Shepherd Moon: Omegaverse: Volume 1 by G.R. Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

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