Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 (6 page)

“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.