Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 Read Online Free PDF

that he, personally, needed or wanted to use to improve his character, colony, ship or space station. He’d never take advantage of Phani’s honesty to cheat him out of a valuable item only to sell it himself.
    He replied, thanking Phani, and agreed to the deal. Then he sat back, closed the message window, and looked out at the stars.
     
    “Destination?”
    “The bridge,” Duncan said, “of the Shepherd Moon.”
    He walked through on to the bridge, to the captain’s chair. He looked at Clive, who nodded at him. Duncan nodded back.
    “Long time, no see,” he joked. “Are there any contacts?”
    “The HMS Westy, sir,” Clive responded, “but he’s 1.5 AU out-system.”
    “So, roughly twelve light minutes away from us,” Duncan pondered, “and thus no danger, at least as far as leaving the station. Open the hangar doors.”
    ‘Yes, sir,” added Clive, “and he seems to be prosecuting a contact.”
    “What?”
    “Attacking a pirate,” clarified Clive.
    “I see. Take us out of the station, make for the jump point,” Duncan ordered, “and don’t forget to close the hangar doors behind us.”
    Duncan then brought up his trading screen. He’d made several hundred thousand credits from Phani’s delivery that day. He used one hundred thousand to order a drone from the Indian station; doubling his cargo fleet. This gave him one to ship to and from the Kepler station, and one for the Indian route. He filled the drone he already owned with the day’s purchase from Eta Bootis and ordered it sent to Kepler, where the resources would fetch him another hundred thousand or so.
    He placed an order at the Indian station, which would be loaded onto his new drone before it shipped out. Satisfied with the day’s business, he closed the screen and brought up the system map. Duncan zoomed in on the third planet, then plotted a course there. It was time, he thought, to start searching out an appropriate spot to begin terraforming.
    The first thing he’d have to do, he’d read, to begin the process was to develop an atmosphere. If he could find enough frozen carbon dioxide, dry ice, on the planet, he’d be able to sublimate it; turn it into a gas that would begin to increase the atmospheric pressure. He could also mine the system’s comets, probably out in the Oort cloud, for ammonia, methane or other greenhouse gasses. In addition to the atmosphere, he had to figure out liquid water requirements, soil requirements, and the many factors required of him to build up the planet to be suitable for colonization.
    He was going to have a busy year.
     

 
    Chapter 6
     
    Eric West’s and Gray Eagle’s laughter mixed to accompany the launch of the second missile. Like its predecessor it leaped from the HMS Westy and impacted with, and destroyed, two of the pirate’s engines. The ship’s acceleration began to slow appreciably; the closure rate for the destroyer leapt accordingly.
    Eric stood, approached the forward viewscreen, watching as the pirate grew by the second as the Westy ran it down.
    “One more, please, Gray Eagle,” said Eric. “It wouldn’t do for the ship to accelerate to the speed required for a hyperspace jump.” Even one engine would eventually push it to jump speed.
    The third missile of the fight launched and accelerated toward the pirate.
    “He’s trying to raise his shields,” added Jordi, “but I don’t think he’ll have time.”
    Jordi was proven right as the missile impacted, finally destroying the last of the pirate’s engines. It now coasted, and the still accelerating destroyer ate the distance between them in ever larger bites. Eric adjusted the helm, first coming starboard then port, until he was on a matching course, a little above, the pirate. The Westy came in over the ship and Eric dropped and reversed the engines, at max thrust, until he’d matched the speed of the pirate ship.
    “All stop,” he shouted, “come about, left ninety degrees!”
    “Port,” interjected