Shepherd Moon: Omegaverse: Volume 1 (9 page)

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.