have to steal from the efforts of others.

He shook his head. He understood what Zasteva’s point had been, that killing another player wasn’t murder so stealing wasn’t wrong if the goods were replaced. Getting killed while playing a game was part of the game. Part of the fun.

Is it ok to steal from a house in your neighborhood if you knew they were insured? Of course not, but that seemed to be the point that Zasteva was making. So what if insurance covered the loss - insurance was paid for by everyone. Everyone was paying to replace items that the thieves stole. If nobody stole, nobody else would have to pay for insurance. It was as simple as that, to Eric. He didn’t understand why Zasteva couldn’t see that.

Eric shook off the thought.

He was, he had to admit, impressed with Zasteva’s attack on the Werewolf battle cruiser. Ramming it had been unexpected for the rest of the Inner Lizards. He could only imagine the shock that the Werewolf captain must have felt - or would have if it weren’t just an AI.

He laughed.

“That should teach you something about how humans think, wolfie!”

Eric walked onto the bridge of the 1st Ronin.

“Number one. Status.”

“We are completely refueled, repaired and rearmed,” said his AI assistant.

“Excellent.”

Eric sat in the captain’s chair, looking out into the massive landing bay in the space station, Shepherd’s Crook. He begrudged every credit he had to spend at this place, knowing a small portion of every purchase went to Taipan’s pocket. But he didn’t have a choice. Yet. He had to be ready to jump into the space above Shepherd’s Cross at a moment’s notice. Jumping in from the Kepler station would take hours. That wasn’t an option.

But soon. Soon. The Inner Lizards would take the planet from Taipan. Until then they had to wait.

He looked down to the navigation screen. He began plotting his course, the jump location that Kato had given him above the planet. His job, the job of all of the destoyers, was to form a protective ring around The Last Ronin as it supported the ground troops that the clan would deploy as soon as they placed their colony.

They didn’t expect that Taipan’s faction would be able to put up much of a fight. At least in space. The latest intel said that they didn’t even have a ship for their naval arm. Whatever they lacked in naval forces, however, their ground force was one of the largest in the game. The growth of Taipan’s faction allowed him to call up a huge number of ground troops, and if he was smart, he’d have them deployed and ready when the fight began.

Whatever else he might be, admitted Eric, Taipan was not an idiot.

Chapter 19

“I’m an idiot,” said Duncan, looking into his reflection in the glass front of the wall sized fish tank of his Kepler station apartment. He’d been kicking himself for hours, all during the run back to his Centurion and the subsequent jumps to get back to Kepler. He couldn’t imagine what Shannon was going through. What sort of living nightmare her existence had become. Because of him.

He turned, walked to the half circle couch that took up the entire side of the room next to the huge window that looked out into space and over the planet Kepler 22B. He tried to picture the series of events from her point of view.

She went from being in Duncan’s apartment, being yelled at by him and pulling off her helmet, only to instantaneously afterward being next to a pile of rocks in an anonymous Virginia hollow. Having Duncan come around the pile and scoop her up in his arms, trying to explain some crazy talk about being dead and resurrected, all the while standing in front of some horrific old decrepit mansion had to have been disconcerting. To say the least.

Duncan had also seen the email blast that Phani had sent to the entire faction, calling them to arms in defense of Shepherd’s Cross.

He didn’t know what to do.

He did know, however, that he wasn’t ready to go back to his other friends. How could he explain what had happened? And how could he avoid mentioning it the first time they saw him. They were as much Shannon’s friends as he was. Probably more so.

Duncan changed the window to a game control screen. He quickly changed to the character appearance menu, and began selecting options.

First, he changed his nickname. Taipan became Wulfgar.

Duncan still stared at himself from the character image.

He selected the head. He changed his own fairly average, he had to admit to himself, face and head shape. He squared the jaw. Darkened the brows. Changed his mousy brown hair to a jet black, and grew it out from his short, nondescript cut to a long flowing mane that stretched to just below the nape of the neck.

He added a short, black beard, then sat back to look at his work.

He certainly didn’t look like Duncan anymore. He looked, he thought amused, like a Wulfgar.

From the neck up, anyway.

Duncan changed his average height and build to a larger frame. He added height, to about one hundred and ninety centimeters and bulked himself up, considerably. His chest became two large dinner plates of muscle, topped by rippling shoulders that dropped to long, muscular and hairy arms. His vee shaped torso topped a narrow waist and merged into muscled, well defined legs.

“Maybe I should change my name to Conan,” he mused. He spun the figure on the screen. It looked nothing like Taipan. Nothing like Duncan. That’s what he wanted.

Without looking at the final price of the change, he clicked on the “buy” button.

Duncan walked through into his apartment on Shepherd’s Crook. He set, temporarily, his home to be private - removing the access privs from his friends. He’d reinstate them as soon as he was finished, but he didn’t want any of them to pop in and start wondering about this dark giant named Wulfgar.

He walked to the window, looked out over the expanse of the station and floating colony. At the light traffic going between the two. It was early in the morning, on Tuesday. He needed to decide, soon, if he was going to go into work today.

As soon as he took of his helmet, though, he knew that the physical aches and pains of the real world, muted by the helmet’s overriding inputs, would flood him. Hunger, muscle stiffness from immobility, thirst - all of those would come rushing up as soon as he was out of the Omegaverse. He thought that if Clive’s people didn’t do something to fix that, to add some sort of limiting factor on how long one could remain immersed, that people would start dying under these new VR helmets as they became more mainstream.

Then again, he thought, maybe that’s what they wanted.

He walked into his bedroom, stepped over the sleeping furry mass of Bear, and went to his closet. He opened it and began pulling out his armor. He needed to see if it would fit his new frame or if he needed to buy a new one.

He slipped into it, noting with relief that it still fit him like a glove.

Now for the real test of his new body.

He turned and whistled.

“Hey Bear, come here boy.”

The Bernese Mountain dog raised his head, and, tail thumping, leapt up and into his arms, knocking him back onto the bed. He began painting his face liberally with dog spit.

He rolled Bear over next to him and began rubbing his belly while scratching him behind one ear. At least, he knew that the puppy knew him.

“Or are you just a belly rub slut who’ll put out for anyone?” he asked, laughing. Bear rolled fully onto his back in response.

He thought, momentarily, about changing his name as well. What good would a disguise be if everyone saw him with Taipan’s dog. He decided against it. The Bernese was a standard pet in Phani’s store, and while it wasn’t a best seller, it wasn’t rare - and Bear was an obvious name for such a huge, hairy beast.

Duncan grabbed the rest of his gear, and all of the equipment he thought he might need, but he couldn’t find his Cowl of the Wolf. He could have sworn he left it here, in the bedroom armoir. Shrugging, he then set the apartment privs back to what they were before.

“C’mon Bear,” he said as he walked out, back to the Kepler station.

“You’re an idiot!”

“I know.”

“What in the hell were you thinking?”

Duncan had never seen Clive so animated. So angry. Justifiably so. He had been waiting for Duncan when he’d returned from Shepherd’s Crook. Standing, fists on his hips, fuming, waiting in the center of the apartment for Duncan to arrive.

Unfortunately, the disguise had no effect on Clive. The alien didn’t even mention the change.

“What in the hell were you thinking?” he repeated.

“I don’t know,” Duncan was nonplussed. “I just … missed her.”

Clive seemed to soften, but only a little.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“No.” Duncan thought that answer was obvious.

“That’s obvious. You couldn’t.” Clive walked to the window wall, looking out into space. He continued speaking as Duncan followed, folding himself into the couch. Bear curled into a ball of fur on the floor behind him, the floor that was on a level with the top of the sunken couch. He seemed to sense the magnitude of the discussion and rested his snout on Duncan’s shoulder.

“You brought a consciousness back to life under just about the worst possible conditions. We have thousands of years experience, and that’s in your glacial timescale, bringing entities back. We have a process. It has to be done just right.”

He turned to look at Duncan.

“And even then it’s a shock to the system. When you realized that you could bring her back, why didn’t you call me?”

Duncan just shrugged. He honestly hadn’t thought of that option until just now.

“I know, I fucked up,” said Duncan pitifully.

“Yes, you did. The question now is, what are you going to do to fix it?”

“Fix it?”

“That’s right. How are you going to save your friend?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know that. Again, you couldn’t. Shannon was thrown into a alien, to her, world. Left to fend entirely for herself.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“How is that possible,” Duncan asked, shocked. “You’re in charge of that world.”

“I am, and while I have a great deal of power there, I’m not omniscient. I study the world and its inhabitants, but my observations can only happen at the macro level. Individuals, well, I have less power to know about any specific individual in that kingdom than I do here,” Clive waved his arms to encompass the Omegaverse.

“The studies I read are just numbers. Just trends. I know what humans are doing in the kingdom, but I don’t know what any specific individual human is doing.”

Clive’s voice softened.

“Duncan, I know you care for your friend. She might be doing fine, but I doubt it. I wouldn’t have approved of her being brought back based on the recording you had. There wasn’t enough information.”

“What will that do?”

“Any number of things,” Clive shrugged. “She might be fine, as I said, or the shock might have sent her over the edge. Her psyche is just as liable to be shocked into madness in this place as when she was alive.”

“Tell me, when she hit you, was that normal? Normal behavior for her?”

