Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 (13 page)

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.