Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 Read Free Page A

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