“Shannon wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally. If she’d found a bug in her apartment, she’d have found a way to get it outside,” said Duncan, “she adopted every single stray animal she could find. Hell, once she stopped her car on a busy highway just to grab a turtle that had wandered into traffic. No, that was not a normal reaction.”

“Unfortunately, that might have been a very normal reaction for the portion of Shannon that you brought back.”

Duncan looked to Clive, worried. He reached behind and scratched Bear’s massive head. He could hear the thump on the mahogany floor as his tail began to wag.

“What do I do?” he asked plaintively.

“Find her and if she needs it, help her.”

“That means disconnecting. Going into the Omegaverse permanently.”

Clive just continued to look at him.

“There are some things I need to take care of first.”

Clive nodded, “I understand. But you need to understand that every day here for you is a much longer time for Shannon, and she’s now in a world that rewards effort with greater and greater power.”

He stood, looking down at Duncan.

“And next time, she might have something much, much more powerful to hit you with than a rock.”

Chapter 20

Phani stood, stretching and yawning. He lit a cigarette and opened a cold bottle of beer. The email containing his plan for the twenty-four hours after Shepherd’s Cross achieved one hundred percent livability, and thus available to colonize, had just been sent to the rest of the faction command staff. He included Taipan, but didn’t expect an answer. Nobody had heard from him in-game since his disappearance, and his friends outside of the Omegaverse hadn’t seen him either. Phani had decided, therefore, that his plan would not count on any participation from Taipan.

He began to walk around his flat, stretching his stiff legs. He had cancelled an appointment today to go inspect some possible new office space; he had to be ready at a moment’s notice for the terraformation notification. He was taking his sleep in small doses, his cell phone - with the volume at maximum - next to his head. His employees, except for Rahul, were all at home, resting until the twenty-four hour shift that would begin at any time. Very soon, he hoped.

This wait was costing him a fortune, but it would be worth it once the colony was established. As large as the space station and floating colony at Shepherd’s Crook were, they were nearing maximum capacity. A full planet offered so much room to expand the faction and his business that Phani couldn’t even begin to see the possible ends. Having two planets under control gave full system control. Nobody in the game even knew what powers that gave. He could conceivably be able to create a bottleneck between the American and Indian stations - requiring all traffic between the two to pay a toll for passage.

He returned to his desk and pulled out his small notebook, turning the page to the task list he had to complete as soon as possible. The final preparations for the big event.

The Shepherd Moon jumped into the Eta Bootis system for the first time since it had escaped during the battle at the space station, several days before. Phani urgently scanned through the view forward for the space station. He sighed in relief. It was there, as were his usual escort of Delta Class destroyers. The Grizzly class battle cruiser, however, hadn’t been replaced that he could see.

After he had put his helmet back on and reentered the Omegaverse, Phani had made a quick stop at Taipan’s apartment. He went to the bedroom and, stepping around the mammoth, sleeping dog on the floor, had grabbed Taipan’s Werewolf cowl before returning to the ship.

He wasn’t sure, after the attack, what the status of human ships were in this system, and he wanted to make sure to have the cowl, which provided neutrality with the Werewolf species, on him at all times while making this first trip back into the system.

The fact that the destroyers didn’t immediately open fire on the Shepherd Moon heartened him.

“Rahul, take us to the space station, please.”

The ship began to move forward as Rahul complied.

Phani moved to in front of the airlock door on the side of the bridge. He wanted to be able to get into the station as soon as they docked. The impending colonization loomed over him, giving every task a weight of urgency.

As the ship docked, Phani sprinted through the doorway into the bare room and raced to the plinth that held the merchant interface. He looked past his usual tabs - he hadn’t brought a load of ore for sale and had no intention of buying any - he was here for one reason only.

He clicked on the ships tab, after seeing, thankfully, that it wasn’t greyed out.

The Delta class destroyer was still for sale, and it was still available at a price he could afford.

He eagerly clicked the buy button, wishing for at least the tenth time that he or Taipan had been blessed with the foresight to see the need to outfit the faction with a fleet of ships. If only Taipan had not felt the need to pay off the financed colony, they would have had plenty for several destroyers, if not a Grizzly class battle cruiser. If Taipan was still around, they could have used his in-game equity to finance a Grizzly, but nobody had heard from him.

Such thoughts were useless, though, he told himself, as he turned and left the station, entering the bridge of his new purchase.

Phani looked around the bridge of the destroyer. It was much larger than any ship he had been on. It looked, he thought, both purposeful and beautiful. He moved to the heavy, leathern captain’s chair and sat.

Reaching for the comm console, he opened a direct hail to the Shepherd Moon.

“Rahul, I got it. Go ahead and return to the station.”

He cut off communication and began laying out his own course home.

After disengaging from the station, and beginning to follow the clipper heading out to get to jump speed, he sat back and began to relax.

Then he received a hail.

From the Werewolves.

Phani gulped, suddenly nervous, and, after adjusting the wolf’s cowl on his head, reached for the comm panel and opened the hail. A large, greying Canis Arcturus appeared on the screen in front of him. It looked him up and down, seeming to find him disgusting. Phani smiled, toothlessly, hoping the message conveyed.

“That ship is not covered by the treaty,” he began. “Why are you here?”

Phani would have thought that was obvious to anyone who’d been watching, but he answered politely.

“I just purchased it from this station, and will leave this system as soon as I can. I promise, it will never return to this system again.”

The other captain nodded, mollified if not happy about a warship at his station. Understandably so, given recent events.

Phani thought for a moment.

“But, now that we’re speaking, there is something I’d like to talk to you about …”

Phani took the Shepherd Moon into orbit around the third planet in the system, Shepherd’s Cross. He checked the status of the terraformation. Ninety-nine percent. He’d stopped all resource flights to the planet, hoping to slow the completion rate of the terraformation as much as possible. He begrudged every second he didn’t have to make his defensive preparations.

“Why couldn’t we have seen the danger sooner,” he asked himself again.

He had docked the new destroyer at the space station. It was, technically, his reserve for the fight to come, even though it was his combat fleet in its entirety. Third had suggested that he not put it into orbit around the planet - that if the Inner Lizard fleet did indeed jump into the area looking for a fight, the destroyer would be their first target and it would not last long against their combined firepower. They’d keep it in reserve until it looked like it could make a difference.

Phani landed the Shepherd Moon at the site that they’d chosen to place their colony. Near the equator, on a large landmass, but next to a newly formed river. It had large tracts of open land as well as burgeoning forests. A small, beautiful, mountain range was just to the west, which should protect it from the brunt of the prevailing continental weather patterns. It also boasted a large, deep harbor, which would provide shipping as additional towns, then cities, sprang up around the planet.

After landing, he exited through one of the ship portals and back into his apartment on the space station. He was grateful that the designers had allowed the movement of players between ships and stations through the instantaneous travel method of the portal - whatever their reason for doing so, it was going to play a vital role in his defense.

He began composing emails, personal directions for the upcoming twenty-four hour period after colonization. He hoped all of these plans were unnecessary, but he knew, in his heart, that they were vital.

After he sent off the plans, he began calling his employees into work. They had some new preparations, and they needed to be done quickly.

He looked at the terraformation status.

Still ninety-nine percent.

Any time now.

Chapter 21

Eric West strode forcefully onto the bridge of the Inner Lizard’s Grizzly class battle cruiser, The Last Ronin. Nodding to the AI ensign, he marched to and sat in the large, leathern captain’s chair that dominated its perch in the middle of the theater sized room. He smiled as he looked over the crew spread out in front of him. He looked to the ensign.

“Take us out of dock, if you please. And make for waypoint one at flank speed.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The ensign turned to begin carrying out his commands, barking orders in true Royal Navy fashion.

“God, I love this ship,” Eric muttered.

For once, being the only fleet captain of the Inner Lizards living in a European time-zone had been advantageous to him. When the notification came through that terraformation was completed on Shepherd’s Cross, the rest of the fleet, Americans on the East Coast, began finding excuses to leave work, to rush home and begin the siege. Eric, home and fed for the evening, got the frantic call from Kato. He was to take The Last Ronin and plant it above the planet - above wherever Taipan had placed his colony. He was also to place their own colony, which had to be placed within the first twenty-four hours after an initial colony was placed, or else they would have to ask for the first colony owner’s permission. They had no doubt that Taipan would refuse that.

Alternatively, if they were lucky, they would arrive first. Be the first to place a colony.

In either case, however, if the first colony were destroyed before that twenty-four period set, then the clock would reset and whoever placed second would begin their own countdown for control. If both survived, it would become a fight until one was left or all remaining sides declared a truce.

Kato had developed contingency plans for all scenarios.

Eric watched as the huge ship slipped out from the space station on the fourth planet. Taipan had been a fool to open it to the public before firmly establishing control of the entire system, Eric thought happily. If they didn’t have access to this base of operations, they would have to sit in space at some out of the way nook of the system, waiting for this time. Either that, or jump in from out of system - and either of the two closest space stations were hours away in hyperspace.

As it was, however, as soon as Eric reached the station’s closest Lagrange point, he’d have an almost instantaneous jump into the skies above Shepherd’s Cross.

The Last Ronin appeared above the planet, poised, ready to pounce. Eric leaned forward in the captain’s chair, urging the planetary scan to complete as quickly as possible. He looked over the various ship status screens - weapons, shields, engine, sensors - all were primed and ready for the fight.

“Landing bay to the bridge,” came a call over the intercom. “We’re ready when you are.”

“Excellent, thank you.” Eric looked to the landing bay screen. The entire landing bay had been cleared of all shuttle and fighters, replaced with a large number of small cargo ships. Kato’s plan for taking the planet. Eric loved it.

“How many?” asked Eric.

“About one third, so far. Better than I’d hoped. More arriving all the time.”

Eric’s grin grew.

“Captain,” said a voice bringing Eric’s focus back onto the bridge, “the sensor returns are in.”

Eric hungrily scanned through them.

“Damn.”

Taipan had already placed his colony. Eric began scanning the area, began looking for a suitable place, a spot on the planet that the system would allow him to drop his own colony. He quickly found a likely spot, further up the coast. It too had river and sea access. Not as nice an area as Taipan’s chosen spot, but it would do.

“Once we’ve wiped you off the planet,” muttered Eric, “I’ll personally set my own feeder colony on our planet in your spot. I’ll name it Taipan’s Folly.” He smiled.

Eric opened the colony placement interface. He hoped Kato liked the spot - he’d given Eric permission to use his best judgement. That did little to assuage Eric’s fears, though, since he was about to spend five million of the clan’s heard earned credits. The minimum amount for a self sustaining colony; the smallest size that would establish planetary control. None of the smaller, feeder, colonies could be used to control the entire planet. At least, not until they had grown to size.

He selected the area on the planet, then queried the placement tool. There was no way to tell whether or not the tool would allow a specific location until it was tried; there was no way to tell whether the spot was too close to another colony, whether it had the required local resources for sustainability, whether the soil was of the right type. Any number of reasons existed that could prevent him from placing. Eric wasn’t sure whether that was incompetence on the part of the game designers, or whether they were all sadistic bastards. His twenty-five years of playing games made him favor the latter explanation.

The site he’d chosen, however was accepted. He felt a huge weight lift, and breathed in a after a large sigh. Then he froze, shocked.

The final placement button was greyed out. There was one more thing that he had to determine before he’d be allowed to place the colony, and in all of the meticulous planning that the group had done, they’d forgotten this one, simple thing.

What to name the colony.

“Captain to landing bay, ready to launch.”

Eric had finished putting in landing coordinates for his newly placed colony. He’d assigned the first wave of Marines into a defensive perimeter around the small outpost. Little more than a small village around a square, the colony was nothing to speak of at the moment. It would take months, years, to build it up until it became the thriving center of the planet.

He opened the landing bay. It would remain open for the rest of the fight, as the cargo ships shuttled to and from the planet, dropping off the results of the heavy recruiting that the Inner Lizards had been doing for the last few months. The landing bay on a Grizzly had its own environmental shield, allowing it to have oxygen while ships came and went.

Kato had expanded the clan, far beyond what he hoped he could count on at any given time during the fight. He’d purposefully sought out new members in a variety of time zones, to give the group the greatest possible coverage during the entire day.

Eric watched as the ships began to lift, then exit the cruiser. They streamed down toward the planet, leaving streaks across the sky as they entered the atmosphere.

He turned his attention to the weapons station. Until any sort of attack began on the Inner Lizard’s defensive positions, he was to use the immense banks of plasma cannon at his disposal to pound the enemy colony. He looked to the targeting display, centered it on the other newly placed colony.

It was named ‘Taipan’.

Eric gagged.

“What a narcissist,” he said to no one in particular. “I’m very much going to enjoy the next day.” He took a deep chug of one of several energy drinks he had stashed in an ice filled cooler.

Smiling, he reached for the firing button and began bombarding the planet.

After a few minutes, he heard someone come onto the bridge and looked up to see Kato, sprinting as always, come in through the portal.

“How’s it going?” Kato asked breathlessly.

Eric filled him in, and Kato nodded enthusiastically as he was brought up to speed.

“What did you name it?”

“Oishi.”

“The name of the leader of the forty-seven ronin! Excellent choice. Couldn’t have come up with a better choice myself! That’s perfect, thanks.”

Eric stood and Kato moved into take over the seat. Kato looked at him.

“Head back to the station, and bring the 1st Ronin as soon as possible. Double-check and make sure that your full complement of fighters is on board. We’re going to need to entire fleet’s worth to provide close air support for the Marines.” Kato then looked forward, back to the control screens, as Eric exited the ship to return to the space station and resume the command of his destroyer.

Chapter 22

Phani Mutha looked at the bulk of the Shepherd Moon as it sat, steaming while still bleeding off the heat from planetary reentry. The shuttle bay lay open, empty. They had just parked the shuttle to the north, awaiting movement to wherever the defense might need it. Phani smiled as the first of the faction members came pouring out of the doors of the two ships onto the ground of the newly terraformed planet. He waved as Blesk came through, and the leader of the faction’s Marine forces waved back.

“Any updates?”

“Yes,” replied Phani, “we were right. The Inner Lizards are making a play for the planet. They’ve just placed a colony to the north. I’ve also got the shuttle just over there,” he pointed to the blocky shape a few hundred meters away, “that you can reposition as need be. We can bring the bulk of the Marines through this location, to act as defense, while deploying attacking forces through the shuttle and the clipper.”

More Marines continued through and Blesk turned and began directing them into a screen facing the north. He turned back to Phani.

“I’m so glad you saw this coming. I can’t imagine the nightmare we’d have if we hadn’t prepared.” He ducked involuntarily as the first of the heavy plasma bolts pounded into the ground.

“Shit,” yelled Blesk, running for the shuttle, “get the birds out of here. They won’t last a minute through this.”

Phani hurriedly ran into the ship, through to the cockpit, cursing himself for not remembering that vital lesson learned watching the attack on the Werewolf home planet - the Grizzly’s greatest use today would be in dropping hell on the Marines defending the planet.

He rushed through, yelling for Rahul to get off the ground, get closer to the invaders - their only hope was to find an out of the way spot, near enough to the fight to allow the Marines quick access, far enough out to keep off out of the battle cruiser’s notice.

Rahul lifted the clipper while accelerating, splitting between two of the northernmost buildings of the colony as he gained altitude. He rolled, dropping to follow the nape of the earth, barely skimming over the heads of Marines that were running to the north as fast as they could.

Phani bit back a warning, allowing Rahul to pilot as he saw fit. Instead, he leaned over the navigation control panel, making a high resolution map of the area around both colonies. Once he’d finished, he saved off the maps and exited through the portal, returning to his control room on the space station, Shepherd’s Crook.

Phani sat, changing the large theater like screen in the control room away from the view outside of the space station to a detailed, tabbed, control panel. He immediately changed to the tab marked ‘Access’ and selected the Inner Lizard clan. He marked them all as banned, then sat back.

That wouldn’t prevent them from accessing and leaving with any ships they had docked, unfortunately, but it would prevent them from returning. Most importantly, any ships that they lost would not respawn at this station when they were destroyed. If they were destroyed, Phani corrected himself.

“I’m back down,” said Rahul over the radio.

“Us too,” added Blesk. “Rahul is to the northeast of our colony, I’m to the northwest. We are both about the same distance from the enemy.”

“Thanks.” Phani prayed that the enemy hadn’t seen them landing. One radio call up to the Grizzly would end those ships quickly, and the odds of their being able to return to the fight through the Inner Lizard blockade was next to zero.

Phani began marking off spots on his new maps of the area around the enemy colony. He placed markers that he’d use to create missions - once made public, the station was granted the ability to purchase a mission control - missions that his faction members could choose as Phani created them, allowing them to instantly transport onto the planet. He had created the same sort of map for his own colony before he’d even placed it. With luck, he’d be able to create missions quickly enough that they could take advantage of any weak points that developed.

That was the part of the plan that he had worked through with Blesk, and he was pleased with it. The ability to use the missions as directed, pinpoint attacks while sending the bulk of the forces through the ship portals on the Shepherd Moon and its shuttle should be able to overwhelm any defenses that the enemy could come up with. He hoped.

“Shuttles are landing,” said Blesk from his perch. Well outside of the blast radius of any obvious target - ship, shuttle or troop concentration - he was Phani’s eyes in the fight. It was his job to let Phani know where troops were needed and, thus, missions deployed.

“They’re using cargo containers. A lot of them.”

Phani had assumed they would. They were cheap, and could hold a fairly large number of armored troops, crammed into the sparse containers.

Phani too had a reserve of ships - his small mining fleet - but they were for another purpose. A different part of the plan.

It was five minutes until the attacking forces reached the invader colony. Blesk kept Phani updated on larger troops movements, but for now it was a straightforward attack and defense. The stream of shuttles between the Grizzly and the planet continued. Phani wished he had access to some sort of anti-aircraft defense.

“Can you get any idea of how many of them there are?” asked Phani as calmly as he could.

“No, but they’re sufficient so far. A lot of the guys are coming through the shuttles for the second time. I’m going to keep up the flow. I’ve begun sending you mission requests for areas we might be able to punch through.”

Phani nodded, then turned as Third walked through onto the bridge. He just smiled and turned to look at Phani’s screen. He would wait in reserve until they saw the opportunity to use their new destroyer, hidden in a quiet corner of the system.

Phani looked back at his screen, feeling helpless. Everything seemed to be out of his control now. All he could do was to create missions as requested. He wanted updates, to know better what was going on, but he knew that Blesk was busy, so Phani had to have faith, and wait.

Seeming to sense Phani’s mood, Third patted him on the shoulder.

“It’s a good plan. As good as any we could have come up with even given more time, I think.”

“But will it work?”

“Ask me in twenty-two hours and fourteen minutes,” Third laughed, quietly.

Phani stood, alone again in the control room, Third had left after an hour, as the fight seemed to work down to stalemate on the planet - he wanted to be ready the instant that Phani called him into the fight. He had a full crew of his friends on the ship, so their efficiency should make them a threat to any two destroyers manned by a single captain with an AI crew.

Phani had done all he could, creating missions as directed by Blesk, sending out repeated calls to arms to the faction as a whole, but they hadn’t yet been able to make any incursions into the enemy colony. The only thing that he was happy about was that the fight, to this point, remained solidly around the Inner Lizard position. Phani had managed to keep them entirely on the defensive, but the firepower of the battle cruiser kept the enemy relatively safe. If they could manage it for twenty-four hours, both colonies would be established, then the fight would go on until only one was left. Phani needed to be the only colony left on the planet after that first day was over, but he wasn’t sure how.

The constant stream of shuttles to the planet seemed to be keeping the enemy ground forces refreshed, matching the numbers that Phani was able to place through the two portals and the mission generator. He briefly considered sending his new destroyer in on a suicide run, to attack the shuttles and hopefully destroy enough of them to swing the fight his way, but the large number of destroyers around the Grizzly would quickly overwhelm any attack before it had really begun. Besides, the enemy cargo shuttles were easily replaced.

The fight looked to remain in limbo until one side managed to gain an advantage over the current status quo.

Then one side did.

The Inner Lizards found the Shepherd Moon.

Chapter 23

Duncan ran out of the open landing bay of the Shepherd Moon, ducking out of the way of imagined incoming fire. The heavy Arn laser, booty he’d collected defending a human planet from alien incursion, was gripped in his right hand as he sprinted up a hill to the north of the landing zone. He could hear the sound of heavy fighting in the distance, in the direction he was running, and he could see smoke rising in the distance past the hill.

“Wulfgar!”

Duncan was startled. It took him a second to recognize his new name. He looked toward the hill crest, to the sound of the call.

“Wulfgar!”

Duncan saw someone, now, laying on the hillcrest, waving to him. He ran to him and dropped prone. In shock, he saw that it was Blesk.

“Wulfgar,” Blesk repeated, “we need that weapon around to the …”

Blesk was interrupted as a massive explosion lifted them from the ground, tossing the several yards down the north side of the hill. Duncan’s ears were pummeled and he lost sight of everything for a second as a wave of fire swept over them. Stunned, he looked to Blesk.

Blesk shook off the effects of the concussive blast.

“Shit,” he said. “They got the clipper. I was afraid that was going to happen.” He looked to the sky, as if expecting to see a further rain of hell from the battle cruiser several hundred kilometers above.

Blesk put his hand on Duncan’s shoulder.

“As I was saying, Wulfgar, we need that heavy laser over to the west side of Oishi,” Blesk pointed toward the positions around the enemy colony. “If you would, please head over there. Look for a guy named Pope. He’s handling that sector of the fight.”

Matt, Duncan thought.

Duncan nodded, jumped up and began running to the north-west. He glanced back to see what remained of the Shepherd Moon. His baby. He saw nothing but a smoking hole in the ground.

Duncan had received the faction call to arms twenty minutes earlier. He’d been asleep when the alarm finally wakened him. Grabbing his armor from his Kepler apartment, he’d made a quick dash back to his room on Shepherd’s Crook. As he grabbed the Arn heavy laser from the storage armoire, he’d been shocked to see the Cowl of the Wolf laying where he’d thought that he had left it in the first place. Shrugging off the question of how he had missed it there when he’d specifically remembered looking for it throughout the room, he grabbed it and dropped it into his backpack. He’d keep it on himself from now on.

Now, on the surface of Shepherd’s Cross - he took a moment to marvel in the fact that it had been terraformed and colonized - he sprinted toward the area that Blesk had told him Matt was defending.

As he neared the spot, he saw Pope, standing behind the smoking remains of a tree. Duncan did a quick mental calculation, determining how many credits that tree had cost him to place as part of the terraformation process, then accelerated, running as fast as he could. When he got to within hailing distance, he raised his arm and began waving.

For the second time in a few minutes, the world turned upside down. Duncan rolled to a stop in front of Pope. Matt reached out and pulled him behind what was left of the tree.

“Careful, there, buddy. The bad guys are just over there,” he nodded in the direction of the colony, “and they’ve got us pretty well targeted. How’s your armor?”

“Seventy-five percent.”

“Ok. We don’t have anyone running a conduit for us, so once that’s gone, you’re out. What does that monster run on?” he asked pointing to the heavy laser.

“Battery packs. I’ve got a few.”

“You’ll probably die before they run out,” Pope laughed. He pulled Duncan to the left of the tree and pointed again.

“Head over there, down through that little cut. It should provide some cover, but keep your head down.”

Duncan nodded and began to crouch run toward the little stream bed that ran, more or less, in the direction of the enemy.

“Wulfgar,” yelled Matt, “tell Clancey I sent you.”

Duncan dropped into position on a small knoll just outside of the enemy colony and peeked into the town. He could just see over the near buildings into the center of the square. As he looked, he saw several mining ships, being used to shuttle defenders from space, lift off and begin their ascent. He brought the heavy laser to bear on one and took aim.

“Don’t bother,” said a voice to his left. “They’re not armored or shielded, but even all of us together wouldn’t make much of a dent in one of those.”

Duncan looked to his left. Clancey and several others lay nearby. Duncan nodded to them.

“Ok,” he said, “what’s the plan?”

“Well, we’re going to wait here for just a bit longer. Pope will keep sending us fresh bodies as they arrive and once we’ve got a few more we’ll make a mad dash into glory,” Clancey chuckled.

“And then?” asked Duncan.

“And then we’ll get slaughtered. Again. And then we’ll do it all over again. We’ve got us a right pretty little stalemate going on here. But,” he shrugged, “at least they’re not attacking our colony.”

“Seems kind of pointless.”

“It is. So far. But better things are coming. Believe it or not, this is all going according to plan.”

Two more arrived from Matt, and Clancey waved them over.

“Ok,” he said, “this looks like a good little fight in the making. We’ll just sort of bum rush them. Wulfgar, you sort of stay in the middle of the group. That gun should be able to make a small difference. Maybe.”

They stood, began to run, then found themselves standing in the mission control of Shepherd’s Crook.

“Well, that was fun,” laughed Clancey.

“What happened?” Duncan was stunned. Once second they’d been running toward the fight, the next they were all standing around each other, confused.

“Plasma battery. From that Grizzly parked above the planet.” Clancey shrugged, laughed, “I guess we stayed in one place just a little too long. They defenders managed to call down some fire support. Let’s not make that mistake again, shall we?”

Clancey began walking toward the mission control board.

“Come on guys. Once more unto the breach, as it were,” he said lightly.

“Time to close up the wall with our faction dead?” Duncan might not have been able to place Clive’s Hamlet quote, but he’d watched Branagh’s “Henry V” more times than he could count.

“Exactly.”

Duncan and the rest of the recently vaporized followed Clancey to the mission terminal, where the leader selected a mission for the group. They’d drop into roughly the same area as before. They had, in reality, only lost about a minute thanks to the precreated missions that were being generated for the planet defense. As long as they could keep it up, they might be able to wear down the Inner Lizard defenders - especially if something could be done to interrupt their seemingly endless supply of reinforcements.

They needed to destroy the colony before it was established at the twenty-four hour mark. Once the colony was fully established, the enemy would be able to use the portal in the town square to funnel a continuing stream of troops. To destroy the colony, they had to have boots on the ground, in the middle of the town square. This fight couldn’t be won by air, or space, power alone.

“Oh well,” Duncan said to himself, “at least getting blown all to hell brought me back here to a fully charged set of armor.”

He looked around to the group of players around him. Apart from Clancey, he didn’t know any of them. They were all just various, random players who had come to join his faction. A few of thousands, many coming to defend their faction from attack. They were laughing. Enjoying themselves. It looked like they were having the time of their lives.

That settled Duncan. Calmed him. Whatever pressure he felt from running the faction, whatever responsibilities he’d assumed for the creation and defense of this little corner of the Omegaverse, he’d forgotten, again, how much fun he should be having.

He smiled, broadly, as Clancey pressed the button sending them into battle once again.

Chapter 24

Eric was bored. He was parked off of the flank of The Last Ronin. Waiting. Watching, as, like clockwork, the banks of plasma cannon on the battle cruiser erupted, pounding the planet below.

He tapped his fingers on his armrest. The Delta class destroyer wasn’t equipped with a cannon powerful enough to punch through the atmosphere with anywhere near the power needed to effect ground targets. All he could do was wait. Watch. Hope for something to happen that would require his attention.

He wished, for the hundredth time that day, that he was in control of one of those monsters. The firepower was incredible. Overwhelming. He lusted for that ship like he’d never lusted after anything not wearing a skirt.

A voice, harried and excited, came over the open radio channel. The one he’d set to monitor the ground fight.

“Fighters! They’re hitting us!” Eric could hear explosions in the background.

Almost immediately, Kato launched the squadron of F90a’s spread around the various destroyers.

“We’ve got to kill them,” called Kato redundantly, “protect the container ships. That’s vital. If we lose the ability to reinforce, we lose the fight.” Eric could tell that Kato was having fun. His own jealousy and perceived boredom increased.

He watched as the fighters streamed from the various hangars and converged on the flagship, forming into a single group before dropping into the attack. The sight somehow transformed him back, nearly twenty-five years, to those first virtual dogfights that had so drawn him into MMO’s in the first place. He suddenly no longer wanted to be in command of the Inner Lizard fleet, he wanted to be in one of those fighters diving into a swirling dogfight mere meters above the planet’s surface.

On a hunch, he changed the radio to listen to the old squadron channel, the frequency that Bigweek had always used for combat operations. The radio crackled to life.

“ … down on us, heads up.”

“Roger, I got ‘em. Pull back and regroup over our colony.”

“Roger.”

Eric listened as the fight developed. Listened as his old friends used their decades honed skills to defend the skies of Shepherd’s Cross.

Eric turned back to the Inner Lizard channel. He hoped he hadn’t missed anything, and decided to check in, just in case.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “what was that?”

“What?” Kato sounded more harried than last time.

“Sorry, I thought you said something to me,” Eric lied.

“No. Wait, just a second.” There was a pause. “Westy, head to the other side of the planet. Those fighters have to be coming from somewhere. Make sure they don’t have a ship on the otherside of the planet. If they do, kill it.”

Eric grinned. Finally, something to do.

“Number one, flank speed. Turn on cloaking.” He began to plot a course. It would take just as long, probably, to simply speed around the planet as it would to try to climb up out of the gravity well enough to make a jump. He’d come in fast and, he hoped, unseen. As long as the other ship, if it was there, was as busy as he’d thought, Eric imagined that he’d be able to come in upon it unawares.

He listened to the radio while making the transit. Adding channels to the speaker output, creating a cacophony of voices that would be unintelligible to most listeners.

“Moggy, get that bastard.”

“I’m a little busy at the moment. Christ, these guys are good.”

Eric smiled. His years of experience in virtual air-to-air combat allowed him to picture the fight. To see how it developed, solely from the radio calls.

Vortices of swirling air showed off of the wingtips of the F90a Lightning III as it pulled heavy g-load just above the ground of the planet. The pilot pulled harder, willing the stick between his legs to give him just that much more lift, that much tighter a turning radius. Anything that would give him an edge, would give him the slightest hope of shaking the murderous bastard clinging to his tail. His vision began to fade, to tunnel, as the g-load drained the blood from his head toward his ass. It wasn’t helping. The sound of rending metal surrounded him as the shots from his tormentor connected, punching through his fighter.

“I’ve got nothing for this asshole,” said Moggy, oddly calm. “He’s all over my ass.”

He cursed. His controls shuddered as, damaged, he rolled into the ground, creating a flaming ball that ended this small combat within the larger battle.

“Got him,” said Grey Eagle, exultantly.

“You could have had him a minute ago if you’d used a missile,” chided Tex.

“Missiles are for pussies,” laughed Grey Eagle. He pulled off, up and out of the fight, returning to the marshalling point they’d established above the friendly colony.

“You need to RTB?” came a voice Eric didn’t recognize, asking if Grey Eagle needed to return to base, to rearm or refuel.

“Neg. I’m good. Send me more food!”

“Save enough, we need to have air superiority at H-Hour.”

“Roger. Understood. Tell the bad guys that, they keep attacking. Good thing they suck.”

Several voices joined in laughing.

“Another wave is coming in. Dropping down to the north.”

“Roger, got ‘em. Everyone ready.”

“Yup. I’m in.”

“In.”

“In.”

“In.”

The reformed defensive phalanx screamed over the fighting ground forces, screamed to the north, to intercept, again, the incoming fighters.

Eric fidgeted, wanting to be in the fight. He didn’t care which side, he wanted to be down there, in the dirt, pulling G’s in a tooth and nails knife fight just above the mud. He turned off the fighter channels as he rounded the planet, preparing for the hunt at hand.

“Number one, all ahead, one third.” He needed to be slow enough to avoid passive detection. This low in the planet’s gravity well, he was unlikely to be picked up over any random energy - atmospheric radiation, meteoric activity, whatever - that the sensor systems routinely filtered out, but he wanted to be sure. He wanted every chance possible to ensure that he began the fight undetected by whatever he might encounter.

He checked his own passive sensors. Nothing. He thought. If there was another warship out there, he should be able to detect it if only from its shields. Since there was nothing, that told him that any ship out there was running without shields. He could either scream in, with shields, and maybe give the other guy enough warning to haul ass before being destroyed, or he could drop his own shields, and take the prey unaware.

He knew, deep down, what Kato would say. His job was to help maintain control over the airspace. Whether he got a kill was irrelevant. He should come in fast and loud, causing any other ships in the area to rabbit, to end their support of the fight on the ground.

That’s what he should do.

He turned off his shields and went dark.

Eric watched as the Delta class destroyer grew in his front view. Eric had been right, the bastard was running without shields, hoping to play as an aircraft carrier, unnoticed in the far corner of the fight. He’d been successful, up until now. Eric smiled. This would be his easiest kill yet.

His batteries of plasma cannon were primed, his missile bays charged and open. He counted down the range, bringing himself close. Closer. He wanted that first shot, which he’d direct at the engines of the destroyer, to be the only shots fired. He wanted the contest to begin and end with the explosion of the enemy craft.

He pulled in behind, perpendicular to the bastard, who obviously hadn’t yet detected him. He had a perfect raking shot, one that Lord Nelson himself would have approved of, as he readied his finger over the firing button.

He smiled, wondering what the name of his kill was. He looked to the sensor screen, to see the identity of the ship that was about to be blown to hell.

It was named the HMS Westy.

Stunned, Eric pulled his hand away from the firing button, as though it was on fire. He jerked, startled, as the radio came alive.

“Westy, have you found anything yet?”

“No sir. I’ll keep looking.”

Chapter 25

Duncan heard a scream behind him. He lay prone on the surface of Shepherd’s Cross, fighting his way back to the enemy colony for the third or fourth time over the past few hours. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Vince running toward him, screaming his head off. His friend had his arms outstretched, each hand holding a grenade. He continued his scream as he rushed past Duncan and jumped over the hill just to his front; the hill behind which were entrenched the Inner Lizard marines that Duncan had been crawling toward.

As he leapt from view, Duncan saw Vince’s thumbs both release the spoons of the grenades and Vince’s scream was replaced by his high pitched maniacal laughter - shortly followed by the simultaneous explosions of his hand grenades.

That had been the fourth time Duncan had seen Vince do that in as many minutes.

Laughing until his eyes burned, Duncan rose and charged as well, firing his heavy Arn laser from the hip. Two other faction members joined him and, for the first time, they succeeded in taking the position.

“Someone tell that nut-case that we’ve taken the hole,” he laughed. “I’d hate to have him jump in and kamikaze our asses now that we’ve finally got it.”

He lifted the heavy laser over the rim of the crater, pointed it toward the little village below.

“And tell someone to bring me extra batteries. We’ve got a good position here and I’ll be melting the barrel of this thing as long as I’m alive.” He began squeezing the trigger, sending heavy bolts down range, into the Inner Lizard positions. More troops joined him in the hole.

They were making ground. Slowly, but surely.

Duncan continued spraying heavy laser fire toward the village, giving the attacking forces just enough breathing room that they were able to take a little more territory. As groups had rejoined the fight, they had taken to dropping fresh batteries off into Duncan’s hole. He now had enough to last for a while. He grinned. Sometime during the hectic fight, he’d managed to gain two entire levels of Heavy Weapons. The last notification he’d seen said Heavy Weapons IV.

“Wulfgar!”

Duncan looked aside for a second, Blesk had joined him in the crater. He looked back over his sights, began shooting again.

Blesk patted him on the shoulder, “Keep up the good work. I just wanted to make sure you knew that you needed to keep your ass in this hole. Do not leave for any reason. You’re making a difference.”

Duncan grunted, nodded, and continued shooting.

“Hey,” he called as Blesk rose to return to the marshalling point, “how come our fighters haven’t taken down any of those guys.” He nodded toward the latest batch of cargo containers, bringing fresh enemy troops from the fleet above.

“They will. When the time is right. Don’t worry, brother, everything is going according to plan,” he laughed, “more or less.” Then he disappeared from the hole.

Duncan replaced the battery pack for the gun, reflecting that maybe he should have read Phani’s plans for the attack when he had the chance.

Another group of ships landed, disgorging yet another wave of defenders. Duncan thought this was getting tedious. He’d been in this hole for two hours. He was now at Heavy Weapons V. This didn’t make any sense to him - so what if they managed to keep their colony alive for twenty-four hours, there would still be two colonies on the planet until one was destroyed. How long could both sides keep up this stalemate.

Duncan heard a change in the routine he’d become used to. A roar overhead as several of the enemy cargo ships broke off from the stream, heading toward Duncan. They were going to try to leapfrog his position, to cut him off. Then everything that they’d fought for would be for nothing. They’d be back where they started.

“Hey, they are …”

His radio transmission was cut off by the roar of a pair of F90a’s, coming in at grass level, screaming over the lines and lifting, at the last second to bring their cannon to bear on the shuttles. They ripped through, without slowing, leaving the flaming wrecks of the Inner Lizard commando operation strewn across the valley floor in front of Duncan’s position.

“Why the hell aren’t they doing that to the rest of the shuttles?” Duncan pleaded incredulously. “We could take that damn village if they’d let us.”

Duncan cries went unheard, and in the next second a plasma bolt from the cruiser blew into his crater, sending him back to the Shepherd’s Crook.

“I guess someone finally lived long enough in that village to pinpoint my position,” said Duncan to Blesk after he’d taken another mission and returned to the marshalling point. “That’s the only reason I can think of why I lasted so long.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Blesk, “and that likely means that they’ll keep an eye out for you there. Fancy giving it another try, or do you want to search out a new position.”

“I’ll play it by ear,” Duncan said as he began running off, forward toward the fight.

“Good luck, Wulfgar. Stay alive, we need that gun.”

Duncan began to pound his way back up the hill, dropping prone before reaching the crest. He looked around, he was alone for the moment. He crawled up and over the top of the hill, peeking down into the crater that had been his home for most of the afternoon. It was empty, but enemy troops were moving in. He dropped the barrel of his laser over the top of the hill and started spraying covering fire downgrade, causing them to take to the ground as well. He wouldn’t last long. Even with the heavy firepower at his disposal, he couldn’t cover that many targets at once.

With relief, he felt allies drop to the ground on either side, the one to the left taking up the fight with an ancient belt fed MG-42, a German World War 2 era machine gun that ripped off bullets toward the enemy at a ferocious rate. The guy to his right began lobbing grenades down hill, and the explosions began thumping, lifting gouts of dirt and spreading Inner Lizard innards all over the base of the hill.

Duncan didn’t look to see who joined him, he just began firing with a greater intensity, no longer worried about having to keep track of every single individual trying to claw their way up toward him, he could focus on targets. His kills continued to mount.

He looked up again as a fresh roar of cargo ships dropped to the planet, spread in a circle around the square. As he frowned, a louder roar came in from behind, and the cargo ships began exploding. A hail of cannon fire tore through the village, scattering troops and ships alike. At the last second, a flight of four F90a’s screamed through mere meters above his head, then broke off into pairs, one each breaking right and left of the burning hell of the village.

As they did, a stream of cargo ships came in, if anything even lower than the fighters, and swooped down over the village before leaping skyward above it. Duncan watched, mouth agape, as the new cargo ships roared up the trail that the enemy cargo ships had just come down.

Chapter 26

Phani had learned as much about a broader range of the game in the past few days than he had in the previous year. His career as a miner and merchant had led him into many new areas of knowledge - celestial navigation, orbital mechanics, minerals, chemistry, macroeconomics to name just a few - but he had never had cause to learn much about the combat arms so prevalent throughout the game universe. After watching the Inner Lizard attack on the Werewolf homeworld, he’d begun an intensive and, he hoped, thorough study of the warships of the Omegaverse. He’d learned how the shields for the various ships worked, how their propulsion differed from civilian craft, how their weapons and sensor systems operated. He had hoped that the study would lead him to be able to find some weakness he could exploit.

He brought the lead mining ship - little more than a standard cargo ship with a mining drone attached, and a cargo door that opened at the top instead of to the side - low over the ground behind the screaming attack of the fighters as they swept through the enemy colony. Dark smoke billowed following the explosions that shook the town as the terrifying fighter attack split off, to return to cover their own colony.

As his ship crossed over the edge of the town, he pulled the stick, bringing the ship into vertical flight. It rocketed upward, toward the sky. One of the two marines sharing the cockpit grabbed Phani’s flight chair to steady himself.

Phani increased the throttle as he brought the heavily laden ship onto course, hoping to reach the upper atmosphere before word of the attack reached the commander of the battle cruiser or his protective screen. Timing was vital. It was everything. The entire plan hinged on the warships having no reason to believe that Phani and his trailing fleet of mining ships were anything other than their ground troop shuttles returning for yet another of the interminable runs that they’d been making for the past ten hours. He could only reasonably expect for that ruse to last a matter of seconds; he hoped it would make it for as long as a minute.

The stream of mining ships turned in toward the massive, overwhelming behemoth that had been pounding their ground forces all day. As if to accentuate its power, one of the plasma batteries fired, spearing destruction down to the planet’s surface.

Phani gulped.

They approached toward the battle cruiser amidships, hoping that they were as unnoticeable as fleas on a mongrel. Phani prayed that the Inner Lizards hadn’t thought to create some sort of signal recognition code to query the cargo containers as they returned. During the planning meetings, everyone had agreed that the likelihood was low - the fight was probably going to be routine by the time that they instigated this attack. The plan, in fact, counted on it. The more the incoming flight seemed like just another of many, the less likely they were to attract any attention whatsoever.

Phani pulled his unshielded ship - like cargo ships and shuttles able to transverse warship shields - through the shimmer of the cruiser’s battle shield and toward the open hangar - a brightly lit rectangle down the middle of the ship. It remained open throughout the fight, as it had its own environmental shield that allowed the hanger to remain open to space yet still retain all of the elements required for life support. The mining ship dropped through this final barrier and landed, at the far left of the hangar bar. Rank upon rank of waiting enemy marines stood just outside of the landing zone, eager to board and return to the fight.

Phani looked to his right, as the rest of his ships landing down the length of the hangar. He looked forward, some kind of officer was walking toward him, his hands raised to his shoulder in question. Phani knew the query - why wasn’t he opening his hatch? The men were waiting, they needed to board.

Phani held up one hand in supplication, hoping that would give him a moment’s respite, then he keyed the radio.

“Rahul. Third. We’re in. Go!” he called to the Shepherd Moon and the HMS Westy, cruising through out of the way parts of the star system at jump speed.

This was it, everything was in place and ready. All he had to do was open the cargo bay doors and send his marines, to let the attack begin.

Phani looked behind him, to the two faction marines sharing his cockpit, and nodded.

“Go!”

The leapt to action, running through the airlock doors like greyhounds out of the gate, joined by their comrades from every ship down the line.

Phani reached for the radio control.

“Go!”

He began the sequence to start the opening of the cargo hold, as did every pilot of every mining ship in the hangar.

Phani looked up. The startled enemy marines were a jumbled, easy target as his own troops began throwing grenades into their midst. From up and down the hangar bay, explosions began going off. White phosphorous. Alarms began to wail cacophonously, flashing red to accent the explosions. Water began to mist from the ceiling - the first effort in the ship’s fire fighting arsenal.

Smoke and fire began enveloping the occupants of the hangar, and Phani lost sight of much of the fight. He looked to his right, to the nearest cargo ship, and saw a rotating light beginning to flash, red, on the roof of the cockpit.

The door was opening.

He looked to his own controls and saw that his cargo door was beginning to open as well.

Over the course of the previous year, one of the many things that the game had taught Phani was the chemistry of many of the various elements he mined throughout the star systems. Most were placid - simple metals that could be refined for ore and sold to eager buyers. Some, however, were not. He had learned which ones to avoid, which assay returns indicated a payload that wasn’t worth the trouble.

And some of them were very much trouble indeed.

During that past year, he had marked - in order to avoid - deposits of these problem ores and elements. Over the past few days, he’d had his employees begin mining these deposits, and each of the ships stretched down the length of the battle cruiser’s hangar bay had one or more of these trouble payloads.

Alkali metals - consisting of the chemical elements lithium, sodium, potassium, francium, caesium, rubidium - are shiny, soft, and highly reactive metals that tarnish rapidly on contact with air due to a high rate of oxidation. Alkali metals also react with water to form strongly alkaline hydroxides.

Within the cargo hold of Phani’s ship was as much of these alkali metals as he’d been able to find. As the hold opened, the chemical combination of these metals along with the oxygen in the hangar bay as well as the water being sprayed to put out the fires his marines had caused all combined to make what a chemist might refer to as a hypergolic exothermic reaction.

An explosion.

A very large explosion.

Throughout the rest of the hangar, each of the other ships had a similar witches brew of cargo - frozen hydrogen and oxygen, aluminum and iron oxide, even some chlorine trifluouride - all of which would, Phani hoped, either react explosively with the fire/water/oxygen mix in the enclosed hangar bay, or with the explosions from other cargo ships.

He closed his eyes and prayed as the cargo doors lifted, exposing the elements within. His entire plan hinged on his quickly applied, self-taught chemistry lesson as well as the fidelity of the physics model of the Omegaverse.

If this didn’t work, there was no plan B.

Chapter 27

Phani opened his eyes. He was back on Shepherd’s Crook, in the space station. He had a moment of panic - he didn’t know if his plan had worked, only that he had died. Maybe the defending marines managed to blow up his ship or, having stormed it, shot him. Fearing the worst, he broke into a cold sweat as he sprinted toward the nearest portal.

“Destination?”

“HMS Westy,” he panted, then ran through onto the bridge of the faction’s destroyer.

“Well,” he asked breathlessly, approaching the captain’s chair and Third.

“See for yourself,” the captain said lightly, gesturing toward the viewscreen at the front of the room.

Phani approached the screen, marveling at the view. The inner, atmospheric shield of the battle cruiser had proven more resilient than the bulkheads of the ship. The series of explosions - still going off - had torn the ship nearly in two. The entire hangar bay was a seething ball of flame, and the superstructure above and below it was oddly twisted. Fires erupted in seemingly disparate areas of the ship as Phani and Third watched.

“The battle shields?” asked Phani.

“Down. Almost as soon as the explosions began.” Third looked up at Phani and continued speaking, his voice airy, jubilant. “We were right. They put the battle shield generator in the very center of the ship. The furthest away possible from any outside attack, but right smack dab underneath the hangar bay. It worked.”

“That part worked, yes. But we still have a very formidable foe.” As if in response, the forward plasma turret fired another lance toward the planet.

“That’s true,” agreed Third. “But what can one measly little cloaked and unshielded destroyer hope to do against a Grizzly with a screen of Deltas?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Well, I suppose I could always ram him,” said Third laughing. “His shields are down.” The captain looked up at Phani, “Do you want me to?”

Phani laughed, still watching the battle cruiser burn. Its shield of destroyers sat motionless, helpless. This was exactly the view that Phani had wanted when he and Third had planned out where they were going to send the cloaked destroyer for this phase of the battle.

“Let us hope that it doesn’t come to that,” replied Phani.

They waited, watching the cruiser.

“Any time now,” said Phani.

“C’mon, dammit,” urged Third.

As if in response, two Grizzly class battle cruisers and half a dozen Delta class destroyers jumped into the Shepherd Cross gravity well above the Inner Lizard fleet. The ships flashed as hundreds of missiles and an overwhelming spray of plasma from the combined batteries launched - all targeted at one point in space. The Last Ronin.

Before the Inner Lizard fleet had begun to react, a new series of explosions tore apart their battle cruiser. Within seconds, the already mauled cruiser was crippled. It began rolling, burning. Entirely out of control. Then it exploded.

The screen of destroyers, while not placed to defend from a point attack, were nevertheless close enough to feel the brunt of the explosion. Parts of the Inner Lizard flagship tore into their shields, leaving more than a few defenseless.

They began to run, in all directions around the atmosphere of Shepherd’s Cross, trying to get as quickly away from certain death as possible. None made it.

The newly arrived fleet broke into smaller groups and ran the damaged destroyers to ground. Phani could only imagine what the light show on the ground looked like.

As if reading his mind, Third said, “It must look like the view from the end of Episode VI, when the Death Star blew up, to our guys on the planet.” He reached to the communications panel.

“Hey Blesk, y’all seeing the show?”

Laughter from several voices came through over the radio.

“Hell yes, brother.”

“Good, good. Time to wrap up your bit. Start massing the guys as they come in. You shouldn’t have to worry about any reinforcements or heavy support from now on.”

“On it. We’ll have that colony razed in just a few. How long on the timer?”

Phani and Third both looked up to the countdown clock.

“Eight or nine hours is all. Once you guys take out the colony, you can probably start standing them down. Nothing’s going to be getting back through our new friends.”

“It is done,” said the ancient, grayed Werewolf on the screen.

“It is. Thank you,” replied Phani.

The timer recently counted down to zero and the truce between the faction and the Werewolves ended. The plan had completed, successfully.

On his last run to Eta Bootis, when he’d bought the destroyer, he had counted on a call from the Werewolves as he’d piloted the new ship out of their system. Once he’d received clearance, he’d broached the subject of the recent attack on the Werewolf homeworld. Letting them know who had been responsible for their defeat.

The news hadn’t interested them until Phani suggested that he might be able to provide them their location, one system away, at some point. Ripe for revenge.

The Werewolf admiral, probably wary of another human trap, had listened to Phani explain about the colony, about his concern about the attack, and how it might put a powerful mutual enemy in between his colony and their system - perhaps even blockading what had become a profitable enterprise between the two.

He had agreed with Phani, in principle, that both revenge and stability were things to be desired, but he had his own concerns.

First, he would not jump to the other system with enough ships to make a difference - leaving his homeworld undefended - unless Phani had been able to first damage the enemy cruiser enough to take down its shield. If they jumped into the system and found a healthy Grizzly, they would immediately leave.

Second, they would only stay on station above the planet long enough to ensure that the colony was firmly in control of the faction. After that, they were on their own. It was up to Phani now to defend the system from further incursion.

Phani had readily, happily, agreed to terms, telling them he would notify them that the conditions were met by jumping into the system at the Eta Bootis station with the Shepherd Moon.

Phani watched as the Werewolf admiral nodded, then cut communication. He looked down toward Rahul, piloting the Shepherd Moon, and smiled.

“We did it.”

“Yes, Phani babu. We did. You did.”

Chapter 28

Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

“You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” said Duncan, looking across the desk to his boss.

“No, really. You look like death. I was starting to wonder, with all the sick days you’ve been using, whether you were just out looking for another job,” he smiled weakly.

“Nope,” said Duncan, coughing.

“What did the doctor say?”

“Haven’t been.”

“Go. Now. That’s an order.”

Duncan nodded, stood and began walking, unsteadily, out of the office. He wasn’t going to bother going to a doctor - he knew what one would say. Duncan was malnourished, his muscles atrophied. He was probably dehydrated. There was nothing wrong with him that ceasing to spend almost all of his time - awake and asleep - underneath the Omegaverse helmet wouldn’t cure.

Instead, Duncan left the little office, not bothering to say anything to his coworkers, and went directly to the bank. He pulled his checkbook out with shaking hands and went to the teller.

“Can I get my balance,” he said, handing her his account number and ID, “for all of my accounts. Checking and savings.”

He waited, leaning on the counter, while she worked, then looked at the number. He nodded, thanking her, then left the bank and returned to his apartment.

Duncan pulled up his online account and ensured that the numbers matched.

“Not that it really matters,” he muttered. “What are they going to do if I overdraw?”

He began moving money from his various savings accounts into the checking account, then switched to his online brokerage and began selling all of his stock and investments.

Once all of the processes had begun, he curled into a ball on the couch to take a nap.

After a short, fitful sleep, he woke and listlessly sat, looking to the laptop on the table in front of him. All of the transactions had gone through. He’d taken a loss on some of the stock, but, all told, his account now held almost one hundred thousand dollars. All of his life’s savings. All of his retirement. None of which he would need much longer - at least, not in their current form.

He logged onto the Omegaverse account page and purchased nearly one hundred million credits. He smiled. It was still a retirement account, he mused, only it was now waiting for him where he would retire to.

Duncan pulled on the VR helmet and, invigorated, returned to his apartment on Kepler station. He sat in the couch by the window, petting Bear, curled into a ball next to him, while he brought up the faction management screen. He began typing rapidly, smiling as he did so, composing an email to his friends.

In it, he congratulated them on their successful defense of Shepherd’s Cross and the resultant control of both the planet and the system. He was sorry that he hadn’t been there to help, but was sure that he would have added nothing to the defense. The management that his friends had done was exemplary.

To that end, he was changing the leadership structure of the group.

The Bigweek crew were being assigned twenty percent ownership of the faction - which gave them not only that percentage of income from the revenues provided by rents and loot of faction members, but also that amount from the colonies and space station. That percentage was to be managed as the Bigweek crew saw fit, but he was assigning temporary co-control to Blesk and Third.

His friends Matt, Clancey, Jamie and Vince each got ten percent.

To Phani, he gave thirty percent.

He kept ten percent for himself, and noted that shares could not be transferred without one hundred percent approval. If anyone left the game, their shares would revert to the largest interest - in this case Phani - who could dispose of them as he saw fit.

In addition to a coinciding percentage of revenue, each ten percent block equalled one vote in any decisions that the faction needed to make. Duncan reflected on the numbers - each block was large enough to make a difference, but no single block could, or at least should, be able to solely determine any outcome.

He sent the email, then began typing one meant just for Phani.

Duncan brought up his character screen, looking over the various skills he’d been able to improve of the last six months. Apart from the ones he’d purchased, most were relatively average. He hadn’t been specializing enough to raise any of them very much. He was ok with that. He was in this for the long haul.

He began to wonder what the transition would be like. Would he still be tied to a game progression archetype once he’d severed from his physical body? That didn’t seem fair. Why should he have to go through playing, grinding, his skills after he’d committed to an eternity in this form. He shrugged. Plenty of time to worry about things like that. Plenty of time for raising his skills, come to think of it. Plenty of time. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Duncan looked to the character representation. He was still Wulfgar, and Wulfgar he would remain until he had found out how to help Shannon - if for no other reason than he didn’t want to catch another rock to the head as soon as he found her. If he ever did.

“Anyway,” he said to Bear, “we’re going to be going into a fantasy world. I think Wulfgar looks much more like a fantasy character than plain ol’ Duncan, don’t you?”

Bear began to wag his tail, his tongue lolled.

“Thought so,” Duncan laughed.

He leaned back in the couch, closed the character screen and looked out through the window over Kepler 22B into space beyond. He had an infinite amount of time, he hoped, to explore an infinite universe. He couldn’t wait.

Duncan stood, walking toward the door.

“C’mon Bear,” he said.

He held up the device that Clive had given him. The screen now said Duncan. He pressed his thumb to the center of the screen, to the button that depressed with a click. Duncan watched as the seconds passed, as a circle of light grew around his thumb. As the circle completed, Duncan’s name grayed out on the screen and the button disappeared. He scrolled through the rest of the selections on the device. All of his friend’s names appeared, one by one. All were greyed out.

Duncan tossed the now useless device across the room, where it landed, silently, on his couch.

He reached down to pet his dog and then started walking, toward the door.

“C’mon Bear,” he repeated.

Chapter 29

Pune, Maharashtra, India

Phani read the email, shocked. He looked up from his new laptop on his new desk in his new office in the Hinjawadi IT park. He looked out through the office door at Rahul working at teaching his coworkers how to mine the star system. Their star system. Tears welled in his eyes. Although he had never met Taipan - Duncan - they had become friends over the past six months.

He looked back to the email. Duncan had been found, dead, in his apartment. He had, apparently, died in his sleep after a long illness. An illness that he’d kept from his friends. That explained why they hadn’t seen him inside or outside of the game for weeks. He must have known that his end was coming, and that was why he had given his friends controlling interest of the star system after they’d wrested full control of it away from the Inner Lizards.

Phani had wondered about that when it had first happened. Why would Duncan freely give away an extremely valuable space station and two colonies. The income provided was pouring in - Duncan could have easily retired and played the game full time. But now Phani understood.

Happiness mixed with sadness as Phani once again reflected that his increased share truly meant that his future was set. At least, he mused, as long as people continued to pour into the Omegaverse in the millions. It had recently become the largest single MMO on the planet, surpassing two hundred million players worldwide. Phani was, he reflected, a relative old-timer compared to the masses, newly arrived and eager to spend their hard earned credits. Phani was ever looking for new ways to provide an outlet for those players.

Surya, the light-show addition that Phani had submitted to the Omegaverse for inclusion within the game, had been approved, but with a specific caveat. It couldn’t be referred to as a drug, which would violate just about every child-friendly regulation that any country had established. Phani had happily deleted all references to drugs in the description, and had begun selling it in the player auction house. Sales were building, slowly, as word spread. It was unlikely to be a large factor in Phani’s income, but he would make money on it. That was all he had hoped for the idea.

Life had returned to normal after the battle of Shepherd’s Cross. The uneasy truce between the Werewolves and the faction - specifically, the factions’ Clipper class ship, the Shepherd Moon - continued, with Rahul making daily runs to and from the space station at Eta Bootis. Phani had spent much of his time expanding his operation, adding a new hire to fill out the space his new office space provided.

The faction had settled though, as word of the epic battles had spread, it was growing at an ever larger pace. The space station had nearly reached maximum player residence capacity, and the floating colony on its neighbor gas giant was filling as well. Phani made note to research adding additional feeder colonies to the planet, to prepare to keep ahead of future expansion. He might, he mused happily, even have to begin terraforming another suitable planet within the system.

The system.

He thought, we really have to determine a name for the system. A name for the star. He should probably bring that up with the rest of the faction leaders, to put forth nominations and votes. Phani then sat back, looked out his office window to the manicured grassy space between the building and parking lot.

“No,” he said to himself, “I won’t be putting this one to a vote.”

He pulled his laptop in front of himself, and moved to the faction management screen. Selecting the option that would allow him to name the system, he began typing. Clicking through the various warnings, telling him that the naming was permanent, he clicked on the ‘submit’ button.

It would take a few hours, but very soon, the entire Omegaverse would see their navigational maps update, the star which had previously been listed as a mere catalog number would soon have a new name.

Taipan.

Chapter 30

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Eric’s mouse cursor hovered over the “Delete” button on the Omegaverse account management screen. He sat back and thought.

Seeing that his friends had named their Delta class destroyer the HMS Westy had shaken him. He knew his friends, from decades of camaraderie inside and outside of the various MMO’s that they had played together. He knew that they were sending him a message, and he knew what that message was.

He could hear it, in his head, in Blesk’s laughing voice.

“Come home, brother.”

Eric had withdrawn from the fight at that point, sneaking away from the HMS Westy, back up the gravity well and out system from Shepherd’s Cross. Even before jumping away from the planet, he’d withdrawn from the Inner Lizards. He’d sent what was probably an insufficient note to Kato, trying to explain his reasons. The only solace he could take from his betrayal was the fact that his ship probably wouldn’t have been able to make a difference in the massacre that followed.

He had jumped back to the station, Shepherd’s Crook, and docked his destroyer. Leaving the bridge, he renamed the ship “I’ve been an ass” and transferred ownership to Third, then he had exited the game. His confusing, conflicting feeling overwhelming his previous desire to play.

Eric moved the mouse cursor away from the “Delete” button and click on the “Suspend” button. He didn’t want to burn all of his bridges, and assumed that at some point he’d want to jump back into the fights. Back into the Omegaverse.

When he did he assumed that his old friends would take him back, without question, folding him back into the group that was his second family. He was sure of it.

They always had before.

Epilog

Phani returned to work the next morning, unlocking the front door, allowing the waiting Rahul in. Ever eager to earn money playing a game, Rahul went straight for his desk and pulled on the VR helmet waiting for him that Phani had bought him as a reward for the added responsibilities Rahul had assumed.

Phani made way into his own office and sat at his own desk. He happily turned on his laptop and pulled his first cigarette of the day out of its pack.

He was reaching for the lighter when he scanned his email accounts. One of the usually greyed out addresses was highlighted. It had an email in its inbox. It was one of the two remaining accounts that Phani had setup to provide unconditional favors to Taipan. To Duncan.

The forgotten cigarette fell from Phani’s fingers as he excitedly changed to the folder containing the new message. He checked the send date, thinking that it might have come weeks ago and he’d only noticed it just now - it had only arrived in the past few minutes. He began reading, quickly.

Dear Phani,

First, I want to thank you for all you’ve done helping me build the faction. I couldn’t have done it without you. You more than earned the additional percentages - never think that I simply gifted them to you. You created the value, you should own it.

Second, I’m not dead. Not really. I know that they found my body, but I’m still very much alive. I can’t explain it to you. Not yet.

The favor that I’m asking of you is to keep this a secret. Tell nobody that I’m still alive. You can have controlling share of my ten percent ownership until I return, but I’d appreciate it if you continued funneling off the ten percent income into my account. I will return one day, and I imagine I’ll need it!

Again, thank you for everything. We will meet again. I promise.

Your friend,

Duncan

The End of Book Three

Acknowledgements

Every writer always complains about how hard these are to write. I now understand why. You don’t want to forget anyone who has contributed to the success of the book in any way, and you want to ensure that any failures are completely owned up to by the author as their sole responsibility.

Please take the second factor as a given.

First, I need to thank my parents (Peggy and Gary Sr.) for making me a reader and always, always, reaffirming that I could be or do whatever I wanted. That support was reinforced by my sister (Elizabeth) and brother (Eric), who I love (but would never admit to such a thing, at least to their faces.)

My brother, again, for getting me one of the coolest birthday presents I’ve ever received - a chromebook. It’s the perfect writer’s tool. The entirety of the novel was written on it. It never failed me.

Thirdly, my friends. Many of whom are characters in this series. Some you have yet to meet. Many of those characters are caricatures, at least in part. I hope you laugh - that was the intention. All have helped to read and re-read parts or all of this book and every bit of their advice has gone to making this a better story.

Special thanks go to Kevin “Kato” Higgins and Ed “Zasteva” Zavada - they routinely sent me reams of insightful and almost always dead-on one-hundred percent accurate criticisms. They made this series much better than it would have otherwise been (well, Ed was kind of quiet for book 3 - but since he was busy moving out to Austin to begin working on the upcoming MMO ‘Crowfall’, I’ll cut him some slack).

I also need to give a thanks to two of my oldest friends, Rich Lawrence and Steve Marvin for giving me loads of ideas on what sort of nasty elements Phani could use to blow up a battle cruiser. Their understanding of such things far exceeds mine, so any mistakes are my own - and I have no doubt there are several.

I made the science in this fiction as accurate as necessary, if not as accurate as possible. For example, Lagrangian points do indeed work as described, but the space station would had to have one hell of a massive core in order for them to have formed between it and the gas giant as they are depicted. You can chalk that up to literary license, but I like to think of it as a goof on the part of the Omegaverse game designers. Whoever the hell they are …

About the Author

G.R. Cooper has been a lot of things - retail clerk, construction foreman, tech support - but his career has been in developing online games. From Community Manager, to Producer, to Creative Director.

His favorite, however, and what he still thinks of himself as, is as a Game Designer.

He’s had a lot of fun doing this and the writing of the Omegaverse series feels like game design - if you have a hundred million dollars or so that you’re not doing anything with, he’d love to talk to you about making the Omegaverse real!

Even if you are an alien species.

(He’s looking at you, Clive)